Kansas City Royals News Roundup: A Happy Weekend, Contraction Talk, Susan Sontag
by Freneau on Apr 4, 2011 10:24 PM EDT
in Kansas City Royals News
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Print- mindahaas.net " Blog Archive " The Y’Know Meter: Day 3
- Royals Kingdom: Opening Weekend revisited
- Royals on major roll heading into off-day | royals.com: News
- Royals Week In Review and Preview - 4/4/2011 | Broken Bat Single Kansas City Royals Blog / LJWorld.com
- Royally Speaking: A wild weekend
Baseball:
- On fanbases and rooting interests.... - McCovey Chronicles
- Differences In Pitcher Release Points - Beyond the Box Score
- Neyer: Are Rays And A's Heading For Contraction? - Baseball Nation
- 17 Predictions That Will Be Right | FanGraphs Baseball
- Know hope = The Hardball Times
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I have a knee jerk nervousness to the word "contraction"
After Hank Steinbrenner recently suggested contracting teams such as the Royals. Since Selig may be gone by next year…
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
by KeepItCopacetic on Apr 4, 2011 10:35 PM EDT reply actions
Baseball doesn't need a contraction, it needs an expansion in a few years
The sport’s growing more popular. I can see moving the Rays and A’s, the A’s to San Jose or Sacramento, and the Rays to one of several metro areas: Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, Portland, Indianapolis, Salt Lake, or San Antonio-Austin. Then, in about five years, expand the AL to two more of those metro areas.
You’d have 32 teams, and what they’d probably do is divide them into divisions of four like the NFL, or even divisions of eight.
"America is a nation without a distinct criminal class, with the possible exception of Congress." --Mark Twain
The problem is that towns need to be able to support the team.
The town that actually needs to be expanded into is NYC or Boston area.
- .-. ..- … – / – …. . / .—. .-. - .. . … …
by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 5, 2011 9:00 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Yes
One in NJ, one in CT. This would mitigate their big advantage.
But good luck get any taxpayers to fork over cash for a stadium in this climate.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
And good luck
Getting anyone to invest in a team in either place thinking that they can woo away Yankee, Met or Red Sox fans to a new team with no history.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
Brooklyn has its own baseball history
The Mets had no history but built their own.
New Jersey has its own growing state pride.
There are millions of people in the New York metro area from somewhere else and not Yankees or Mets fans. As a new team builds its fan base, it would be able to sell significant tickets to fans of other teams, including the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox. If priced cheaper, they would attract the people who do not want to pay the prices at a Yankees game. A kids often pick a favorite team just to be different than their parents — my mom was a Dodgers fan because my grandfather was a Yankees fan. And if successful, a lot of bandwagon fans would jump aboard. After 10 years, the team would build its own generation of fans — a 10 year old kid is not going to care about the Yankees’ history.
Another team in the New York metro area would be a long term investment, but it would work.
Agreed
And its not like you’d have to sell out like the Yankees, you’d only have to sell as well as the Rays.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
The Mets
were taking over the fan base of the Giants and Dodgers. They’re not a good example of a new franchise finding a fan base in established territory.
New Jersey state pride looked promising for a while, but not anymore. The Giants and Jets still use the “New York” name, and the Nets are moving to Brooklyn. Still, if there’s any real thought to putting a third team in the New York market, that would be the way to go.
Kids definitely do sometimes pick a team just to be contrary to their parents (heck, I live in New York and I’m a Royals fan), but kids don’t pay for the merchandise, for the extra cable channels, etc. The uphill battle for a third team in New York would be HUGE. Getting a new stadium built would be prohibitively expensive, and you can forget about getting any public money, after new stadiums were just built for the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets and Nets. The city of New York would not be expecting additional revenue from a third baseball team (as would, say, San Antonio), the new team (if it has any success in the first place) would just be taking money that’s being spent on the Yankees and Mets. (New Jersey would be better for this, but they have a reluctance to build a baseball stadium going back 25 years, when the Yankees actually threatened to move there.) They’d need to get their games aired on radio and TV in competition with the established Mets and Yankees networks – how eager will cable providers be to pay to offer that to their subscribers? And somehow they’d be financially viable by being the cheap alternative?
As we say in New York, fuhgeddaboutit. MLB is better off moving into established sports markets that lack for baseball, as they always do, somewhat behind all the other leagues. They were the last major league to put a franchise in Miami, in Denver, in Phoenix and in Central Florida (counting Tampa Bay and Orlando as a single market, though I could be wrong about the reality of it). The other leagues have set up shop in North Carolina and in Tennessee, and baseball would be wiser to try and follow them there. Or San Antonio, though only one other league set up shop there. It’s a huge metro area, growing by leaps and bounds, and I’d be willing to bet they’re not such die-hard Ranger or Astro fans that they can’t be swayed to root for a new or relocated local MLB team.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
I think the problem with San Antonio
Is that there is really nothing around it. Texas is just so large, its big cities are so far apart. Austin is still hours away.
Charlotte makes some sense, but many indications are that area is tapped out as far as sports support goes, and the waning attendance of Bobcats games is an indication of that.
I think leagues are figuring out that putting more teams in huge rapid markets is a better chance of success than going to fledgling small markets. The NBA will likely put a third team in SoCal, and they have floated the possibility of a second Chicago team. Many feel its just a matter of time before the NHL adds a second Ontario franchise either near Toronto or Hamilton.
NYC is just a huge market that loves baseball. You would only have to pry a small fraction of Yankees and Mets fans to support a new third team. I guess I agree its probably not going to happen, but if I were commish or a new owner, I’d much rather want to set up shop in Brooklyn or Newark than in Portland, San Antonio, Charlotte or Nashville.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
Austin/San Antonio
It would be fine for weekend games. The drive down i-35 from one to the other isn’t bad, but something that’s not really possible on a weeknight. Also of note, Austin is pretty much laid out on a north-south line, so people in the northern surburbs of austin would have a considerably longer drive to SA than those in the south.
You could put the stadium somewhere near New Braunfels
Or you could build a jewel-box park in Austin, play half the games there, and the other half in the Alamodome.
"America is a nation without a distinct criminal class, with the possible exception of Congress." --Mark Twain
A new NHL franchise in Ontario
would be the province’s third, not second.
But aside from that nit-pick, Hamilton is not suburban Toronto, they’re a large (by Canadian standards) city in their own right. And others here have told me that, NBA-wise, Anaheim has a market distinct from Los Angeles (despite what the Angels owner would like Los Angelinos to think) – and I’m still skeptical about their odds of success. At least they have an arena already there to move in to.
A second Toronto or Chicago team? I’ll believe it when I see it.
New Jersey is a possibility. New York itself (including Brooklyn)? Can’t see it succeeding.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
There was a seven year gap between the Giants/Dodgers and the Mets
even then, NY had three teams, and only added one more. The Mets gained allegiance once they finally starting winning. The same thing would happen again.
The NY metro area has 20 million people. A new team would only need to a gain a fraction of that market to be a better overall market than other available cities.
New York is one place where public money would not be needed. The franchise would have built in value because of the market — the team itself, the ballpark, and the cable channel. Sports drive cable systems, so the systems would love to add another channel that would justify raising their rates. Anyone buying the franchise would be looking at the long term value — just because of the location, the team would end up being one of the most valuable in the sport. Just like with the Mets or any other team that moved into an existing market, it only takes a few successful years to build an independent fanbase.
As previously noted, Charlotte, San Antonio, and especially Nashville do not have the population density yet to support 81 home dates, all but 25% on weeknights. Brooklyn alone has 2.5 million, or 3.5 times as many people as Charlotte or Nashville.
The gap was 4 years
Dodgers and Giants’s last year in NYC was 1957, Mets took the field in 1962. And because the NL promised a new team in New York before the team actually started play, the practical gap was even less.
Dodger and Giant fans HATED the Yankees and the American League and would not have, and did not, switch to the Yankees when their team left. The NL knew that a new NL team in New York would get their alleigance, and they were correct about that. The Mets did everything they could to connect themselves to the departed teams – adopted their colors, hired their washed-up stars – and it worked like a charm.
And cable systems do NOT love adding more sports channels. They pay for every channel they sell to their customers, and they’d much rather be putting sports channels on the “extra” tier that sports fans will pay extra for. Sports teams and their pet networks, unsurprisingly, insist on being part of the basic package. The Yankees and Cablevision fought over this right before the playoffs last year and I believe a game or two was not televised in New York (for those with Cablevision, which is a lot) before Cablevision caved (watching sales of satellite dish systems skyrocket). A new team with no fan base will have no leverage with the providers (unless said providers are the actual owners of the team, which is definitely a possibility) and few fans will pay extra to see a new team.
San Antonio is a larger market than Kansas City and Milwaukee, and is just a shade behind Cleveland and Pittsburgh, which are declining in population while SA shows growth. Throw in the Austin media market, which is also growing and is closer to SA than it is to either Dallas or Houston, and you ought to have a market that can support an MLB team.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
Again, the market transformation does not have to happen over night.
The value of the franchise is going to come over time. There is always going to be a segment of NY fans who do not like the Yankees or the Mets, and who like to be different. Given how poorly run the Mets have been over the last 10 years, if NY had another team, say the Rays or A’s, who have been well run and have had some success, a third team would have made significant inroads. And a lot of the revenue at the ballpark comes from corporate dollars — most of the business people being entertained at the game could care less about a rooting interest in the Yankees or Mets, they just like being treated to a luxury suite spread or box seats.
I made a mistake on the number of years in between — I mixed up the year of the move (7 in 1957) with the number of years between when typing it out. But four years is a significant gap too. But the new team could follow the same general plan as the Mets in reaching out to the fans alienated by the high prices to attend a Yankees or Mets game. And if the team is called “Brooklyn” or “New Jersey,” it has a built-in population that could identify with it.
Cable systems love adding more sports channels — they do not like the Yankee-owned YES network gouging them. Based on current models, the provider would not necessarily need to be an owner of a team, just a part-owner of the cable channel, so the focus would be long-term, not immediate profits. The team would have leverage because of the product — 150+ major league baseball games a year. And again, the team does not have to be immediately (or really ever) as successful as the Yankees or Mets, just more successful than the current A’s or Rays or whichever team moves.
As mentioned previously, San Antonio is moving toward becoming a viable market, but needs another ten years of growth (which cannot be assumed). The fact that right now San Antonio is close in size to four of baseball’s least valuable franchises is not a major selling point — moving a struggling small market team to another small market is just setting up the same potential problems in a new location. If the growth continues, and the market starts to push 2.5 million, those concerns start to lessen considerably.
If baseball lost its antitrust exemption
which is probably the only way the Yankees and Mets would ever give up their exclusive rights to the NY market, I would bet private financing of a ballpark in Brooklyn or Northern New Jersey would not a problem.
Of the others, San Jose might be the only one viable right now, but the Giants would never want to give up their exclusive rights.
Actually, there is one more than is immediately viable — Montreal — but it might be a few more years before the climate is right to try again there.
Charlotte is probably 10 more years of growth away from having enough people within easy driving distance to support 81 games a year. Charlotte would have enough if Raleigh-Durham was not two hours away, which makes it tough to attend weeknight games. The other problem with Charlotte is that as a result of MLB’s deal with Peter Angelos when moving the Nationals, North Carolina is now part of the O’s exclusive region.
Portland might have enough concentration of population and could be a viable market as the economy recovers, but right now, it is probably short on political capital and corporate partners, plus, it is part of the Mariners’ exclusive region.
Like Charlotte, San Antonio has real potential if the population growth continues over the next 10 years or so. Austin is growing too and within an hour and a half. But Dallas and Houston are also relatively close and would fight entry into their region.
The others lack the market size, urban density, corporate partners, and/or economic or political climate to be a viable market right now.
If Sacramento couldn't support the NBA's Kings
How could baseball expect them to support the A’s?
I definitely think the deep south is underserved by Major League Baseball. Every other major league sport has a presence in North Carolina and in Tennessee, and MLB has in neither. And I definitely think a third team in Texas could do well.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
Sacramento supported the Kings very well
Long string of sell outs. The problem was they didn’t want to fork over money for a new arena.
The problem with Sacramento now though is they’ve been hammered by foreclosures, and with so many state employees, the long-term outlook for the city does not look good.
Long-term, I would bet San Jose or even Inland Empire get a team before Sactown.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
Right, but now is what I'm talking about
The A’s can no longer move to 1980’s-1990’s Sacramento. The problems affecting the Kings would be just as bad for a relocated A’s team.
Chaim Mattis Keller New York City's # 1 Royals fan!
Funny the only time you ever hear about contraction
Is when a CBA is expiring…..
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
by RoyalsRetro on Apr 5, 2011 11:46 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
IT'S WORTH IT TO STICK IT TO THOSE DARN GREEDY PLAYERS!!!1111
Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
My Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Apr 5, 2011 5:51 PM EDT up reply actions
I Just Had
Pornsex with a younger woman and I’m traveling to have more of the same tomorrow. Envy me
I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.
I Had To
Postpone the trip until tomorrow. I’m still recovering.
I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.
by philofthenorth on Apr 5, 2011 4:34 PM EDT up reply actions
The underage girl naked 'snuggling' or the homoerotic architectural nicknames? And why only in April?
oh, oh wait, we see what you did there.
by Official Arrowhead Pride Parade on Apr 5, 2011 10:43 AM EDT up reply actions
Minnesota and Detroit both lost
cosolidating the Royals’ hold on first place.
"America is a nation without a distinct criminal class, with the possible exception of Congress." --Mark Twain
consolidating
"America is a nation without a distinct criminal class, with the possible exception of Congress." --Mark Twain
Thanks again Will
Really appreciate the linkage!
Corey Ettinger is a senior writer for Baseball Digest. He also provides extensive analysis of the American League Central Division at his own blog, AL Central In Focus.
OT
What’s a good response in a job interview to the question “where do you want to be in five years” when the answer is “your job?”
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
nothing wrong with that answer
as long as you imply that your interviewer will be his or her boss’s job then.
That reminds me of Family Guy
“don’t say say doing your wife. Don’t say doing your wife.”
Hating Zack Greinke irrationally since 2010.
by royaldaddy on Apr 5, 2011 12:22 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
"Doing your........................son."
But for real, yes, what Gopherballs said. Just don’t say: “I will be in the chair you’re sitting in now! Say your prayers, Nancy, your ass is about to be REPLACED!”
WTF, self?
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