Successful sports franchises tend to fall in one of two ways. Injuries and age may take their toll. Far more dramatic and frustrating to fans, though, is the team that begins to smoke its own dope: after years of having transactions work out in its favor, the team starts to interpret luck as skill and…
Minnesotans for Major League Baseball member Thomas Lang weighed in on last week’s The Imbalance Sheet by pointing me to that committee’s report on the Twins’ stadium situation: "The Twins’ claims that they can’t compete without a new stadium were obviously fraudulent before this year…" I object both to your conclusion and particularly strongly to…
Sometimes, readers make this job much easier. Here’s an email from Cris Enestvedt, regarding the stadium situation in Minnesota. You should be covering the MN situation if you’re into seeing owners get stiff-armed. A few years ago a referendum in St Paul went down 58% to 42%, but in this session a couple of new…
The whining and threatening have already begun. Florida’s legislature made a small gesture to try to restore the state’s credibility this week by telling Marlins owner John Henry to stuff his $140 million funding request up his… well, up his John Henry. Now even the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper generally known for sensible business…
Recently, I had the chance to speak extensively with Brad Humphreys, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Humphreys has spent several years researching the true economic impact of sports teams, particularly on the debate over the merits of publicly funding new facilities for privately-owned sports franchises. His most recent work,…
Two weeks ago, the Cincinnati Reds undid perhaps the best part of last July’s trade in which they sent a broken-down Denny Neagle to the Yankees for four prospects, one of which was erstwhile college football star Drew Henson. Henson’s situation illustrates a problem far more important for competitive balance than disparities in the free-agent…
Czar Bud has issued a gag order on his fellow owners, and despite Selig’s relative lack of power, the owners have so far decided to abide by the edict and clam up. The taboo subject? The impending labor talks and possible work stoppage that currently loom over the 2002 season. Many fans are no doubt…
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays have done a lot of things right this winter, from not spending millions on additional veteran mediocrities to turning nominal closer Roberto Hernandez into a great young hitter who has already been locked up into his arbitration years (Ben Grieve). But they could be on the verge of making a…
The Pirates continue to astound us with their incompetence. This week, they signed Scott Sauerbeck, the very definition of free talent (he was taken from the Mets via the Rule 5 draft in December of 1998), to a three-year, $2.4-million deal. Although that’s not a lot of money, and we generally advocate locking good young…
So you may have heard that the NBA is having its own small-market problem. Yes, salary cap and all, the vaunted NBA is suffering from a post-Jordan malaise that is about to take one of the league’s two newest franchises, the Vancouver Grizzlies, on the road to a new home. And the league’s commissioner, David…
Curt Schilling is never at a loss for words, and unlike a lot of athletes (and actors and other Famous People™) who like to sound off to the media, he often has something of substance to say. Last week was no different, when ESPN.com posted a 2,400-word essay by the Diamondbacks’ hurler, focusing on the…
In my last Pivot column for ESPN.com, an offhand comment about the stupidity of the Brewers drew a surprisingly large number of reader e-mails, almost as many as I got about the Henry Rollins reference. One particular reader expressed the reasons for his frustration: It seems is though year after year the Milwaukee Brewers don’t…
Baseball Weekly recently ran a Bob Nightengale column that focused on some of Scott Boras’s ideas for improving competitive balance. Buried at the end of the article was an interesting quote from a major-league general manager that cited the most oft-repeated mantra of the small-marketeers. As part of the argument, Nightengale quotes Kansas City GM…
When Baltimore Ravens owner Heartless Art Modell stood at the podium in Tampa Bay Sunday night and said that the Vince Lombardi Trophy belonged to the people of Baltimore and the state of Maryland, he wasn’t kidding: they paid for his stadium, his team, and arguably his salary and the increase in his net worth,…
Bob turned on the television one fine August day to find that the hated New York Yankees were in town to play the Twins. He called his son John into the room to let him know the game was on. "Who’s that?" asked John, as a Yankee hitter lumbered to the plate. "I’m not sure,"…
Alex Rodriguez‘s signing isn’t all that interesting, even though it has generated all the headlines. He’s an exceptional package: a power hitter who hasn’t reached his power peak; a seven-skill talent with great plate discipline and an improving defensive profile; a generally classy guy with no interest in recording rap albums; and he plays one…