DrungoHazewood

Now that there are as many or more pitchers on the roster as hitters shouldn't their vote more? Who cares if we can't get a stat-obsessed right-handed slugger to sign here if we have a better chance at the next Tom Glavine or Sandy Koufax? It was Nick Castellanos who was whining about the distant fences in Detroit, right? If it means we can't sign players like that, fine by me. Could you imagine Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio whining about how it's 461 to LC at old Yankee Stadium? Or Willie Mays crying about the 480' distant, 60' tall clubhouse in play in CF of the Polo Grounds? No, they just played ball.

There's a guy in the MLB offices with OCD who hasn't been able to sleep since he found out that the far edge of first base lines up with the center of second base, so the infield is not exactly a square rotated 45 degrees. It's more of a kite. This will allow him to get his life back.

They must have moved people around when the game started, but this was listed as a game the Red Sox and Tigers in 1910. I've seen photos of old games where clearly the players were playing and there were fans right on the other side of the foul lines. And around the infield. And behind ropes that were 50' inside the fences in the outfield. Stuff they'd never, ever, ever think about allowing today.

So many questions from the perspective of today. Did they push everyone back before the game started? Were hard-hit balls so rare in the deadball era that nobody really had a fear of getting killed by a ball standing 30-40 feet from home? People are standing right behind home. Assuming nobody brought a glove. Really? How many ground rule singles/doubles were there? In a modern game at least every inning or two a ball would be hit into the crowd. Was the expectation that the fielders would fight the fans for balls? Where did the batting team go? Where are the dugouts? There's people everywhere. The umpire(s) were probably like WTF... I am going to get killed today. If I'm standing along the rope in the OF I'm kicking every visiting hit back to my outfielder, and anything my team hits either disappears, or gets kicked as from from a fielder as possible. If you're in the fifth row of the standing room you aren't seeing anything unless you're 6' 3".

They should move first base back a foot to avoid all of those close plays. -John Lowenstein I suppose now there won't be any close plays at second in the minor leagues where they're trying this.

Fans: We want to watch more baseball in new and innovative ways, and we'll pay your for it. MLB: Uhhh... no. We'll tell you how to enjoy our product. There's always other sports if you don't like it. That's a great way to run a business.

Oh, but if they let eight people on Guam stream the A's on MLB.com, then Eddie's Carpet Cleaning and Snake Removal Service (who pay good money to advertise on Channel 42 knowing they carry six A's games) wouldn't be getting full value from their ads. So the appropriate response is to ban all legal streaming of A's games in Guam, thoroughly annoying yet another small part of the MLB fanbase in pursuit of $4.88. I still want to know what ill-conceived, lobbyist-drafted, spineless 14-term-legislator-sponsored law VPN streaming is violating.

Coogan's Bluff was outside the Polo Grounds. I was thinking more like this scene from Boston in 1910 where the real outfield wall was behind the spectators standing in the OF, so they just threw some ropes and posts up kind of like the lines at the airport. As you see they'd often let the fans stand just behind the foul lines and coaching boxes. It's a miracle nobody got killed by a line drive.

What law are you violating? Or is it just the terms of service of the MLB.com subscription. Is that illegal, or are they just going to cancel your subscription if they find out? There's no law that says MLB blackout restrictions are sacrosanct, but I suppose there's some way to tie it back to DMCA or similar that says nobody should ever hack a workaround to a monopoly's digital controls.

This just occurred to me... When they do get back to contention and they want to sell more tickets they could just put a rope across where the fence used to be and have the overflow crowd stand behind it. They'd do this all the time 100 years ago, often to ridiculous effect, with the crowd encroaching on the foul lines, and standing so close any ball hit over the ropes was a ground rule double. Here it would just be the same configuration we've had for nearly 30 years.

How much is that? Is this the same ATT/Directv streaming package that was really the only legal streaming means last year? That was roughly $100 a month. I'm not going to pay that to turn on the O's, see that they're down 5-0 in the second, and let my kids switch to much more enjoyable reruns of Impractical Jokers.

I'd argue that they haven't been consistently well run since the 1970s. We've discussed recently the fact that they got essentially nothing at all out of the 1980-86 drafts, and that was also the period where the only free agents they'd sign were 33-year-olds who'd been stars five years ago. The Camden Yards money papered over a lot of flaws in the 90s, and Duquette's and Buck's creativity won some games in the 2012-16 timeframe. But the franchise has had some serious holes continuously since the early 80s.

He could be. He's coming off a so-so season, and it's possible some team really needs a DH or 1B in July. So if he's OPSing .875 and someone has a big hole he could be worth more than the current Trey Mancini who just had a year OPSing .758. But no guarantees.

No, no, no... it should be like the old days when a player was bound by the reserve clause forever. If Trey was a 1966 Oriole they'd renew his contract at $22k a year every year until he wasn't as good as the next guy up from the minors and then they'd release him.

If you were looking to acquire one year (or less) of a 30-year-old first baseman with a 115 OPS+, what would you give up for that? He averages 1.9 rWAR per 600 PAs. You might give him a little bonus credit for being miscast as an outfielder, and for recovering from cancer last year. So what would you offer in trade for one year of a 2.5 win, 30-year-old first baseman? He'll probably be paid $8M. So, arguably $8M in surplus value if a win is $8M. Nobody is going to give up multiple good prospects for him. Not unless Mancini is crushing the ball on July 10th and some contender's first basemen gets eaten by a crocodile.

How much do minor league teams contribute to these expenses? I think that has to be quite small. I think we've seen numbers thrown around by the owners like 4-5% of revenue goes to non-MLB salaries, signing bonuses, pensions, health insurance and the like. The Orioles' 2021 draft bonus pool was $11M or so. I'd guess total minor league salaries aren't that much. A single A player can make as little as $500 a week, and that's up significantly from 2020. That's five months (no pay for offseason or spring training), so about $11k a year. So Aberdeen's 26-man roster would be paid a minimum of $280k a year. Even if many of the players are paid above minimum (and I don't really know) that's under $500k in payroll a year. The AA minimum is $600 a week, AAA $700. Even if you assume average pay of 50% higher than minimums, the Orioles' total player salaries for their four full-season affiliates would work out to $1.8M a year. Or about 2% of what we're calling operating expenses. They're getting 100 minor leaguers for about the cost of Pedro Severino. There may be some nuance I'm missing, but in general terms cutting Frederick was like eliminating one league-minimum MLB player.

Also, at the Polo Grounds the bullpens were in fair territory.

Yea, that was strange. What was the big deal with carrying your glove to the dugout?

Things I've heard of being in play on professional baseball fields at some point in the last 150 years: - Sheds full of groundskeepers equipment - A mule - A memorial to a WWI vet that looked like a tombstone - A swampy RF that sloped away from the infield - Trees - A basketball goal (on the outfield fence at Bluefield, O's rookie league team for many years. Player won something if he hit a ball that went through) - Batting practice nets, stored in deepest CF - Terraced, multi-tiered hills (Sulphur Dell, Nashville) - Lots of flagpoles - Scoreboards way taller than the Green Monster - As late as maybe the 1920s the minor league park in Pennington Gap, VA didn't have an outfield fence - Infields that were obviously not level - Light towers And not professional, but for about 50 years the University of Texas had a cliff that ran across the middle of center field.

I didn't say you were. We're in agreement. If you invest in a Major League team you would probably make a profit on the sale even if you set the stadium on fire and traded all the players for an army of ferrets.

Angelos bought the Orioles for $173M. After nearly three decades of incompetent management he'd get well over $1B for them today.

Those both prove my point, that you can be almost purposefully malevolent and make a killing on a baseball team. If you did this with an EPL team you'd get relegated and half your revenues would disappear overnight and along with it a good chunk of franchise value.

I was thinking more of his systematic destruction of the Expos.

That says something about the owners' position of being in hard financial straits. You can explicitly not try to win for 4-5 years, have your attendance drop to the lowest levels in many decades, and the franchise valuation still more-or-less holds steady. There's almost nothing an owner could do short of being Jeffrey Loria that would cause his team's value to fall appreciably.

They could always try free tickets/beer/food for lingerie models. Not only would it bring more lingerie models to the park, but also other interested parties.