Orioles close to acquiring Corbin Burnes (Update: Acquired for Joey Ortiz and DL Hall)

[Hank Scorpio]

10 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think you are defining “small market” differently than I do.  For me, “market” has nothing to do with the wealth of the owners.   It relates to the ability of the team to generate revenue from its own operations.   And by that definition, Baltimore is a small market team, as MLB itself recognizes.  

Now, do our new owners have the wealth to subsidize the team if they want to?  Yes.   Do they have the resources to run the team at a modest loss for brief periods and then make up for it in other years?  Yes.   I believe very few owners subsidize their teams long term, while lots of owners run their teams at a loss for brief periods when they see a shot at the brass ring.  
 

Stated more eloquently than I could muster.

I agree with Frobby's perspective.

[Safelykept]

18 minutes ago, Rbiggs2525 said:

I did some minor research to try and get a gauge on Burnes future contract. Both Strasburg and Cole contracts go until age 37. I believe those are 2 pitchers in the ballpark of Burnes career wise. So 6-7 years around 35 million per is what we may be looking at. Will be very interested to see what Snell gets.

So 7 years 250 Mil . Not likely, Were still the Orioles

[Porky]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think you are defining “small market” differently than I do.  For me, “market” has nothing to do with the wealth of the owners.   It relates to the ability of the team to generate revenue from its own operations.   And by that definition, Baltimore is a small market team, as MLB itself recognizes.  

Now, do our new owners have the wealth to subsidize the team if they want to?  Yes.   Do they have the resources to run the team at a modest loss for brief periods and then make up for it in other years?  Yes.   I believe very few owners subsidize their teams long term, while lots of owners run their teams at a loss for brief periods when they see a shot at the brass ring.  
 

Very important point, Frobby. The new ownership group certainly has much more wealth than the Angelos family - but in a world where Shohei Ohtani just secured a $700 million contract, even they aren't wealthy enough to start writing personal checks to turn the O's into the Dodgers. Baltimore is still going to be a small market team.

I think what we can look forward to is that this is an ownership group with lots of business success and experience. While the baseball operations have turned a corner under Elias, the business side of the Orioles has continued to be run quite poorly, from Kevin Brown's suspension, to the MASN legal battles, to the issues with concessions and the PA system last year. I think the biggest boost we will see is that the organization will be run at a much higher level top-to-bottom - which should be good for fan experience at the Yard, and hopefully that will result in a more robust player payroll too.

[SemperFi]

8 minutes ago, Big Mac said:

While the specifics of a deal like this are vastly different, typically in an M&A transaction once the deal terms have been agreed upon but before the transaction actually closes, there are restrictions on what the seller can do to the business during that interim period.  I've never done a sale of a sports franchise and I am sure that there are significant structural differences, but I'd think there was a bit of a holding pattern on making anything beyond minor moves in some way. 

I think most are aware of that-but that is not what the poster said and what I was responding to- "all (major) spending was frozen " -there is no spend until paychecks start.  If you are referencing committments obviously but diction matters especially when a poster is referencing a rumor.

 

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

Eh, I think it's just a semantical disagreement.

The money ownership is willing to part with matters, but that's a different thing than market size. To me, market size refers specifically about the eyeballs available to your organization re: attendance & ad revenue, not the willingness of the owner to spend their own money or how they distribute the organizational revenue. 

Now, if you win a lot, I guess it's arguable that market size is a malleable thing. You could expand your eyeballs and acquire "new" fans.

The Yankees revenue is solely attributable to the ad revenue they bring in every year. Population. What they do with it is independent of that. Luckily for us, we may have a new ownership group who is hopefully willing to profit less and put more of it into payroll. They're off to a hot start, I'd say.

This is basically what I was trying to say.  And I echo the point about market size being somewhat malleable, within reason.  Winning breeds interest and can increase market size if it happens for a sustained period.  That’s why an owner might run a team at a modest loss for a while, expecting to make it up on the back end.

[Bemorewins]

I appreciate the different perspective from myself regarding "market size". However, no one answered my question regarding why the spending capabilities don't always match the city/population/market size? If there were a direct correlation teams like ARI, HOU, TOR, MIA, TEX, SD would have always been big spenders. However, those orgs histories show that their spending/budgets have changed with different ownership groups. 

I am confident that the billionaires coming to take over the Orioles are not content to bleed money consistently. However, I believe that they are smart enough to make their money and see the investment opportunity here. I think we can win, spend, and the can still turn a profit. It may not be the profit that Angelos was looking for but I don't think that they are primarily in it for the same reason that John Angelos was. From the very outset, Reubenstein said the goal is to bring a World Series back to Baltimore. Of all the things (most bizarre) that John Angelos said, I don't recall that ever being at the forefront of his stated priorities.

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I think you are defining “small market” differently than I do.  For me, “market” has nothing to do with the wealth of the owners.   It relates to the ability of the team to generate revenue from its own operations.   And by that definition, Baltimore is a small market team, as MLB itself recognizes.  

Now, do our new owners have the wealth to subsidize the team if they want to?  Yes.   Do they have the resources to run the team at a modest loss for brief periods and then make up for it in other years?  Yes.   I believe very few owners subsidize their teams long term, while lots of owners run their teams at a loss for brief periods when they see a shot at the brass ring.  
 

Even by this measure I do think that market size belies the reach of the O's because the team does derive a decently large portion of its fan base from counties that are considered part of the DC metro area (northern PG County, MoCo, Frederick.)  They're probably a mid-market team in terms of reach even if they're a small market team by metro area size. 

[deward]

29 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I appreciate the different perspective from myself regarding "market size". However, no one answered my question regarding why the spending capabilities don't always match the city/population/market size? If there were a direct correlation teams like ARI, HOU, TOR, MIA, TEX, SD would have always been big spenders. However, those orgs histories show that their spending/budgets have changed with different ownership groups. 

I am confident that the billionaires coming to take over the Orioles are not content to bleed money consistently. However, I believe that they are smart enough to make their money and see the investment opportunity here. I think we can win, spend, and the can still turn a profit. It may not be the profit that Angelos was looking for but I don't think that they are primarily in it for the same reason that John Angelos was. From the very outset, Reubenstein said the goal is to bring a World Series back to Baltimore. Of all the things (most bizarre) that John Angelos said, I don't recall that ever being at the forefront of his stated priorities.

Some owners and front offices have different philosophical positions on how high a payroll they want to run, even if the money is there to support more. However, every team has a different upper limit of what their market can support before they start running into the red. A team like San Diego might be willing to spend above what their market can truly support for a few years because they had an owner who wanted to see a championship before he died, but it's not sustainable long term (which is why they had to trade Soto this past off-season). Rubenstein may well want to come in with a splash, we'll see, but I wouldn't be expecting him to want to run losses on the regular. We'll have to see what he's comfortable with over the long haul.

[Malike]

1 hour ago, RZNJ said:

Much of your post is very, very ironic.   Know it all.  Ego.   You’re a funny guy.  I just never realized it before.  LOL

I'd never have known it but people keep quoting him, so yeah.

[Malike]

1 hour ago, ThisIsBirdland said:

 

 

I don't know if I'd go that far. The Brewers believe Hall is a starter and he's obviously got an electric arm. If they can develop him better than we can, they are going to have a stud for 6 years. The possibility being they have their Hader replacement. Hall is going to be good, I believe.

[Bemorewins]

1 minute ago, deward said:

Some owners and front offices have different philosophical positions on how high a payroll they want to run, even if the money is there to support more. However, every team has a different upper limit of what their market can support before they start running into the red. A team like San Diego might be willing to spend above what their market can truly support for a few years because they had an owner who wanted to see a championship before he died, but it's not sustainable long term (which is why they had to trade Soto this past off-season). Rubenstein may well want to come in with a splash, we'll see, but I wouldn't be expecting him to want to run losses on the regular. We'll have to see what he's comfortable with over the long haul.

I wouldn't expect that either and stated as much. However, again the market/population/city size has not proven to have a direct correlation on spending in many instances that I cited. I also mentioned that just mid-market spending gets us extensions for Adley, Gunnar, and Holliday PLUS one big pitcher (maybe Burnes).  There is a long way for us to go to even enter the mid-market $150- 180 million dollar a year pool. I don't think the goal will be/nor should it be to go crazy in FA consistently. But what we need is to be able to retain most/all of the franchise/homegrown cornerstone players and then supplement where needed. I think that we will always have a good to decent farm with Elias/Sig running things. However, we do not need to maintain a top 5 system to be consistently a contender (under the presumed average level of spending at least from the new owner).

But you are right, we will have to wait and see. But I do think that my expectations are reasonable given the MASSIVE difference between the wealth (and hopefully intelligence) of new ownership group vs the outgoing one. I just keep coming back to this - Presale of the O's if there was a team up for sale, the Angelos wouldn't even have been able to come close to affording one. They simply did not have the capital. And John didn't really have much outside of the baseball team. For this new ownership group that is simply not the case.

Another advantage that the new owners have vis-is-vie other extremely wealthy owners who have recently bough teams is almost all of the heavy lifting in order to amass this type of talent treasure chest, has been done already. Steve Cohen (as an example) did not inherit an Elias/Sig with a top farm system and a minuscule payroll. IMO - what we did in order to get to this point is TOO RISKY for clubs like the Red Sox, Mets, etc (though it can be argued that the Cubs did something similar). Because most of the traditional "big markets" can't/won't take the risk of the alienation of their fan base which comes as a result of extreme tanking in order to get an abundance of top young/cheap talent. Plus you have to get so much right from a draft/development perspective.

IMO we have gotten very luck that the stars have aligned so perfectly.

[ledzepp8]

3 hours ago, ChuckS said:

Do you want to do that though for a 30 year old pitcher likely to command 200+ mil over five or more seasons? Maybe he ends up having a Scherzer like career and it will be worth it, but it seems risky. 

I rather extend Gunnar and Jackson, unless we are going to be able to start dishing out huge contracts like candy.  

I don't think anyone necessarily wants to give that much money to anyone. But if that's the cost of baseball players now, then it's the cost. I would rather give that type of money to a 30-year-old pitcher than a 30-year-old position player.

[Mooreisbetter27]

According to Melewski (on JA and the trade):

John is the control person and he worked with him on this deal.  Said on all fronts there is a lot to be excited for in Birdland right now.

"I think we've got a real shot, but our division is a bear."

[ledzepp8]

3 hours ago, TradeAngelos said:

Committed to running 150m payrolls?.....it's not 2015 anymore. That would still be below league average (in 2024 that is). The question should be if they are committed to running 200m payrolls, not 150m. 200m in 2025 and beyond will still only be 12-14th overall. It's like this fanbase has been in a payroll coma for a decade and just woke up. Wait how much do players cost now? And these teams are spending how much?? Wow! So much has changed. 

There are only 9 teams with a payroll of $200m +. The league average is $158m.

[Bemorewins]

12 minutes ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

According to Melewski (on JA and the trade):

John is the control person and he worked with him on this deal.  Said on all fronts there is a lot to be excited for in Birdland right now.

"I think we've got a real shot, but our division is a bear."

Is this surprising coming from John Angelos that he would be there waiting to take the credit? IMO that is right on brand for him.