Curious as to why you think this? The Dodgers just buying all the good players now?
Even with the Dodgers and Yankees outspending it still seems pretty competitive to me. Texas is a small market team and just won the World Series 2 years ago.
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Even with the Dodgers and Yankees outspending it still seems pretty competitive to me. Texas is a small market team and just won the World Series 2 years ago.
Portal season is just getting fired up. Probably still a lot of kids that haven't even entered yet. If we had the money to go after Cluff, we have money to go after whoever is next on their list.
Texas payroll that year was over 250 million, $100 million more than the previous year. They weren’t money balling anything. Seager, Semien, DeGrom, Eovaldi were all big ticket guys.
Theoretically, yes. I’m thinking we targeted who we wanted immediately for a reason though. And to me, the reason would be to wrap it up before schools with larger budgets start to really dig in. The longer the portal season goes, the more “desperate” everyone gets.
The Rangers have the 5th-highest payroll in the league...
It shows them having the 9th highest payroll on opening day that year. Not exactly in the Dodgers range either.
Regardless of payroll I'm curious why you guys don't like baseball anymore.
Because you can eat lunch , mow the lawn and then take a nap and still not miss out on any important plays.
Fair enough, it's alot more tolerable now with the pitching clock imo.
Someone said $750k on UVa forum, and others have implied not much of a discount to what we offered Cluff, which was allegedly close to 7 figures
Guessing Jefferson still has Mahaney’s number.
Competitive imbalance notwithstanding, MLB just lost their ESPN contract. There’s not a single major sport that doesn’t have some sort of presence on the Worldwide Leader. Especially at a time when media rights are growing for pretty much every other league.
Many MLB teams are also reliant on regional broadcast partners for revenue. That went through a major upheaval last year with Diamond Sports bankruptcy. While many teams were able to survive that bankruptcy case, MLB had to takeover broadcast operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. Regardless, that business model is clearly dying, and fast, as exemplified by YES (the most successful RSN) and Comcast’s recent contract feud, as well as MASN’s with the Orioles. It’s notable that YES/Comcast weren’t able to negotiate a new deal but only extend their old one to keep Yankees games on TV. Very telling.
This reliance on RSNs also causes the sport to be hindered by an archaic blackout policy for its MLB all-access pass to protect the dwindling RSN revenue source. This policy greatly inhibits viewership for fans who live in the team’s market but don’t have cable (a growing segment)
The Dodgers are only able to spend what they are spending because a.) they are banking on additional revenue from the Japanese market with Shohei and b.) they are deferring payments on many of their huge contracts including Shohei. While Japan is a source of growth, U.S. viewership has been declining. U.S. viewership did grow 6% YoY last year (the first time it’s done that since Covid). However, just look at decade by decade average World Series viewed to see how far the sport has fallen
- 2020s (hurt by Covid): 11.3M viewers
- 2010s: 15.6M viewers
- 2000s: 19M viewers
- 1990s: 26.7M viewers
- 1980s: 34.45M viewers
Sure, but it's still basically the first quarter. My impression of the way this staff recruits the transfer market is to jump on their role players early, and then go all out for their biggest targets.
Seems like having 3 weeks to go before the portal closes and only really needing one or two guys leaves us well positioned to get someone we'll be very happy with.
Whether he was or wasn't, we clearly still have money available to go after a big fish.
Texas isn't small market. The Metroplex is the 4th largest metro area in the country.
Estimate on the money still available?
My answer for the last question is always, "I have a hard time saying no." If they were to ask what my wife is really good at I'd say that she is really good at saying no.
The interview can't be worse than Woodbury walking into Hoiberg's office wearing an Iowa sweatshirt.
