The Great Hambino

In case there was any doubt that the RSN model is dying: wouldn't ROOT, NBC Sports, etc be champing at the bit to swoop in and get established in these newly (or soon-to-be) open markets if their own models were thriving? Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen or heard anything to suggest that might be happening.

The Twins used 154 different lineups this year, which sounds ... high. But it wasn't too out of line compared to the AL playoff teams. Yankees used 106 different lineups, which was the fewest by far of the AL playoff teams. Having two hitters that were A) in the top 5 in all of baseball and B) healthy all year in Judge and Soto locking down two spots I'm sure had a lot to do with cutting down on the lineup permutations. If they were each only healthy for half the season - and the healthy times didn't overlap much - they'd have used more lineups out of necessity. The Royals used 137. Everyone else in the playoffs used at least 144. The Tigers - that team with the manager everyone here wishes the Twins had and the payroll the Pohlads wish the Twins had - used 155 different lineups Right, wrong, or indifferent, a fixed inflexible lineup just isn't something that happens in today's game. Back in the days of 10 man pitching staffs and no DH, there were 7 bench spots to cover for 8 spots in the order. Now there are 4 to cover 9. With the apparent increase in injuries in today's game, teams have to dip into that shorter bench more often. All this requires more flexibility, which is naturally going to result in more lineups. The Twins are on the high side for sure, but not as out of line as it might seem, and I'd argue driven at least partially by the injuries the guys you'd ideally build a lineup around in Buxton and Correa (throw Lewis in there too if you'd like)

I don't know if I've ever had my opinion of a player flip as much in as short of an amount of time as mine did of Alexi Casilla from the late tag up on what should've been the winning run in the tenth to "THERE WILL BE NO PLAY..." He really took me on an emotional journey across that hour or so

I'd love to be wrong here, but Lopez netted Arraez and a non-top 100 prospect when he cost $5.5 mil. You think he'll get 2 top 100 prospects costing nearly 4 times as much? I have my doubts. Maybe middling wasn't the right word - how about solid-but-unspectacular

Pablo gets moved for a pu pu platter of middling prospects. Salary savings are reinvested in bringing back Santana and bringing in one starter and multiple relievers with sketchy injury histories Twins kick in salary to move Paddack and prospect ballast for a serviceable RH ouftielder with team control - sort of a reverse of last year's Polanco trade with Paddack playing the role of DeSclafani Both catchers are retained St Peter decides to take whatever table scraps Bally will give him and accepts a carriage deal at a siginificantly reduced rate Fans continue to right-size their interest in the team

I believe during the last CBA negotiations the owners proposing a floor somewhere between 34-56% of the cap, depending on what you want to call the cap in a tiered luxury tax system. The NFL, NBA, and NHL have floors between 74% - 90% of the cap. There certainly would be a need to really ramp up revenue sharing to get in that range (plus other things like increased minimum salaries, maybe fewer arb years), but this shows why the players don't trust that increased revenue sharing will be reinvested into player salaries. And I can't blame them.

Have you seen Tires on Netflix? Joe Pohlad is Will

This is year one of an entirely new method of distributing baseball broadcasts. We didn't wake up one morning with a fully-formed cable television system in place where we could pay one price to see all* the games we wanted. It took decades to grow from something incredibly niche into the dominant form of television consumption. Cable isn't dead, but it is in hospice care. Certainly a streaming or hybrid streaming/OTA/cable/satellite model can't currently match the revenue available from a 2024 RSN contract. But you know what else can't? A 2025 RSN contract. Diamond's bankruptcy proceedings have confirmed that. So TV revenue is dropping one way or another. Given that, does it make more sense to get out on the front end of a new, growing model where you retain control of the terms of how your product is delivered, or do you continue to tether yourself to a model where revenue decline is a certainty and you lose control of the delivery? St Peter can talk all he wants about how there's nothing they could do in the Bally/Comcast dispute, but they did choose to grant Bally that power in the first place. Making any sort of long-term commitment to the RSN model would be like going all in on railroads in 1948 *In case some Captain Pedantic wants to swoop in here, I know it's not literally all the games, but it's basically all of them

That's a good question. Had some fun perusing historical rookie of the year votes (no, I don't know how I keep the ladies at bay) Since Marty Cordova won it, the the Twins have received exactly one first place ROY vote - Liriano in 2006. It's a fun list of names showing up down ballot in these votes. Mark Redman, Tony Fiore, Dustan Mohr, Eddy Julien (anyone remember that guy?) Even funnier: the entire Twins franchise post-Cordova has received fewer first place ROY votes than their current manager did

I mean the one that threatened contraction and a move to North Carolina until they got their subsidy

I'm guessing your hypothetical businessman didn't receive a nine-figure public subsidy for their place of business

The White Sox just started a network in partnership with the Bulls and Blackhawks that is starting out with a mix of cable and OTA carrriage (seems wise) but no current streaming option (seems less wise). It will be interesting to see if this city-centered model or a league-centered model becomes the more prominent arrangement in a post-RSN world. Since we're sorta starting from scratch, maybe the models could work together, share distribution, get wider reach while maintaining flexibility. My hope is that MLB tells Diamond to pound sand now that Diamond is trying to drop most of their MLB contracts. Hopefully this forces Diamond to fold and frees up NBA/NHL (they're only committed to Diamond through the upcoming season) and allows MLB, NBA, and NHL to create a joint venture of an OTA/streaming combo. Within that they could sell team, league or even city/regional subscription packages (or the whole enchilada for the truly depraved sports nut) while retaining all the ad revenue. No idea of how the math works out in that, and there would still be the issue of integrating non-Bally teams, but that's my dream outcome

In two years of this format, the World Series has been 1 vs 6 and 5 vs 6. With the way the Tigers and Mets look right now, I wouldn't be totally shocked if one of them can make it 3 for 3 for the 6 seeds. They'd never do this, but I think the teams on bye should receive more of an advantage than 3 home games out of 5 to compensate for almost a week of rust. Japan has a team on bye in their playoffs too, but they get to start their series up 1-0. The expanded playoff genie ain't going back in that bottle, and my plan is about as likely as Dave St Peter being named Twins Daily Executive of the Year, but I wish they could find some way to more substantially reward the teams that proved their excellence over 162 games

Funny you mention that Ober game. It illustrates a case where Rocco maybe did learn and tried a different approach. Two Ober starts later, he was in almost the exact same position. Instead of a 2-0 lead entering the 8th, he had a 2-1 lead entering the 7th. Exactly 83 pitches thrown in both cases. This time Rocco leaves him in ... and the lead didn't last past the next batter as a Naylor knocked it out of the park. This got overshadowed by what followed (Henriquez in THAT 10th inning in Cleveland), but to me it sort of encapsulates the entire six week meltdown. Not trying to absolve Rocco - I'm on record that I'd move on from him - I just think he isn't always as rigid in his approach as it seems. When I was a kid I had one of those choose your own adventure books where there was no happy ending - every possible path was doomed to failure. These last six weeks kinda felt like that.

What a shame to see the Astros go 2 & BBQ at home. A real, real shame

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/sports/padres-announce-local-tv-plan-for-2024-season/3473741/ That wasn't true for Padres fans when they made their games available in-market for streaming. Part of their streaming rollout included working with cable/satellite providers to keep games on their platforms, so they didn't have to pony up anything on top of what they were already paying. Other teams in other sports have struck over-the-air deals to supplement their streaming package (I think Vegas and Phoenix have done this). I don't know if a similar plan here would cover every single fan getting Bally's via cable, but it would certainly cover a lot of them

Please oh please tell me there's video of DSP chewing out TC Bear...

The most damning part of all of this is this part of their response to Comcast dropping Bally in May: "The Twins have no role or voice in this matter." Really? You couldn't have possibly foreseen the channel that's been falling off platforms left and right might have additional carriage issues? Yet another piece of evidence that they have zero long-term vision. They could've been out on the front end of what is clearly where baseball broadcasts are headed while keeping promises made to the fanbase and doing something to engage with younger fans. A lot of the people cutting the cord right now are the people that could potentially be bringing families to the park five-ten-fifteen years from now. Might have hurt the short-term cash flow a little (which we've been told was mitigated by the decrease in payroll) but it could've paid off big time down the road. Paying something now for a larger payoff in the future: that's literally the definition of investment.

The Twins could've (should've IMO) followed the Padres model of using the MLB.tv platform and selling subs directly - maybe $48 mil was the number that convinced the Twins to go all JKLOL about their promises to end blackouts

As a recent convert to the Fire Rocco side of the ledger, a shot with Hypothetical Manager X is all I'm asking for. I agree that baseball is a very different animal than other sports, and that a good manager only provides marginal improvement. But wouldn't that mean a bad manager only has a marginal negative effect as well? Given the status quo, I'd take that risk. A marginal improvement is still an improvement.

I had to go look it up because I had assumed that the Correa/Lopez funds were handed out before Joe was put in charge - at least Correa, anyway. But no - he was put in charge in December 2022, before both contracts were handed out, so you'd have to assume he signed off on deals of that size. And to the suprise of no one (except Joe, apparently), DSG went into bankruptcy that spring. So he knew TV revenue was going to be seriously in flux (anyone in his positon should've seen bankruptcy coming when they signed Correa, and they signed Lopez after bankruptcy was filed), approved those big contracts anyway, experienced the most successful season in a generation ... and only then decided payroll needed right-sizing? To answer your question: nothing was really different regarding the TV situation. And he followed up the following year by opting back in to Bally's when they were free and clear from that sinking ship. There's just no evidence of any sort of long-term vision at work here. I'm afraid we've already seen the high-water mark for payroll for quite some time.

That was as enlightening as it was disheartening. The radio stations he ran - are those numbers correct? They sold them for about a tenth of their purchase price? I was going to comment that his only qualification for running the team was "Carl's Least Incompetent Grandson." Now I think that would be giving him too much credit

Technically, his lifetime ban should be over, right?

I'm starting to think that right-sizing payroll makes more sense before handing out large contracts with no trade clauses, not after.

Good breakdown of the blind spots Rocco seems to have in implementing analytics. I'd argue another way he misuses them is in scope. This shows itself most glaringly in early pinch hitting deployment. Going all-in on the platoon advantage when the spot is likely to come up in the order again is so short-sighted. How many times were ninth-inning rallies killed by Margot flailing at right-handed pitching because he hit for Larnach in the sixth and now you have no bench. The goal is to win the game, not the sixth inning. He could use the exact same analytical information - the same spreadsheets, if you will - and map out a plan for the rest of the game instead of just that specific matchup when it comes up in the sixth. Now, instead of looking at Margot vs Larnach against that one lefty, he could look at Larnach facing a lefty now AND ALSO facing what would likely be a righty later in the game vs Margot facing a lefty now and the likely righty later, plus having less flexibility with a depleted bench. The spreadsheets aren't the problem, the implementation of them is the problem. A hammer is a useful tool when hanging a picture frame. But if instead of finding a stud and using the hammer to pound a nail into it, I started cracking myself repeatedly in the temple with it, I would have an unhung picture frame and a massive headache. Would you look at me and conclude that a hammer is not useful in hanging a picture frame? Of course not. You'd say "hey dummy, that's not how you use a hammer." Misuse of a tool is the fault of the carpenter, not the tool