Gleeman & the Geek: TV Rant and Spring Storylines

[John Bonnes]

Aaron and John talk about the Twins choosing money over availability with their new TV deal, and why not spending that money would make a bad situation even more frustrating for fans, plus picking the biggest storylines to watch in spring training as camp begins in Fort Myers. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. 

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[stringer bell]

Always an interesting listen. I realize I’m not typical in that I’ll follow the team passionately whether they win 70 or 90, but attracting the casual fan and setting the team up for future success seems to have been lost in balancing the books for the short term.

Regarding Spring Training, I am curious about similar topics. I hope to see (and hear of) Austin Martin in center field and I’m really interested where Brooks Lee will be playing on the infield. 

[Major League Ready]

I think it is accurate to say the drop in TV revenue was reported as the reason for the drop in payroll.  That does not make it an accurate representation.  Without a doubt, you gents know revenue was also reduced by an additional $30M in BAM revenue. No doubt it's makes for a more popular position to ignore this fact but those dollars spend the same way TV revenue spends and those dollars contributed to record spending last year.

[tony&rodney]

2 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I think it is accurate to say the drop in TV revenue was reported as the reason for the drop in payroll.  That does not make it an accurate representation.  Without a doubt, you gents know revenue was also reduced by an additional $30M in BAM revenue. No doubt it's makes for a more popular position to ignore this fact but those dollars spend the same way TV revenue spends and those dollars contributed to record spending last year.

Well, I tried to help you out by also including the detail and an explanation of the BAM money, but I'm not sure it stuck or was understood due to zero responses returned by comments, thumbs up/down, or whatever. The teams around baseball spent their extra money and moved on. I expected a budget of $125-130 million.

Perhaps the ability of teams to keep all finances relatively private is an ongoing issue for many. I just care for baseball. I could care less for the owners except as a general "hope they are well" general thought.

One thing that is bound to be true - if kids and younger people cannot turn on the television and watch a game of baseball  - the audience for MLB will shrink eventually. A product that doesn't have a place in the market doesn't sell as well as one that is present and visible. 

For older people, such as myself, there is the radio or watching games the next day via mlb.com if the games are not available on tv. I don't need to see everything live, but I would bet the younger audience is less likely to have those habits. I wonder what the numbers show for radio listeners versus television viewers? The Twins can say whatever they want because they always do, but the media fiasco cannot be a sound business decision. A down season like 2022 might really punish the Twins at the gate and in potentil media deals going forward. But, like someone else has said, winning it all cures everything and erases every poor decision.

[stringer bell]

Taking BAM into account and using a model with 50% of payroll going to payroll, the Twins payroll would then drop $15M without the one time BAM money and half of the difference in money from Diamond between '23 and '24 due, estimated at $11-15M (so half would be $5.5-7.5M. Midpoint would be $6.5M, adding back the $15M would mean a reduction of $21.5M (give or take). The Twins currently are at about $124M, after going to $155M last year. 

It looks like there should be some room (maybe $10M), but there could be other expenses to render this little calculation inaccurate. At best, reducing salaries should make the accountants happy, but as G and the G point out, there isn't a much worse time to reduce payroll when the Twins finally won a post season series with a mostly young lineup. It only makes sense (to most of us) to bring in another excellent player or two to get over the top.

[Major League Ready]

20 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Well, I tried to help you out by also including the detail and an explanation of the BAM money, but I'm not sure it stuck or was understood due to zero responses returned by comments, thumbs up/down, or whatever. The teams around baseball spent their extra money and moved on. I expected a budget of $125-130 million.

Perhaps the ability of teams to keep all finances relatively private is an ongoing issue for many. I just care for baseball. I could care less for the owners except as a general "hope they are well" general thought.

One thing that is bound to be true - if kids and younger people cannot turn on the television and watch a game of baseball  - the audience for MLB will shrink eventually. A product that doesn't have a place in the market doesn't sell as well as one that is present and visible. 

For older people, such as myself, there is the radio or watching games the next day via mlb.com if the games are not available on tv. I don't need to see everything live, but I would bet the younger audience is less likely to have those habits. I wonder what the numbers show for radio listeners versus television viewers? The Twins can say whatever they want because they always do, but the media fiasco cannot be a sound business decision. A down season like 2022 might really punish the Twins at the gate and in potentil media deals going forward. But, like someone else has said, winning it all cures everything and erases every poor decision.

You are in a very small minority that acknowledged the BAM revenue.  This is not a big deal in the larger scheme of things.  The league did a great job of making the game more watchable.  Now they need to make it available.  What I find implausible is the notion passed around here that the failure to achieve wider availability is the product of lack of effort, incompetence or just generally wanting to get it done.  That's just silly.  I had commented months ago I was very hopeful that the whole fiasco is a great opportunity and I believe that's still the case.  There is so much we simply don't know.  It is quite likely that getting to a distribution model they want will take some time.  It's hard enough to navigate the changes in a well-established model with 20 year contracts,  Throw in bankruptcy courts and last minute investors, etc and it's just often not possible to implement change as quickly as it's needed.   I really doubt the problem is incompetence or lack of desire as is often suggested by frustrated fans.   

[Jocko87]

This one was a tough listen, what with being told multiple times no fan could possibly have an opinion similar to mine and all.

Question for Aaron.  The restaurant analogy was used several times.  How many times have you chided your favorite places for not spending enough money to make your MSG chicken?  As a long time listener, I am open to the possibility that he has, to be fair. 

30 minutes talking about how good things were looking baseball wise wrapping with Aaron saying likely they will be top 5 offense and defense in the AL and possibly MLB.  John-to be clear, not an excuse for not adding a #2 playoff starter.  What the ever loving f**k?  

Also, the concept you would be accepting of the team "recouping" money spent going for it during the down years that follow is laughable.  We'd have the same silly machinations about billionaires don't care about money and they have no excuse to cut payroll.  Why, we could spend the Pohlads money every year.

At some point, you have to consider if the fan attitude referenced many times is just a projection of their fans selves.  I can't and won't believe the average fan gives two chits if the payroll is 130m or 230m as long as the team is winning. 

At some point, stop trying to set the narrative and let it play out on it's own.

[stringer bell]

2 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

This one was a tough listen, what with being told multiple times no fan could possibly have an opinion similar to mine and all.

Question for Aaron.  The restaurant analogy was used several times.  How many times have you chided your favorite places for not spending enough money to make your MSG chicken?  As a long time listener, I am open to the possibility that he has, to be fair. 

30 minutes talking about how good things were looking baseball wise wrapping with Aaron saying likely they will be top 5 offense and defense in the AL and possibly MLB.  John-to be clear, not an excuse for not adding a #2 playoff starter.  What the ever loving f**k?  

Also, the concept you would be accepting of the team "recouping" money spent going for it during the down years that follow is laughable.  We'd have the same silly machinations about billionaires don't care about money and they have no excuse to cut payroll.  Why, we could spend the Pohlads money every year.

At some point, you have to consider if the fan attitude referenced many times is just a projection of their fans selves.  I can't and won't believe the average fan gives two chits if the payroll is 130m or 230m as long as the team is winning. 

At some point, stop trying to set the narrative and let it play out on it's own.

I do agree that it is unlikely that there would be acceptance of down years as part of the cycle. However, I think that now really isn’t a good time to cut payroll.

If the Twins win the Central, a segment of the fan base will be satisfied, if the reach the ALDS or ALCS, a greater amount will be satisfied. More success yields more interest and all that goes with it.

Having more payroll and using it to enhance the roster could help to achieve post season success. 

[Major League Ready]

12 hours ago, stringer bell said:

Taking BAM into account and using a model with 50% of payroll going to payroll, the Twins payroll would then drop $15M without the one time BAM money and half of the difference in money from Diamond between '23 and '24 due, estimated at $11-15M (so half would be $5.5-7.5M. Midpoint would be $6.5M, adding back the $15M would mean a reduction of $21.5M (give or take). The Twins currently are at about $124M, after going to $155M last year. 

It looks like there should be some room (maybe $10M), but there could be other expenses to render this little calculation inaccurate. At best, reducing salaries should make the accountants happy, but as G and the G point out, there isn't a much worse time to reduce payroll when the Twins finally won a post season series with a mostly young lineup. It only makes sense (to most of us) to bring in another excellent player or two to get over the top.

Now this is a fair and accurate representation of the revenue picture. The point was independent of if they should take a hit or not.  It was that article after article completely ignored an obvious fact.  There are only two possibilities, the people writing these articles are uninformed or intentionally misleading.  

As fans of course we want them to spend more and I doubt that's much different any year,  There is a call to spend more every year.  The claim is the same that additional spending will put us over the top.  This team would not be even close to the teams favored to win the WS if they spent another $30M.  $30M got us 1.1 WAR out of Correa and we can also talk about the numerous Rodon type failures so it's far from certainty additional spending would "put us over the top".   I wish they didn't care about money too but when is this ever the case.  We seem to accept quite readily with players that it's a business and we expect and even cheer them in their pursuit of maximizing their income.  Yet, our expectation of business owners is that they do not treat their business as a business.  It's just not a very realistic expectation and it's being done parallel to people complaining about paying $20/month for coverage.  

[Johnny Ringo]

This was a tough listen for me, too. They spent the first half of this podcast vilifying the Twins for their payroll and always spend a quarter of any other installment flogging the Patreon podcast.

John speaks with authority on the Bally bankruptcy case but it is clear that he knows zero about bankruptcy jurisprudence.  One of the monied Patreon crowd  surely is a lawyer in the field and could explain some of the rudiments to him, pro bono. To be clear though, that does not mean he is a fan of the lead singer of U2.

Somewhere, GATG and other Twins pundits got it in their heads as gospel that a $1 drop in revenue should translate automatically into a 50 cent drop in payroll which, of course, ignores the tremendous fixed costs of running a MLB team. Financial planning and analysis is such a drag, man. That nuance is for the green eyeshade nerds. 

A few weeks before Falvey drop the payroll "bomb", GATG proffered  that the 2024 club spend should be $170 million. Now GATG seemed determined to prove why they are still right.

Personally, I would just like to hear about a little baseball. 

  

[stringer bell]

35 minutes ago, Johnny Ringo said:

This was a tough listen for me, too. They spent the first half of this podcast vilifying the Twins for their payroll and always spend a quarter of any other installment flogging the Patreon podcast.

John speaks with authority on the Bally bankruptcy case but it is clear that he knows zero about bankruptcy jurisprudence.  One of the monied Patreon crowd  surely is a lawyer in the field and could explain some of the rudiments to him, pro bono. To be clear though, that does not mean he is a fan of the lead singer of U2.

Somewhere, GATG and other Twins pundits got it in their heads as gospel that a $1 drop in revenue should translate automatically into a 50 cent drop in payroll which, of course, ignores the tremendous fixed costs of running a MLB team. Financial planning and analysis is such a drag, man. That nuance is for the green eyeshade nerds. 

A few weeks before Falvey drop the payroll "bomb", GATG proffered  that the 2024 club spend should be $170 million. Now GATG seemed determined to prove why they are still right.

Personally, I would just like to hear about a little baseball. 

  

In earlier GATG installments, the guys have said they've been told that the formula is basically 50% of revenue is dedicated to salary. For good reason, the club doesn't disclose all the details of their finances.

From what we know, the loss of BAM ($30M) and the reduction of local TV revenue (plus or minus $10M) is $40M or so and the payroll is reduced by more than $30M. The Twins have chosen to explain the reduction in salary as a function of uncertainty and now reduction in local TV revenue. I guess if the BAM money is such a big factor and the Twins want people to understand that, they should point it out.

[Johnny Ringo]

The 50% rule was either misconstrued or meant for localized revenue bands. Any fiancé guy will tell you this can not be applied universally. . 

[tony&rodney]

3 hours ago, Johnny Ringo said:

A few weeks before Falvey drop the payroll "bomb", GATG proffered  that the 2024 club spend should be $170 million. Now GATG seemed determined to prove why they are still right.

Personally, I would just like to hear about a little baseball. 

 

Well said and right on. 

When I saw the "expected" $170 million payroll figure last Fall from Bonnes, I thought "ok, what do i know. Maybe the Twins spend $150 million tops". About four days later after thinking about it for seven seconds I put out a team for $120 million because I saw $130 million as a ceiling. But then again, what do I know? The answer is straightforward - nothing.

Aaron is best when he sticks to baseball. He has made me laugh and read his stuff since he lived on Chinese takeout in his mom's basement in Highland Park and was angry that the U of M didn't allow him to write for The Daily. Gleeman wrote what many Twins fans thought well before any baseball writers chimed in later on .... "Free Johan". Good times, good times. 

[jorgenswest]

Couldn’t make it through this podcast. No insight or really anything that was new in the first 50 minutes. Just rant. Justifiable rant certainly but I listen for insight and entertainment. There may have been something redeeming after the 50 but I didn’t get there.

[Major League Ready]

5 hours ago, Johnny Ringo said:

The 50% rule was either misconstrued or meant for localized revenue bands. Any fiancé guy will tell you this can not be applied universally. . 

Very good point.  Let me add that when a CFO or anyone responsible for a P&L defines payroll, it's not just salary.  It's salary and benefits.  Spotrac's estimate for 2024 benefits is $17M.   Now, it's all together possible that whoever started this measure is not aware of how these things are defined in Corporate America but we really don't know what they are including when they say 50%.  

[Craig Arko]

For me the main Spring storyline will be seeing how Buxton does in the field.

[Jocko87]

5 hours ago, stringer bell said:

In earlier GATG installments, the guys have said they've been told that the formula is basically 50% of revenue is dedicated to salary. For good reason, the club doesn't disclose all the details of their finances.

From what we know, the loss of BAM ($30M) and the reduction of local TV revenue (plus or minus $10M) is $40M or so and the payroll is reduced by more than $30M. The Twins have chosen to explain the reduction in salary as a function of uncertainty and now reduction in local TV revenue. I guess if the BAM money is such a big factor and the Twins want people to understand that, they should point it out.

Never mind that there isn't a single player available that we'd all be comfortable with a long term deal. Then, never mind again that said player would want to come to Minnesota.  

If they aren't spending wisely, I'm one fan who doesn't want them to spend it.  

I do believe that if their newest BFF calls needing another one year favor, there is money available.  If we think it's 10-15m, ownership might be willing to OK a 10-15m ONE year spend.  Otherwise, that money is best spent at the deadline.  A little flexibility to take on some salary can make a big difference in what they might be able to get done.

I struggle with people who don't understand how big this TV thing is.  If they were already watching the money, what the heck would you expect?

[Linus]

I had no issue with the podcast. There are a lot of people parsing numbers to defend the Pohlads which is mind boggling to me. The Pohlads top priority is getting their money and hopefully winning at the same time. They have demonstrated this consistently throughout their ownership tenure which is their right. I think it is actually refreshing to have prominent voices shedding light on it. 

[Schmoeman5]

The BAM money. Isn't that just a 1 time payment for all 30 team from the sale of MLB 15% stake in BAMTECH? So yes it's revenue, but it's not an annual revenue. So why is it being considered lost revenue. Obviously the owners would all have to vote on that sale. That might account for the increased payroll for 1 year but it doesn't affect payroll on a yearly basis. What I'm trying to say is ok. The Twins got an extra 30 million as did every other team so they might just say let's spend it this year but it won't be available next year so they can adjust the payroll accordingly. What am I missing?