MLB News & Notes - 2024 Season

[andyb]

It might have been the Forbes source data here. I just saw that link on my Facebook feed but it may not have been that original. Here is Forbes:

MLB Valuations 2024

[bkox]

And maybe a second team for sale

White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly in discussions about selling team...

[bkeich]

And maybe a second team for sale

White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly in discussions about selling team...

I bet if all of us got our change out of the canisters we undoubtedly keep it in we could band together….

I mean it is the White Sox, really, we could do it. Then someone would actually listen to our insane rants of how to run a team​

[zambonir]

These jokes are cute but it wouldn't surprise me if the White Sox sold for more than the Mets (they went for $2.4 billion; the Orioles went for $1.75 billion w/o a bidding process and thus was considered a cheap deal).

Definitely time for both these owners to go but that doesn't mean the new generation of mega-wealthy individuals or private equity groups will be better.

[bkeich]

These jokes are cute but it wouldn't surprise me if the White Sox sold for more than the Mets (they went for $2.4 billion; the Orioles went for $1.75 billion w/o a bidding process and thus was considered a cheap deal).

Definitely time for both these owners to go but that doesn't mean the new generation of mega-wealthy individuals or private equity groups will be better.

In all seriousness, selling the White Sox at this point really does seem like selling low. The league is (somewhat) designed to help bad teams get competitive again. Higher draft picks, etc.

I would imagine in a few years (4-7) the White Sox can turn this around to a degree. But they will always have an attendance issue. They have never really been in the upper third of revenue of the league in modern (post 1980) baseball.

At some point the league is going to increase the revenue sharing even further. Whoever buys this team is going to get a “bargain”.

[Philsmania]

There's some chatter that a Nashville buyer may be interested in him. Reinsdorf wants public funding for his new White Sox ballpark but neither the city of Chicago or state of Illinois are buying it. Considering that the White Sox are clearly Chicago's second fiddle franchise and have been pretty much since 1984, it may be something to be watched.

[andyb]

The Mets had a whole lot of debt which depressed their price somewhat. White Sox really have to be in the $4 billion range though based on market size. Assume they want a new stadium too.

[zambonir]

An MLB team in a market the size of Chicago is just valuable regardless of W-L record or attendance. The Mets were an extremely distressed asset (and a desperate seller) and that was still the highest sale price in MLB history. Anyone buying the team is going to be paying for potential.

[andyb]

It definitely is fascinating to watch the NBA team values increase because their national TV deal (as opposed to local RSN TV) is much better. Baseball is much more dependent on local revenue at the moment so the teams are not increasing in value as much as the NFL and the NBA.

[bkeich]

Shohei Ohtani is now 17 for his last 20 with RISP. Maybe that contract wasn’t so crazy.

[zambonir]

Did anybody think the contract was crazy? (I mean, it was crazy of Ohtani to not get more money for himself.)

[zambonir]

Wild AL game tonight. Our relievers may not be any better or worse than anyone else but our hitters sure didn't do that this year.

[HopeSpringsEternal]

but our hitters sure didn't do that this year

Maybe with one exception - game 2 of the NLDS.

[dcsman]

I've always found it interesting that Philadelphia is basically the largest market in MLB without a second area franchise. They've been a big market team for some time but have only recently started acting like it.

[zambonir]

That's not really true anymore though. Dallas, Houston and Atlanta are all bigger metro areas, and Houston and Phoenix are bigger cities (with San Antonio, a team that doesn't even have a baseball or football team, right behind us).

We're also the city with the highest poverty rate in the country (not that Chicago and NY aren't right there too). Our old owners were cheap but as a media market and a business market it never really called for two teams, and IMO we still don't even need two arenas.

Really New York and Chicago are the only cities with two teams (as opposed to more diffuse metro areas with two distinct cities or regions that are also big enough to have their own airports. Three in the Bay Area's case, though now of course they're down to one team).

[BostonRoss]

Traditional city boundaries rally aren't meaningful in discussing market size. Metro area size is better, but not perfect as some cover very large land areas or are hemmed in by adjacent areas.

I think a good argument can be made that only New York and LA are large enough to support multiple teams. The New York metro area is more than twice as large as Chicago. So is LA if you include Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario. Chicago is a distant third and seems likely to be passed by Dallas and Houston in the next few years. Philadelphia is eighth.

The top 20 (if Riverside is included with LA) all have teams. From 21-30, only three had teams (St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati); a fourth will get one going forward (Sacramento followed by Las Vegas). Kansas City is 31st, Cleveland 33, and Milwaukee 40. (Toronto of course is not in the census data.)

You could do a lot more manipulation by considering adjacent/nearby areas within others (e.g., Austin/San Antonio within Houston, Columbus with one of the Ohio cities, Louisville with Cincinnati, etc.) But it doesn't change the case much, except for perhaps that Texas could accommodate a third team.

These numbers are based on Public U.S. Census Bureau figures, which you can view by clicking on one oft the Excel icons on this page:

Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area Population by Characteristics:...

[zambonir]

In the end though, MLB is not going to let Chicago lose the White Sox, any more than they are going to give up on the three markets you mention at 31-40 which would never get a team today if they didn't have one (arguably true of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh too).

The Sox would probably do better if they moved into a suburb like where the MLS team is. I think the issue now is less the size of the city or metro area as the fact that both teams are five miles from downtown and the Cubs own the larger fan/population base both within the city and immediately north and west. Of course that would also be a crushing thing to do to the South Side and historic fan base.

Yankees and Mets are a similar distance but feel much further away from each other (different boroughs, a body of water). Orange County to East LA feels very far (though I assume Riverside etc. would never want a team that's not the Dodgers.

[flyers19rw]

Just an aside here to your post. It was only a couple of years ago that investors from Columbus were sniffing around acquiring the Indians/Guardians and bringing the club to their city. For that reason, I wonder how secure the State support for a potential megabucks new stadium in Cleveland really is? The political power in the State is in Columbus and it is trying to increase that all of the time at the expense of the other C cities in the state- Cleveland and Cincinnati.

[bkeich]

Thank you Dodgers from having us watch the unbearable Mets - Yankees series.

[Philsmania]

Many people find both the Yankees and Dodgers tough to like but this WS matchup is a wild card era rarity--a matchup of the best team recordwise from the AL versus the best team recordwise from the NL. Other than Mets-Phillies, this Postseason continues to be all chalk post-wild card round.