Rumblings
Dave · December 6, 2004 at 8:34 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Looks like there are several non-Mariner related deals on the verge of going down. One may be announced tomorrow. The offseason should begin this week.
And, as I’ve repeatedly said, patience is the key for M’s fans. There may be some good news on the horizon.
Comments
73 Responses to “Rumblings”
The market bears the player’s worth. MLB is an entertainment business – people pay to see players just as they go to the movies to see actors. Do we hear public complaints about Tom Cruise (or other top actors) getting $15-20M per picture, even if the movie stinks? No, because A-List actors are responsible for a bulk of the revenue their films generate, just as top athletes do for their sports. Add to that the fact that baseball has no salary cap (except for the Ms) and you can start to understand why salaries are so high for the best players. And if salaries get too high for revenues, then you see a market correction as we did the past couple of offseasons. Or they start to go up again w/ revenues as we’re seeing this year.
I wrote that BP2003 comment, and it’s serious: Franklin said that that year was the first he’d been able to spend all his time working out and concentrating and conditioning.
It’s not at all ridiculous. Players in the minors get a per-diem and, unless they’re minor league FAs or high draft picks, have almost no money to live off in the off-season.
Gammons mentioned, in his latest article on ESPN, that Boras may want to package two of his clients to one team. Beltre and Drew would be good for Seattle, if not without risk (Beltre’s one-year heroics and, well, Drew’s one-year heroics too). Outside of Ichiro! and Boone, I don’t see much stability at the positions. Don’t know why they’re messing around with first-basemen, unless it’s a bit of a red herring.
#52–“I wrote that BP2003 comment, and it’s serious: Franklin said that that year was the first he’d been able to spend all his time working out and concentrating and conditioning. It’s not at all ridiculous. Players in the minors get a per-diem and, unless they’re minor league FAs or high draft picks, have almost no money to live off in the off-season.– Comment by DMZ
and he had a wife, 2 children, college bills, and 8 1/2 years in the minor leagues after being drafted in the 23rd round.
#50: Clearly all 6bn are not in efficient competition for an MLB roster spot; I’ve been sitting at my desk for 15 years and haven’t worked on my curveball at all, for one. But the point stands appropriately, in spite of my admittedly liberal estimation: there is a very very thin slice of people capable of playing major league ball, and these guys have devoted a lifetime of training to achieve that (or they are very rare natural talents). Leaving aside any supposed “trivial” nature of a luxury entertainment, baseball is extrinsically important to the tune of billions of dollars annually. Someone of sufficiently rare and hard-to-obtain skill, necessary for the functioning of a multi-billion dollar industry, is very understandably worth millions of dollars.
I just wish the Rockies new GM Dave Stewart announced the Denny Neagle morals charge firing.
Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes to come out of the last half of the 20th century. He played basketball and baseball all through childhood and HS until he was drafted. He could sink 35-foot jump shots while being attacked by Karl Malone, float to the basket from the top of the key like a mad cloud in a Kansas hurricane, pass between his legs backward to Scotty Pippen in the paint, but when he tried baseball again he found out couldn’t field, couldn’t hit dirt, not even at a decent AA level. Baseball isn’t easy.
Some players are overpaid, others not paid enough. One thing Derek forgat in his comment about Franklin: the guy was on a minor league contract in Tacoma at the time, not at the MLB minimum.
During ST I saw Franklin get into his brand-new, cherried out Hummer. He couldn’t be too bad off.
There’s no such thing as being overpaid. The market pays what it can bear.
#58– that was a few pay raises later…
I remember seeing Ryan Franklin follow Rhodes and Charlton out of the parking lot after a game a couple of years back. Rhodes and Charlton were driving their new European Mercedes SUVs and Franklin was driving a mid 90’s Honda Accord.
Until you get your major-league contract, you don’t earn very much.
It’s a significant barrier to entry in baseball – young atheletes may well choose other sports simply because they can start getting paid sooner.
The best news i have heard all week is that the yankees may be interested in delgado, in the hopes that they can unload giambi. That interest may drive delgado’s price out of the mariner’s budget.
Please. Please happen.
On Franklin … he was also involved in a scam of some sort a season or two ago … maybe it went further back in time? I can’t remember specifics. I think another Mariner was involved as well.
Sorry, disagree. Trust me, you don’t want who they’ll end up with if they lose Delgado.
Re. player salaries: My view is basically the same as whoever else has said “it’s what the market will bear,” but perhaps the following explanation will be helpful to some readers:
If I pay $20 for a ticket to watch a ballgame, then the performance of the ballplayers (combined with supporting staff) was worth $20 to me that evening.
If 3 million people pay $20 each to watch a team over the course of a season, and if 8 sponsors pay $5 million each for the privilege of advertising on their broadcasts, then that team’s performance was worth $100 million to the people who paid for it. (The scarcity of major-league ballplayers only plays into this indirectly, as I and the other consumers decide whether to pay $20 to watch the Mariners, pay $8 to watch the AquaSox, or watch a local high-school game through a chain-link fence for free.)
True, some of the consumers may have ended up feeling ripped off; but they at least felt the ticket price was a reasonable valuation at the time of purchase, or they wouldn’t have paid it. If they keep feeling ripped off and yet keep buying tickets, that’s hardly the ballplayers’ fault. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. (Note: I take the view that the “truest fans” of a franchise are not those who keep coming out when they’re losing, but those who pay only for success, not for incompetence. The more your expenditure on a team varies with its success, the more you’re economically rewarding them for competent performance, and thus supporting the continued success of the organization.)
As for the comparison that’s occasionally raised between entertainers and (for example) schoolteachers: The difference there is that Ichiro can provide a service to thousands or (via broadcast) millions of people in a single evening, while a schoolteacher can only deal with 30 or so kids at a time, and thus can provide value to only 30 families. Even if our society did collectively value education more highly than entertainment, the difference would still be in how many ways the pie was getting sliced. Conversely, if ballplayers were only allowed to play on sandlot fields, with no broadcasting or other mass distribution of their performances, they wouldn’t be getting paid so much either.
Surprise, surprise – I just heard that the M’s have signed Dan Wilson through next season. Who woulda thunk it?
I wonder how much they signed him for? Sure hope it is not over 2 millions.
Are you talking about the wine futures scam that happened with rare llc? Evidently our own Jamie Moyer got burned buying a lot — don’t know how much a lot is, but it’s, uh, a LOT 🙂 — of Bordeaux wine futures. Rare LLC sold bogus futures, bascially buying a wine while you wait for it to be delivered. The delivery takes place with Bordeaux typically 2.5 years after the harvest: fall 2000 wines were released spring of 2003. At any rate, tens of millions of dollars were scammed off people.
I sure hope Dan Wilson isn’t the good news we’re waiting for 😉
#64 & 69– the scam involving Franklin was local (unlike the one that roped in Moyer among many others) A self-proclaimed sports promoter got to know Franklin, and from there met several other players & promised them (and local car dealerships, companies, etc.) deals & ‘opportunities’. Franklin’s older brother (who’d apparently worked for Boras at one time) called in the cops, which led to theft & fraud charges for the guy.
Uhm…. 30 kids at a time? Sorry. We have overcrowded classrooms in Cali. My freshman classes, though, all have a maximum of 22 kids in them. 20 kids per 5 periods= 100 kids. Plus a junior class with 33 in it (my pleasure of the day–not). 133 kids. I have 4 T.A.’s. Plus, how many single household families are there? Probably 40% or so of the families are divorced, so there are another 40 families– bringing the total up close to 200 “families” or so, for a high school english teacher with “small” class sizes compared to many others in his department.
Oh, and if you teach P.E., you are looking at 50 kids plus per class, so you need to accomodate for that as well. In fact, i have possibly the fewest students in the school due to my teaching of 5 frosh english classes.
I’m not saying I deserve what Ichiro makes, but we do touch a few more than 30 families in a given day.
And yes, we deserve more. But so does education in general, but that would be a rant that i’ll spare you from.
Yeah … that refreshed my memory. I remember the Franklin scam now. Thanks!