TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Saturday, May 08, 2004

Crying in Beertown
This week a pair of financial reports on the Brewers were released. The local press, which has always treated the franchise with kid gloves, started their account with the following paragraph:

With the release of two independent financial reviews of the Milwaukee Brewers, baseball fans learned Thursday that team debt has jumped to $133.2 million and that local baseball revenue has declined 28.7% in the last two years to $59.4 million in 2003.

Sounds like the Brewers are in big trouble, right? Well, consider that the average team debt is baseball comes in at around $120M, on top of that, note that the average debt for a team with a brand new ballpark is $140M. So the Brewers debt situation isn't doing that badly. What about the 28.7% decline in revenue? Well, that's a great example of lying with statistics. Here's a chart not found in the Journal-Sentinal article:

Year	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003
Local Baseball Revenue	$36.6M	$35.2M	$39.6M	$83.3M	$68.6M	$59.4M

How about this statement - In 2003, coming off a 56-106 season, the worst in franchise history, the Brewers saw a large drop in attendance from their 2001 season when they unveiled Miller Park. However, the $59.4M in local baseball revenue represented a 50% increase over 2000, the last year that the Brewers played in County Stadium. County Stadium was replaced by Miller Park, at a cost of $425M, the lion's share of the cost of Miller Park was paid for by the tax payers of Wisconsin.

One interesting this is their listed operating expenses. For 2003 they list total expenses as $103.8M, with a player payroll of $48.3M. We can compare them to ten years ago by looking at the May 10, 1994 issue of Financial World. They list financial numbers of all the baseball teams, and for the Brewers they list total operating expenses of $48.5M with a player payroll of $27.8. So in ten years the Brewers payroll jumped from $27.8M to $48.3M, roughly 74%. This isn't a huge surprise, the owners are always badmouthing their product, talking about those greedy players. But what about those non-player payroll expenses? In 1993 this number was $20.7M, in 2003 this was $55.5M! That's a 168% increase! While the owners complain about players' salary demands making their financial picture dark, their "other" costs grew at twice that rate over the last ten years. The percentage of player salary in terms of total costs dropped from 57% in 1993 to 47% in 2003. Of course, all of these non-player salary costs are above the board transactions. No sleaze here. The Brewers would never make an arrangement with Selig Leasing, getting the use of 40 cars for $521,000 last year...

What's the point of a free press if they simply parrot what the big interests want you to hear?

posted by David 9:01 AM

Friday, May 07, 2004

Spiderman 2: The Sequel Column

Holy Web of Deceit, Seligman!

What's weirder about this scenario -- the fact that Major League Baseball claims their project to make second base into the happy meal prize for Spiderman 2 was the product of careful market research when clearly they hadn't bothered to test the idea with a single focus group of fans -- or Bud Selig claiming "I'm a traditionalist" while trying to pimp the promotion?

This is what The Czar said yesterday:

"One thing about our rules, you can't start to bend them."

This said the same day he wanted to completely violate baseball's (written) rules against markings on the bases. You can look it up in the sections of the rule book and the major league code on field conditions.

Of course, he was talking about baseball's territorial rules, not Spiderman 2. And this is one of the most patently false things to come out of a leader's mouth since the former owner of the Texas Rangers claimed Saddam was buying Yellowcake from Niger. You can bend the rules if you can make them up as you go along, which is what baseball has always done as far as "territory".

You see, Mr. Selig yesterday also visited the Oakland Coliseum for the first time since he became commissioner. I'm not making this up. It took him over a decade to look into the actual physical circumstances and facilities of a franchise he has used as the embodiment of poormouth "small market" franchises (the Bay area, combined, is the fourth largest in the country; split into three parts, all three would be in the top 15). And he took the occasion to basically torpedo any chance the A's would be able to move from the dumpy coliseum and the poormouth city of Oakland to the tenth largest city in America, San Jose, and one of its richest in per capita income even after the dot com bust.

You see, the Giants "territorial rights" to San Jose were granted in 1992. It wasn't some plan to save baseball in San Francisco. It was to allow the Giants to move to San Jose, back when the club was stuck at the 'Stick and was rumoured to be heading to Tampa- St Pete. It was more than a rumour: it was a done deal, and baseball, fearful of the embarrassment of losing one of the marquee cities in the country from its roster, did what it could at the time to move things along. As it turns out, it wasn't the addition of Santa Clara county to the Giants' already arbitrary territorial rights, despite the fact that Oakland is marginally closer to the county than San Francisco is, that saved the Giants. It was a new ownership group, the one that built Pac Bell (excuse, me SBC Park) with mostly its own money, that kept the Giants in San Francisco. Only, I might add, after voters in Santa Clara county previously declined to pay for a ballpark with taxpayer money, turning the Giants back to Plan A, build in San Francisco.

I can hardly blame Peter Magowan and company from wanted to hang on to San Jose. It's emblematic of the real fear of competition, and the desire for guaranteed profit, among baseball owners that they somehow think the A's franchise would trounce them with a new facility in San Jose. Trust me, no matter how wonderful a park they might build down there, it can't compete with the location the Giants are in. Brian Sabean has been as masterful as Billy Beane at getting his team in the playoffs. And the ballyhooed debt burden the Giants carry for SBC won't be a problem after Barry Bonds retires unless attendance falls off by half. Do the Giants think that poorly of themselves and their city and ballpark that they think without San Jose they won't be able to compete?

The phallacy, of course, they seem to believe is that baseball isn't its own best marketing tool. The game, not, say, cheap promotional tie-ins or kiddie playgrounds at the ballparks. They buy into the idea that two teams close in a market have to divide up that market -- instead of two great teams being mutually reinforcing. Magowan has cited the statistic 60% of the corporate sponsorships for the Giants come from Silicon Valley. Ahem, where exactly do you suppose the fans and support come now for the team that plays at Network Associates Coliseum? Nothing will change - fans from all over the area will still be split between the Giants and A's, only now the fans that live North and East of SF will find it easier to get to the Giants than the A's, in our hypothetical San Jose A's universe.

But you can't get blood from a stone twice. Getting a new ballpark -- this ain't going to happen in Oakland. It might happen in San Jose, the city around which Silicon Valley flows, which supports the San Jose Sharks quite nicely and supplies a fair number of fans to both Oakland and SF games.

San Jose is more than an hour south of San Francisco. Oakland is nine miles away from SBC Park. If the commissioner wants to investigate inequities in Oakland's mausoleum football stadium vis a vis the Giants, he need only look at the artificial lines the commissioner's office draws, then somehow treats like they were written in permanent marking ink made out of holy blood.

Baltimore? Halfway between Philadelphia and Washington, at a time when there were two teams in Philly and one in Washington. What gives the Orioles the sacred "right" to the territory of Washington?

Chicago has two ballparks on the same train line. The Brewers are as close to the Chicago market as Oakland is to South San Jose. You can get from Yankee Stadium to Shea Stadium with two transfers. But New Jersey is "Yankee" territory, according to the territorial rules. As is all of upstate New York, even though Boston is as close as Buffalo, and Buffalo is closer to Toronto.

It's all very arbitrary, and much of the "lines" are mere artifacts of happenstance. Yet the Commissioner says he can't change the rules. Heck, he can't even bend them!

Baltimore was "granted" territorial rights to Washington by a fiat well after the second Senators' franchise departed in 1971. The Giants' "rights" were granted in 1992. In both cases this was done with a wave of the wrist by the incumbent commissioner.

Baseball is run by a weird sort of politburo, and I take the contrasting stories about Spiderman 2 and the non-existent "rules" the Commissioner cites as to why they can't let the A's try to move to a new park in San Jose together as evidence that MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IS STILL COMPLETELY CLUELESS ABOUT MARKETING AND MARKET ECONOMICS.

If they don't even bother with a focus group about an issue like putting advertising on bases, why on earth should we think they've got the genius of territorial rights figured out?

Because Bud says so.

posted by The Crank 3:58 PM

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Since no one else has yet posted about the latest and lowest outrage perpetrated on the fans, allow me to be the first.

As you're probably heard, Major League Baseball has decided to sell advertising space on the bases -- yes, on the bases -- to a movie promotion. I'm sure Spiderman 2 will be a heckuva movie, but it's not, apparently, even a baseball movie.

MLB is making a measly $3.6 million on this, which might seem cheap (just over $100,000 per team), only it's probably just the beginning.

I'm no purist about advertising per se -- I didn't really object to the return of outfield advertising to the outfield fences, which is now in every major league park except Montreal, where they can't sell it because it doesn't appear on local TV, in part because outfield advertising was present in the 19th century and never left the minor leagues.

But the idea of using the field itself to advertise stuff means you just can't get away from it. I'm sure before long we'll be hearing the Fox announcers talk about the virtues of the Fox fall lineup, with stars of those shows featured on the Louisville Slugger. In short, it's intruding on the game.

Even if you allow that MLB ought to be advertising on its equipment, however, the complete line of bullwash and hogwarts being handed out by the Commissioner's office is truly reprehensible.

Major League Baseball's official press release includes this incredibly specious justification:

"Over the past year and a half, we've been doing substantive research to determine the best ways to market the game into the 21st century, and we have overwhelming evidence that we have a property that's . . . never been stronger," said Jacqueline Parkes, senior vice president of advertising and marketing for MLB. "One thing that came out of the research is that we have a huge opportunity with kids, to bring them into the game. We needed to engage them in relevant and meaningful ways.

See, it's all for the kids -- they're not selling advertising to make money, they're doing it to attract kids into the game! See, it's not about their greed for squeezing out more money, it's all about the kids and passing that tradition on.

Yes, junior, I know you think baseball is boring, but if we go to the game today, you'll be able to see the Spiderman 2 logo about 400 feet away on second base! Won't that be exciting??

There are two possibilities here:

(1) MLB really believes that the best way to market the greatest game on earth is through cheap product and movie tie-ins, like baseball was some kind of happy meal. Gosh, that shows a lot of confidence in the value of your product, doesn't it?

(2) They're completely disingenuous about their motives.

Take your pick, just when the idea of a World Cup makes me think maybe they're not all dullards at MLB HQ, they turn around and do something just plain awful like this.

At the bottom of all this, of course, is the continued merchandising of our children -- the idea that kids are little consumers and their lives, likes, and interests in something as engrossing as baseball are purely products of advertising. It's the ultimate surrender of content to hype, and if the bases seem like a little thing, just you wait.

Baseball has actually already gone down the first steps of the path to fictionalizing its game for TV advertising, by having the 'green screen' advertisements that seem to appear behind the plate and on the grass that are projections -- they don't actually appear in the park. They're editing reality for the TV audience. If you think that will never creep into the game...I give you Spiderman 2.

posted by The Crank 3:53 PM

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

The Rabidry Part 1192

My observations today are on three random and completely unrelated items, bear with me on this themeless day.

I don't mean to add fuel to the fodder for Yankee fans, but is it a coincidence that Dan Godfrey, the Red Sox ballboy/employee who made the terrific catch the other day is a special education teacher?

Does that ring a bell? Yes, that's right, Paul Williams, the Red Sox groundscrewman who was assaulted in the bullpen last year by Yankee pitchers Jeff Nelson and Karim Garcia because he was cheering for the Red Sox is also a special ed teacher.
I like to think that it's because your typical Red Sox fanatic cares. Maybe cares a bit too much. But cares.

Of course, uncouth wags might make the argument the average Yankeee fan is the one who needs special education. I was using the Internet Movie Database the other day to get some information on the forthcoming The Boston Red Sox Movie, and I noticed a "review" had already been posted -- names and email addresses included herein to protect the guilty -- dated before the movie had debuted:

johndoherty (johndoherty@rcn.com)
Boston
Date: 28 April 2004

Summary: This movie like the red sox sucks!

A movie that is supposed to feel like a reality series comes off as a scripted poorly edited documentary. You want reality talk about ticket prices at Fenway to go see those schmos! I'd rather send my kids to college!! Unfortunately this movie makes all Bostonians look like ignorant morons. I live here it's not true but you do have idiots yelling "Yankees Suck". Gee if that's the case Genius then why are they the best sports franchise in history? The response you usually get is "they suck anyway". Yes, very intelligent indeed. Remember baseball is a sport that honors respect for players of all teams and is a combination of physical and mental ability. This movie drags Baseball into the empty headed dungeon of Sports machismo. If you want see a truly great Baseball movie watch "Pride of the Yankees" instead. You'll feel better about yourself and appreciate life a bit more.

Yes, Gary Cooper batting right handed in a mirror is one of those great sports moments, to be sure. Just remember, Baseball is a sport that honors respect for players of all teams - this movie like the red sox sucks!
No, I haven't seen it yet, the nearest multiplex showing it is about 2900 miles away. But then again I don't usually review movies I haven't seen, either.

---

On Monday, Greg Maddux and Jason Marquis both stole bases in the same game . This was supposedly the first time starting pitchers had stolen a base in the same game since 1950. Sounds like an argument for the DH to me. I watched the game on TV, and both "hits" preceeding the steals were "swinging bunts" (more on that particular misnomer in another blog on another day) that went about nine feet combined. Maddux' steal was very heads up and caused a muffed throw and eventually plated a run.

There's plenty of pitchers who can run, and plenty of game situations where pitchers get on where a steal might otherwise be indicated, but part of the Unwritten Rules is that Pitchers don't steal. It's probably more about not getting themselves hurt than anything, but again that makes the case for the DH -- if a player isn't going to play the same game as the other hitters/runners out there, he's not really a hitter, anyway, which you're reminded of every time you see a pitcher try to bunt with one out.

I go back and forth on the DH a lot, but ultimately I don't care what happens to it -- as long as both leagues play by the same rules. That to me is much more of a travesty than the pitcher not hitting (and not running).

---

In the brouhaha over Barry Bonds passing Willie Mays on the all-time home run list, in which some attention is being given to the great Henry Aaron as well, I'd like to take a few inches here to praise Frank Robinson, who may have the greatest "combined" baseball career of all-time. He was the MVP in both the AL and NL in an era when it was considered the two leagues played nearly incompatible brands of baseball. He nearly single-handedly took the '61 Reds to the World Series, and won the AL Triple Crown in 1966 (a feat only done once since, by Yaz in 1967). He was both a Rookie of the Year (at 20) and a Gold Glover. He was an All-star in three decades and had an OPS over 1000 in four relatively pitching-friendly years. I could go on, but playing in obscurity in Cincinnati and Baltimore didn't help his profile much, nor did his Bondsian testiness at times with the press.

But Robinson's had a second career as a baseball executive that's nearly as distinguished as his inner circle playing days. He was the first African-American manager, as player-manager for the Cleveland club in 1975-76 (where I had the great occasion to watch him hit a homer in his first game at home as player-manager), and at the time this was not exactly a smoothly-paved path for a minority.

His record as a manager may look spotty on face value -- he's about 70 games under .500 in 14 years and for four teams -- and he had some notoriously stormy relationships with players and management at his three previous stops before Montreal. But he did not have a lot to work with at any of his stops; taking the Expos to identical 83-79 records the last two years is as much a testament to his ability to work with what he's got as anything Omar Minaya did (fans of the Devil Rays, Pirates, and Brewers ought to check the record of the haplessly undersupported by "management" Expos of the last two years and demand a refund for their season tickets). I'm not sure he's a top tier manager, but he has soldiered off and on for nearly 30 years in both leagues. Anyone who lives through the Baltimore Orioles' legendarily bad 1988 season gets extra credit.

My favorite recent Robinson moment was last year, during an Expos-Giants game. The infield somehow managed to surround a pop-up that landed, unfielded, three feet in front of the plate on an infield fly rule call. The Expos were very much asleep at the switch, but the alert Neifi Perez tagged up and scampered home -- the rule does say, after all, runners may advance at their own risk. The Expos concerned -- basically the entire infield, pitcher, and catcher -- clearly didn't know this nuance and started arguing hotly with the umpire. Many a manager would come out and intercede to keep his players from getting tossed. Instead Robinson came out, barked at the players (basically, one might lip read, the umpire's right about the rule, stop embarrassing yourselves, shut up and play ball) and went back to the bench. I think this ranks right up there with Carlton Fisk cussing out Deion Sanders (who was on the opposing team) for not running out a pop-up for my favorite Old School moment.

Somewhat more obscure are two off-field achievements. Robinson is widely credited, as an Orioles executive, with insisting on the architectural and on-field changes to the Camden Yards project that transformed it from just-another-stadium into the model for all the new jewels out there. If you want to see what Camden Yards might've been, look no further than the utterly bland New Comiskey Park, which opened the year before Camden Yards did in 1992.

Robinson also exerted influences not entirely clear to me in the ongoing struggles on the field as the 'Dean of Discipline' and investigating umpiring as an executive for Major League baseball as Vice President for On Field Operations.

I don't know that Robinson's individual achievements in any of these post-playing-days posts are, taken singly, earth-shattering in their importantance. But it's hard to think of another former playing great who has had such a variety of positions in baseball. Robinson's willingness to take on the management of the homeless Expos is just another of his quiet contributions that make the game better for all of us.

I am a great admirer of Barry Bonds, but it's hard to imagine him or any other superstar serving baseball for another 30 years the way Robbie has.

If there were a way to vote a guy into the Hall of Fame twice, I'd say vote Robinson in again.

posted by The Crank 2:07 PM

Monday, May 03, 2004

I have a little bit to say about a lot of different topics, so let's get going.

The NL Wild Card

I don't think I appreciated quite how good the "also-rans" in the NL Central were, or quite how bad those of the NL East have turned out to be, at least in the first 25 games or so of the season. I still think the NLWC winner will come from the Central, but the fact that the Mets and the Expos are in the NL East opens the door a little wider for one of the three decent or better teams from the East. And let's not forget LA and San Diego. If LA keeps hitting the way they've started you have to like their chances to win, and possibly run away with, the West, but if the Padres continue to seriously outclass the other three teams in the West the WC could even come from the West, as hard as that was to imagine a month ago.

The Cubs

With today's win to earn a series split in the four games in St. Louis, the Cubs move to 15-10 on the season. They have managed this despite Mark Prior's absence and having only one reliable lefty in the 'pen. Prior just threw a one-inning simulated game, with no adverse effects after working out of the stretch for 15 pitches. In his rehab schedule Prior will increase his workload by an inning in each simulated game, which will be spaced four days apart. Throw in a couple of rehab starts after a few more simulated games and Prior could be back in the lineup sometime around Memorial Day, or maybe a little sooner. Mike Remlinger should also be ready to go in a couple of weeks, and that will help bolster the Cubs' bullpen and take some of the load off of Kent Mercker.

On the offensive side, Todd Walker, Moises Alou, and Aramis Ramirez have all gotten off to great starts. Sammy Sosa and Derek Lee have started off in a characteristically slow manner, but I expect that they will warm up along with the weather. I don't expect Alou to keep up his .700+ SLG or for Ramirez to go at a .600+ pace for too much longer, but as they regress back to their means Sosa and Lee should be in position to pick up some of that slack.

The Twins

I caught yesterday's Twins' game as well as the game on Saturday with the Kingman pre-game episode. The Twins dropped a couple of tough games to the Angels after being tied through seven. The Twins just couldn't match the Francisco Rodriguez-Troy Percival combo that the Angels can field late in tight games.

One interesting thing I noted is that Ron Gardenhire chose to take out both Brad Radke and Johan Santana after seven, even though each guy was a few pitches shy of 100 on their pitch counts for their respective games. Keep in mind that Radke was locked in a 0-0 duel and Santana had righted his ship after a rocky start to be in the middle of a 1-1 game.

This is not headed where you think it is, though. I'm not about to second-guess Gardenhire. He's 199-149 (.572) in his first 2+ seasons with the Twins, so he knows what he's doing. What's going on is that with no reliable fifth starter, Gardenhire is using off days whenever possible to skip the number 5 spot in the rotation. This policy has already meant that about a half start or so extra has piled up on the established quartet of Radke, Santana, Kyle Lohse, and Carlos Silva. The Twins off days today and a week from today mean that the policy could be kept up until May 15 if Gardenhire so chose, and based on the way he handled Radke and Santana I'm guessing he will choose this route. But in the wait for a decent #5 (and the guess here is that Terry Mulholland may get a chance soon while Rick Helling and Joe Mays heal), the top four in the Twins' rotation will basically have piled up an extra start in the first six weeks or so of the season. This extra work shortens the rope a little in any given start, and that may have cost the Twins in their games against the Angels.

Incidentally, the top four in the rotation for the Twins have already started to right the ship. As I mentioned last week, the Twins rotation had performed well below expectations. If you take a look now, things are starting to look up. Carlos Silva went from the mid-4's to almost 4 even. Radke and Santana went from the mid-5's to the mid-4's, and the guess here is that there's more room to improve. Kyle Lohse has gone from the low-8's to the mid-6's, and there's no maybe that things will continue to get better for him. They just need someone, anyone, to fill in that #5 slot in the rotation before the other guys' arms start to fall off.

The Scott Podsednik Watch

In games 20-24 Podsednik didn't even attempt a steal before getting two in the Brewers' 25th game. That puts him on pace for 91 attempts. There's a nice lesson about putting stock in early projections. Just going from 19 games to 25 changes the projection multiplier from 8.5 to 6.5. A few dormant games can have a significant effect on whatever it is you're projecting this early in the season. I wouldn't take anything before the one-quarter (about 40 games) to one-third (54 games) seriously at all, and even then there's more than 100 games remaining in either case.

I do have to say that I think I'm going to have to consider Dave Roberts from the Dodgers to have a shot at a monster steals season. He's a perfect 15-for-15 in steals and has a .380 OBP so far. If he keeps it up, he's in the running. The things about Roberts are that his career OBP is only .338 and he's never played more than 127 games in a season. So even if he keeps up the OBP pace, there's some question as to whether he could make 150 starts. But who knows, maybe we're seeing the start to something that could turn into something similar to Leflore vs. Moreno from 1980.

Updated May 06

It looks like it's possible that we have at least one member of the Brewers' front office as part of The Bullpen readership. The Brew Crew just signed Scott Podsednik to a two-year contract extension, no doubt in part because we've talked him up a little bit here. Congrats, Scott, and where are my complimentary box seats? ;-)

posted by Tom Renbarger 6:48 PM

Bonds OBP Update
OK, now that it's May, maybe we can think about what a .700 OBP means

The Giants have 136 games left. Assume Barry gets into 110 more games, and sees probably about 450 PAs. Throw together the following chart

Target	Needs	Comments
650	638	Not very possible
600	577	This would probably imply breaking his own walks record
582	555	This is what he needs to break his own OBP record
553	520	This would beat out Thumper for #2
545	510	This would beat out Ruth for #3
536	500	If he can maintain a .500 OBP it's good for #4 all time
512	470	This is Mantle, the first non-Bonds/Ruth/Williams in the modern era
500	455	He seems to have a lock on 500 at this point in the season
400	334	This looks about as impossible as him going .638 for the rest of the year

posted by David 6:04 PM

Sunday, May 02, 2004

From an article from 2002:
Bonds had a .582 on-base percentage, easily topping the mark of .553 Ted Williams set in 1941.

Even if Bonds had gone 0-for-403 this season instead of 149-for-403, the walks and the nine times he was hit by pitches would have given him a .338 on-base percentage, higher than Yankees leadoff hitter Alfonso Soriano (.332).

OK, now here's the question. At the end of this year, play the same trick, and set Barry's hits to zero. How many starters in the Giants lineup will still have a lower OBP than Barry?

posted by David 10:26 AM