Hot Stove Thread 2014-15

How many years was it between playoff appearances for the Royals? How many for the Pirates before 2013?

Sorry if it bothers you to admit as much, but the financial big boys still have a very large advantage.

That said, Miller makes sense for the Yankees. That deal would make a lot less sense for the Pirates, who could also use the bullpen help, but they have to be a lot more careful in their spending.

 

Yes, they have an advantage. And that's what makes it great. Yankees have won how many titles since 2000?

 

Yes, Mr. Spock, it is a different argument.
But if my house is a dump and I want a full reno, I'm not going to go buy curtains first.
I agree Duquette is one of the best execs in baseball, but there were some growing pains along the way.
I believe the guy resides along the autism spectrum and has been much misunderstood because of it.

 

I would put the Dodgers in there too. They don't hesitate to throw the money around. With that massive TV deal they might as well have a money tree.

 

They'll end that streak of 26 years without a title any day now.

 

Hopefully it will be 27 next year. Next time Yasie Ouig acts up toward Madison Bumgarner, Bum should ask him how many World Series rings he has.

 

It is amazing how much brand damage the McCourts inflicted on that franchise.
It's a cash farm and those dipshits managed to lose money while at the reins.

 

The Yankees aren't the only financial big boy in MLB. The Giants, winners of three titles in the last five years, are consistently among the top 10 in payroll. The Red Sox were fourth when they won the World Series in 2013. The Cardinals were ninth when they won it in 2012. The last team to be outside the top 10 in payroll the year it won the World Series was the 2008 Phillies, who were 12th. The next year, they were in the top 10, but ran into a Yankees team that bought a championship about as blatantly as possible.

I'm not sure when a team in the bottom half of the majors in payroll last won the World Series. Y'all are welcome to look it up.

The money guarantees nothing, but let's not pretend it doesn't still have a huge impact on the game.

 

You know what has real impact? Abortion. Talk about finality.

 

Just for the record, there's correlations between market size and revenue and payroll, but it's not all 1:1:1. Some teams have high payrolls because they are good at what they do and thus produce players worth paying and revenue to pay them.

 

In 2009, the Yankees were coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs for the first time since 1994 and they had the highest payroll in MLB before adding a single player. They then went out and bought one of the most valuable free agent pitchers to hit the market in the past decade, the top hitter on the market and the second best starting pitcher on the market. They did not produce those players by being good at what they do. They bought them because they had more money to spend.

That is just one example of the reality not reflected in your post. The high revenue franchises are able to keep every one of those good players they produce and buy more away from franchises with less money. Sure, they will occasionally balk at overpaying as the Yankees did with Robinson Cano, but they get to keep their guys. The low-revenue franchises get to keep some of their good players and only get the free agents the big boys don't want. These are generalizations, but they hold up quite well.

Market size is not the only factor in revenue, but it is a huge one. The Pirates and Royals will never be able to come close to the type of revenue that fuels franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox. When those teams don't produce enough players to warrant a high payroll, they buy them. Or at least they have the ability to do so. Then you have franchises like the Giants, who fall somewhere in between, but clearly have resources superior to the teams at the bottom of the payroll heap and that plays a role in their ability to sustain success.

 

Nothing you just said contradicted anything I just said. So ... cool, I guess.