Being a poor team and being in a small market are far from perfectly correlated.
And being 'small market' is a fairly useless current definition, if the goal is equity. Only the Dodgers have a higher attendence per game in 2022 than the Cardinals do. Size of 'territory' means little. KC and St. Louis share/divide a territory, but KC draws less than half what Cards do. In Forbes rankings, the Cards rank #14 in revenue and 7th in value of team. That is why I say that the fix is in. The Cards are very far from being a poor, small market team.
Apparently not, if Forbes is to be believe. There are many ways of finagling revenue, especially TV revenue. Forbes attempts to get an actual measure of team revenue, cutting through the obfuscation of team's getting 'ownership' revenue, disguising purchase of TV rights, etc. Given the always high Cardinal attendance, it seems reasonable that they are 14th in revenue -- I actually thought they would be higher than that. TV revenue isn't really based on the TV station's in-region potential audience, I would think, but how many fans are likely to tune in. Game attendance is probably a reasonable proxy for fan interest.
Oh, I understand that, the whole revenue and valuation picture is a scam. But all 30 teams play that game. I reckon the teams that don't even spend their revenue-sharing money on baseball ops are a much bigger problem than the Cardinals getting a slight leg up among the Top 15 teams in the game. Ditto a team like Houston allowing itself to fall into the low-revenue category and getting the $. And the Phillies certainly didn't lose to St. Louis in 2011, nor have they been an inferior organization, because of that tiny extra advantage. Similarly, the Indians or Orioles or Reds or Pirates or A's or Royals could all have better attendance if they had better organizations/owners.
What fraction of revenue comes from attendance (including things like concessions)? I'm guessing that revenue from other sources like media, marketing, etc. is much more.
It's interesting to note that the Cardinals market is much larger than the St. Louis metro area. It would seem to include most of Missouri, much of Tennessee, southern Illinois, Arkansas, and maybe some other places (Mississippi? Louisiana?). The Phillies are hemmed into southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware. Probably more populous than the Cardinals' area, but not by as much as by looking only at the metro areas.
Here is Fangraph estimate of TV revenue for each team. It is for 2020, a year in which the Cardinals received a charity pick. The Cards ranked 13th in TV revenue that year.
The Cardinals got $65 million in local TV revenue that year. Forbes estimates their total 2021 revenue as $$287 million.
I got the sense that before the Braves moved to Atlanta, the Cardinals was basically the South's team.
not just southern Illinois.. Im smack in the middle of Illinoi and Cards fans out number Cubs fans here in Decatur IL and in the capital, Springfield. Cubs dont start winning the battle until you get toward Champaign-Urbana.
The Cardinals don't even have a competitive balance pick this year. Was there a change to the formula in the CBA or did they simply rise out of the bottom 10 (in either revenue or market size). Obviously they never had a very high pick. And only 8 teams qualified this year
A team in a market like Seattle should certainly not be in there (ditto Houston when the Astros were), and the Reds had almost every advantage the Cardinals did, historically speaking (large regional radio audience, fan bases in Kentucky and TN).
Since 2017, Major League Baseball has used a formula that combines revenue, winning percentage and market score to award Draft picks to teams that fall in the bottom 10 in revenue or market size.
The attached article shows 15 teams with competitive balance picks. But you are right, no Cardinals this year. Yay! These picks are tradeable, so it's possible they did, but more likely they missed the formula. It's the teams that are either bottom 10 in revenue (which they clearly haven't been) or bottom 10 in market size (I don't know how that is defined. I still think it insane to qualify for bottom 10 in market size, with 2nd highest attendance in MLB),
It is such an arbitrary system. MLB really missed an opportunity to reclaim the local broadcast revenues with the internet. Originally Selig got an a agreement to share everything but at some point maybe 5 years ago MLB reversed that, likely at the behest of the larger market clubs.
Market size really is important in the number of TV households in that market that can get that $5 a month from RSNs on cable systems. If streaming revenue were shared equally (or more equally when it comes to local games) there would be no need for competitive balance picks. NY and LA will always have more money, but as we have seen, a good small market team can sell out their stadium and enhance local revenues if they are well run (like the Cardinals are).
More revenue sharing has worked for the NFL and NBA. There is no need for competitive balance picks in those leagues.
Oh I was only looking at one round as I typed there, forgot to re-read.
To my mind it is not the Cardinals fault they get these picks. It is the large market owners' fault, as well as all of the owners' faults given that revenue as reported doesn't actually measure the true financial health or profitability of their teams.
That the Cardinals may get a little more money because they are actually a good franchise doesn't bother me so much - and less than seeing underperforming teams in bigger markets get it. If anything, we're now seeing sentiment move towards rewarding teams that compete with picks, instead of rewarding failure.
This probably will work itself out eventually in the streaming era but not for 20 years. And of course the owners will still want more of a salary cap as part of it.
This is also a refernce to some other comments upthread but, in my opnion, the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cardinals are the game's four elite franchises. They never have to rebuild (or at least not rebuild for long). They reload. All four franchises know the secret to simultaneously building a WS contender every season and building for the future. All four of those organizations exude cultures of competence and excellence from top to bottom.
I would probably put the Braves, Giants, Astros, Guardians and Rays on a second tier. They don't reload but their rebuilds are never long and their rebuilds typically work and they've field good teams over the past thirty-plus years far more often than they haven't (or since 2008 in the case of the Rays).. The Rays are what the Expos were from the late-'70's to 1994, the fiancially-strapped organization that plays in a dumpy dome and which cannot afford to keep ML stars for long but has extraordinary front office, scouting and development acumen that enables them to field a contender each season (and just maybe catch lightning in a bottle one October).
The other 21 franchises basically get lumped together and have to go through up and down cycles of success and rebuilds (and their rebuilds don't always work out). However, I may be inclined to put the Marlins, Reds, Rockies, Royals and Orioles on a worst franchise list.
Guardians / Indians? Clearly you missed the reason that "Major League" used the Indians as their example of ineptitude​
Ah, but Major League was filmed in 1989. Form 1994 onward, the Indians/Guardians have been one of the game's better organizations.
Teams like Cleveland and Houston show it can be done - finally stop decades of poor culture to where the good culture survives through multiple eras.
I'm not really ready to put Houston in a higher category though. The Killer Bs era was pretty much like the '08 Phillies etc. - more of a one-off. What they have done a good job of is staying the course despite changing GMs and now many players. But we're really only talking about the last seven years (preceded by 9 years of losing, only some of it on purpose).
Houston is a pretty big market these days though. 8th currently though 4-10 (Philly through Boston) are all pretty close now.
https://oaaa.org/Portals/0/Public%20PDFs/OAAA%202021%20NIELSEN%20DMA%20Rankings%20Report.pdf1
Note - baseball markets are different because they often include whole regions outside the major market.
Cleveland is smaller of course. They had the second nice stadium after Camden Yards in the early 90s so they were a bigger revenue team compared to market size for a few years. The last 15-20 years they have really been an average team that can compete in a weak division. Both Central divisions are really full of small market teams and more easily winnable.
Houston has always been a big market. Under previous ownership (and in the old stadium) they were basically the Phillies, a cheap and underachieving club relative to the city. Only difference is Houston is less of a baseball town (historically and climate-wise). Now it's big enough they even moved the minor league team to the 'burbs.
If only Cincinnati or Pittsburgh could have figured out what Cleveland did.
None of these small market teams can truly compete in MLB, and none of the under $100,000,000 teams have ever won a championship I don't think (at least not in recent years when >200,000,000 is a normal high payroll). But the Guardians have only had three GMs since 1991 and they all have been successful, with no real hiccup once Shapiro left. And Hart played a role in good Rangers and Braves teams (even if his Rangers tenure is was not itself a hit, and his Braves role more advisory).
Actually, in forty-six seasons going back to 1977, the Astros have had just fourteen losing seasons and four of them were during the tanking era and the tanking years (2011-14) were preceeded by two losing seasons when Wade tried to win but built a loser. Prior to 2009, the Astros had only one period where they posted a losing record two years in a row (1990-91). And, they went to the Postseason nine times in twenty-six years from 1980-2005, So, I would say that even before the current management, the Astros have been a consistently good organization with a good culture. And, you have to wonder if all that tanking was really necessary considering how the Astros had a good culture and a knack for figuring things out fairly quickly.
I would agree that that Braves (since 1991), Indians/Guardians (since 1994) and Rays (since 2008) have been fairly recent "building a culture" success stories. If only we could build a good culture.