DrungoHazewood

I'd like to know. Some back-of-the-napkin guesses: - The Blue Crabs drew 200k fans last year. If they got $15 in revenues per head, that's $3M in revenues. - If they have 20 employees that average $30k each that's $600k - 25 players times six months times $1500 = $225k in player salaries - 60 hotel days times $125 a room times 12 rooms (everyone doubles up) = $90k - If the bus is rented at $5000 per trip, 20 road trips = $100k - Stadium rent? Facility maintenance? Player equipment? - Fees to the league for umps, league salaries? - Costs for promotions? - Revenues from stadium advertising? - Costs for insurance? - I'll assume most minor league teams have near zero media revenues. I'm sure some of that is off and I've missed some things. So I guess it's plausible that they make a decent profit of several hundred grand a year. But the margins can't be big. And certainly this year the revenues are near zero, while at least some of the expenses continue.

It appears that MLB is intending on having fewer and fewer affiliated teams that are subsidized by not having to pay salaries. I doubt the current plan of eliminating 40 teams is the end goal. Without MLB paying salaries there are fewer markets that can support a team. If localities didn't provide free stadiums the number would be vanishingly small. Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf cost $25M, if the locality didn't pay for it the Blue Crabs wouldn't exist. Many localities wouldn't pay $25M for an indy league team. I fear that minor league baseball as a stand-alone business doesn't work in most cases. They heavily rely on taxpayer-funded stadiums and MLB-funded salaries. As MLB draws down the number of affiliates it's going to be awfully tough for a lot markets.

Good thing the sun is shining everywhere, all the time.

A constantly moving 13 foot sphere. Everyone should watch the rest of that Mythbusters episode. They rigged up Adam with a fake runny nose (basically a little tube covered by makeup, along his glasses to his nose that dripped at the same rate a typical nose runs. Filled with something that had a fluorescing dye that glows under black light). He sat down with a bunch of people and played games, ate dinner, etc. Afterwards they let the group in on the project, shut off the lights, turned on the blacklight. The fake snot was everywhere. They redid it with Adam trying to not shake hands, avoid touching, etc. And things got better. But if you're reasonably close to someone with a bug you don't want... good luck, you'll probably get exposed. Someone should redo that with a mask, or everyone wearing masks.

Mythbusters showed that a sneeze can travel 30 feet, so I have serious doubts that the virus is capped at 13. I've exercised without a mask almost every day of the quarantine, including running 3-4 miles in the area around my house. But staying pretty far from any other humans.

That's understandable. A lot of people go fishing or root for the Nats or watch reruns of TJ Hooker when the team isn't doing well and come back when they're really good. Takes a lot to stick with a team through thick and thin.

What if you're robbing a bank? Or it's Halloween? Or you're a superhero? Or really, really ugly?

Maybe sports aren't really for you.

Good for you.

Contraction. There aren't seven levels of minors because that's been mathematically proven to best develop baseball players. It's the level that teams are comfortable paying for and hoping for the odd 500-to-1 19th rounder making an impact. I think we're seeing that teams would probably be okay with 2-3 levels of minors with real prospects if it wasn't for the negative political ramifications of cutting loose a few hundred teams in a few hundred congressional districts.

In that case I'll assume that the CDC came out with a ruling that LSD is really effective against COVID and legalized the drug for the entire population.

I guess I'd pay $50 or something. It is funny that all of us who have cable are still paying our $5 or whatever monthly MASN fee. MASN without the Nats and Orioles is just an endless stream of infomercials and random reruns of supposedly classic games. There can't be more than a few dozen people watching the channel at any given moment. They have to be pulling in huge profits. Millions of mandatory subscription fees, and no game day expenses. I'm guessing they locked in advertising contracts months or years ago.

I think it's a near-certainty that kids can be carriers without really being affected. And they will transmit the virus to teachers, administrators, and other people at home. And not all kids are unaffected.

I think that's a pessimistic view. We don't know what's possible within the constraints the new regime are under, both internally and systemically. But it is a challenge to catch up when the other 29 teams are trying to improve at at least the same rate the Orioles are. I've said before that the Orioles problem from 1980-something until 2010 or so was that they were improving at 1% a year while the competition was at 2%. They got a little better every year and still lost ground.

Oh, you're saying the Marlins and Rays. I was thinking that the FSL sometimes gets 750 or 1000 fans on free beer night.

Sure. Odds are he hits .225 at Frederick (or wherever the A ball team ends up) and we never hear from him again. Think Jomar Reyes, who was a 16-year-old shortstop, is now a 22-year-old first baseman who seems like he's been OPSing .690 with the Keys since the Carter administration.

Highly optimistic is that he's ARod or Manny and is up by 19 or 20 and hits free agency six years later, which is about 2030 or 2031. Reasonably optimistic is he's up by 21 or 22 and he's a free agent by '32 or '33. If it takes him eight years to get to the majors he's probably just not that good. Jonathan Scoop was playing DOSL at 17, and is supposed to be a free agent after this year, right? So 11-12 years after signing? That would be 2031-32 for this guy.

If he were being projected as a second baseman at 16 he wouldn't be on anyone's top prospect lists. I need a copy of Visio so I can put together a flow chart for this. Short version is if you can't be a SS/CF at 16, and you don't hit like a first baseman, and you're not a catcher, then you're hoping to get into a DII/DIII school and really trying to get your degree. Mike Fontenot is my go-to counter-example for a guy who was a second baseman from early on, but I'm betting even he played some short in high school.

Rene Gonzalez. Or you may know him as RC.

Excellent news. But it's hard to get too excited about a player who, even in the most hopelessly optimistic case, will not be in Baltimore for 3-4 years. In the US this guy would be in the 10th or 11th grade. If all goes reasonably well, the likely case is that he hits MLB free agency in 2032 or 2033.

Awesome. Ford hit .303 for them last year at the age of 42. I hope he keeps going until he's 60!

So is a player only a member of the union when they're on the roster? Or once you get called up are you in for good?

There was a rumor going around a few days ago that they were cancelling the MiLB season, but apparently that was at least premature. Another article says the independent Atlantic League wants to press on and have a season. The complication with the minors compared to the majors is that the minors get a much larger percentage of their revenues from ticket sales. The majors get a lot of revenues from TV, streaming, radio, etc. Most minor league teams (including the Atlantic League) have none of that. I don't think the Blue Crabs have even a single AM radio affiliate. Kind of like baseball circa 1930. So if they're not able to come back with fans there's probably no point.

I thought it was obvious that I was being 100% tongue-in-cheek, but maybe it wasn't so clear. If ever you want to get your data and analysis right it's with a pandemic. Otherwise you go on a hunch and thousands could die. This isn't goofing around with platoon differentials.