Monthly Archives: January 2022

The 2022 Hall of Fame BBWAA Election, Part A

Status is about numbering, counting, ranking and ultimately about excluding. Andy Crouch

January 15, 2022

In earlier posts, I discussed the twenty candidates under consideration by the Early Baseball Era and Golden Days Era Committees [10 players each] for their possible 2022 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For my evaluation of whether these old time players were worthy, I used an analysis based on the WAR [wins above replacement] statistic from the Baseball Reference website. Now I will use the same procedure to analyze the 30 candidates being voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America [BBWAA]. These results will be announced on January 25, 2022. Basically my method was simple. Starting with the assumption that the Hall of Fame only wants to honor the very best players, I asked this question: “How many eligible players have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame before 2022?” Unfortunately, I had to exclude the players from the Negro Leagues. But I also had to include some players elected as either Executives or Managers (that would have been elected as Players too). With those two qualifications, the answer to the question of how many eligible players have already been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame before 2021 turned out to be 235.

My Rating System

My second assumption was that the Baseball Hall of Fame always meant to honor the best 235 eligible players. Using that assumption, I then asked who was the 235th best eligible player in the history of Baseball according to the Career WAR calculation on Baseball Reference [bWAR]. The answer to that question turned out to be Bid McPhee with 52.5 bWAR. The career WAR total of this 235th best player then established the lowest common denominator for entry into the Hall of Fame. In other words, if a player has more than 52.5 bWAR, that player should be inducted. If not, then they should be barred. A nice simple clean objective system. However, as is usual with all supposedly nice simple clean objective systems, there is still the possibility of an error or even an injustice if the player does not amass the requisite 52.5 bWAR. One obvious injustice would be: “Was the player a victim of discrimination (such as the Negro League players)?” Another example of a possible error would be: “Was the player primarily a catcher (a position that wears players out faster)?” Yet another problem would be: “Does the player’s career bWAR number fall short because their career was interrupted by Military Service?” The lowest common bWAR denominator is the beginning of the conversation, not the end of the debate.

These three exceptions are the obvious major problems with using Baseball Reference’s bWAR calculation as a bright shining line. The bWAR calculation also does not give any extra credit for a player’s post-season heroics. Not giving David Ortiz, a first time candidate for induction in 2022, bonus points for his incredible performances in the post season seems to miss the essence of the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the other hand, a debit should be made for any player who constantly underperformed when the lights were brightest (Billy Wagner, on the current ballot, and his post-season ERA of 10.03 would certainly qualify). On top of all this, there is the essential question of: “How good is all the information going into the bWAR calculation itself?” Like any system built to spit out ratings, the end result will only be as good as the data going in the front door. There are other systems that attempt to rate the total career value of baseball players: Total Value, Win Shares, and several different versions of Wins Above Replacement. Although I currently believe that bWAR is the best current system, I could be wrong.

One Glitch in the System

The biggest flaw in any of these systems is simply the fact that all baseball statistics are not created equal. There are basically three types of statistics to measure a baseball player’s career: Batting, Pitching, and Fielding. The Batting metric is relatively straight forward and all measurements of this value highly correlate to the player’s worth. The Pitching metric is a bit more complicated. There are problems separating the value of the Pitching from the last metric, Fielding. To complicate matters, this problem has a Time Line component. In other words, the farther back in time that you go, more and more value that is attributed to Pitching is actually Fielding. The last metric, Fielding, is the great unknown. A good example of this would be the current baseball enthusiasm for shifts. A player could play for a team that uses fielding analytics well and maximizes his defensive positioning. Because of this, the player looks like a great fielder. Meanwhile, with another team that is poorly run with little or no defensive analytics, the same player could seem to be a bad fielder because his positioning is bad. In other words, the value is not intrinsic to the player. It is simply caused by his situation (like the difference between two exactly equivalent pitchers, but one backed by a great defense while the other is supported by a team full glove-less wonders). For this reason, I take Fielding statistics with a much greater grain of salt.

The Ratings Themselves

Without further ado, I will list the 30 Candidates eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 24, 2022, by the BBWAA. They have been listed in the order of their career bWAR rating. After their name, their career bWAR value is listed, followed by their defensive WAR rating [also from the Baseball Reference website]. By my system, sixteen [16] of the 2022 candidates qualify for induction and fourteen [14] do not. It does occur to me that 16 qualified candidates for election seems very high. My next post will discuss these thirty players in a more detail after the election results are announced. Once again, my system concludes that any player with 52.5 career bWAR (or more) should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Hall of Famers on the 2022 Ballot [Player/Career WAR/Defensive WAR]

1. Barry Bonds [162.7 ~ 7.6]
2. Roger Clemens [138.7]
3. Alex Rodriguez [117.5 ~ 10.4]
4. Curt Schilling [80.5]
5. Scott Rolen [70.1 ~ 21.2]
6. Manny Ramirez [69.3 ~ -21.7]
7. Andruw Jones [62.7 ~ 24.4]
8. Todd Helton [61.8 ~ -5.0]
9. Andy Pettitte [60.7]
10. Gary Sheffield [60.5 ~ -27.7]
11. Bobby Abreu [60.2 ~ -10.9]
12. Mark Buehrle [60.0]
13. Sammy Sosa [58.6 ~ -0.3]
14. Tim Hudson [56.5]
15. Jeff Kent [55.5 ~ -0.1]
16. David Ortiz [55.3 ~ -20.9]

Non-Hall of Famers on the 2022 Ballot

1. Torii Hunter [50.7 ~ 4.0]
2. Mark Teixeira [50.6 ~ -0.9]
3. Jimmy Rollins [47.6 ~ 15.9]
4. Omar Vizquel [45.6 ~ 29.5]
5. Carl Crawford [39.1 ~ 1.5]
6. Jake Peavy [37.2]
7. Billy Wagner [27.8]
8. Justin Morneau [27.0 ~ -6.6]
9. Joe Nathan [26.4]
10. Prince Fielder [23.8 ~ -20.5]
11. A.J. Pierzynski [23.8 ~ 8.4]
12. Jonathan Papelbon [23.3]
13. Tim Lincecum [19.9]
14. Ryan Howard [14.7 ~ -17.3]

Notes: Negative defensive WAR listed in red type. If players are tied, player with better offensive WAR listed first.

The above lists of the current 2022 candidates should probably generate a little sympathy for the BBWAA members who are voting this year. There are sixteen fully qualified Hall of Famer players eligible on the 2022 BBWAA Ballot. A Ballot which is limited to just ten spots. With this many qualified Baseball Hall of Famers on the Ballot, the candidates are bound to cannibalize votes from each other. This will make it much harder, if not almost impossible, for any single player to meet the 75% requirement of votes cast to be inducted. On the other hand, one could easily argue that the BBWA itself is completely responsible for this predicament by riding the moral high horse and refusing to elect any players who used or were suspected of using steroids, so perhaps no sympathy is warranted.

Interestingly, this problem will be significantly reduced by the time that the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame election rolls around. Four of the fully qualified players [Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa] are in their tenth and final year on the Ballot. Yet another qualified player [Hudson] does not appear to be on track to get the minimum 5% requirement of the 2022 Ballots to get relisted on the 2023 Ballot. Lastly, David Ortiz (strangely enough the least qualified of the sixteen players certified by my system as Hall of Famers) is on track to be elected this year. With all these players removed, the 2023 Hall of Fame Ballot should only have 10 candidates who deserve election returning from 2022. These ten will be joined by only one player [Carlos Beltran] who is eligible for the first time in 2023 that also qualifies under my system.

Next:

In my next post [Part B], I will discuss these thirty candidates in a little more detail and also talk about the Baseball Hall of Fame tracking metrics that have been developed by Ryan Thibodaux. This system lets anyone know whether a candidate actually has a chance to be elected way before the vote has actually been announced. Basically, because of Thibodaux’ tracking system, the only real question right now is whether David Ortiz will be elected or not. No one else has a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected.

2021: The Year in Review, Part A

History is a myth agreed upon. Napoleon Bonaparte

January 1, 2022

For the Baseball fan, the year of 2021 was probably far more interesting than usual. After the Co-vid pandemic wiped out most of the 2020 season, Major League Baseball played the 2021 season under the threat that this contagion would wipe out another year too. Fortunately, the 2021 Baseball season was finished without any interruptions. The year was filled with interesting stories and unforgettable moments, everything from Shohei Ohtani turning into the modern day Babe Ruth to Trea Turner’s strangely graceful pop-up slide across home plate. The year in Major League Baseball ended with the Atlanta Braves winning the World Series in 6 games over the Houston Astros. After finishing a grueling season against all odds, the final coda to the 2021 season was even harsher. The Major League Baseball Owners locked the Major League Players out on December 1st of 2021, threatening the beginning of the 2022 season. It certainly felt like Deja Vu; or perhaps just a bad feeling of “the more things change, the more things stay the same.” But none of these things are the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the 2021 season. I believe that the year 2021 marked a major milestone in the Baseball Time Line. I maintain that 2021 was the first year of Baseball’s “Third Age.” The future of Baseball has arrived. Or perhaps I just read too many books about History.

The Time Line of Baseball History

Historians love to cut up time into Ages and Eras, Epochs and Generations. Then they divide these units like quadratic equations. The long Time Line of Baseball History is treated no differently by those who chronicle it. Even the casual Baseball fan has probably heard of the Dead Ball Era or the Lively Ball Era or the Golden Age of Baseball. Before the internet site Baseball Reference became the go-to-place for Baseball statistics, many fans got their stats from published encyclopedias. One of these old encyclopedias (Neft’s: The Sports Encyclopedia Baseball) even arranged its statistics by Eras. These arbitrary periods of time often make no sense. The “Dead Ball Era” is usually listed as lasting from 1901 to 1919. But this is simply not correct. The defining line of the Dead Ball Era should be the adoption of the cork-centered baseball. This “lively” baseball” was adopted late in the 1909 season and first fully used in 1910. The true Dead Ball Era was from 1871 until 1909. From 1910 to 1919, baseball players were damaging, defacing, deforming, vandalizing or dirtying up the new lively baseball until it acted like a non-cork-centered “Dead” ball. It is odd that no baseball historian has ever nicknamed this transitional time period the “Dirty Ball Era.”

The First Age of Baseball

In any event, during the entire history of Professional Baseball from 1871 to the present, there are only really two distinct “Ages” in the Baseball Time Line. Of course, these “Ages” can be endlessly sub-divided into many smaller Eras. But the true “First Age” of Baseball lasted from the initial professional season of 1871 until 1945 (before 1871 would be the equivalent of the prehistory or “Dark Ages” of professional baseball). This First Age could also be called the “Age of Segregation.” This Age’s chief characteristic was the establishment of two completely different systems of Professional Baseball. One system was called “Organized Baseball.” This structure was comprised of the White Major Leagues and its affiliated minor leagues. Alongside Organized Baseball grew a completely different and separate system which offered baseball players of African American heritage opportunities to pursue their careers. This other structure is now usually referred to as the “Negro Leagues.” In its broadest sense, the “Negro Leagues” included not only the teams and leagues of the actual Negro Leagues but also the entire structure, from the summer fields of Latin America to the wind swept plains of Canada, under its umbrella.

In this First Age, the sport of Baseball was truly the “National Pastime” of the United States of America. Virtually every village or town had its own baseball team. Every small city had multiple teams. Larger cities were awash in both professional and amateur teams and leagues. There were many professional traveling teams. If you grew up in the United States from 1871 until 1945, it is very unlikely that you did not participate in the game of baseball in some way. Baseball had no real competition from other sports for its talent; and, because Baseball was so widespread, this talent could come from anywhere. Both the best white player and black pitcher of this Age (Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige) came from reform schools. Although the White Major Leagues represented the pinnacle of Baseball in the United States, the Minor Leagues were mostly independent teams and leagues. A good professional ballplayer could play in this system until his late 40s or even early 50s and then manage or coach until he was ready to retire. During this First Age, Baseball grew outside the United States in places as far apart as Canada and Japan. But mostly it grew in Cuba and other Latin America countries, reaching all the way down to Venezuela in South America.

The Second Age of Baseball

In 1946, the “Second Age” of Baseball began when the White Major League’s Brooklyn Dodgers club signed Jackie Robinson of the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs to a Minor League contract. This Age could also be called the “Age of Integration.” As the walls of segregation came tumbling down, it was at the complete expense of the parallel Baseball system operating behind the “Color Line.” By the 1960s, the Negro Leagues had completely crumbled and disappeared. All of the Latin American teams and leagues that had been part of the Negro League system became affiliated and subservient to Organized Baseball. Simultaneously, the Major Leagues extinguished the final traces of Minor League independence. All Minor League teams became part of a Major League “farm system.” By moving teams around and adding new franchises, the Major Leagues covered the entire country. At the end of the 20th century, the Major Leagues even began signing the greatest players from the Japanese Major Leagues. By the dawn of the 21st century, the Major Leagues reigned supreme at the pinnacle of the Baseball pyramid. All of the remaining talent in the Baseball world flowed towards the lucrative paychecks from the Major Leagues.

However, during this “Second Age” of Baseball, the sport lost its status as the “National Pastime” of the United States of America. At the very least, Football surpassed Baseball as the most popular sport in the country (and, it could be argued, probably Basketball too). The blanket of baseball teams that covered the country down to the smallest hamlet evaporated. Baseball talent began to be funneled up from organized youth leagues or colleges. Players who fell off a career path to the Major Leagues were unable to continue their careers for very long. Other professional sports were able to drain away some of the best talent. Vincent “Bo” Jackson, possibly the most physically gifted player of the 1980s, played Baseball as a “hobby” during Football’s off-season. At the beginning of this Second Age, the very greatest players (Henry Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays) were all the sons of fathers whose love of baseball had never been consummated with a Major League career. Later, the best players (Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds) were the sons of former Major League players. As the Age wore on, players from Latin America Countries that loved Baseball poured into the Major Leagues in ever greater numbers. Baseball became just another competitive sport played by the talented few for the entertainment of the many.

The Third Age of Baseball?

I believe that the “Second Age of Baseball” ended in the pandemic wrecked season of 2020. Of course, the symmetry of the First Age of Baseball lasting exactly 75 years from 1871 to 1945 and then the Second Age lasting exactly 75 years from 1946 to 2020 seems too proportionately pat to be true. But what better year to call the end of the Second Age than 2020? The Baseball year of 2021 saw the final and absolute subjugation of the Minor League system by the Major Leagues. And, for the first time, the very best player in the Major Leagues (Shohei Ohtani) was not even raised in the United States. A new Age has dawned. The first question should probably be: what should we call this Age? One candidate would simply be the “International Age” of Baseball in honor of the great Ohtani. Yet another candidate would be the “Corporate Age” of Baseball in honor of the “Money Ball” tactics of modern front offices. Baseball, which spent most of its history governed like a old school southern plantation, is now managed like a modern business. The baseball season of 2021 ended in a lock out of the Major League Players. The Baseball Owners are prepared to fight and possibly wreck the game so that their new found business skills can continue to be leveraged to increase their profits at the expense of the players.

One notable feature of this new Baseball Age is the degree that the sport has become a game of birthright. The game is definitely no longer the National Pastime, played by all. You could also call this part of the Baseball Time Line the “Legacy Age.” Ken Griffey Junior could be the poster child for this name. Long ago, baseball players would come from just about anywhere. There is no evidence that the father of either Babe Ruth or Satchel Paige ever played the game. Now many of the best players (Vlad Junior, Tatis Junior, etc) have fathers who played in the Major Leagues. The future of Baseball may be ruled by the sons of former Major Leaguers. Of course, right now many of the best players are still the sons of frustrated former baseball fathers who didn’t make it (Mike Trout, whose father played in the Minor Leagues, and even the great Shohei Ohtani, whose father played in the Japanese Industrial Leagues, would be examples). In this “Third Age” of Baseball, the game will probably begin to more and more resemble the Hollywood Film Industry. Hopefully, the game of Baseball will never have to have a player change his last name (like Nick “Cage” Coppola) to short circuit charges of nepotism rather than talent.*

*Update [3/13/2022]: Oddly enough, something like this has already happened. Only the last names were not changed to protect the guilty. Marc Sullivan, the son of the Boston Red Sox co-owner Haywood Sullivan, played for the BoSox in 1982 and 1984-1987, getting into 137 Major League games. The sum total of the reasons why Sullivan was given a Major League job are contained by this sentence: He was the son of the Boston Red Sox co-owner Haywood Sullivan.

Conclusion

What does all this mean? The human mind loves to organize information. So, in a sense, these historical markers in the “Time Line” of Baseball are just man-made constructs that separate what is really just gradual changes with various exclamation marks. But there is also always the chance that organization will result in insight.

NEXT:

1. Another Hall of Fame Post: the BBWA Ballot for 2022
2. The Year in Review, Part B: The Giants and Old Age
3. The Year in Review, Part C: The Braves and the Legacy of the Negro Leagues

Lock Out: Creative Accounting

There’s no Business like Show Business; but there are several Businesses like Accounting. David Letterman

December 30, 2021

In May of 2020, with the Co-vid pandemic threatening to wipe out the entire season, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (aka the Baseball Owners’ mouthpiece) estimated that Major League Owners could collectively lose 4 billion dollars for the year. In October of 2020, after the abbreviated season finished, Manfred claimed that Major League Baseball had operational losses of 2.8 to 3.0 billion dollars for the 2020 season and was loaded with 8.3 billion dollars in debt. In other words, the thirty [30] Major League clubs were averaging 100 million dollars of losses a year and deeply in debt. With that amount of yearly losses and outstanding debt, a normal business would be contemplating bankruptcy [restructuring if not liquidation]. In December of 2020, player agent Scott Boras responded to Rob Manfred’s claims. In a press conference that sounded like he was channeling boxing promoter Don King, Boras stated: “There’s no team in baseball that lost money last year.” Snidely, Boras pointed out that lost profits are not exactly the same thing as actual losses. Rob Manfred dismissed Boras’ claim, saying that the 3.0 billion dollars were actual losses, not just lost profits. With the Lock Out putting a damper on actual baseball news, I thought that I would look back at this bit of creative accounting. Who was telling the truth, Rob Manfred or Scott Boras?

Creative Accounting 101

Starting out the analysis by just shooting at the already dead fish in the barrel, let’s look at Manfred’s claim that Major League Baseball was an astounding 8.3 billion dollars in debt. That statement could very well be true. Of course, almost all of this 8.3 million dollars of debt is long term player contracts. But just simply looking at this debt without also looking at any offsetting income would be ridiculous. Currently, Major League Baseball has three long-term contracts for national TV broadcasting rights with 1) Disney [ESPN] FOR 3.85 Billion, 2) Fox for 5.10 billion, and 3) Warner [TBS] for 3.70 billion. With the caveat that these contracts were recently re-negotiated, that’s 12.45 billion dollars in guaranteed future income which can offset that supposed 8.3 billion dollars of future debt. It would certainly seem that Major League Baseball is not tottering on the edge of bankruptcy but is actually completely financially solvent and almost surely profitable. In other words, Manfred’s claim about Major League Baseball being 8.3 billion in debt, even if true, is just a bunch of baloney, signifying absolutely nothing. That would be strike one against the belief that Rob Manfred was truthful source.

Rob Manfred may be Pinocchio’s Cousin

What about Rob Manfred’s claim that Major League Baseball lost 3.0 billion dollars in 2020? If that statement was literally true, the 2021 baseball season should have been an exercise in industry wide belt tightening. However, in November of 2021, the Baseball Owners handed out a staggering 1.7 billion dollars in player contracts after the season ended. This wild spending spree demolished the previous monthly record. Of course, if the intervening 2021 season had produced record profits, the Baseball Owners would have had a good explanation for this behavior. But it was stated by Rob Manfred, their Commissioner, that profits for 2021 were down substantially. From all this, one can only assume that Manfred’s claim that Major League Baseball had actually lost 3.0 billion dollars in 2020 and his subsequent denial that it was just lost profits, is almost surely untrue. On the other hand, the assertion by Scott Boras that not a single baseball team lost money in 2020 and that the 3.0 billion dollars in losses claimed by Manfred are actually just lost profits is almost certainly a truthful statement. That would be strike two against any belief in Rob Manfred telling the truth.

But let’s do some actual math. In 2019, the Revenue of Major League Baseball was reported by Forbes Magazine as 10.70 billion [other sources report it as between 9.9 and 10.37 billion]. All this income reportedly came from: 1) Gate Receipts of about 4 billion; 2) Local TV revenue of reportedly 2.5 billion; 3) National TV revenue of about 1.8 billion; 4) Licensing of about 1.0 billion; 5) Sponsorships of about 800 million; 6) Concessions of around 500 million; and 7) other sources of 100 million. Of course, all of these numbers are estimates and are not being double checked by any reputable accounting firm [not that scandals such as Enron would give anyone much faith in so-called reputable accounting firms]. But the estimates are basically reasonable from all that is known and Major League Baseball has not disputed them. Forbes estimated that Major League Baseball made a profit of 2.5 million in 2019. Manfred and the Baseball Owners did dispute this. They responded that their actual profit in 2019 was exactly zero dollars. This deserves to be re-stated. The Owners claimed, with a straight face, that they made no money at all in 2019. It has to be presumed that, if asked, the Owners would also claim that their profits in 2021 were zero also. So the next question would be: was Forbes Magazine or the Baseball Owners telling the truth about whether Major League Baseball made any profit at all in 2019?

Steve Cohen is probably a very good businessman

On Friday, October 30, 2020, Billionaire Steve Cohen completed his purchase of the New York Mets for 2.475 billion dollars. The previous record price for a Major League Baseball team had been the Los Angeles Dodgers, sold for 2.00 billion dollars in 2012. Right before Cohen bought the Mets, the Kansas City Royals sold for exactly one billion dollars during the 2019 season. The Royals are always listed as one of the least valuable Major League franchises (usually with the two Florida teams). The New York Yankees are usually appraised as the most valuable Major League franchise. The estimate of the purchase price of the Yankees ranges anywhere from 5.0 to 7.0 billion dollars. So the current range in values for a Major League franchise goes from 1.0 billion on the low end to 5.0 (maybe even 7.0) billion at the high end. The median value would then probably be about 2.0 to 3.0 billion. From these numbers, it should be easy to estimate how much each team makes per year simply by using a cap rate formula. Cap rate [or capitalization rate] uses the annual Net Operating Income [NOI] of any business to determine its property asset value [PAV]. In other words, if a business being sold makes this much money per year, cap rate answers the question of how much you should pay for it.

The reverse of this equation is that you can also use the purchase price of a business to figure out approximately how much income a business generates. For instance, if a business is purchased for 2.0 billion dollars and the cap rate is 5.0, the business probably generates about 100 million in revenue annually. When Steve Cohen purchased the New York Mets, a 5.0 cap rate would have been a good, but not outstanding, return. Using a 5.0 cap rate, the purchase price of 2.475 billion would seem to indicate that the Mets generated more than 100 million per year. However, if you believe Rob Manfred that Major League Baseball teams just broke even in 2019 and lost money in 2020, this purchase price makes absolutely no sense at all. Of course, there is always the possibility that Cohen, who made a fortune investing in hedge funds, is a bad businessman. Or that he wildly overpaid for the Mets because owning a Major League Baseball team is all about prestige, not profits. But the truth of the matter is almost surely that Cohen bought the Mets from the previous owners as an investment and he probably paid a good, but not outstanding, cap rate for it.

Assuming that the cap rate of about 5.0 is correct and Steve Cohen is actually a good businessman, the New York Mets almost surely generated somewhere around 125 million dollars of income in 2020. The Kansas City Royals would have made about 50 million a year and the New York Yankees (provided the estimated franchise values are correct) somewhere between 250-350 million dollars. Interestingly, if all these figures are correct, Steve Cohen is certainly a pretty good businessman. He purchased the Mets from the Wilpons (who, as victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, were not known for being all that financially astute) for basically the average purchase price of a Major League Baseball team. But the New York Mets, located in the largest media market in the country, are hardly a mid-market team. Only the mismanagement by the Wilpons had been keeping the team down. The Mets have more in common with the Yankees than the ordinary Major League club. So the question boils down to: do you believe Steve Cohen is a good businessman or that Manfred was lying about the profits of Major League baseball being zero? That would have to be strike three against Rob Manfred.

Lock Out Blues

Even more interestingly, if you try to estimate the net operating income of Major League Baseball with a currently normal cap rate of 5.0 and an average franchise price of 2 billion dollars (i.e. all 30 Major League teams together are worth a cumulative 60 billion dollars), the profits of the whole League come out to 3 billion dollars annually. In other words, the same exact amount that Rob Manfred claimed baseball lost in 2020. The most likely conclusion is that Scott Boras was correct: the Owners lost profits were 3 billion dollars in 2020. If the Owners did actually make 3.0 billion dollars of profits out of 10.7 billion dollars in revenue in 2019, Baseball has to be an incredibly lucrative business for the Owners. But, if that is true, then why in God’s name have the Owners locked out the Major League players and threatened the pig that lays golden eggs? The answer to that is simple. It is the most basic reason any billionaire becomes a billionaire: greed. As the player’s salaries have stagnated recently, the overall revenue of Major League Baseball has soared. Virtually every cent of that recent increase has gone into the Owner’s pockets.

Conclusion

There will almost certainly be more than just a bit of blood on the floor at the end of the current labor dispute. This post has argued (and concluded) that Rob Manfred was either dissembling, stretching the truth, or simply outright lying about the finances of Major League Baseball. Of course, just the simple fact that they will do almost anything rather than open their financial records to outside scrutiny, tells you all you really need to know about the finances of Major League Baseball. So this post could simply be considered superfluous. As for Manfred, it is literally his job to dissemble or lie for the Major League Baseball Owners. For the money he gets paid, I would probably dissemble or lie with a straight face too. One of constants of Major League history is that the Baseball Owners always lie about their finances. But, if you lie constantly in a negotiation, you can hardly be surprised when the other side reaches the point where they don’t believe a single word you say. My current prediction for this lockout would be: a quarter or the season [40 games] goes down in flames before the negotiations even get serious.