Owners suck, and that's a dumb quote from the Milwaukee guy. But this entire conversation about the Dodgers and things being unfair seems so manufactured right now by media people wanting to make dumb arguments. And that's including media people I like, such as Passan.
It's not new, just a different team. 20 years ago the same things were said about the Yankees when they were double all but 1 team.
They have bubble gummed together a bunch of mediocre players to winning teams without a star ever since Yelich has started dealing with injuries. Chourio and Jesus Made turning into stars would go a long way to changing the calculus of how they go about winning. Agreed that's a bad quote from Attanasio. I don't think it's necessarily wrong but shouldn't be framed as the goal being a fun time. But if there were moves at the owner level that could guarantee a championship the Dodgers would have 8 consecutive running. The most likely way to win a title for them is to get in every year and hope some year it's your turn to be the underdog team to win it all.
That poor Brewers owner only being worth $700 million. Not sure how we expect such a man to compete at the major league level
I get this, but I also think a lot of this has nothing to do with owners and their willingness to spend. Juan Soto got 15/$765M to sign with a New York team. Realistically, how much more would a team like Seattle, Milwaukee, Toronto, Pittsburgh, etc., have to guarantee to get him? I bet it's at least $50M, and maybe closer to $100M at that scale for some of those markets. So you've got teams from the biggest and most desirable markets also capable of guaranteeing the most $$ and years for the only players in the sport worth spending on in the current system. The notion of payroll inequality isn't just about whether owners are willing to spend.
went to a brewers game this past year. that place is a blast. they beat the fuck out of the redlegs (in milwaukee of course)
Joe Buck is calling the NYY/MIL game on Opening Day for ESPN. Seems like it's a one-off, but cool that he's doing something baseball related again.
Also, it’s not like Dodgers ownership is shelling out a bunch of their own cash and taking huge losses to their wealth in order to put the team together. Dbl just posted a thing saying they get $330 mil a year from their TV revenue, they are basically just putting all that back into the payroll. So calling the Milwaukee owner cheap and the Dodgers owner not cheap rings hollow, IMO.
Rosenthal is really weird now since getting dumped by MLBN for taking shots at Manfred and thinks every team should have $200M+ payrolls. His article on the Brewers today was weird. I get that small markets can spend more, but the system makes no sense and this stuff is more complicated than just constantly saying that everyone should spend more. The Tigers offered Bregman more money and years than anyone else, and Boras leaked to a Detroit writer that Bregman was negotiating with Detroit but asked for either 6/$187 with an opt out after year one, or 7/$200M. And when they didn't, he took 3/$120M from Boston. And that's fine if that's where he preferred to go, but it's also part of what teams outside of the biggest markets deal with in FA when competing against those clubs. Smaller markets generally don't have the option of spending anything less than massive overpay deals for good players, and it makes no sense to overpay average players if you're the Brewers and have proven you can find and develop those kinds of guys.
It felt like that article was written by agents tbh. They hate that a club has found a way to win games that isn't driven by player salary. If the Brewers go .500 I'm sure all of they will all pen lots of words dunking on them even though they are fine with Jed Hoyer going .500 every year without mention.
It sucks that people in baseball media can't figure out a way to talk about payrolls that isn't either pretending the Rays can't spend more, or pretending like the Brewers and Pirates could be the Dodgers if they wanted to be. There's a massive middle ground where the conversation could be, but no one in those jobs seems interested in having it because it's more fun to let agents or owners talk for them while trying to scare everyone with labor disaster stories about a salary cap demand that is never going to happen.
I listen to ESPN 1000 occasionally who has broadcast the Sox the last few years and they’re currently running ads to buy radio ad space during Sox games lol
Cubs have been getting dunked on left and right this offseason for our spending. This was written just yesterday. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id...hicago-cubs-alex-bregman-spending-free-agency
no change this year but the rights to that window and the Wild Card round are now up for grabs as of next year ESPN wanted to cut the payments it was making under the deal which, considering what they’re handing out elsewhere, yikes
Probably more nostalgia for me but man not having anything MLB related on ESPN feels like a big deal.
Jesse rogers was live on the radio when this broke and said it’s decently likely they don’t have Sunday night baseball next year and would go out for bid
I know, but it's more the overall no presence on anything they do. The sport won't exist to them on social media.
the sports calendar helps them a little but pennant races and playoffs are going to be buried behind an even bigger mountain of football bullshit
I think the mlb social accounts do a way better job than they did previously but people obviously have to follow those accounts
I never consume anything from ESPN unless I’m watching a live game on there anyway, I really don’t care if they cover MLB or not. I’m used to not having games on ESPN with the B1G and it’s fine.
MLBN killed baseball on ESPN. It crushed Baseball Tonight, drained their talent pool, and ESPN saw the writing on the wall and basically let the baseball section of its enterprise on TV and the web die. Sucks because they used to legitimately care about it. I remember watching Baseball Tonight consistently and Buster Olney's blog used to be a daily visit for me on the website back in the day. They used to have so many national writers and then MLBN came around and it was over quick.
I think they'll still cover it similarly to what they do now, which is basically nothing other than Passan tweets about breaking news and maybe keeping Kiley around to do prospect stuff.