I skipped the ABS analysis and went straight to the lovely knitting story. Thank you, Kathllen.
My heart grew three sizes and I had a lump in my throat until "The pattern does not include the Jays logo, due to ownership rights". My two middle fingers are now extended to Rogers/MLB.
I feel like there needs to be some analysis of ABS challenges that differs in later innings versus earlier innings. At some point, the teams reach the "use it or lose it" part of the game, so they may be more likely to use a challenge in a less confident situation (kind of like certain timeouts in basketball). I would be interested to see if teams are exercising this strategy more often as they are getting used to the rules. That could skew the numbers negatively against the challengers.
Whenever somebody grouses that baseball labor disputes are just “millionaires versus billionaires”, keep in mind that a million seconds is two weeks while a billion seconds is thirty years. And the San Diego Padres are ONE HUNDRED TWENTY YEARS.
A million seconds is a little over 11 and a half days, and 1 billion is actually 31 years and 251 or 252 days, depending on the number of leap years.
Years ago, I put together a big surprise party for my Wife on her billionth second birthday. The best way to really surprise someone is to do it on a day where you are the only person who is a big enough geek to know when it is.
I've calendared my 1,000,000,000th Second anniversary which is coming up in the middle of next month. Gotta make sure that we celebrate in style. I only wish I knew precisely to the second when we were formally told, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
Well akshully ... (yeah I hate that guy!) ... a million seconds is less than two weeks and a billion seconds is almost thirty-two years.
Ah heck, why not. As of shortly after 5pm today, I will have been married for just under a billion - 996,883,200 to be precise - seconds. Now to calculate how many seconds I've spent on baseball message boards ... how does one type in the symbol for waaaaaaaytoomany?
I'm so tired of sports team owning billionaires acting like they're not turning a big enough profit.
First, I don't believe them when they try to say that they're losing money. I don't believe it.
But beyond that, owning a sports team is like having one of the biggest fanciest yachts.
I imagine owning a mega yacht means paying a lot of money in upkeep and operations. Maybe you make a bit of money if you host parties on it that require an expensive ticket, but mostly I expect they're a money sink. But the point isn't making money—it's that you get to enjoy having and showing off this fancy exclusive thing everyone wants!
Sports teams are like that, except they APPRECIATE in value, so you get to own the cool thing and then recoup your investment multiple times over!!
Over 30 years ago, right after Bud Selig's buzzkill tour of the Kingdome ("nice team you've got there, shame if anyone were to decide to move it"), sports talk host JT the Brick said what I've always thought of as the core wisdom about ownership. "It's a capital play, not an income play." Succinct and accurate.
Very interesting observation that the robo ump would make human umps better by giving them real-time feedback.
Here's a question: Are catchers more, less or equally successful at challenges when batting as they are behind the plate? In other words can they see the strike zone as well from the side as they can face on?
In additional to challenge success rate, I think number of challenges per game would be useful to see whether the umps are adjusting to ABS in any way.
Well, I can't break it down by time, but there have been an average of 4.02 challenges per game attempted and 2.16 overturns per game. Each game involves two teams, sot the "per team game" numbers are half that. (2.01 and 1.08)
We really need stop with the idea that owners are using their own money to fund the mega teams. Every penny the dodgers spend on players is coming from revenue, not the owner. So yes, market size is part of it, and tv contracts are a huge part of that.
Maybe so. But we have at least one (^) publicly traded company owning a team and having to release reasonably detailed finances. The Braves (together with the real estate holdings in "The Battery") were spun off from Liberty Media a year or three back. You or I could buy shares of BATRA, the stock symbol under which it operates. They have quarterly and annual SEC filings showing all sources of revenue and moderately detailed itemization of expenses. They have been close to break even in those public reports. If a team that is a habitual playoff contender and a mid-market spender is at break even, I suspect some clubs operate at an annual loss. (That, of course, ignores capital appreciation but that isn't revenue at all.) https://www.bravesholdings.com/investors/financial-information/sec-filings
(^) My - very, very limited - understanding is that the Blue Jays operate similarly and are also publicly traded via a parent company. But my knowledge of Canadian laws and corporate finance approaches zero, so I'll make no assumptions about their revenue.
I want to hear more about the detox. I agree about drinking lots of water. I would say – eat real food. Meat, fish, chicken, vegetables, eggs, beans, nuts, fruit. Eliminate as much starch and sugar from your diet as possible. Especially liquid starch and liquid sugar, i.e. beer, and other forms of alcohol. Walk a lot for exercise, especially after eating.
I agree the umpires are going to adjust. But I think there’s more to it then they will just improve. I am concerned that the umpires are going to start erring on the side of calling strikes. Wouldn’t you? Maybe that’s part of why the challenges were less successful…
I know that Ted Kluszewski did it once, but has any other player post live ball lead in Homers and had more taters than Ks? (Big Klu's line in '54 was nuts. He had 49 homers and 35 Ks. He almost did it again the next year, but finished with "only" 47 homers while Mays had 51.)
Alright, I had to look. Johnny Mize (1947 and '48), Lou Gehrig (1934), Joe DiMaggio ('48), Ken Williams ('22), Ted Williams ('41), Tommy Holmes ('45). Holmes, with the best of the best off at war and the ball made of mush, lead the NL with 28 homers (and doubles with 47 and hits with 224) and struck out only 9 times.
Alright Brilliant (and less so) Readers, yesterday I tried to come up with the best fish to field (stream?) behind Mike Trout in an all-aquatic squad. Today, how about some help in an animal team?
I've got Rob Deer for the 3TO, Rabbit Maranville for the comedy and fielding, Nellie Fox for the biggest chaw of 'baccy possible, Colt Keith because the youngster is batting over .300 this year, Newt Allen because we need a lizard, ewe can't miss with Jake Lamb, Paul Byrd had his pant legs up high the way they should be, Butch Huskey had a bit of dog in him, Craig Swan once lead the league in ERA, Randy Wolf pitches while brother Jim is not allowed to umpire, Goose Gossage is the grumpy old man shaking his fist at the clouds ... do I get to use Ted Lyons or Yogi Berra?
How about Robin (pick from Roberts, Yount, or Ventura), Birdie Tibbets, Dylan Beavers, Mike Carp, Jay Gibbons, and Turkey Stearnes.
If you open it up to nicknames, there are scores, like Fernando "El Toro" Valenzuela or "Big Cat" (either Johnny Mize or Andrés Galarraga), Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff or "Big Dog" Tony Perez, "Chipmunk" Don Zimmer, Ron "The Penguin" Cey, et al.
For the life of me, I don't understand what counts as a big market. San Diego is the 18th largest metropolitan area in the country, bigger than 4 sports metro area Denver, 3 sports area Pittsburgh, and plenty of 2 sport metro areas.
I'm not sure that ordinal ranking is what really matters. San Diego's metro area holds roughly half the people that Atlanta's does. Atlanta, in turn, has half as many souls as does Los Angeles. And the City of Angles messes up the progression by having 60% as many people as does the New York metro.
Plus, I think that people use "big market" as a shorthand for well-funded. For better or worse, residents of St. Louis and Boston support their baseball teams well out of proportion to the mere numbers. Dallas and Houston less so leaving some to say that the Astros and Rangers are small market clubs despite the literal meaning of the term.
I do agree that people tend to use big or small market as code for small budget, but this isn't true in the Padres case. The Padres have had a top ten payroll each of the last 5 seasons (8th, 4th, 5th, 9th 6th) and are in the top ten so far this year as well.
They have cycled back and forth in the player salary rankings ever since Ray Kroc spent big to McBuy early free agents like Oscar Gamble, Goose Gossage or Graig Nettles (hmm was there a NYY fascination?) or trade for big dollar guys like Rollie Fingers. Then they have gone through periodic episodes of frugality with salary dumps of the McGriff team in the mid 90s or the Upton team some decades later.
And that isn't a bad thing! In a healthy league, you wouldn't expect the same teams to constantly be the big spenders or always at the bottom of the list.
You're right in that there are key differences between markets that matter more than just the population within 70 miles of the stadium. San Diego's proximity to LA and the immensely popular Dodgers certainly makes the market weaker than the population suggests. The Brewers are the opposite - the Milwaukee area ranks lower in population but the team is supported by the state of Wisconsin's >5 million residents. Estimates of revenue have similar amounts for the Padres, Brewers, Rockies, Twins, etc.
To Joe's point, there are probably other factors (rubbing shoulders with other rich & famous) as to why that amount of money would be spent to buy the Padres but not the Twins.
You are right that city population itself isn't determinative. But I wouldn't say that all of Wisconsin supports the Brewers. It is more than 45 years since I moved away from my childhood home in River Falls, but the western part of the State is part of the Twins television coverage area and a chunk of the southern population are really close to the Cubs / ChiSox.
More broadly though, every city has its own built in culture. Rust belt cities with families stretching back generations aren't the same as Sun belt cities with a bunch of transients. San Diego hasn't ever been a huge supporter of its sports teams, whether the Padres, Chargers, Clippers, Rockets, and even the WHA's Mariners. Fortunately, with about 330 days of sun & beautiful beaches there are a few other things that the residents can do.
I think the difference here is that San Diego is a couple of hours away from the LA region (and on the border with Mexico as well), which limits its primary potential market to the immediate local area, unlike a Denver or a Pittsburgh that do not have major cities/franchises within such close reach.
For clarity, they are also in the same league as the Dodgers, which means most fans in the area really are either an SD fan or a Dodgers fan. If the Angels consistently had pretty decent teams, I think they would be much more successful, for example, even though they are very close to the Dodgers.
funny, a quick search shows that there is significant population within 4 hours driving time of denver- 5-6.5 million...i dont think deer are included.
“You get cities to bow down to you, give you every tax break imaginable, and hand you a palace like Petco Park to play in.”
Joe do you even care about the Chiefs moving to Kansas and Royals downtown? Some of us are sick about it 😢
"We hand them championship trophies first."
Which is another reason why hockey is great. The Cup is handed to the team captain.
Owners really need to think of themselves as stewards of their teams, not owners.
If the new book were only about home-run hitting prowess, you could call it “Fifty Ways To Leave The Ballyard”
"You smack one all the way back, Stan Hack"
You hit it all the way out, Mike Trout
Knowing you're a massive 1ders fan, I really hope you go with SEA50NS
I skipped the ABS analysis and went straight to the lovely knitting story. Thank you, Kathllen.
My heart grew three sizes and I had a lump in my throat until "The pattern does not include the Jays logo, due to ownership rights". My two middle fingers are now extended to Rogers/MLB.
I feel like there needs to be some analysis of ABS challenges that differs in later innings versus earlier innings. At some point, the teams reach the "use it or lose it" part of the game, so they may be more likely to use a challenge in a less confident situation (kind of like certain timeouts in basketball). I would be interested to see if teams are exercising this strategy more often as they are getting used to the rules. That could skew the numbers negatively against the challengers.
Whenever somebody grouses that baseball labor disputes are just “millionaires versus billionaires”, keep in mind that a million seconds is two weeks while a billion seconds is thirty years. And the San Diego Padres are ONE HUNDRED TWENTY YEARS.
A million seconds is a little over 11 and a half days, and 1 billion is actually 31 years and 251 or 252 days, depending on the number of leap years.
Years ago, I put together a big surprise party for my Wife on her billionth second birthday. The best way to really surprise someone is to do it on a day where you are the only person who is a big enough geek to know when it is.
I've calendared my 1,000,000,000th Second anniversary which is coming up in the middle of next month. Gotta make sure that we celebrate in style. I only wish I knew precisely to the second when we were formally told, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
Well akshully ... (yeah I hate that guy!) ... a million seconds is less than two weeks and a billion seconds is almost thirty-two years.
Ah heck, why not. As of shortly after 5pm today, I will have been married for just under a billion - 996,883,200 to be precise - seconds. Now to calculate how many seconds I've spent on baseball message boards ... how does one type in the symbol for waaaaaaaytoomany?
I'm so tired of sports team owning billionaires acting like they're not turning a big enough profit.
First, I don't believe them when they try to say that they're losing money. I don't believe it.
But beyond that, owning a sports team is like having one of the biggest fanciest yachts.
I imagine owning a mega yacht means paying a lot of money in upkeep and operations. Maybe you make a bit of money if you host parties on it that require an expensive ticket, but mostly I expect they're a money sink. But the point isn't making money—it's that you get to enjoy having and showing off this fancy exclusive thing everyone wants!
Sports teams are like that, except they APPRECIATE in value, so you get to own the cool thing and then recoup your investment multiple times over!!
Billionaires can miss me with their tears.
Over 30 years ago, right after Bud Selig's buzzkill tour of the Kingdome ("nice team you've got there, shame if anyone were to decide to move it"), sports talk host JT the Brick said what I've always thought of as the core wisdom about ownership. "It's a capital play, not an income play." Succinct and accurate.
Very interesting observation that the robo ump would make human umps better by giving them real-time feedback.
Here's a question: Are catchers more, less or equally successful at challenges when batting as they are behind the plate? In other words can they see the strike zone as well from the side as they can face on?
In additional to challenge success rate, I think number of challenges per game would be useful to see whether the umps are adjusting to ABS in any way.
Well, I can't break it down by time, but there have been an average of 4.02 challenges per game attempted and 2.16 overturns per game. Each game involves two teams, sot the "per team game" numbers are half that. (2.01 and 1.08)
There is not a single billionaire owner who can’t afford a competitive team, regardless of “market size”.
We really need stop with the idea that owners are using their own money to fund the mega teams. Every penny the dodgers spend on players is coming from revenue, not the owner. So yes, market size is part of it, and tv contracts are a huge part of that.
Maybe so. But we have at least one (^) publicly traded company owning a team and having to release reasonably detailed finances. The Braves (together with the real estate holdings in "The Battery") were spun off from Liberty Media a year or three back. You or I could buy shares of BATRA, the stock symbol under which it operates. They have quarterly and annual SEC filings showing all sources of revenue and moderately detailed itemization of expenses. They have been close to break even in those public reports. If a team that is a habitual playoff contender and a mid-market spender is at break even, I suspect some clubs operate at an annual loss. (That, of course, ignores capital appreciation but that isn't revenue at all.) https://www.bravesholdings.com/investors/financial-information/sec-filings
(^) My - very, very limited - understanding is that the Blue Jays operate similarly and are also publicly traded via a parent company. But my knowledge of Canadian laws and corporate finance approaches zero, so I'll make no assumptions about their revenue.
I want to hear more about the detox. I agree about drinking lots of water. I would say – eat real food. Meat, fish, chicken, vegetables, eggs, beans, nuts, fruit. Eliminate as much starch and sugar from your diet as possible. Especially liquid starch and liquid sugar, i.e. beer, and other forms of alcohol. Walk a lot for exercise, especially after eating.
I agree the umpires are going to adjust. But I think there’s more to it then they will just improve. I am concerned that the umpires are going to start erring on the side of calling strikes. Wouldn’t you? Maybe that’s part of why the challenges were less successful…
My favorite non-Mason Miller stat of this young season: Yordan Alvarez is leading the Majors with 10 homers and has 11 strikeouts.
I know that Ted Kluszewski did it once, but has any other player post live ball lead in Homers and had more taters than Ks? (Big Klu's line in '54 was nuts. He had 49 homers and 35 Ks. He almost did it again the next year, but finished with "only" 47 homers while Mays had 51.)
Alright, I had to look. Johnny Mize (1947 and '48), Lou Gehrig (1934), Joe DiMaggio ('48), Ken Williams ('22), Ted Williams ('41), Tommy Holmes ('45). Holmes, with the best of the best off at war and the ball made of mush, lead the NL with 28 homers (and doubles with 47 and hits with 224) and struck out only 9 times.
Worth noting - Yogi Berra:
1950: 28 HR, 12 Ks
1951: 27 HR, 20 Ks
1952: 30 HR, 24 Ks
Three year totals:
85 HR, 56 Ks
Joe DiMaggio retired one year too late. Through his penultimate season, he had 349 homers and 333 Ks.
Alright Brilliant (and less so) Readers, yesterday I tried to come up with the best fish to field (stream?) behind Mike Trout in an all-aquatic squad. Today, how about some help in an animal team?
I've got Rob Deer for the 3TO, Rabbit Maranville for the comedy and fielding, Nellie Fox for the biggest chaw of 'baccy possible, Colt Keith because the youngster is batting over .300 this year, Newt Allen because we need a lizard, ewe can't miss with Jake Lamb, Paul Byrd had his pant legs up high the way they should be, Butch Huskey had a bit of dog in him, Craig Swan once lead the league in ERA, Randy Wolf pitches while brother Jim is not allowed to umpire, Goose Gossage is the grumpy old man shaking his fist at the clouds ... do I get to use Ted Lyons or Yogi Berra?
I’m going David Lamb because I played Pony League against him.
How about Robin (pick from Roberts, Yount, or Ventura), Birdie Tibbets, Dylan Beavers, Mike Carp, Jay Gibbons, and Turkey Stearnes.
If you open it up to nicknames, there are scores, like Fernando "El Toro" Valenzuela or "Big Cat" (either Johnny Mize or Andrés Galarraga), Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff or "Big Dog" Tony Perez, "Chipmunk" Don Zimmer, Ron "The Penguin" Cey, et al.
Or my fave, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych. (I know you wrote "et. al." but I couldn't resist.)
I left out the Pirates great pitching staff: Bob Veale, Bob Moose, and John Lamb. Tasty!
Moose Skowron!
For the life of me, I don't understand what counts as a big market. San Diego is the 18th largest metropolitan area in the country, bigger than 4 sports metro area Denver, 3 sports area Pittsburgh, and plenty of 2 sport metro areas.
18th isn't that big though, considering almost all of the markets ahead of them have at least one team. There are 30 teams, so 18th is bottom half.
I'm not sure that ordinal ranking is what really matters. San Diego's metro area holds roughly half the people that Atlanta's does. Atlanta, in turn, has half as many souls as does Los Angeles. And the City of Angles messes up the progression by having 60% as many people as does the New York metro.
Plus, I think that people use "big market" as a shorthand for well-funded. For better or worse, residents of St. Louis and Boston support their baseball teams well out of proportion to the mere numbers. Dallas and Houston less so leaving some to say that the Astros and Rangers are small market clubs despite the literal meaning of the term.
I do agree that people tend to use big or small market as code for small budget, but this isn't true in the Padres case. The Padres have had a top ten payroll each of the last 5 seasons (8th, 4th, 5th, 9th 6th) and are in the top ten so far this year as well.
They not a small budget team.
They have cycled back and forth in the player salary rankings ever since Ray Kroc spent big to McBuy early free agents like Oscar Gamble, Goose Gossage or Graig Nettles (hmm was there a NYY fascination?) or trade for big dollar guys like Rollie Fingers. Then they have gone through periodic episodes of frugality with salary dumps of the McGriff team in the mid 90s or the Upton team some decades later.
And that isn't a bad thing! In a healthy league, you wouldn't expect the same teams to constantly be the big spenders or always at the bottom of the list.
You're right in that there are key differences between markets that matter more than just the population within 70 miles of the stadium. San Diego's proximity to LA and the immensely popular Dodgers certainly makes the market weaker than the population suggests. The Brewers are the opposite - the Milwaukee area ranks lower in population but the team is supported by the state of Wisconsin's >5 million residents. Estimates of revenue have similar amounts for the Padres, Brewers, Rockies, Twins, etc.
To Joe's point, there are probably other factors (rubbing shoulders with other rich & famous) as to why that amount of money would be spent to buy the Padres but not the Twins.
You are right that city population itself isn't determinative. But I wouldn't say that all of Wisconsin supports the Brewers. It is more than 45 years since I moved away from my childhood home in River Falls, but the western part of the State is part of the Twins television coverage area and a chunk of the southern population are really close to the Cubs / ChiSox.
More broadly though, every city has its own built in culture. Rust belt cities with families stretching back generations aren't the same as Sun belt cities with a bunch of transients. San Diego hasn't ever been a huge supporter of its sports teams, whether the Padres, Chargers, Clippers, Rockets, and even the WHA's Mariners. Fortunately, with about 330 days of sun & beautiful beaches there are a few other things that the residents can do.
I think the difference here is that San Diego is a couple of hours away from the LA region (and on the border with Mexico as well), which limits its primary potential market to the immediate local area, unlike a Denver or a Pittsburgh that do not have major cities/franchises within such close reach.
For clarity, they are also in the same league as the Dodgers, which means most fans in the area really are either an SD fan or a Dodgers fan. If the Angels consistently had pretty decent teams, I think they would be much more successful, for example, even though they are very close to the Dodgers.
Denver? Yeah, there's not another team within hundreds of miles, but deer, elk, and mountain lions don't buy many tickets or streaming packages.
funny, a quick search shows that there is significant population within 4 hours driving time of denver- 5-6.5 million...i dont think deer are included.