The Sports Curmudgeon

It has been almost two years since Raiders’ WR Henry Ruggs III was involved in a car crash that killed a young woman and saw Ruggs charged with felony DUI, driving 156 mph, possessing a firearm and vehicular manslaughter.  After two years of legal wrangling, Ruggs pleaded guilty yesterday to reduced charges and was sentenced to prison for 3 to 10 years.  Ruggs is 24 years old; if he is released after 3 years, he might be able to resume an NFL career; if he serves the full 10 years, I doubt he would have any chance for a return.

Speaking obliquely about the Raiders, someone sent me a link to a listicle of the “Ten Most Hated Players In The NFL”.  Lists like this are usually silly at best and I would not even try to set up any sort of measurement scale that might confirm this list either in aggregate or in order.  But I did find it notable that none of the ten “most hated players in the NFL” are Las Vegas Raiders.  I suspect that Al Davis is somewhere in the cosmos wondering what has happened to his squad …

Yesterday, I mentioned that this year’s USWNT had 11 of the highest paid women’s soccer players in the world and the team’s early exit demonstrated that big payrolls do not necessarily translate into championships.  In MLB, the 2023 New York Mets would be the poster children for such a circumstance; so, I went back to check just how far short of dominance that squad fell.

Here are some data:

• The Mets’ Opening Day roster of 40 players totaled $376M.
• The Mets were “sellers” at the trade deadline and had to eat portions of the bloated contracts they traded away.
• In total – – including the infamous Bobby Bonilla contract from more than 20 years ago – – the Mets are paying $155M to players who are not playing for the Mets.

[Aside:  If I have counted correctly, there were 10 MLB teams that started the 2023 season with 40-man roster payrolls BELOW $155M.]

• This morning the Mets are 7 games behind the Marlins in the NL East.  On Opening Day, the Marlins payroll was $130M.  The Mets’ contractual commitments were 290% of the Marlins’ commitments, and yet …
• This morning the Mets are 2.5 games ahead of the Nationals in the NL East.  On Opening Day, the Nationals payroll was $93.1M.  The Mets’ contractual commitments were 404% pf the Nationals’ commitments, and yet …

Success in professional sports requires owners to spend money on players and good players cost more than scrubs.  Those two statements need no historical litany.  But the important and intangible element for success is roster building – – and roster building involves signing some top players to big contracts and pairing those players with young talent that can perform at a high level but does not have the history that allows them to command top dollars – – yet.

What the Mets tried to do was to buy top-shelf talent up and down the roster and did so by paying big money to good players.

• Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were to make $43.1M each this year.
• Francisco Lindor was to make $32.4M this year – – and he is signed at that figure or higher through 2031.
• Starling Marte was to make $21M this year – – and he is clearly on the downward arc of his career.

You get the idea.  The Mets were committed to overpaying at far too many positions and they were concentrating their spending on players who were not likely to improve their performances as compared to previous performances.  The Mets were paying players for their lifetime achievements in many cases and not for what might be reasonably expected as results in 2023.  As of this morning, sportsline.com gives the Mets a 0% chance to win the NL East and only a 4% chance to make the NL Playoffs.

Moving on …  I got an email from Dwight Perry earlier this week.  I miss his Sideline Chatter column in the Seattle Times, but it is good to hear from him periodically.  His note this week dealt with “Pac 12 Stuff”.  This is the kind of stuff that is below the surface here on the East Coast but is clearly worth knowing:

“A couple things among the Pac-12 rubble: Washington State is also left holding the bag to the tune of a $100 million athletic deficit, for paying extravagant coaching salaries and making facilities upgrades while anticipated/promised income from the Pac-12 Networks fell way short of anticipated projections. But they were still getting $25-30 million a year in TV revenue; now they might get a quarter of that.

“Check my figures, but I think Oregon State is $80 million in the hole. The Beavers, ironically, are a solid threat to win the final Pac-12 (as we knew it) football title this year. [Aside:  I like Washington in this final PAC-12 season …]

“The most logical solution to this mess I’ve seen is to let football break off on its own and keep all the other sports in their traditional, regional conference set-ups. I know I’m not salivating at the thought of Washington’s softball team making a cross-country road trip for a riveting three-game series at Rutgers.

“Also, I saw a headline where the NCAA president is ‘deeply concerned’ about the latest conference realignment/implosion. In a related story I think I saw a chihuahua with a wolfhound’s tail.”

Finally, I will close today with these words from George Orwell:

“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Fallout from the early exit of the USWNT from the Women’s World Cup continues.  The woman who has come away in a positive light from the loss to Sweden is Carli Lloyd the former captain of the USWNT who is doing on-site studio analysis for the tournament on FOX.  Even before the survival game against Portugal, Lloyd said the team was complacent and underprepared; then, after one of the players attributed the loss to a video replay call that had a blocked penalty kick only a millimeter over the goal line, this was Lloyd’s commentary:

“No, it was not a millimeter. This was years in the making. This is going to haunt the players. I’ll give them credit in saying that they came out and they played; they played well, they just didn’t score a goal. But you can’t stay complacent and not evolve, and that is exactly what has happened.  This is on the players, this is on coach Vlatko Andonovski, U.S. Soccer, that has contributed to this failure and this exit at the World Cup. The team was not prepared, and a lot of these younger players, we’re going to see a new era, and a lot of these younger players, I hope, will use this as a huge learning experience to get better in the future.”

Carli Lloyd was on the USWNT from 2005 until 2021 and she appeared in 316 games over that time period; let there be no question about her “expertise” here; she played soccer at its highest level.  In her first chance as a broadcaster, Carli Lloyd is “bringing it”; lots of former players – and former coaches to be sure – soft-pedal any criticisms they might offer but Lloyd is giving viewers exactly what she thinks about a less-than-positive situation.  Lloyd took some heat for her bluntness and her lack of empathy – – but that did not stop her.

The FOX team is still covering the tournament and on the air after the dust had settled over the USWNT elimination, Carli Lloyd said:

“They have to take their time, but they also need to quickly figure out what to do with the Olympics looming.  Players shouldn’t be involved with this. In the past, players have been involved. I think someone needs to come in, they need to be ruthless, they need to make tough decisions.  This is a very, very important decision and a coach should not be friends with the players.”

Regarding the thought that this team was complacent, here is an interesting bit of information I ran across about the USWNT:

• The 2023 USWNT had on its roster eleven of the fifteen highest paid women players in the world and nine of the top ten highest paid women players in the world.

I have no way to know if that data created a sense of complacency or nonchalance, but it is another example to demonstrate that amassing a roster with the highest payroll is not necessarily going to wind up successfully.

I do not know what the broadcasting situation is for the soccer competitions – – men’s and women’s – – in next year’s Olympics, but I sure hope Carli Lloyd is part of the studio team and that she continues to “bring it”.

The other “announcer news” of the moment involves Kevin Brown who is the play-by-play announcer for the Baltimore Orioles.  He was suspended earlier this week by the team for remarks he made on the air a couple of weeks ago that highlighted the Orioles’ losing record over the past several years against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field.  Moreover, it is not as if Brown went and dug up arcane stats for his commentary; the stuff he offered to the viewers was taken from the scoreboard information in the Rays’ stadium.  It was a simple acknowledgement that for the last several years, the O’s have been dominated by the Rays.

For those of you who are not in the Baltimore/Washington area, Kevin Brown is a very good play-by-play guy.  He is young; he is engaging; he is enthusiastic, and he does not drown the audience in verbiage.  So, I was glad to see that there was a huge outcry against his suspension and calls from lots of places for him to be back on the air immediately.  Orioles’ fans in Camden Yards made their preference known with chants of “Free Kevin Brown!  Free Kevin Brown!”

The latest reports say that he will return to the booth on Friday of this week which should placate the fans and at the same time it gives the Orioles’ ownership some degree of face-saving” having Brown sit out about 15 games.  As Willy Shakespeare once said:

“All’s well that ends well…”

Finally, since I praised Carli Lloyd for “bringing it” today and since Kevin Brown will be reinstated from suspension for comments that his bosses did not like, let me close today with this example of unmitigated scorn offered up by William F. Buckley, Jr. regarding France and the French people:

“A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country in Western Europe, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom.”

Other than that …

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

I said there were two calamitous events in the sports world over the weekend and yesterday was devoted to the early departure from the World Cup by the USWNT.  Today, let me chew on the implosion of the PAC-12 to its current state as the PAC-4.  With all the so-called “4-Corner Schools” now aligned with the Big-12 and with Washington and Oregon going to the Big-10 along with USC and UCLA, the entity that Bill Walton loves to call the “Conference of Champions” is reduced to:

1. Cal
2. Oregon State
3. Stanford
4. Washington State.

That’s it; that’s the list.  And consider that Washington and Oregon fled this sinking ship because they took only a partial share of the revenue stream(s) from the Big-10 for several years because half of something is better than all of nothing.  What happened over the weekend is that the Power 5 has become the Core Four.

• [Aside: This has happened before to college football.  About 10 years ago there were six major college football conferences but then the Big-East evaporated leaving the Power 5 and now the PAC-12 has gone the way of all flesh …]

And don’t those folks at San Diego State who “resigned from the Mountain West Conference” and were supposed to join the PAC-12 just before the implosion look smart for running home to the Mountain West.  Let me start with the bottom line here which is TV money.  The PAC-12 has been trying to get a new media rights deal to tack onto the one they now have through the end of 2024, and they cannot get one that is even marginally interesting.  That fact tells you a lot about PAC-12 football and basketball – the two sports that generate the revenues that allow all the other sports to exist.

• Even before the start of the demise of the PAC-12, it was an uninviting product.

With all the sports-focused networks out there along with the mainstream networks and new streaming services that appear to generate spontaneously every two weeks, there is ample room for “content” to find a home or multiple homes.  Networks are paying real money for the broadcast rights to things like pickleball and cornhole and professional bull riding and professional fishing.  But they would not pay enough to keep the PAC-12 from imploding …

The fundamental underpinning of the PAC-12’s demise demonstrates that we can no longer pretend that college football is “amateur football”.  It is not; it may not be the NFL or even the XFL/USFL, but it is not “amateur” in any sense of that word.

There was an interesting element of hypocrisy embedded in this story as the vultures were circling above the PAC-12 waiting for it to succumb.  SEC Commissioner, Greg Sankey, sought to stay above the fray and stated that he was sorry to see the damage wrought upon the PAC-12 and called for cooler heads to prevail.  That would be a statesmanlike position absent a smidgen of reality:

• It was Sankey and his SEC that kicked the snowball over the cliff here when they poached Texas and Oklahoma from the Big-12.

There are plenty of losers in this collapse.  Oregon State and Washington State are huge losers; both will have to hope to beg their way into the Mountain West Conference even if it means a swift kick to their wallets.  The Rose Bowl becomes a huge loser so long as long as its contract to have the Big-10 champ play the PAC-X champ holds.  Ohio State/Oregon State anyone?  Cal/Wisconsin?

Athletes on PAC-12 teams in the “non-revenue sports” are going to lose out too.  The women’s softball team and/or the men’s tennis team – – just as examples – – are going to be playing a bunch of “away games” at far-flung venues.  The PAC-12 used to cover two time zones; now athletes in Washington’s non-revenue sports will cover all four US time zones.  Football teams – and maybe a few men’s basketball teams – fly charter to away games; softball and tennis teams fly commercial.  How about those connecting lights from State College, PA to Eugene, OR?  Sounds like fun to me.

One more loser for the moment is the agreed upon formula for putting teams in the expanded CFP.  Current rules call for the champions of the top six conference champions to get automatic bids to the CFP; well, is that going to work if one of the top six is the PAC-4?  No, it will not work and so it will need to be changed causing even more agita in the college football world.

Moreover, please do not think this is the end of the line for college football realignment/reshuffling/reorganization because it is not.  As school athletic programs become addicted to huge revenues generated by college football, there will be a natural tendency to want to continue to grow those revenues.  At some point – – probably not imminent but inevitable somewhere down the road – – the networks that pay for those expensive media rights will turn to the Big-10 people and say something like:

• We would offer lots more money for rights to more games like Michigan/Ohio State or Penn State/USC, but we have too many Purdue/Illinois and Rutgers/Maryland games in the package for us to raise our bids above this number.
• Imagine the same topic coming up in SEC media rights negotiations and in Big-12 negotiations.
• Then imagine the media rights deal that would go to the “Big Guys” from all three “Big Conferences” if all those “Big Guys” might come together to for the “Biggest Conference of All”.

Unless you can show that you predicted all the current machinations about 10 years ago, please do not say that my scenario is “impossible” or “unthinkable”.  I may not be alive to see this sort of upheaval come to pass, but it would not surprise me at all.

There is a rumbling in the college football world that says all this turmoil may not be at an end.  The ACC has been quiet through all this; recall that it was the ACC that picked apart the Big East in the last reshuffling of the college football landscape; this time the conference has done nothing.  But there are plenty of reports that Florida State is unhappy that there has been insufficient escalation of ACC media rights and other reports that Miami wants to play Florida regularly and to monetize that “special game”.  I have no idea if anything will come out of those rumblings down south in the ACC, but I never thought Arizona State and West Virginia would be conference rivals either.

As strange as all these college football doings are, let me assure everyone that I am on record with a reinvention of college football that is far more radical than is evidenced by the status quo.  In January 2017, I wrote here about a new world for college football.  Some of the features of my reinvention are:

• A “Big Boys” Category consisting of 8 divisions of 8 teams aligned geographically.
• A “Little Boys” Category consisting of 8 divisions of 8 teams aligned geographically.
• Relegation and promotion annually between the two categories.

If you find those sorts of ideas – – and they are not the only changes I propose – – interesting, here is the link to my rant from January 19, 2017.  It is never going to happen, but it is not nearly as outrageous to consider in the current environment as it was back then.

Finally, since it is probably too early to know if all these changes are for the good and too early to know who the “good guys” are as opposed to the “bad guys”, let me close with these words from the French poet, Anatole France:

“It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law.  Nature has no principles.  She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected.  Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The overall label for sports news over the weekend would have to be “subsidence” or “collapse” or maybe even “disintegration”.  Two major stories of that sort dominated the sports landscape and the one that was noted globally was the loss by the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) in the Women’s World Cup in the Round of 16.  That is the earliest elimination for a USWNT since 1991 when FIFA initiated a women’s tournament.  In the eight previous tournaments, the US women finished third or better every time.  The hype going into this tournament was that there could be a “three-peat” for the women and that had never been done before.

Last week, I said that the women had made it to the Knockout Round but had not looked anything like impressive in their Group Stage games.  The team played better against Sweden but never put the ball in the net – the same thing that plagued them in Group Stage games.  Consider:

• This USWNT – – seeking a “three-peat” don’t you know – – scored a total of 4 goals in 4 games and 3 of them came against the team from Vietnam, a team that really did not belong in the tournament in the first place.
• The USWNT closed out its 4-game appearance in this year’s Women’s World Cup on a goal drought that lasted for 238 minutes.

The USWNT roster will change dramatically soon; ten players on the roster are 30 years old or older.  Megan Rapinoe has already announced her retirement from professional soccer and while some of the other veteran players may choose to continue competing, they are not likely to be around much past the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris – – if they make it to that competition.  And, of course, there will be those who pin the blame for this underachievement on the coach, Vlatko Andonovski, ignoring the patently obvious fact that he never appeared on the pitch for even a moment in the tournament.

What happened to cause this seeming catastrophe?  I have no interest in trying to read the minds of the players and I will not try to do a mass psychological assessment of the team from afar and without the requisite knowledge even to attempt such an undertaking.  I think the root cause of the relatively early ouster for this year’s USWNT is this:

• The world has caught up to the US.  In previous World Cup tournaments, the USWNT won the cup 4 times and medaled in every tournament based on having a greater number of elite athletes on the squad.  Looking at their games this year against Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, the US women are no longer clearly better athletes because those teams have gotten better.

In no way should anyone take that assessment as a negative statement about the USWNT; rather, it is a compliment for women’s soccer programs and progress around the world.  The USWNT set a high standard for performance in women’s soccer and plenty of other countries have chosen to take on the challenge of meeting that standard.  Next year’s Olympic competition should be very interesting viewing.

[Aside:  The USWNT has won a medal in every Women’s World Cup Tournament and in every Olympics save for the 2016 Olympics and this year’s Women’s World Cup.  In both of those events, they were eliminated by Sweden on penalty kicks.  Cue Rod Serling …]

This situation – – where the world catches up to a standard set by the US – – should not be a total surprise to sports fans.  For years, the US dominated men’s basketball so thoroughly that the US sent teams of collegians to play against much older competition and won just about all the time.  By the late 80’s the rest of the world had progressed to the point where its adults were better than our college players and that led to the US putting the “Dream Team” out on display.  The Dream Team showed that the world still had a way to go to match up against the best pro players, but the fact of world improvement was clear to anyone who watched the competitions.

Look today at the state of men’s basketball here in the US.  In our NBA, I would argue that 4 of the top players in the NBA today are “foreigners” who learned to play and honed their skills outside the US:

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo
2. Luka Doncic
3. Joel Embid
4. Nikola Jokic

If Victor Wembanyama lives up to 80% of his hype, he will join that list of 4 dominant foreign basketball players.  The world does not produce the same quantity of top basketball players as does the US in 2023, but we should recognize that the best players from “over there” have the talent and the ability to compete and to excel in the modern NBA.  The world caught up to the US in men’s basketball and I believe that has also happened in women’s soccer.

So, what’s next for the USWNT?  As I said above, the coach will take some heat for this “embarrassment”.  With the Olympic competition less than a year in the future, it might be difficult for a new coach to take over a team that will likely have significant roster changes.  Coach Andonovski is on a hot seat to be sure.

As noted above, the current roster is dominated by veteran players.  The overseers of US women’s soccer need to be sure that there is a pipeline of similar talent coming up through the levels of US women’s soccer to replace retirees.  Maybe player development for future USWNT squads will need to include sending some youngsters to Europe where women’s soccer is a year-round undertaking.  Practice makes perfect …

The way the USWNT has dominated the sport in the past has been by scoring lots of goals with an attacking and finishing style of play.  This year’s team attacked but rarely finished.  I will not pretend to have figured out the key that will unlock that “finishing potential” for the women in next year’s Olympics – – but someone who knows more about soccer strategy and tactics than I do had better figure that out quickly.

I said at the start that there were two stories from the weekend about “collapse”.  The other one involves the disintegration of the PAC-12 into the PAC-4.  That will be the lead topic in tomorrow’s rant.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

There were far too many trades at the MLB deadline to tally all of them here with a smidgen of commentary on many of them.  Rather, let me mention a few of the player movements that I think will be most impactful:

• Justin Verlander back to the Astros:  The Astros need pitching help; they are only a half game behind the Rangers in the AL West as of this morning despite injuries galore to their starting rotation.  Verlander is big-time help there …
• The Rangers added pitching too:  Speaking of the Rangers, they strengthened their staff too with the addition of Max Scherzer and Aroldis Chapman.
• The Angels keep Otani and add pitching:  The Angels resisted the temptation to trade a superstar for a ton of prospects and make a run for it in 2023.  They are only 3 games out of a wild card slot as of today.  They did add another starter to the rotation in Lucas Giolito, which should help a bit.
• Tommy Pham to the D-Backs:  He adds a career OPS of .790 to the D-Backs’ outfield.  He is also the “other guy” the Mets cleared out of Queens this year.
• Michael Lorenzen to the Phillies:  Lorenzen was an All-Star about three weeks ago and is having the best year of his career.  The Phillies’ starting rotation is strong.
• Jeimer Candelario to the Cubs:  His OPS this year is .823 which is .084 higher than his career average and he is not an embarrassment in the field.  The Cubs’ lineup got better.

I think the AL West race will be the most interesting one to watch this year.  The Rangers and Astros are neck-and-neck.  They each got an aging starting pitcher from the Mets at the trade deadline; the Astros have hung in there while Yordan Alvarez and Jose Altuve were on the IL, and both are back now.  My advice for baseball fans is to keep a close eye on that race even if your favorite team is not involved in the race in any way.

Moving on …  The US Women’s National Team made it out of the Group Stage and into the Knockout Round of the Women’s World Cup tournament – – but by the skin of their teeth.  I missed about 15 minutes of the game against the Netherlands but watched the rest of the US team’s games, and they have looked anything but dominant except against Vietnam.  Put that game in perspective; if FIFA had not expanded the field for the tournament this year, Vietnam may never have made it to New Zealand for the competition.

Against the Netherlands, the US women managed to get a draw, but were outplayed for most of the time I was tuned in.  Against Portugal, the US women showed no superiority in any phase of the game and were saved from elimination by a late shot that hit the goal post and bounded out of the goal and not into the goal.

I am not nearly sufficiently familiar with the subtleties/technicalities of soccer to know what the problem is there, but this team is not nearly as dominant as ones in the past have been.  If they continue to play as they have, they could easily be an early team to pack up and go home.  If that happens, there could be an interesting irony to the situations:

• The US Women protested their second-class status as compared to the US Men in terms of pay and perks.  One argument was that the US Women won World Cups and the US Men always disappointed.
• This year marks the start of equal sharing of earnings and perks for the women and the men.
• Will this year be the start of equal disappointment on the pitch for the two teams?

Next up … Gregg Drinnan’s blog, Keeping Score has been tracking the futility of the Edmonton Elks of the CFL in their home games.  The Elks lost the last time they were at home to the BC Lions by a score of 27-0.  Shutouts in the CFL are unusual in themselves, but this game was far more than merely unusual:

• That was the Elks’ 21^st consecutive home loss.
• That is now the longest home losing streak by any North American sports franchise surpassing the St Louis Browns who lost 20 home games in a row in 1953.
• The Elks’ last home victory was in October 2019
• In those 21 straight home losses, the Elks have been outscored 660-365 if my calculations are correct.
• That was the second meeting between the Elks and the Lions; the first one was also a shutout by the Lions, 22-0.  That is the first time since 1970 that one team has shut out another team twice in a season.
• Since the start of the 2021 season, the Elks’ cumulative record – – home and away – – is 7-33.  For the 50-year period between 1970 and 2020, the Elks – – then known as the Eskimos – – only missed out on being in the CFL playoff 5 times.

The Elks’ next home game will be on August 10 when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers come to visit.  The Bombers are 5-2 so far this year; that is not a good omen for Elks’ fans.

Finally, let me close again today with another anecdote involving the poet, Dorothy Parker:

• A woman told Parker, “I really can’t come to your party, I can’t bear fools.”  To which Parker replied, “That’s strange, your mother could.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports ………

 

 

Most folks, when they check the standings for a sport they are interested in, go to the top of the standings to see what team is on top and what others might overtake them.  Here in Curmudgeon Central, we look at the top of the standings too – – but we always check the bottom as well because there are signs of great futility and incompetence there.  And in that spirit, let me look at the MLB standings.

The team with the worst record is the Oakland A’s.  That should not be a surprise because the A’s have traded away every good player they had who was coming up on a big payday for about the last 5 years.  You don’t always get what you paid for – – see the Mets and Yankees this year – – but you rarely get a championship contender with that sort of roster-building strategy.  The A’s are not likely to threaten the 1962 Mets’ modern era record for 120 losses in the season but they still could set a new mark for the worst run differential in MLB history.

• Previously, the A’s were on track to have a season total for run differential of minus-440 runs.
• The modern-day record is minus-349 runs.
• Today, the A’s project to end the 2023 season at minus-387 runs.

The run differential stat is interesting when you compare the A’s to the Royals who are the second-worst team in MLB this year a mere 2 games better than the A’s.  And yet, compare the run differential as of this morning:

• A’s are minus-255 runs having lost 77 games.
• Royals are minus-169 runs having lost 75 games.

There is another interesting juxtaposition of the run differential stats at the top of the AL Central Division:

• Twins record is 54-53 with a run differential of +34 runs.
• Guardians record is 53-54 with a run differential of +2 runs.

Even more strange than that is the situation in the middle of the NL East race:

• Marlins’ record is 57-50 with a run differential of minus-23 runs.
• Phillies’ record is 57-49 with a run differential of +10 runs.

Moving on … When the MLB season started back in April, lots of folks wanted to see if the rules changes for 2023 would improve the game in terms of fan experience.  Traditionalists were not convinced but the smart thing to do back then was to wait for the data to come in.  We now have 4 months of data, and the answer surely seems to be that MLB games are a better entertainment experience now than they were a year ago.

• ESPN’s baseball audience for televised national games is up 6.9%.
• Total MLB attendance at games is up 9.8%.

More people are watching games on TV and more people are going out to the stadium to see live games.  It would certainly appear that the folks who kept pointing out that there was not enough action in a baseball game that took three-and-a-half hours to hold fan attention had a point.  Games are shorter on average; scoring is up; on-base percentage is up; the stolen base has returned to the game – – and fans seem to like that a lot.

Now, if MLB would only get rid of the “ghost runner on second base” in extra-inning games …

Switching gears …  ESPN has hired Doc Rivers to be a color analyst for NBA games next season.  It appears that Mark Jackson has been “demoted” to the second announcing team and that the “A-Team” for ESPB will be Mike Breen on play-by-play with Doc Rivers and Doris Burke as the color analysts.  That means:

• Burke and Rivers are on in place of Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson

I know that lots of people love Doris Burke; I do not like her; nor do I dislike her.  I find her to be plain vanilla; I would not hit the mute button to avoid her; nor would I sit with rapt attention to be sure I caught every word she put out over the airwaves.  If you consider that the exchange of Jackson and Rivers is an exchange of former players/coaches and that there is not a huge chasm between their desirability, the new team versus the old team is an exchange of Doris Burke for Jeff Van Gundy.  Folks, that is not even close to being an upgrade for the new team.  I think that substitution clearly shows that:

• The personnel shakeups at ESPN have far more to do with costs and cost-cutting than they have to do with competency.

Next up …  Earlier this week, the Buffalo Bills held their first practice in full pads in training camp.  Normally, that event would qualify as “Meh!” on the interest scale – – but this year was different.  That practice was the first time Damar Hamlin was on a football field in pads since his cardiac arrest on the field during the Bengals/Bills game on January 2^nd of this year.  The practice went on schedule with no “unplanned incidents”.  Fans of the Bills – – and of every NFL team for that matter – – must hope that Hamlin has gotten proper and accurate medical interpretation of his physical condition leading him to return to the field.

Finally, for no specific reason, let me close today with an anecdote involving the poet Dorothy Parker:

• On hearing that the famously taciturn President Calvin Coolidge had died, she asked, “How could they tell?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The MLB trade deadline is upon us but before the last-second drama hits, the Mets and Rangers made what could be an important trade.  The Mets appear to have thrown in the towel for 2023 and perhaps the Mets have abandoned their philosophy for building a championship contender.  Recall that the Mets chose to enter 2023 with a payroll that dwarfed every other MLB team in history; they had guaranteed contracts to players totaling more than $350M and more than a handful of those players were long in the tooth.  Over the weekend, the Mets traded away one of those big contracts (to 39-year-old Max Scherzer) and received in return a top minor league prospect from the Rangers.

On the surface, this deal is very simple to assess.  Here is the deal:

• Rangers get Max Scherzer – – owed about $57M through the end of 2024.
• Mets get Luisangel Acuna – – younger brother of the Braves’ Ronald Acuna, Jr.
• Rangers pay Scherzer $22.5M.
• Mets pay Scherzer the rest of what he is owed.

The easy way to look at this is that the Rangers have committed to “win now”; they lead the AL West Division this morning by 1 game over the Astros with the Angels and the Mariners lurking only about 5 games off the lead.  The Rangers have had some pitching injuries and need to bolster the starting rotation; Scherzer is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, so he fits in there like a glove.  If Luisangel Acuna turns out to be as good as his big brother, then the Mets will have won the trade over the long haul, but that remains to be seen.  MLB has a robust history of siblings who have played in the major leagues where one sibling is significantly better than the other:

• Greg Maddux and Mike Maddux
• George Brett and Ken Brett
• Gaylord Perry and Jim Perry
• Henry Aaron and Tommy Aaron
• Joe DiMaggio and Dom DiMaggio and Vince DiMaggio …

That the Rangers have committed to winning now is confirmed by another trade they made over the weekend with the Cardinals.  In that deal:

• Rangers get pitchers Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton
• Cards get reliver John King and two minor league prospects.

That the Mets may be changing their approach to team building might be confirmed later today if the rumors that Justin Verlander is also available for a trade materialize into another deal.  Another signal could show itself based on how the Mets position Luisangel Acuna in their minor league system.  The younger Acuna is a shortstop and a center fielder; the Mets are paying Francisco Lindor about $34M per year through the end of the 2031 season to play shortstop.  Hmmm …

Mets’ owner, Steve Cohen is purportedly the richest of the MLB owners; Forbes says his net worth is $17.6B.  Is he adjusting his approach to team building or is he merely shedding some big contracts that he does not think have paid off properly?  As far as I am concerned, the answer to that question is as interesting as the answer to the question:

• Can Luisangel Acuna live up to his brother’s example?

Cohen bought the Mets after the truncated 2020 season paying $2.4B for the club.  At the time he said his goal was to have the Mets “win the World Series” sometime over a “three to five year” time span.  This year marks the third year of his ownership and the Mets have yet to win the NL East let alone the World Series.  Cohen made his fortune managing hedge funds so the idea of changing one’s strategy/tactics as new information becomes available is certainly something he is familiar with.  I will be very interested in watching Mets’ personnel moves over the next year or two.

Moving on …  The US economy runs on capitalism.  You can like that or decry that, but you cannot deny that.  One of the foundation pieces of capitalism is the Law of Supply and Demand.  The tenets of that law are intuitively obvious, and they hold sway in the marketplace.  Here is the latest example.

Last month, the baseball fans in Oakland staged a “reverse boycott” where they organized to show up en masse at an A’s game seeking to demonstrate that there is indeed “fan interest” in Oakland in MLB and to urge the current owner, John Fisher, to sell the team to someone who would keep the A’s in Oakland.  A little more than 28,000 people showed up for that game in June.  The A’s average attendance is not quite 10,000 fans per game absent that anomalous game.

Organizers are doing an encore performance.  The A’s will host their area rival SF Giants on August 5^th and the hope is that there will be a large and raucous audience for that game at whatever they are calling the Oakland Coliseum these days.  John Fisher paid attention in his Economics 101 course to realize what he should do for that game on August 5^th.  There will be greater demand than usual; so, he raised the prices for tickets since the supply remained the same.  Brilliant!

Reports say that the cheapest seat in the house – – the house being the single worst MLB facility of them all – – will be $44 on August 5^th.  For the other games against the Giants in this series, the cheap seats cost $27; soon after this encore “reverse boycott”, the cheap seats for game against the first place Rangers will cost $10.  No mystery here …

Finally, since capitalism has been part of today’s rant, let me close with two observations about that system:

“The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they’re too damn greedy.”  [Herbert Hoover]

And …

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  [Sir Winston Churchill]

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports ………

 

 

Recall that ESPN fired – or did not renew contracts – with 20 of their on-air personalities about 2 weeks ago.  Most of the folks cut adrift by ESPN remain in that status but Steve Young has gotten himself a new job.  Young will be an assistant coach for a girls’ high school flag football team in California.  Young has two daughters on the flag football team at Menlo HS in California and his assistant coaching duties are expected to be on the “offensive side” of the game.  The head coach at Menlo HS for girls’ flag football is another former Niners’ QB, John Paye whose football career is sort of interesting.

Paye graduated from Menlo HS as a multi-sport athlete and was the QB at Stanford in the mid-1980s and he had the “honor” of following John Elway into that position.  When he graduated from Stanford, Paye was drafted by the Niners in the 10^th round of the NFL Draft and spent two years with the Niners but never saw the field in a real game.  Two QBs ahead of Paye on the Niners’ roster at the time were Joe Montana and Steve Young.  John Paye was a QB – – but more importantly, he was around a bunch of really good QBs who kept him on the bench.

Next … Last winter in the MLB offseason, there was a bit of drama surrounding the free agency of Carlos Correa.  The Giants had him signed but then he failed their physical.  He had a lower leg injury several years ago and that seemed to bother the Giants’ medical folks, so Correa was a free agent again.  There was a similar flirtation with the Mets that did not stand up to scrutiny for very long.  In the end, Correa re-signed with the Twins where he had played in 2022.

Weep not for Carlos Correa; he is making $36M to play baseball this year for the Twins.  But at age 29 – – next month – – he should be at or near the peak of his career and this year’s offensive numbers belie that status:

• Batting average = .228
• On base percentage = .304
• OPS = .705

Those are not “shameful numbers” except when they are juxtaposed with a salary of $36M for 2023 and he will also make $36M in 2024 and 2025.  I am too lazy to track down where his current salary ranks among the top earners in MLB, but I will guess that at $36M for 2023, Correa certainly ranks in the Top 20 earners and maybe in the Top 10.  So, the question now is:

• Were those medical folks in SF and NY correct in having Correa “flunk a physical” – – OR – –
• Is this just a down year for Correa whose career OPS is .119 higher than this year’s figure?

Moving on …  The owner of the Tottenham Hotspurs in the EPL is in a bit of hot water.  Joe Lewis – – neither the boxer nor the comedian, both of whom are dead – – has been charged with insider trading here in NY.  US Attorneys there have alleged that Lewis shared inside corporate information with “friends, associates and romantic partners” over a three- year period that overlapped COVID times.  Tottenham refused to make any comment on the matter, saying that none of this affected the club or the team as is likely the case for now.

However, the former owner of Chelsea in the EPL was ultimately forced to sell his club based on international sanctions related to the Chelsea owner’s “close ties” to Vladimir Putin.  When Chelsea was on the market, there was plenty of interest in acquiring the team which ultimately sold for $5.4B.  I don’t have any idea what the Tottenham club might command on the open market, but if the “Middle East Money Men” take a shine to the club, the price could be stratospheric.

Switching gears …  In news that is clearly less economically uplifting, I read a report that the XFL lost $60M in the course of its season.  Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson acquired the XFL from Vince McMahon when the league folded for the second time during COVID.  The good news is that the league made it through to the end of its season without bouncing checks hither, thither and yon and that its TV deal with ESPN remains intact.

The XFL – – call this XFL 3.0 – – projects that it will take in $100M in revenue in the 2024 season which would be a great success for this twice-failed league.  The problem I have with the projection is that only 20% of that projection is going to come from the TV deal with ESPN.  Seeing how XFL 3.0 is going to make up $80M in things like live gate and local partnerships is not an easy thing for me to do.

Let me be clear … I hope that XFL 3.0 and USFL 2.0 both succeed and continue to provide pro football events for fan consumption on a continuous basis.  But that sort of revenue projection from XFL 3.0 requires some heavy lifting by the league.  At least they have a physical specimen like “The Rock” to help with that heavy lifting.

Switching gears … I mentioned earlier this week that Saquon Barkley had $900K of incentives added to what he would have earned by signing the franchise tag that the Giants put on him.  If I understand the reports on the details of those incentives that have been appended to the deal, here is what must happen for Barkley to earn the full $900K:

• Rush for 1350 yards or more (80 yards per game)
• Catch 65 passes (4 receptions per game)
• Score 11 TDs – – AND – –
• Giants make the playoffs.

Finally, let me close today with two observations by George Bernard Shaw that seem eerily appropriate in 2023:

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

And …

“We all profess the deepest regard for liberty; but no sooner does anyone claim to exercise it than we declare with horror that we are in favor of liberty but not od license, and demand indignantly whether true freedom can ever mean freedom to do wrong, to preach sedition and immorality, to utter blasphemy.  Yet this is exactly what liberty does mean.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………