Let’s
face it. None of us expected the Mets to be in on the Yoan
Moncada deal, but paying a $31.5 million dollar signing bonus screams
for either some kind of ceiling in this process, or an incorporation of the
international signing program into the draft. This is just stupid.
Others
will tell you as long as there is a market in this area (three teams were
willing to pay over $30mil, including the Dodgers who offered $35mil if Moncada
would agree to wait to sign until after July 2nd), so who’s at fault
here, the player taking the money or the team offering it?
There’s
never been a deal in baseball that winds up standing as the biggest deal ever
signed. They just keep getting bigger and no one seems to care.
The
sport is now being led by the television revenue. The Dodgers receive an annual
check from their TV contract of $334mil. That’s more than three Mets payrolls.
And, they could have spent around $100mil more this year in payroll and still
be taking in 100% of the profits from tickets sales and hot dogs.
And
now, here comes San Diego, whose current TV contract will go from $31mil a year
to total contract (15-20 year range) of ‘over’ $1.5 billion dollars. Did I just
use the billion word?
What
this all translates to is the business will just continue to grow and each team
will only be limited by its own ownership and vision.
How
is this Mets related?
Well,
it seems to me that they are about to begin a 5-7 year period where they will
be dominated by very talented starting pitchers. That being said, it also seems
that the team, and how it operates, will not reach out and spend the money to
secure two or two superstar ‘bats’ to create a team that can compete with teams
like the Boston Red Sox that just signed Moncada.
This
doesn’t mean that teams with smaller payrolls don’t make the playoffs, or even
play in the World Series, but as a Met fan for all these years, I wish I was
rooting for a team that doesn’t define ‘superstar’ as players like Curtis Granderson or Michael
Cuddyer.
Folks,
I’m telling you. These people have the money to make this a great team.
11 comments:
Mack
I don't think either the player or the team is at fault.
Certainly not the player. If someone offers me $30 million to do my job, I'm not going to turn it down.
If I'm a team that has a big TV contract. I owe it to them and their sponsors to put a quality team on the field. If I think spending $30 million on a player will bring in viewers and make the sponsors happy then I would need to do it if I were running a team.
There are teams that will never be in the position to get the tv revenue that teams like the Red Sox, Dodgers, Padres and others are getting. The Mets are not one of them. They are in the largest market in the states. It is a baseball city. They are the 2nd team in that city but so are the Angels in the LA area. They have SNY. They should be able to have a $200 salary and 100 percent of their ticket sales as profit.
Spend money and put an exciting team on the field each day. Viewers will tune in. Sponsors will want time during your games. Demand for those time slots will increase and so will the price they pay for those slots.
I do agree with you, the league needs to do something to help the small market teams to be competitive and to be fair to American born players. If Moncada were born in the USA he would likely have been a top 5 pick and got the money slotted to that draft position. That would have been 20 million less than he got. All players need to enter MLB via the draft. One problem is how you would work that out with teams like Japan.
It used to be the Yankees who had the big purse ,now they have competition.But where does that leave us?.It's sad to see the rich getting richer and the poor teams having to make do with just scraps.The big question for us Met fans is are we going to sign these great pitchers we have when they come off protected contracts.I like our direction but man I wish we could of gotten this guy Moncada ,I think we missed a great ooportunity to show our fans we have turned the Madoff corner.I think Moncad was the talent to go for broke with.
Richard -
I think the new Commish is going to figure out how to incorporate the Latin 'market' into the draft
Rene -
It's tough for me to believe that the current ownership will pay pitchers past the arbitration process
Rene-
About a month ago I was in the camp that said the Mets should go all in on Moncada. What changed my mind is that the team who signed him will not be able to sign any other international prospect. That is why the Dodgers didn't sign him. They were willing to part with the money. They weren't will to part with the potential to sign other international prospects next year.
Teams probably have a good feel for who their going to be able to sign. I think that is why the Mets didn't even make an attempt. They could have offered $30 million and lost out to the Red Sox and made it look like they were trying to do something but I do believe they feel that all of the players they will sign after June 2nd is more desirable than just Moncada. Moncada is a great prospect but he is still a prospect until he proves he can hit MLB pitching. Sometimes great prospects can't do that, like Fernando Martinez.
Sometimes 5 or 6 good prospects pan out better than one great one.
It's TWO years that Boston can't sign a player for over 300,000. So, do you want a Moncada or the potential of two years worth of prospects?
I'm actually shocked that all the teams didn't stick together, offer him the minimum without being penalized and let him chose which team he wanted to go to. I know that's ridiculous, but so is 60 million for a 19 year old and zero top prosects internationally for the next two years.
The unfairness to American-born players is definitely an issue, IMO.
As for the Mets, it's disheartening to see MLB move massively in the direction of more revenue, bigger contracts, higher payroll while the NY Mets are stuck treading water.
It's definitely a disadvantage.
James
I disagree with you slightly about the revenue issue. In a free market society the best run organizations or companies are rewarded with the most revenue or profit.
Where that falls apart in baseball is that some teams do not have the markets to be competitive in a free market. Baseball as a whole is healthier with those smaller market teams than it would be with the 10-14 that would be able to compete in a free market.
The Mets are one of the 10-14 that would be able to. I would like tosee some numbers comparing Mets and Dodgers revenue when both teams were successful in the late 80s. One team spends money and puts an exiting team on the field. The other hasn't. I believe the Mets are a low revenue team because it is poorly ran. Poorly ran companies die or make changes. The Mets have done some good things to put them on the edge of being a team that fans will want to watch. Hopefully they will start to spend some money once they have some minor success to put the over that edge.
This off season was a poor off season to see where the Mets are. I didn't see a player available that was a good fit. Spending money just to spend is not smart either. Moncada was the 1st player I wanted to see them sign but I don't have scouting reports and the knowledge about the international market over the next 2 years to tell if they made the right decision.
FYI - International market is a great business for the agents. They keep up to 40% of the signing bonus!! That's why they're against international draft.
The one thing that could dramatically impact the escalating salaries is if cable systems start unbundling their services and these sports channel start to go request only. In California, there is a movement to have the Dodgers channel removed from the extended basic package because a number of people (not without merit) are claiming that they are being forced to subsidize professional sports by having these channels bundled in with other channels. Don't think it is impossible, since HBO was the first to go down this road by offering a streaming service and if the packages started coming apart and channels like SNY and YES were individual buy ins, the number of subscribers would collapse. Sure, they could increase the charge that sports fans pay to see their favorite teams, but the monster revenue you see teams getting from these TV deals is based on the sheer number of subscribers cable systems can charge for, but if it were opt in only, the size of these deals would change dramatically. For instance, if Fox News or MSNBC were not part of this similar bundling and had to go opt in only or rely strictly on advertising, neither would be financially viable, so don't underestimate how important the concept of forced bundling is for many business plans and if this were to go against MLB, it would crash the revenue source that feeds the beast. The NFL relies on Network contracts, not subscribers, so they get their $9B as a result of advertising, which MLB would never command
Just so everyone knows....
The Mets HAD the money to go out and sign Moncada.
However what prevented them from doing so was 2 things.
A) The inability to sign international prospect for over $300k over the next 2 years.
- The Mets already have commitments made to a handful of IFA's that they did not want to back out of. One of these potential commitments is the soon to be 16 yr old Vlad Guerrero Jr.
B) The signing bonus can be paid across 3 seasons, but the fine is due July 15th.
- The Wilpons have money.... but....what the Wilpons DO NOT have is significant Cash Flow. Shelling out a total of $40M in the 1st season for Moncada is something that the club could not due with such a rigid deadline.
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