Effectively Wild Episode 1324: The Salary Trap
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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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.
Boy, the podcast conversation with Dubuque didn’t age well.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sd-sp-padres-debt-finances-payroll-fowler-seidler-owners-0118-story.html
Perhaps discuss the Tribune article in a future episode.
Also, you have both poked fun at saber-focused bloggers/writers from years ago (including your younger yourselves), about the snark or disdain towards narrative-focused, question-begging thinking about what made good baseball players and what was good for baseball. And while not all of it was on point or fully deserved, the fundamental skepticism underlying the snark was justified. Because people *should* be skeptical of lazy thinking.
One suggestion is not lose your own skepticism, and thus become the new version of the narrative-focused, question-beggers that skeptical saber-writers criticized in years past.
Dubuque’s “argument” fell flat precisely because the current, popular, unexamined narrative isn’t anything about taking the side of owners against players or assuming that high salaries are the underlying reason for high ticket prices. This isn’t 5 years ago. Do you guys read Fangraphs, or any writer like Heyman, Rosenthal, Calcaterra, et al? The narrative has shifted away from that, and is now about billionaires v. millionaires, cheap owners who don’t want to compete, and carrying the water of agents who want their clients to sign high-priced FA contracts.
Jeff started to ask Dubuque a very insightful question about why we should assume the virtue of the MLB player money getting those dollars over an owner (or even some limited partner of a team, who is worth far less than billions). If Dubuque even recognized the insight of the question (doubtful) he dodged it anyway, and went straight to the plight of minor leaguers.
But it is actually a very good question that deserves thought. What exactly is the marginal good (i.e., social welfare) from Eric Hosmer (to use one example) getting $25MM per year for 6 years versus $23MM per year for six years? Eric Hosmer personally (and his agent) is certainly better off by $2MM per year, but so what, he is one person and already immensely wealthy. The marginal social good is basically nothing for him personally. Does the extra $ do anything for fans? Clearly not. The argument that Hosmer would play harder for the extra $ and provide better performance or entertainment for those extra $ is silly. Is there some greater baseball good, because the extra $2MM is the difference between attracting better players in the future? Again, clearly not (see the above point about there being no social good to Hosmer individually). If the owner pockets all $2MM? Well, if he pockets it all, then clearly no social good either.
Indeed, once you look at it, the only possible social good (to the fan, to making that fan’s team more competitive, to baseball overall, including for the purposes of attracting better players in the future) is if the $2M is used (or part of the $2MM is used) for something or someone else to make the team better. For an extension for another player that would be lost, for an intl FA, for another FA to outbid another team, etc.
And once you keep going down and down this path it becomes obvious that the most good for baseball – for players overall (not to one’s individual player compared to another), for fans, for baseball, for competitiveness, etc. – it is best for team to spend whatever budget dollars they have as “efficiently” as possible.
After that, the only thing left to do is set the total budget for all teams (as far as % of baseball revenue), and that is done through the CBA.