Yankees Outspend A's 9-3 (and $150MM)

But with the Yankees it’s automatic fold?

Due to the salary cap, they’ve had to let 8 players walk. Including the goalie who stood on his head to get them to the Stanley Cup.

Imagine if the Yankees had to let 8 of their players go after winning the World Series?

I was living on Prince of Wales Island and I got direct tv and the mlb package….and was in hog heaven to be able to watch the A’s. One game, mid season or so, Zito pitched a brilliant game against the yanks. I was impressed…young pitcher, cool, poised at yankee stadium. Those were the days.

Clearly they want the A’s to win the division.

I fell hard for moneyball. I truly believed that Beane had “cracked the code” to allow small market teams to compete with the Yanks/Sox, etc… Unfortunately I was wrong; it’s my misunderstanding of the book. The premise that small revenue teams can’t consisstently compete is unfortunately true.

Moneyball is true in the sense that you can find market inconsistencies and under-valued commodities in all competittive situations. However, I’m starting to feel like a fool for believing that our A’s could get back on top and stay there. Our best case scenario is for us to have a 2-3 year window in which we have a sliver of a chance to compete for a championship. That period would be followed by another long stretch of suckitude thanks to the inequity in the marketplace known as MLB.

What’s a fan to do???

Eff this.

I can’t even look at Pinstripes anymore they make me so angry.

That’s the man who spent every Saturday at the House of Ruth in the late 40s-early 50s.

I would HATE to be a Yankee fan. How demeaning. How embarrassing. If you win, there’s no real satisfaction in it. If you lose, you’re an absolute laughing stock. Is anyone laughing at the A’s this year? No. They know we’re not there yet, but they are sure worried that we’re getting there.

So what if we took some lumps today. To tell you the truth, we probably had them coming, because our starters, great as they are, still have some lessons to learn. If there’s a better time of the season to learn them, tell me what it is, because I don’t know. If there’s a better team to learn them against, tell me who it is, because I don’t know. (Not Texas, I can tell you that much. Not the Angels.)

The 2-3 years of competitive ball Flash describes is good enough, because it isn’t just good, it’s GREAT! Always be an underdog, and always root for them (us).

I NEVER miss watching a game, but I decided to skip this series because it’s just too ridiculous. Baseball needs a salary cap and floor, period, because what MLB is allowing and even encouraging is just bad for baseball, bad for fan interest, just bad period.

And I kept wishing the sound from the movie could have somehow been transpoosed over the picture from the game. The shots of our dugout would have went tremendously well with the “Comfortably Numb” sequence, IMO.

Is There Anybody Out There? Not when we play NYY… our guys just seem to turn and Run Like Hell.

How similar Barton’s and Cust’s slash lines are (especially considering how differently they are perceived). Barton has been slugging a bit more lately and if he surges and Cust slumps, they could be really close by year’s end. Right now:

Barton: .280/.395/.411

Cust: .275/.399/.452

They get there in very different ways, but they’re both basically about .278/.397/.430 hitters.

if you can think of a profit cap, get back to me.

and baseball alltogether.

MLB won’t survive if every fanbase but the Yankees revolts on their team and stops supporting their non-#1 payroll team. This would force Selig to act. Probably the only thing that would do so.

Seriously, I think the answer is: (1) a more leveraged salary cap, and (2) a “negative” salary cap floor, where teams are penalized for spending too little by not receiving their full allotment of salary cap $$. This could be laddered to find a sweet spot somewhere. Of course, the owners should use this as a bargaining chip at the next round of negotiations, perhaps in exchange for trading rights on draft picks, longer arb periods, whatever.

The Yankees make money because they’ve been able to market themselves well which has led to success which leads to more revenue and the ability to spend money to increase the odds of success…a near perfect feedback loop. All teams have these near perfect feedback loops with various degrees of success [just because they are near perfect does not mean the results are going to be desirable for every team — especially if their fans aren’t happy enough]. Asking for a salary cap is akin to interferring into these feedback loops because disparities exist when compared relative to each other. Why not champion for a revenue cap? While it may sound ridiculous, it’s going to have more of the so-called fair and equitable affect as it’s bottom line goal.

I think it’s made the NFL much, much worse. In the NFL, every season has 2 good teams, about 4 pathetic teams, and 26 teams that are exactly the same. Just because it switches each year doesn’t make that a good thing.

I also don’t think it’s right to tell players that they are being limited in how much they make. A hard cap just means more owners can pocket more money that they made because of the players. I know players are millionaires already, but I’d much rather they get a larger piece of the pie.

I don’t want a hard cap in baseball. I would support a salary floor. But I also think the Yankees spending that much more than even the other rich teams is a problem. So why not make the luxury tax some sort of tiered thing? If the number is $125 million and you spend $130, meh. But if you’re spending $200+, why not make it some ridiculous number? Make it a 1000% tax, and make it on the ENTIRE payroll (not just the amount they’re over the tax). Yes, that’s crazy. But it would effectively limit payrolls while still giving a team the choice of spending billions if they wanted. If my numbers are too extreme, just change them.

One thing the Big3 had that the BGMAC have yet to show…. BALLS! Maybe next year these pitchers will step on the Yankee mound as if it’s their mound. They need to show some fight in order to overcome $$$ ineffeciencies. Braden needs to keep working with these guys. Show them what it means to be an underdog in a fist fight.

Yup, I was at my yearly A’s trek into the Bronx (from Brooklyn) last night, sporting my retro Reggie long-sleeve A’s jersey (partly a self-saving propitiation to the Evil Empire). For $125 dollars I got to sit on the main terrace and for $55 dollars I got to drink 5 beers.

Mazzaro was announced as a “hometown” player, and he definitely had pockets of fans around—including a guy with a Mazzaro jersey who got a New Yawk accented heckling when he was getting up: “Hey, Mazzaro! This isn’t the opera! SIT DOWN!” He did get a foul ball pitched by Vin an inning later though.

Anyway. Not a good game. I missed Barton’s jack, too. Oh well. I didn’t get spit on.

Teams that are at the bottom of the league and receive money have little if any incentive to a)get better and b)pay a large sum of money to any free agent. The first reason is pretty much basic…for every win you increase you’ll theoretically move up in the standings and therefore become a ‘better’ team and will earn less money in revenue sharing the following year. The free agent angle is a bit more interesting. Unless you’re on the cusp of being a playoff team and therefore earning money for hosting playoff games it’s really not beneficial for you to spend big on free agents. If you shell out say $20M in the off season and increase your win total by say 5 wins and end up 90-72 but still miss the playoffs you’ve taken on more salary and you’re getting less money in revenue sharing because you’re a better team. Both ways, from an ownership perspective, you’re losing money. Unless as an owner you’re committed to spending money to make your team a perennial division contender and ultimately a team capable of making a WS run you can fiscally justify not spending money outside of what revenue you’re currently generating. So, while hating on ‘big market’ teams is easy to do being a fan of a small market the fact is that they’re contenders b/c they spend money freely. Until the ownership of any non-contending team decides to spend there is little chance it’ll all come together in the form of an average MLB payroll. That being said, that’s why I love the A’s. When it does happen and we make it to the playoffs and World Series it’s all the more sweet.