The Broken Business of Baseball (AKA never side with management)

[Sammy Sofa]

No, seriously; EVERYTHING IS FINE:

 

https://deadspin.com/mlb-advanced-media-made-billions-for-baseball-chewed-u-1832634219

 

On the second Tuesday of February, at 3:00 in the afternoon, around 40 employees of MLB Advanced Media—one arm of MLB’s media empire, which also includes MLB.com, MLB Network and MLB Productions—nervously filed into a conference room at MLBAM’s office in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market. They had been living in fear of layoffs for months, thanks to longstanding plans for the company’s move to the MLB Network headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey, and had received an email the previous day announcing a mandatory meeting. As they arrived, two people from MLB’s human resources department ticked their names off a list and sent them to one of two rooms. The people sent to one room were safe; the people sent to the other, including producers and editors who had worked for the company for a decade or longer, were laid off on the spot. In all, 18 people, nearly all of them full-timers, lost their jobs.

 

In the months leading up to the layoffs, sources say, management sent mixed messages and lied outright about who would get to keep their jobs, while the layoffs themselves were poorly handled and carried out by people whom those losing their jobs had never even met. But the crucial story isn’t the layoffs or MLBAM’s move to Secaucus, New Jersey—those, are, after all, mere business decisions. It’s that while those at the top of the MLB food chain are making more money than ever, those at the bottom are underpaid and overworked, toiling away in a toxic work environment that top baseball leadership allowed to fester even after former MLBAM CEO Bob Bowman was ousted in December 2017 for egregious workplace misconduct.

 

What’s happening with MLBAM is an instantiation of the way that those in charge of the national pastime, concerned mostly with maximizing already extravagant revenues, treat their most vulnerable workers. Just look at this recent story about how players aren’t paid for spring training, or at how MLB lobbied a bill preventing minor leaguers from being paid overtime into law. MLBAM had been allowed to operate, sources say, as an insular, Mad Men-style office—resulting in a wage suppression lawsuit and settlement—for nearly two decades because it was bringing in gobs and gobs of money thanks largely to its streaming operation, known as BAM. Since that operation was spun off and sold to Disney as BAMTech last summer, the calculus has changed somewhat. The treatment of workers has not.

 

I finally got around to finishing this, and it's worth it just for the comments alone; tons of ex MLBAM staffers (or part time freelancers/contractors being worked like multiple full time staffers) talking about what a horsefeathers show it is to work for. Everything MLB touches is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

[Sammy Sofa]

And just take in EVERYTHING about this coward fucknut's private Twitter account:

 

 

Shocker that this guy runs a business like a bull that's been dropped on its head.

[Sammy Sofa]

It seems inevitable the players are going to screw up the next deal:

 

https://deadspin.com/adam-eaton-actually-the-financial-struggles-of-minor-1835787706

 

Towards the end of the story, however, the tone switches a bit when Nationals outfielder Adam Eaton shares his take on this whole situation. Eaton does what most grumpy veterans do at any job and argues that because he had to struggle during his climb up to the majors, then everyone else should have to go through the same process too. In fact, getting rid of those difficulties would be problematic as it would soften up this new generation of players.

 

While he believes things can be improved and players should make a little more money so they’re “literally not eating crumbs,” he doesn’t want the MLB to make minor league conditions more hospitable.

 

“If you do, complacency sets in,” Eaton says. “I think it’s difficult, yes, and it’s easy for me to say that because of where I am, but I wouldn’t be where I am without that … If I financially am supported down there and financially can make a living and not have to get to the big leagues, I think I’m a little more comfortable. I think that I might not work as hard because I know I’m getting a decent paycheck every two weeks, and may not push myself nearly as hard.”

 

“I don’t disagree with [the notion] that they’re being exploited, but I think it’s for the betterment of everybody,” he adds. “I know it sounds crazy … I think there’s a middle ground … There’s ground to be made up, but I think it still should be rough.”

 

As perfectly summed up in the comments:

 

Mediocre white man takes economically illiterate, ill-considered position based on his gut feeling about how things should work, with the implication being that he’s somehow a hero for overcoming obstacles that shouldn’t have been there in the first place?

[Banedon]

Honestly, I think that's the position a lot of older successful folks take though...

 

"Cancel student debt?! I didn't get MINE cancelled!"

 

"Medicare for All? I had to pay all my own medical bills!"

 

"Thing is nicer than thing was when I was younger? People should have to suffer like I did!"

[Derwood]

Yep, if you're making $35,000/year, there's NO WAY you'll work hard to be a multi-millionaire. Solid logic

[Sammy Sofa]

It's not like baseball is shooting itself in the foot with a shrinking talent pool when everyone wants to treat anyone drafted past the first few rounds like an intern.

 

Also: "they're getting paid to play a GAME. They should be grateful they get anything at all!!!"

[HawkeTrackler]

Honestly, I think that's the position a lot of older successful folks take though...

 

"Cancel student debt?! I didn't get MINE cancelled!"

 

"Medicare for All? I had to pay all my own medical bills!"

 

"Thing is nicer than thing was when I was younger? People should have to suffer like I did!"

 

I believe the official medical terminology for this is "Boomer Brain"

[Derwood]

I don't know what the solution is, but the huge differences between the four major sports can be maddening. Baseball players come in and make nothing for several years, THEN (if they get called up) are locked into their team's control for another 6 years. Even with arbitration, the earning potential of an MLB player's first 6-10 years compared to an NFL or NBA player is ridiculously low. People will argue that NFL contracts aren't guaranteed (true), but first round rookies are making many many times more than their MLB counterparts.

 

Side question: are there too many levels of minor leagues? Is there any argument for condensing the three or four levels of pre-AA?

[jersey cubs fan]

Side question: are there too many levels of minor leagues? Is there any argument for condensing the three or four levels of pre-AA?

For what purpose?

 

If participation dwindles they may be forced to do it someday out of a lack of viable bodies to field a team, but I don't think there are "too many".

[Derwood]

Side question: are there too many levels of minor leagues? Is there any argument for condensing the three or four levels of pre-AA?

For what purpose?

 

If participation dwindles they may be forced to do it someday out of a lack of viable bodies to field a team, but I don't think there are "too many".

 

It just feels like a lot of hoops to jump through to even start your 6 year clock. Even if a player "speeds through" the minors (i.e. 2-3 years from draft to majors), you're talking about a player waiting 8 or 9 years before free agency. No other major sport has such a long wait.

 

Also, how many of the players at AFL/Short-A are viable prospects? How many warm bodies are floating in the minors? No other sport (outside of hockey, which has its own convoluted system of Junior/Minor league teams) has so many tiers of prospects below the big leagues

[jersey cubs fan]

Side question: are there too many levels of minor leagues? Is there any argument for condensing the three or four levels of pre-AA?

For what purpose?

 

If participation dwindles they may be forced to do it someday out of a lack of viable bodies to field a team, but I don't think there are "too many".

 

It just feels like a lot of hoops to jump through to even start your 6 year clock. Even if a player "speeds through" the minors (i.e. 2-3 years from draft to majors), you're talking about a player waiting 8 or 9 years before free agency. No other major sport has such a long wait.

 

Also, how many of the players at AFL/Short-A are viable prospects? How many warm bodies are floating in the minors? No other sport (outside of hockey, which has its own convoluted system of Junior/Minor league teams) has so many tiers of prospects below the big leagues

Consolidating dominican summer leagues, short season ball and low A into one isn't going to make the journey to the big leagues any shorter. Guys don't take that long to break into the majors because it is mandatory to play at each level.

[Sammy Sofa]

Look how out of his mind this guy is that he won a grand! "I get to eat real food for a month or two! THIS IS THE DREAM!!!"

 

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[squally1313]

 

Give Brandon McCarthy Descalso's spot on the roster.

[Bertz]

It seems inevitable the players are going to screw up the next deal

 

 

They'll get something nice, probably a higher minimum wage, otherwise it's gonna be a blood bath

[Clem Fandango]

"Cancel student debt?! I didn't get MINE cancelled!"

 

What my brother said to me, nearly verbatim, as to why AOC is the devil.

[Sammy Sofa]

https://deadspin.com/mlbs-empty-seats-arent-the-problem-theyre-part-of-the-1838701704

 

Major League Baseball saw attendance decline for the fifth straight year, falling to a mere 28,198 fans per game, the lowest mark since 2003. It’s a trend that has already prompted much public hand-wringing from baseball barons and the sportswriters who care about them: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said the sport needs to work harder to appeal to fickle millennials, though far more likely theories are that too many teams are setting ticket prices too high (as I theorized here a few weeks back) or giving up on competing before the season even starts (which Rob Arthur calculated is responsible for about one-third of the attendance drop at Baseball Prospectus about a week later).

 

What’s going on here is an attempt by team owners to navigate a longstanding microeconomics problem: How to capture all of the value under a demand curve.

 

When you raise prices (in this case from $12 to $16), fewer people buy your product (in this case 60 people instead of 80). Since your revenue depends on the number of items you sell times the price—we’ll ignore the cost of producing more items for the moment here—you want to set prices at a place that maximizes the area of the rectangle under the curve. (In this case, both prices earn you the same amount, $960.)

 

Ah, but what if you could capture revenue representing all the area below the diagonal line? That would mean selling your product for more money to people who are willing to spend more, while simultaneously selling it for less to lure in people who will only buy at a low price. Which is exactly what teams try to do by selling “premium” seats vs. cheap ones.

 

It’s precisely that dynamic that airlines try to exploit in selling business class seats vs. economy, or that streaming video services do by offering HD vs. SD movie rentals, or really that any industry does that offers separate premium and discount options, at wildly disparate price points—sometimes, with absolutely no relation to the actual cost to the company. What from the consumer’s point of view may look like an attempt to cater to every specific need is also a profit-maximizing strategy: The more you can slice up the market into ever-smaller gradations of demand, the better you can squeeze the most cash out of customers who are willing to part with it, without driving away those who are less eager or able to spend big bucks.

 

Getting back to the Times article, we now have the missing link between team owners not caring too much about attendance and simultaneously caring so much that they’re offering all kinds of new ticket deals: It’s not a contradiction at all. Of course teams want to sell as many tickets as possible, but only if it doesn’t cut into their existing high-priced sales. Things like membership cards for standing-room only admission, then, are their way to try to have the best of both worlds: Keep on gouging rich fans, while getting less well-heeled or more casual fans to pay whatever they’re willing for a lesser version of the same product.

 

In other words, though the Times article hedges on answering the question posed in its headline, Betteridge was right in this case: Baseball’s attendance problem isn’t so much a problem as the logical outcome of a marketing strategy. If MLB teams wanted to sell more tickets, they wouldn’t need to suss out the particular desires of phone-happy younguns or the exact calibration of how many home runs is too many; they could simply lower prices, and maybe start spending enough money on players to give fans some reason to come out and watch, and the seats would fill with fannies. Which means the logical corollary is: If stadiums are empty, it’s because team owners would rather have it that way—at least until they can figure a way to have their cake and eat it too.

[Derwood]

Millennials aren’t fickle, they’re just in massive debt, and spending $100 on a ticket isn’t much of a priority.

[Brian]

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[Tryptamine]

It's an absolute joke MLB wont give these kids a livable wage.

[champaignchris]

Also, how many of the players at AFL/Short-A are viable prospects? How many warm bodies are floating in the minors? No other sport (outside of hockey, which has its own convoluted system of Junior/Minor league teams) has so many tiers of prospects below the big leagues

 

Football and basketball hide their minor leagues in the colleges. Given a choice between the two, the NCAA makes minor league baseball look humane and well thought out.

[Bertz]

 

Remember this in January when they're crying poor

[ConstableRabbit]

 

Remember this in January when they're crying poor

What were ratings for April through mid-July?

[Bertz]

 

Remember this in January when they're crying poor

What were ratings for April through mid-July?

 

About the same as their costs?

[ConstableRabbit]

 

Remember this in January when they're crying poor

What were ratings for April through mid-July?

 

About the same as their costs?

You think the Cubs org had 0 costs between April and July?

[Sammy Sofa]

I think they could easily afford whatever they were.