San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Baseball’s big problem evident in Exhibit A’s
Baseball is broken, and the Oakland Athletics are the poster team for why it is.
As the A’s celebrate the anniversary of their 2002 season, with its 20-game winning streak, the team’s front office can take pride in how they beat the system back then. But the ownership group should be embarrassed by how it’s living on 20-year-old glory.
Baseball’s problem isn’t the ongoing strike-zone follies, the shiftstorm, the pace of play, or the increasing decrease of actual action on the field.
Those are all legit concerns, but MLB is in the process of dealing with that stuff. The shift goes away next season. Robo umps calling balls and strikes will happen soon, as proof mounts that human umps can’t or won’t do that job.
Baseball’s bigger problem is the laughable disparity in team payrolls. Not exactly breaking news, but it’s an increasingly galling fact of life for A’s fans, and for potential A’s fans, as team ownership shamelessly exploits the system.
The Dodgers have baseball’s top payroll, $265 million, per Spotrac. Five other teams are above $200 million. The A’s are next to last, at $48 million.
So the top teams’ payrolls are about 51⁄2 times the size of the bottom two teams (the Orioles are last at $44 million).
What other major sport would consider this a good system? Let’s look.
In the NBA, the Warriors were tops in payroll last season at $178 million, per BetMGM, because of the massive luxury tax they pay to keep the players they have developed. Every other team except the Thunder spent at least $112 million.
NFL? The Cowboys had the top payroll last season, $205 million, per BetMGM. The Seahawks were last, $172 million.
In the NHL the spendingest team (Tampa Bay, $108 million), did not double the payroll of the cheapest team (Anaheim, $56 million).
Baseball is the only sport that puts up with this silliness. How is that good for the game? Baseball justifies its payroll imbalance by pointing out that teams like the 2002 Underpaid A’s can triumph.
However: In 2002, the Yankees had the top MLB payroll, $112 million. The A’s had the thirdlowest payroll, $40 million. So the A’s were badly outspent by the big boys, but not nearly to the ludicrous extent they are now. The A’s back then had Moneyball, a clever system of analytics introduced by Sandy Alderson and refined by Billy Beane, while all the other teams were spittin’ tobacco into their hats. Today, every team has super-advanced analytics.
With the cleverness gap between the A’s the rest of baseball having slammed shut, and the rich/poor money gap widening, you wind up with an organization living on past glory and future promises.
The promises are hazy. Consider:
The Giants were sold in 1992 to Peter Magowan and friends. About seven years later, the Giants were playing in a new ballpark they built with their own money.
The Warriors were sold in 2010 to Joe Lacob and friends. Nine years later, the Warriors were playing in a new arena they built with their own money.
The A’s were sold in 2005 to John Fisher and friends. Seventeen years later, they are at least four years or so away from moving into a new ballpark they build, with massive taxpayer assistance.
Baseball is funny. What other sport would do this: A team owner wants to sell his team, he finds a buyer, they work out an agreement, then the commissioner kills the deal and tells the team owner, “Forget your buyer. You must sell your team to my old college pal.” Then-Commissioner Bud Selig made the previous A’s owners sell the team to Fisher and minority partner Lew Wolff. Fisher’s credentials: He made some money as a minority investor in the Giants. Wolff ’s credentials: He spent the previous two years working for the A’s, tasked with getting a new ballpark, with zero results.
The poor schlub who got left out in the cold: Joe Lacob, who five years later bought the Warriors.
Had Lacob bought the A’s in 2005, who knows, maybe they would have won four or five World Series titles by now. We can be pretty sure of this: He would have built a new ballpark, with his own money.
(He might have struck out at Howard Terminal, as he would strike out years later trying to build an arena on the waterfront in San Francisco, but Lacob’s Plan B for an A’s ballpark would be the Coliseum, not Las Vegas.)
And, Lacob’s A’s would not be bottom-two on the MLB payroll rankings.
Instead, A’s fans have Fisher and minority owner/president Dave Kaval, who are masters of the New Moneyball.
The definition of Moneyball is winning by outsmarting the system. With the original Moneyball, the goal was winning games. With the New Moneyball, the goal is winning money, by means of low payroll, revenue sharing and franchise appreciation.
In MLB’s silly system, the A’s are big winners.