from Amazon
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Expansion
Adding two teams will do nothing that you will notice, that’s for sure. If you have 750 players in the league, adding the 751st to 800th best player will not affect anything you can notice. Pretend that the average player has “4 units of talent”. So that the average team has “100 units of talent”. With 750 players in the league, you have “3000 units of talent”. You add in 50 more players into the league each of which has 1 unit of talent. Now you have 3050 units of talent, but spread over 32 teams. The average team will now have 95 units of talent. You are not really going to notice. Not to mention that the number of US-born players playing in MLB since 1969 (24 teams) has not changed! All the extra players are coming from abroad. And they are holding their own. So, in reality, adding 2 teams really means adding 50 more foreign players (Japan has lots of players I hear). I’ll guarantee that if ever Japan/MLB can have a better transfer deal, you will get expansion in MLB.
Anyway, Maury talks about expansion, and I respond:
Maury, I’ll only comment on things I know. In NJ, you should not use “Newark” as a stand-in for some NJ city, especially for household income. You should choose a town in Morris or Union as something more representative. And, they would certainly play in the new Giants/Jets Stadium. Why wouldn’t they? You give the Giants/Jets enough money (or the Sports Authority if it’s theirs) and they’ll make the modifications.
As for Montreal, is the Big O really down to 26,000 seats? Did they make modifications? Maybe they did. But, if it’s down to 26,000, they’d almost certainly play in Molson Stadium (where the Alouettes play). The best thing that ever happened to football in Montreal was U2 booking the Big O, forcing the Alouettes to find a new home for one game, and as it turns out, forever. It’s incredible what happens when you put the stadium downtown, and limit the number of seats to drive up demand.
Finally, can you list all the cities in the US that have two major league teams (including MLS), but does not have a MLB team?
Hi Tom,
Good catch on my attendance figure gaff. The Big O’s seating capacity is 46,500 and I have updated.
On the New Meadowlands… Good idea, and a real possibility. On the household income… Went with what census had and easily available. Perfect? Of course not, it’s me. Exhaustive? Could have done more, but then there’s always “more”, right?