Effectively Wild Episode 1324: The Salary Trap

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo’s final winter league stats, the retirement of Ricky Romero, the upside of a slow market, and the anticlimax of a big free-agent signing, then (11:25) bring on Baseball Prospectus director of editorial content Patrick Dubuque to talk about why we know how much players make, how knowing players’ financial information but not owners’ affects the way we talk about baseball, whether opportunity cost still matters, whether casual fans will ever sympathize with players over owners, how to analyze transactions without fixating on salary, talking about money vs. talking about games, finishing Baseball Prospectus 2019, how the Annual has evolved over time, why we still want the paperbound Annual in the digital age, and more.

Audio intro: Prince, "Money Don’t Matter 2 Night"
Audio interstitial: Built to Spill, "Pat"
Audio outro: Sonic Youth, "That’s All I Know (Right Now)"

Link to Patrick’s article
Link to preorder Baseball Prospectus 2019
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Fredchuckdave
5 years ago

I love the movie Sicario, and the sequel as well (which is much less political); they are very well made interesting storylines about a somewhat hot topic. However the way they are constructed is sort a loose propaganda framework (and not intentionally made so); essentially the way that we are taught to approach the border drug issue is completely scripted by prior constructions and discussion; the same is true here. The Upper Class has such an easy stranglehold on all information dispensation on the internet that any discourse that runs counter the dominant train of thought is not even considered as being used in a mainstream product. Similarly Baseball writing since the age of Moneyball has always been on a “this team can afford to spend X” whereas its really “this team will make (hypothetically) 10 times X but is only willing to spend X hereafter,” obviously this will eventually lead to a strike/lockout (where the public will favor the owners as they were scripted to do); but at the end of the day the billionaires will still be billionaires and the talented athletes will still be millionaires that are both in some theoretical realm of useless Fiat wealth accumulation that benefits almost no one; one can only hope they’re all willing to be as adventurous as Roy Halladay with their wealth.