The Awfully Quiet Pirates
Twitter can be an awfully contentious place. After noting NL Central payrolls in a tweet over the weekend, I received a barrage of replies and quote tweets loudly complaining about the Pirates’ failures to invest in the team. And it’s not just folks who are mad online causing a stir. Pirates fans have spoken with their wallets as well; attendance has dwindled since the team made three straight playoff appearances earlier this decade. The Pirates have a decent team, but have done almost nothing this offseason to improve it, and seem likely to enter 2019 with payroll at it’s lowest point in the last five seasons.
PNC Park opened in Pittsburgh in 2001, and despite a 100-loss team, nearly 2.5 million fans showed up to watch the Pirates play. The team averaged 93 losses and attendance of 1.75 million fans over the next 11 seasons. After topping two million fans in 2012 — as the club approached a .500 record for the first time since Barry Bonds left for San Francisco — Pittsburgh made the playoffs each year from 2013 to 2015 and averaged 2.4 million in attendance per season. The 2016 season was a losing one, and attendance waned as the summer wore on, but positive expectations kept it at a reasonably high 2.25 million fans. Expectations were lowered in 2017; attendance dropped below two million. After trading Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole, confidence in the club among fans seemed to drop to a new low as attendance dipped below 1.5 million despite a winning record.
The Pirates actually put together a decent team a year ago, but losing their two stars meant that the club’s surprising start didn’t translate in to people at the gate. At the All-Star break, Pittsburgh was averaging just 18,155 fans per game. Contention and the acquisition of Chris Archer breathed some excitement into the franchise, and in the month after the All-Star Break, the team averaged 25,357 fans per game, a two-million-plus pace over the course of the season. But as the Pirates fell out of the race, attendance plummeted again.
Last June, Pirates President Frank Coonelly acknowledged that fans had lost some of their faith in the team, faith the team would need to earn it back.
“We are genuinely focused on those great Pirates fans who are coming out to PNC Park and how much we appreciate their support,” Pirates President Frank Coonelly said in a statement responding to a request for comment. “At the same time, we appreciate that we have work to do to bring back fans who are not joining us at the park this year. Our television ratings remain in the top five in MLB, so we know that Pirates fans are following the team. We understand that we need to provide a compelling reason for all of our fans to come to the best ballpark in baseball.”
It was perhaps with those sentiments in mind that Pittsburgh pursued Chris Archer and Keone Kela, players who might have helped them if they had continued to contend in 2018, but who also could improve the club in future seasons. Given that Archer’s contract, assuming the team picks up his option years, runs through 2021 — a timeline that coincides with that of their best player, Starling Marte — it would be reasonable to assume the Pirates see a window of contention during that stretch.
This is what the Pirates have done so far this offseason:
- Traded Jordan Luplow and Max Moroff to Cleveland for Erik Gonzalez, Dante Mendoza, and Tahnaj Thomas
- Signed Jung Ho Kang
- Signed Lonnie Chisenhall
- Signed Jordan Lyles
- Traded Ivan Nova for Yordi Rosario and international cap space.
- Claimed Aaron Slegers off waivers
The team has also made the typical MLB teams minor league signings; among those, Tyler Lyons is the most interesting and promising. They also let Jordy Mercer go in free agency and declined Josh Harrison’s team option, though those weren’t big losses. The issue is the lack of progress on the major league roster from a team that, as Jeff Sullivan noted earlier this week, isn’t far from a playoff spot but currently has a projected Opening Day payroll of roughly $68 million. Only the Tampa Bay Rays have a lower projected payroll at the moment. This is how Pirates payroll has progressed over the years compared to MLB averages.
The first thing we might note is that the Pirates have always been a good bit below league average when it comes to spending. Given that the team plays in a smaller market, that’s not too surprising. The most obvious complaint for Pirates’ fans is the huge downturn in 2019 payroll we see as of now despite competing in 2018, losing no significant contributors this offseason, and gaining a full season of Chris Archer and Keone Kela. But that’s not where the angst regarding the Pirates’s spending really begins. If we were to look at graphs like the ones above for teams from similarly small markets like Milwaukee, Cleveland or Kansas City, we would expect to see similar graphs. What we would actually see, though, is that when those teams became competitive, they immediately invested more money into the roster to capitalize on that excitement, and ran close to (Cleveland) or above league-average payrolls (Milwaukee and Kansas City).
It’s that failure to invest that has disillusioned fans, and created a need for the team to somehow draw them back to the ballpark. Trading for Archer and Kela was a very good start, but at this point in the offseason, it’s hard to see how much more the Pirates can do given the remaining options and their purported budget constraints. They have mostly let the offseason pass them by, leaving deficiencies in the middle infield and in their rotation depth largely unaddressed.
In the middle infield, the team has options like Adam Frazier, Kevin Newman, Kevin Kramer, and Erik Gonzalez, but in a free agent market with a glut of reasonably priced options at second base, it’s hard not to think an opportunity was missed.
In the rotation, Mitch Keller might be ready to take a spot, but further depth would have raised the floor — and potentially the ceiling — for a team still close to contention. There are still some starters out there who could help, like Wade Miley, Gio Gonzalez, and of course, Dallas Keuchel, but it is possible the Pirates missed the boat on a better fit earlier in the offseason.
The Pirates had an opportunity this offseason to continue repairing their relationship with their fans. But an approach that looked so promising at the trade deadline has left much to be desired this winter. In order to win back the fans — and potentially gain back close to a million attendees a season — the team will have to win consistently, or at least offer a reasonable expectation that they might. There are lots of teams with built-in buffers that help keep their attendance from falling too far. The Pirates are not one of those. Their quiet offseason isn’t likely to attract more fans to the park on Opening Day, and their lack of additions might also hurt them at the end of the season in the standings.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
The Pirates have been habitual under-spenders, even when comparing payroll to revenue (see link for an interactive comparison of all 30 teams payroll/revenue since 2001: https://tinyurl.com/ycjsrq2f), but it’s worth noting the Yankees, along with other larger market teams, have actually been spending even less on a relative basis. The focus of frugality should remain at the top, where markets are larger and revenue growth is more certain.
Disagree- from a labor perspective, you have a point, but from a competitiveness perspective, even if the Yankees/Red Sox/Dodgers are spending less relative to the Pirates, the smaller markets’ refusal to invest means that the big dogs are still able to put out a better product and attract more veteran talent. Why should the Yankees spend more if they’re already in the pole position to land whichever FAs they want?
If the Yankees/Red Sox/Dodgers spend less it keeps salaries down across the board, allowing smaller market teams to get away with under investing. The Yankees should spend more because they want to win (i.e., beat the Red Sox, Dodgers, Astros, etc.). Instead, they now prioritize profit margin.
That’s a good point. I never put the two together.
Also (and I think we are seeing it big time now), when the big boys (Yankees/Dodgers/Red Sox/Cubs..etc) aren’t in on the big free agents like Harper and Machado, it really hurts every free agent player, and maybe even possible re-sign guys. The price never gets jacked up. Also Grandal making his blunder by not taking that Mets deal will probably hurt the catcher position in the future (like when JTR goes on the market).
Which, obviously we all know this, but I don’t think the magnitude of these big-market teams not spending was really truly recognized, especially this widespread.
No, this is looking at it quite backwards.
Teams now assess the value of all players on process/future performance; they don’t assess the value of FAs on superficially comping those players to past FA contracts. But the latter is how teams used to do it, and how many agents still do it. That is the paradigm shift that is playing out in the FA market now (and over the last few years)
The teams are like McKinsey/Bain management consultants who are actually assessing likely marginal wins in the future versus competing options (including arb and pre-arb players).
The player agents don’t do this. The player agents are glorified Century 21 real estate agents who look at past FA contracts like a real estate agent looks at similar houses that sold in the neighborhood a few years ago and then guesses at a market price, with a premium tacked on. When they shop these market prices to teams, the teams assess the actual value going forward, and think the purchase price is outrageous, and the agents’ only responses are that they got a similar price for a similar product a few years so the teams should buy it again (with a premium, because prices always go up a little). The teams just tell them no, and say that even if some team was dumb enough to buy at the inflated price years ago, the teams know better now.
The only way this will be “fixed” in the future is for the owners/players to negotiate in the CBA ways to “force” the owners to spend more on players, despite the lack of “value” to the owners in marginal wins or marginal revenues. There are lots of ways to do this, the most obvious ways being a team salary floor, expanding rosters (adding a 26th man) and/or raising the minimum ML salary.
If only the agents were as smart as you!
I think that you are likely correct that this is how it plays out in 95% of FA cases. There are definitely cases where I don’t think this is the case. Eric Hosmer was like that last year, and I suspect that you will see similar things with Machado and Harper this year.
I liken this to the difference between a commodity and a status symbol. Most players on the market are “commodities.” They’re like a package of sliced bread, or a shirt, or a toaster. You can buy better versions of all of these, and worse versions. The worse versions usually cost less; the better versions usually cost more. They are, however, more or less fungible/replaceable. There’s an expected cost (which varies a bit across teams) and expected utility (which varies much more widely), but it’s a rational process.
But there are definitely players where the old “anchoring” method still applies. These guys are status symbols for teams, and the people who own baseball teams do often like status symbols. These guys usually give you a lot of value, but it also lets you look cool in front of your friends. Because a lot of the value is qualitative, so is the negotiation process.
Part of the reason why Boras’s clients always seem to dramatically overshoot or undershoot the expected contract is because he is firmly committed to treating his players as status symbols, not commodities. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I suspect that the asymmetry between players and teams is not inherently because teams are more rational than agents, although that is true. It’s because teams have internalized that they can walk away from a deal if they don’t like it more than they ever have before, and players do not have that luxury. Maybe teams have more data to back this orientation up, but it was always the case that the team has an army of players to play even if they don’t have a free agent. Players can’t do that; a team can sign no free agents and still play games, but a player has to sign with a team.
Yes, I agree and made a comment in the Lozano article about yachts that more-or-less says the same thing.
As for your last paragraph, that is not a market “problem.” What you describe does not result in the player not having a ML job and does not preclude the player from being paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. It *only* results in a specific player not getting a “vanity-purchase” premium in his contract.
Again, going to the last paragraph in my comment above, such that the MLBPA was previously relying on owners’ vanity to make up for an efficient market in distributing the “right” amount of money from owners to players in the current CBA (or past ones), then the MLBPA should not rely on that silly concept anymore, and should instead design the system to force owners to transfer the “right” amount of money to players (which can be done through the tools I mentioned above).
I don’t really think it’s quite that simple. Teams are just much more aware that if they don’t sign a player, their world will still turn, while that’s not necessarily true for the player. That’s a pretty strong imbalance in negotiating power between management and workers, and should affect a lot of different players, some of whom were always considered “commodities” but still may be clocking in for much lower salaries than before.
I can’t say exactly what the solution should be, and your suggestions seem reasonable.
The obvious problem with your argument (even accepting some of your factual premises, which I don’t) is this, when sorted by Team WAR:
https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Team
And when that (that the Yankees are projected to be the best team in baseball next year) is combined with the vagaries of playoff baseball, your argument that the Yankees “prioritize profit margin over winning” loses all of its force.
“Allowing the smaller market teams to get away with under investing” or sign a superstar at a price that potentially yields relative value. The Pirates are walking a fine line and the Forbes piece last year highlighted how the franchise makes money on an operating basis and has seen the value of the franchise grow on a healthy double digit annual basis. Good for Robert Nutting and their fans are right to challenge ownership to deliver a good product and go for it when its within reach..
You guys always miss the biggest point on this… baseball players (and their wives) don’t want to live in cold weather states.
They are from CA, TX, FL and the DR. They need a lot more money and/or something they can’t get from another team (starting spot, ST invite) to live in the cold. NYY and Cubs can overpay to entice folks to live in the cold, PIT can’t.
This would be a much more compelling argument if the baseball season ran from October to March instead of other way around.
They all live in Florida in the offseason anyway. There’s no need to live in a city where you’re going to play 81 nights a year.
In any case, most sane people would much rather be in Pittsburgh (weather wise) in July and August than Florida or Texas.
No state income tax in Florida.
Carlos Carrasco begs to differ.
A lot of players do live in the city they play in. Some stay after being traded or retiring.
Yes, a lot of players set up their residences elsewhere but it’s far from all of them.
Fan citing single player example begs to differ. Players can either live in market or set up a homestead out of market. For some, city is a huge factor. For others, not so much.
not sure why everyone is hating on you for your comment, which is obviously true…
wives matter… kids matter… wives and kids tend to stay somewhere, year-round, for schooling, and, assuming you’re not hoping to give her half your money in a couple years, she will be choosing where you live…
and everybody knows, weather-wise, most of this country sucks…
just look at the today’s weather…
Part of the problem, I think, is that there isn’t much high-end talent to draw fans to the ballpark anymore. Cole and McCutchen were stars, and while Marte and Taillon are good, they don’t have the same star power.
I also have the same instinct as Craig–that failure to invest when the team was good didn’t build enough goodwill with fans. But I don’t know if it’s true; I haven’t seen any evidence that this is what is specifically happening.
Another way to think about it is expectation management. In 2016, the Pirates actually had a worse record than they did in 2018, and they drew 10K more fans. So while losing games matters, that’s not the only thing that matters.
All of these, and Craig’s hypothesis too, are variations on the same theme. They just don’t look like they’re trying to get better, and haven’t looked like they were trying for a while. That might not actually be true, but their recent strategy of “let’s tread water and hope things break right” is not exactly a rallying cry. Since there are no recognizable attempts to do something with the team, they need to win to bring fans out. And with how competitive the NL Central is–and how iffy the Pirates’ depth is right now–this could get ugly really fast.
There are many factors in the organization’s downturn: unwilling to pony up and invest when the team was at it’s apex, poor drafting and developing under Huntington, completely staying away from high-end talent in Latin America, and the FO completely missing the boat on the way the game has turned (power pitching, power hitting). I don’t think Huntington is a bad GM, and he’s been severely hamstrung by ownership’s unwillingness to get off their wallet, but he does a pretty poor job with the resources he does have.
Side note: good timing on this article by Craig. Piratesfest is tomorrow here!
Sorry NN, one point I really disagree with you on is the “ poor poor Neil H. “ If he wasn’t satisfied with apparently being hamstrung by the owner, he would have resigned after 2015 rather then re up last year for 4 more seasons. My contention has been until Coonelly, he and Hurdle are gone, we will not see any significant improvement there.
McCutchen WAS a “ star “ for a 4-5 year period and certainly attracted fans. Cole never was near that level either in star power or on a competitive level.
Agree that the final number is frustrating, but one could argue that the positions of need are not a great match with the middle of the FA market. They are also spots where the Bucs have invested a lot and need to see what they have. The weak IF spots 1B – Bell, 2B – Frazier/Kramer, SS – Newman/Tucker, and 3B – Moran are all high picks or in Moran’s case a key piece of the Cole trade. You can argue that they need to see what they have and then move forward rather than signing stopgaps. Of course, Machado is the piece that would make all the sense in the world, but they wont even consider it. Really, they probably should have added a SP buy now rather than Lyles/Brault/Kingham in the 5 spot.
The numbers reinforce something that Coonnelly said several years ago – essentially “we will build it if you come”. He directly tied payroll to attendance then and it sure looks like the 2018 backlash has resulted in a 2019 penalty. Its ridiculous that Nutting is forcing them to operate in this manner.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I think Frank Coonelly might have taken the wrong message from that movie.
He may have gotten it from his neighbor to the West: the Dolans said the same thing a decade ago about the Cleveland payroll, that it would depend on local attendance.
See, I don’t agree and this is the trap they fall into themselves. They talk themselves into being patient with what they have (Kramer/Newman/Moran) when really, these three look like placeholders or utility guys. You don’t think they could have been players in the Segura market? Flipped Keller as the centerpiece for him? Patience isn’t always a virtue with young players because a lot of them don’t work out; and I think they’re using that patience as an excuse anyway cause they’re just so frugal.
Coonelly is a buffoon. I remember that statement, and I also remember him completely misreading the TV market and locking them into a terrible deal that saw other teams get huge TV money. Now that their deal is expiring and the cable bubble has popped, I have little faith that he’s going to get this one right.
Why in the world would you”flip” Keller when front line SP is still the most difficult thing to get in MLB and he is ready this season?
I got your back you on that one Nasty !
DJ and Moose would look nice on that team.
Agree on Moose, even Iglesias as a glove first SS would help as the IF defense looks awful right now.
Did Nutting take his family hostage that Huntington is “ forced to operate in this manner ? “ I doubt it. He is a mediocre at best GM who is hanging on to that job like I would a life boat in the Atlantic Ocean
Lifelong Pirates fan and former season ticket holder. The Pirates pull back in overall spending has actually been visible since well before 2017. Since they broke the old draft system with the Josh Bell bonus, they’ve refused to budge from slot. In addition, the team’s investment in Latin America really shrank- part was Rene Gayo’s fault but most was ownership. Starling Marte may have been the worst thing that could happen- when Nutting realized that you could sign a dozen guys for less than $1 million total and that one might be a Marte-level star, you don’t have to even bother with the top guys. Combine that with the failure of Luis Heredia and you have a perfect storm to get a skittish owner to close his wallet. They did spend a bit more this year, including Ji Hwan-Bae, but they still have never gone all out for a Latin American player since Heredia.
In any event, we all knew that attendance would crater when Cutch and Cole would be inevitably traded, and the fact that the returns were extremely underwhelming to the casual fan made it worse. The simplest way to put it is that when they finally put together something that could be special, Nutting’s greed got in the way. I think that I and many others have finally come to the conclusion that if ownership is going to refuse to commit to winning, there is no reason for us to financially support ownership. It’s a sad state of affairs, and all of the good will from 2013-2015 has absolutely vanished.
Help us, Mark Cuban. You’re our only hope.
They are actually spending just about every dollar allowed in INTL FA. They sign north of 40 guys a year instead of one big ticket, but the money is the same. I think there are valid reasons to go with that approach.
Sure, now they are. But under the previous CBA they were one of only a handful of teams that never exceeded the international bonus pool cap. Among “small market” teams Tampa, San Diego, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Oakland and St. Louis all exceeded the cap, the penalty for which was…the inability to sign an international free agent for more than $300,000 – a sum the Pirates rarely approached anyway, given the spread-it-around approach you cite. The penalties for exceeding the bonus pool were so laughably light that you have to think owner Bob Nutting breathed a huge sigh of relief when the new CBA was ratified with a hard international spending cap.
Please, just stop with the “ small market “ line with the Cardinals.
If there are valid reasons to go with the quantity over quality approach, I think it’s evident that pipeline dried up. Between Edgar Santana debuting this year (solid piece, unfortunately out for the year with TJ surgery) the last low dollar guy to debut was Polanco. They signed Polanco in (checks watch) 2009. Latin America is a much bigger wild card than the draft for sure. But other small market teams (Cincinnati, Tampa, Oakland, Kansas City), routinely spend a lot there on the big ticket guys. You need stars and you’re more likely to find those at the top of the draft or paying big in the IFA market. They’re currently doing neither.
This is an excellent point. Go take a look at the top prospects at the end of the year in 2018. The top four prospects were all from the Dominican Republic, as was #6 (a couple more 60s from the DR in there, too). Among the twenty five or so 55s, you have one guy from Brazil, another from Cuba, four from the DR, two from Mexico, and two from Venezuela. Aside from Ohtani (who is a different kind of IFA altogether), the best rookies last year were Acuna (Venezuela), Soto (DR), Torres (Venezuela), and Andujar (DR). You’re looking at about one-third of the best prospects in the minors coming from the Top 25 IFAs every year. You don’t always need to blow half your budget on Wander Franco like the Rays did, but a lot of top prospects come from bonuses around $1M (Alex Reyes comes to mind); if you’re cutting yourself off from that pool you’re probably not going to get a star.
That’s one problem with the quantity over quality approach to IFA. The other one is that because you’re signing these guys when they’re 16 years old, there’s something like a 95% chance they’re going to need Rule 5 protection before they hit the majors (it is true that you get a little more time with IFA’s before they need R5 protection, but IIRC it’s only one year). The result is that you wind up with a bunch of guys in A+ who might look like they might be useful contributors, and you just hope that some spoiler like the Padres doesn’t come along and take them.
I’m not sure your first point is entirely correct. Jose Ramirez, Altuve, Bogaerts, Suarez, Segura, Severino, Carrasco all signed for under half a million. A few were under 100K. The vast majority of the top players in baseball came through the draft, but I think more than half of the really good international players were fairly cheap.
I think you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of what is cheap as far as a LA signing and what isn’t. It probably isn’t just a clear line where “anyone over 500k is expensive and anyone under isn’t.” There probably is a good bit more nuance than isn’t. But even with that taken into account, the Pirates have signed very few over 500k relative to other teams.
So all those guys were signed for under half a mil eh? Gleybar Torres, Juan Soto were over a mil, as was Gary Sanchez, Andujar was …700k i think? The top two prospects in baseball now are signings on the international market. You’re always going to have more stars in volume drafted out of the first round of the draft, just like you’ll always have more stars in volume under 500k vs over 1 mil because..you’re not buying that many players over a mil. But you’re still much more likely to find a star on the IFA market if you’re spending over a mil on a player than if you’re spending under 500k.
They signed 8 guys for over 300K this year and yes many of those top DR prospects in MLB signed for low dollars. At any rate spending 6 million is the same as spending 6 million. Ask Kiley and Eric about the strategy, neither has been critical. As for return, this is only year 3 of it, so we will just see these kids getting to the US.
There are lots of valid complaints, this isnt one of them.
Alex Reyes is not a good example. He spent his whole life in New Jersey and then moved to DR for a year to avoid the amateur draft and sign for much bigger bucks
Provided that the Bucs spend all of their international allocation, quantity over quality may be a reasonable approach for teenage international prospects… but the quantity over quality approach to last offseason’s trades of Cutch and Cole was very disappointing.
Well Cutch wasnt going to bring quality with 1 year left. Obviously harder to defend not getting more for Cole.
Someone made me laugh when there was a Rangers article about the Lynn signing a few weeks back, and they said that the Rangers were like a dog swimming in place. That feels like the Pirates. I’m not confident in a long term plan here besides payroll management. I can’t figure out shipping Cole away, and then reversing course with a much more expensive trade for Archer six months later. I actually like several of their infield pieces, but this team didn’t want e.g. Asdrubal Cabrera for < $4m?
The plan is to aim for 83-84 wins and hope for positive variance, NH admitted as such last year. It was a much better plan before the super team era arose.
Exactly. All his plans now are DOA.
This
78-82, actually!
Maybe this team couldn’t convince Cabrera that he was going to start, which he should do in Texas.
Same goes for SS, Newman and Kramer are going to have to play, and bringing in Jose Iglesias for depth is nice for the Pirates, but Iglesias is unlikely to want to be a bench guy if he had a choice.
This kind of thinking backfired on them spectacularly in the infamous “bridge year” 2015-2016 offseason. Rather than backfill a rotation that had lost AJ Burnett (and his post-deadline fill-in JA Happ), the front office signed Ryan Vogelsong and went into the 2016 season with a hope and a prayer that the team would hold up until Super-2 cutoff when Taillon and Glasnow would be needed. Man plans God laughs. Cole was injured, Liriano lost his O-swing, Niese continued to decline, Glasnow was in no way ready and Vogelsong was predictably horrible. About the only part of the plan that went right is Taillon pitching well as the rest of the house burned to the ground.
Newman has done nothing to earn a starting job with the big league club and should in no way be the presumptive starter over Jose Iglesias, who is a superior player both at the plate and in the field and will likely end up flipped at the deadline to a contender, whereupon either Newman or Cole Tucker can take over at short. It’s the right baseball move, it won’t cost much, and it’s at least a meager acknowledgment to the fan base, which is not exactly excited about Kevin Newman, or the offseason in general.
What it really looks like now (and I didn’t think so at the time, being naive) is the Archer and Kela trades were efforts to boost attendance, not necessarily the team. From a baseball standpoint, with the situation they were in (middling under .500, not awful, but not good) there wasn’t really any reason to add at all, even with the division in a rather mediocre state.
Then they got hot in July and won 11 in a row, so they made those deals to A) improve the team but also B) boost the attendance that had flagged so much. However, by making this deal and then doing nothing in the offseason, it’s evident that this move was much more B than both A and B. From a baseball standpoint, once you trade Glasnow/Meadows/Baz/Hearn, you’re cashing in some big chips for some hopes at short-term glory. But, that isn’t enough, they had to do more to contend in 2019 and they won’t.
How typical of this ownership group to spend prospect capital to acquire controllable players to increase attendance / revenues, but refuse to spend actual free agent dollars in the offseason to accomplish or further the same goal. Actively making the future worse to save a billionaire owner a few bucks today – your 2019 Pittsburgh Pirates!
I wager that they have the same attendance data as we all do. Winning is the only driver of butts in the seats. Not star power or flashy trades. NH has coveted Archer for a long while, lets see how he does in 2019 before we bury him.
There’s a SABR article which disagrees with you, which looked into what drives attendance.
Red, as a Pirate fan of almost 70 years, my biggest complaint since the ‘15-‘16 off season is that I never could see exactly what their plan actually is ! And I doubt anybody else can figure it out either.
I just made a similar comment on the Pollock to Dodgers article, but the reason for stagnating payrolls is that the financial incentives for teams have changed. Before big TV deals, attendance was the biggest money maker, and attendance has always been relatively closely linked to on-field performance. But now that TV deals that pay the team the same amount over a long period of time (e.g., not linked to on-field performance whatsoever after the deal is underway) make up the biggest portion of a team’s revenues, winning is not as strongly correlated with increasing profit anymore, and, understandly so as they are simply responding to these changed incentives, teams are less concerned with winning.
If you want to change that, make TV deals a smaller percentage of teams’ overall revenue, or find a way to make TV deals more closely linked to on-field performance.
Making the TV money a smaller percentage of team revenue may come to pass. Don’t expect to like it if it happens.
Too much of that TV money is coming from Cable companies and cable company subscriptions are declining day by day.
See this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-subscriber-losses-q2-chart-2017-6
Also note that wireless telecoms are muscling in to the home internet business already and with 5G emerging this year they will be an even bigger threat to cable operators.
Anybody know when Pittsburgh’s local TV deal expires?
It’s up for renewal after the season.
Oh.
Not…a…good….thing…
Ownership of the Fox RSNs is up for grabs and most of the bidders are finding the Disney asking prices too high. Triple negotiations at the same time? As some folks say “Oy vey!”
Doesn’t sound like they’re in for a TV windfall this time around. Hopefully the Pirates won’t end up as Houston did, without a TV deal at all.
Their network is owned by ATT, not Fox.
This makes sense, but do we also know the slope of TV viewing versus wins? Is that less steep than attendance versus wins (would make sense, given you have to buy TV a year at a time and then turning the game on is free), or is the disconnect in the TV contract structure (and why?)
I think it’s in the TV contract structure. Most of these deals are for at least 10 years at a time (the Dodgers’ is 25 and the Yankees’ is 20) and don’t have any mechanism to adjust the payments to the team based on ratings or winning percentage. So more wins only becomes strongly associated with higher profits when a new TV deal or a renewal of the existing deal is being negotiated. Which is about once every 10-25 years.
Some teams worked to align their competitive windows with the start of their new TV contracts, making the TV rights look more valuable during negotiation. It’s one reason the new Dodgers ownership took on all the big contracts to be instant competitors and it might be the reason for the turn to efficiency spending more recently.
Long term TV deals mean predictable revenues so profits will be mostly affected by spending. Flat spending may annoy some fans but attendance won’t crash as long as the team shows flashes of competitiveness during hot streaks.
This new normal of efficiency spending isn’t for the big guys only…
Hmm… Looks like labor peace is history.
I disagree. Teams maximize profits when they win…and when they debut a new stadium. The point of low payrolls is to build a foundation of sustainable winning, the source of which is having a large number of good young players at the same time. No one goes to the ballpark and even diehard fans turn off the TV when the team is bad, the smarter ones knowing to come back in a couple years when the rebuild completes.
We had public data on the Braves and they made no money over 3 years when they were bad. Win the division, open a new ballpark, and boom—profits explode! Cleveland has a great team, fans don’t come to the games, so they can’t retain some of their FA’s.
I’m trying to think of a segment of MLB teams that your idea works for: most of the rich/big market teams are super-teams, the Rays and A’s win with lower payrolls (and have amazing farm systems), and then there are rebuilding teams for whom it doesn’t pay to spend big money on FA’s who block their prospects.
I’d say instead that wins and payroll are decoupling. Most teams want young, good, cheap players because that’s the foundation for sustainable winning. Trying to build a foundation on 6 expensive FA’s doesn’t make any sense.
“Teams maximize profits when they win” clearly revenues go up when a team wins, profits not necessarily. We interchange revenue and profit but they’re quite different. We’re all somewhat in the dark because the books are closed, but Forbes magazine does a good job of estimating valuation (how much a franchise is estimated to be worth) and operating income (how much money do they make annually).
Yes, and I’m asserting that PROFITS are maximized when a team wins and gave the example of the Braves whose profits are public and who validate my assertion. If you have numbers from Forbes, share them. Let’s see if it’s not true that the biggest winners aren’t also the most profitable. I know this was true in the late 90’s when the Marlins had to break up a World Series winner after losing money, but I don’t think it holds today.
I’m not arguing that winning has no association with higher profits, I’m arguing that since the advent of huge TV deals, winning is not as strongly associated with higher profits as it used to be.
Until we get more info on profits (maybe MartyVan90 will publish what he saw in Forbes?), who knows? As I said in the 90’s, the Marlins lost money after winning the World Series, so the relationship between profits and winning appears to depend on the city and other factors. Perhaps it always has and there’s not much new to the new TV deals except by raising up all teams’ profit floors. The decoupling of wins from payroll also has this effect on profit floors.
Shalesh, profitability is difficult to pin down exactly because Sports franchises are overwhelmingly privately held, not beholden to shareholders and not subject to accounting requirements like publicly traded companies. Below is only a small piece of data- the closed book nature of sports ownership gives us data in small pieces,
https://www.forbes.com/teams/pittsburgh-pirates/
Thanks Marty, this summary of all teams is interesting: https://www.forbes.com/mlb-valuations/list/
The Yankees only made $14M on $619M in 2017 revenue so WilliamsNYY’s assertion that all in baseball would be solved if the Yankees would just spend more on FA’s doesn’t seem to hold up.
Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, RedSox, Phillies, Astros, and Brewers all made at least $65M. The Giants and Phillies were terrible, so I’m not sure how they made so much money.
Marlins & Tigers lost more than $45M each, O’s lost $26M, Royals $17M, the Mariners and Blue Jays each lost around $2M. All other teams seem to show 10% of revenues as profits with the Pirates, Dbacks, and Braves closer to 15% and the Reds, A’s, and Rockies closer to 5%.
Perhaps there’s an argument that the Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, RedSox, Phillies, Astros, Brewers, Pirates, DBacks, and Braves could have spent more or perhaps it’s they had positive variance in their revenues that they didn’t forecast.
You’re welcome. Yeah, the lines between top line revenue and bottom line profit can contain a lot more than just players salaries and benefits. Other personnel costs, investment in development, capital expenditures, servicing the debt, etc. Plus accounting practices aren’t required to be standardized so I assume there is organizational variance?
Yankees revenues often don’t include the YES network, so that could be misleading. The Bucs are probably saving up to start their own network so they can hide profits in a separate pot as well – while still claiming financial distress.
The Pirates may not win the NL Central or have more wins than the Cardinals ever again, but man it has been an AMAZING investment.
That headline is a children’s book I would buy in a heartbeat.
It’s always perplexed me that the Pirates have low attendance numbers. Pittsburgh is a great sports town and PNC is a beautiful stadium – arguably the best one I’ve ever watched a game at.
It’s because they’ve been consistently mediocre to awful for the past almost 27 years, except for 2013-15, when they were finally good but still won only two playoff games over those three years combined.
When the management of said team seems to be actively sabotaging the team’s chances and citing “budget constraints” that any reasonable person knows is an absolute lie… you divert your excess income and entertainment activities to other things.
It’s a shame too because I used to love going to PNC… even when they were bad.
It’s been slow, but there’s still a lot of time. The Bucs biggest addition last offseason was Corey Dickerson, who they acquired in late February. Mercer is the only decent free agent shortstop to sign so far, so they could easily grab one of the remaining players. At least I hope…
Twitter can be an awfully contentious place.
No kidding. It’s pretty much designed to make people very angry with each other.
Just remember to say “I was taking ambien”, and it’s a license to use all the racial epithets you’d like.
So one could say they are the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything?
A heck of a lot of the problem for Pirates fans is the stupid shit that Huntington says in the media. What was it, last year? He said aloud: “Our goal is to build a roster that projects for 78-82 wins year in and year out and that’ll carry us to the post-season years things break right.” How much of a dunce is this man? How little does he understand about what it’s been like to be a mid-30s Pirates fan _just_ old enough to remember the Bonds/Van Slyke/Bonilla teams and what a good team can look like only to see that slip away into a historic two decade losing streak only to very briefly see two good teams again get shit on by the brand new Wild Card setup? Why should anyone under 45 years old be a Pirates fan other than for pure joy of the game or childhood nostalgia? I am one but I sure as hell don’t know why past me and my dad watched Pirates games when I was a kid. How do they expect to create new fans?
Key word is _Awful_ if that’s not yet been said.
I agree, the Buco’s need to be trying. Their top-5 position-players (by fWAR), in 2018, were an average age of 28.6. So they aren’t getting any younger.
The starting-pitching was alot better than I originally thought, as the starting-pitchers for PIT last season that started atleast 15 games (six pitchers), only two had K-rates lower than 20%. That’s pretty darn good for the pitchers they had.
I doubt Cervelli will have the same season in 2019, since his 3.3-fWAR was his best since 2015, but they do have some solid position players. Marte should be strong again in 2019 and Dickerson and Polonco should again be above-average. If Dickerson can walk a little more he could be a 3-3.5 win player before he gets old.
This team really isn’t bad. In 2018 they had two position-players with atleast 3-fWAR and three position-players with atleast 2-fWAR (not counting Adam Frazier at 1.9-fWAR).
The four most-used bullpen guys all had FIPs in the two’s, except for one (3.26), and only one of them had a K% below 20% (19.9%). Quite frankly the bullpen was excellent in 2018.
They should add some pieces. Not “stupid-money” type pieces, but they should atleast be making an effort to improve in 2019, at least somewhat. A payroll in the $60-millions is LOL.
The Bucs are right at the win curve where the additional marginal dollars spent to improve the team could add a couple wins and launch them into contention. And even if they missed the playoffs, that would significantly boost attendance and restore faith in the franchise. It makes too much sense.
Instead, let’s crap in the hearts of our fans, continue to destroy our brand, and pocket another $75M. Only in America…
Jamos: Not given their league and division.
It is VERY frustrating being a Pirate fan. Since our glory decade in the 70s, we’ve only had a couple of 3 year ‘windows’ (90-92 and 2013-2015) and the rest has been misery.
I was just looking at doing a little gambling and I saw something that probably has a big bearing on why Pittsburg is standing pat: the Pirates are projected to finish 10+ wins behind the Cubs and the Cardinals.
There is effectively no way that the Pirates can add 10 +WAR this offseason. Whatever WAR they could add by expensive signings and costly trades wouldn’t be enough to get them into the playoffs. Signing both Harper AND Machado wouldn’t even do it.
So probably the wisest and most efficient thing they can do is to put the team they have on the field and see who develops…which is what it looks like they are going to do.
That would make sense if they had a lot of young players ready to make an impact and break in this year. Other than Keller, they really don’t. Their best players are finished products for the most part; some like Taillon could take a big step forward. As a commenter above pointed out, they’re not a young team. So that theory doesn’t pass the smell test.
Hayes and Tucker both start the year in AAA and I think both will be impact players. They aren’t an old team either. The entire pitching staff is well under 30 outside of Arche. The lineup includes four 30-somethings but there are all in their low 30’s. Bell, Polanco, Frazier, and whoever the shortstop is are all mid-20’s. I’d say they’re relatively young.
Trading for Archer should push fans away, not draw them to the park. One good year in his career per BR WAR (when you habitually over/underperform more advanced stats I don’t think they are as good at assessing value). I don’t need to watch a game in which the starter needs 90 pitches to get through 4 innings even if he has only given up 1 run. There is little to no entertainment value in watching Archer pitch.
It seems like fangraphs is repeatedly not sold on Mitch Keller whereas all other scouting reports are, thinking he is a #2 starter. Seems like that type of praise is never given here. Just wondering about that disconnect.
Assuming health (a huge “if” with pitchers) he certainly looks like a starting pitcher of some kind.
What kind of pitcher? Eric and Kiley slap a 55 on him. For reference, at the end of last year there were exactly two pitchers Eric and Kiley put an FV60 on (Whitley and Sixto), four more that were 55s but they had suffered some rather serious injuries (Reyes, Honeywell, Puk, Kopech) and something like ten more that were just regular 55s (including Keller).
Based on this and what Eric/Kiley have written elsewhere, I think the main difference is that they don’t give big grades to pitchers unless they’re real studs. They’ve said they’re very conservative with pitcher grades because so many of them flame out. Keller is still seen as the 10-15th best pitching prospect in the game by Eric and Kiley.
They had a 60 on him last year, fwiw.
Yep, he didn’t impress at Indy this past year for whatever that’s worth. Whether that’s a bump in the road or a more realistic view of what he actually win contribute remains to be seen. I think most were hoping he’d slide right in and grab a spot right away, but that seems unlikely for 2019.
I care less about payroll than i do about a better team.
There where (still a few) short stop options available in FA, there are still a few LHP rotation options in the FA market… I think there are one or two LHP Relievers available…
But even if they don’t sign any of them the 2019 team ‘should’ be better than the 2018 team
Why should they be?
They are projected currently for 80 wins. If you figure all FWAR projections are dead on, then you add on the top SS (Machado 5.x fWar), SP (Keuchel 3.x fWar),and RP (Kimbrel 1.x fWar). They only become an 87 win team because they do replace a few WAR of actual players. 87 wins is likely to only be a wild card team. Without a true pitching ace the wildcard is not much to strive for. This division is tough and I expect most teams to under perform expectations win wise. So, it is possible 87 wins takes the division, but it is unlikely. I do think if they added Keuchel they could have one of the deepest if not the deepest rotation in baseball. Archer is not much of an ACE but 3 3.x war pitchers and 2 2.x War pitchers is very very strong. Nonetheless,the cost of giving themselves a real shot at the division this year is a bunch of money Pittsburgh does not likely have. On the other hand, they would probably see 2.5 million fans a year over the life of Machado’s contract. That would add up, so maybe it’s doable. But, it’s no sure thing the money would work out enough to be worth it.
They need to develop their own Superstar or at least several stars in the next 2 seasons to have a legit shot at the World Series with this core. Unfortunately they, and, for what its worth, i, do not see that happening, so they seem to be settling for a team that does not suck while they pay down more debt and free more cash flow for the future.
If you’re a slave to projections, and and those players, than yeah, it’s only a wild card team. But a team projected to win 87 is damn close to the division and that’s worth fighting and adding for to achieve that goal. Also if you for some reason, think that most teams will under perform win-wise, doesn’t that mean a team should add and try to beat those projections?
I find it so odd that fans look at teams and “don’t” want them to improve when they actually could make meaningful strides. Why do you want the organization to save money when it isn’t yours? And furthermore, why do you want THIS organization to save money when it’s been made very clear they won’t strike when the iron is hot and the time comes to spend it? It’s always tomorrow, or the next season. It’s never now.
83 wins using Steamer here.
I think the Pirates are crazy to keep trying right now. They need to “look” like they are trying to keep attendance from cratering
The cubs have three good years left, if the cardinals sign Goldschmidt to a deal, the cards then have a 3-5 year window, the reds have decided to start spending and the Brewers also are in a 3-5 year window.
The Pirates have no chance to compete right now. They should be priming the pump for 3 years from now and invest heavily in lower level talent
In theory, shouldn’t this movement of large market teams away form long-term contracts make top free agents more available for small market teams?
I would assume virtually any team within a competitive window could afford a player at $20-$30MM/year for just 1-3 years. If the don’t pan out, it’s only a couple years. If they do, but you aren’t competitive, then that is still a valuable trade piece. If it all works out, great! You got your money’s worth.
Why can’t Pittsburgh (or anyone) offer Machado/Harper 3/$100MM? Not saying that would get them, but that should be an offer any team expected to be around .500 should be offering (assuming they have a need at SS/3B or COF).
Signing a guy like Moustakas seems like it makes too much sense for the Bucs
I attended about 5-8 games per year until last year when I attend 3, one of which was my company picnic. When they traded McCutchen, that reduced my desire to spend money on the team. Trading away a former MVP to save $12.5M is their right, but I have the right not to give them my money. Flash forward to this off season, they traded Nova to save $9M but now need a starter. The smart move would be to sign Keuchel but that will never happen. Instead, they haven’t invented in the team and thus haven’t generated any excitement. Their TV deal ends after 2019. Without a winning season, ratings will be down and the next TV deal will be worth less. I would like to see General Motors tell potential customers that they need to buy an inferior product today so that they can improve the next model. That is essentially what the owners of the Pirates do every year.