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Finances
Friday, August 15, 2008
Marian Hossa is one of the best players in the NHL, a free agent, had a great post-season, went to the finals, and he seemed to have been offered some Ovechkin-like contract, some $92MM long-term deal. Instead he opted for a one-year $7.45MM deal:
“I asked what they were looking for,” Holland told Landsberg. “It was north of 7.5 (million). I told them I was uncomfortable (having Hossa make more than Lidstrom). “In the end, Marian Hossa told me to not bother calling Nik, one year at 7.45 - it was a done deal.”
Even his agent was surprised. “I have never been involved in a deal and seen a player get so excited to take $85 million less than he was offered elsewhere,” Winter told The Canadian Press. “It’s almost incomprehensible, even to an agent. But Marian is a special player.”
To put this in baseball perspective, you need to double all NHL salaries to get it into MLB terms. He effectively turned down a $185MM multi-year deal, for a 1 year $15MM deal to play for the best team in the league.
Monday, August 04, 2008
If you are interested in a $300 book on the business of sports. (If you are going to buy this book, click on the $300 link, so we get a small referral fee.) And if someone is going to buy the book, feel free to post your review and whatever interesting tidbits you find. Normally, I would encourage people to buy books, but a $300 book is pretty ridiculous. Is that what schools are charging these days? (*)
Here is Dave Berri expanded view of the book.
Why is hockey always neglected? A league competitive to the NHL in the 1970s, mergers of teams, expansion of teams (from only six!), strike, lockout, European competition, changes in styles of play brings in different talent types, Olympic hockey, collusion between NHL president and head of the NHLPA. It has a rich history that would be ripe for the business heavyweights, certainly at least on par with baseball. And yet, all we get is baseball, baseball, baseball.
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Analyzing Zimbalist the consultant, and the scholar.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
By , 09:08 PM
It is almost no doubt that the Sox will not pick up his 20 mil option. There is also almost no doubt that he is not worth nearly that much and I am pretty sure the Red Sox know that and have known that for a while. Whether they helped to orchestrate all this negative publicity surrounding Manny lately, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, I think they are quite happy with it, at least to the extent that it helps ease, if not eliminate, any flak they may have gotten for not picking up the option.
Anyway, if you are a team signing him as a FA, what would you give him?
Also, what do you think he will get, from a sabermetrically stupid team I am assuming?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The NY Giants announced their plans in selling personal seat licences. It looks like the average licence is around 4K I suppose, and with 75K seats… well, the math is easy here. K times K is MM. And 75 times 4 is 300. Wow. Imagine buying a baseball team for 300MM. Instead, here, you pay 300MM for the right to buy tickets! Fantastic idea. I’m sure the Jets will follow something similar.
By the way: no complaining. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it! Reminds me of Kelly Ripa being outraged at the 20,000$ price tag of some Hermes purse.
- “This is an outrage, this is ridiculous, I can’t believe it!”
- “Miss Ripa? It’s our last bag.”
- “I must have it!!”
Monday, July 14, 2008
This is the average from 2003-2007. This means that 43% of payroll has gone to pitching. This is lovely, since I give out 42.9% of WAR to pitching.
43.2% P
8.4% RF
8.4% 1B
7.9% LF
6.8% 3B
6.3% CF
5.8% C
5.5% SS
4.1% 2B
3.6% DH
Unless 2B are way undervalued relative to 3B and 3B are way overvalued, it seems to me that the average 3B is probably a better player than the average 2B. I’m sure there is some under or over valuation going on, especially if you got a great player arb-eligible, and a not-so-good player who is a free agent being paid the same thing. It would seem that the gap couldn’t be that high even considering that bias.
***
2B+SS+3B (IF) get 16.5% of the payroll, while the OF gets 22.6%. If you have a 90MM payroll, that means your OF are getting 5.5MM more per team than your IF. Offensively-speaking, the OF probably generate about about 3 more wins than the IF. With a 2.5MM per win, that would imply paying 7.5MM for their offense. Since the gap is only 2.0MM, that probably implies that MLB thinks that the IF is about 2MM better than the OF for fielding, or about 0.8 wins total.
My fielding spectrum gives +0.5 wins for SS/CF, 0 wins for 2B/3B, and -0.5 wins for LF/RF. In all, I’m giving -0.5 wins for the OF and +0.5 wins for the IF, for a gap of 1.0 wins.
It seems that teams are paying based on this fielding spectrum.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Futterman says:
Hockey is tribal. NHL research shows 50% of NHL fans won’t watch the finals if their favorite team isn’t playing. Television ratings for hockey grow just 41% in the playoffs, while baseball’s grow 400%, and the NBA’s grow 135%.
That’s pretty shocking, really. I didn’t realize that. To that end, it makes sense then that you have 16 teams make the playoffs, and you can argue even more should make it.
That said, NHL revenues are just a bit under half of those of MLB, and all that without a national TV contract. And with half the games. Per game, the NHL generates as much revenue as MLB. With the lack of interest in hockey in most of USA, that’s pretty impressive. That the NHL can “only” generate 2.5 billion dollars should be treated as the NHL “somehow managed to” generate that much.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
By , 08:54 PM
Victor Wang wrote this really good article in THT analyzing the CC Sabathia trade:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/evaluating-the-cc-sabathia-trade/
On Ballhype, I made these comments:
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Referencing this article on VORP, some BTF readers make some curious statements, while JC makes some puzzling ones.
I made this post at both blogs:
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
I like the idea. This is along the same lines as that minor league player who sells 4% of his future earnings for a fixed price today. If he makes the big time, you get your cut.
Scholarships (for athletes) could work in a similar spirit. Either you make it a straight refund of the scholarship for any player earning a full year of salary in MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA, MLS. Or, get colleges to bid on athletes. “Hey, Alex, come to college, we’ll give you a scholarship, and since you are so good, we’ll only ask for 1% of your future earnings until you are 25.” Or, also allow the inclusion of payments, like giving him 100,000$ to play for your college team. Something, anything, that shows that NCAA is a business, and not slave owners of athletes under the guise of an educational system. In hockey, junior clubs (filled with high school and college-level players) are not affiliated to any schools.
The floor is yours. What kind of a business system can you create with high school and college players?
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Just linking this story to show the financial data:
Last year, the team - which hasn’t won a World Series in eight years - grossed a record $188 million in gate receipts, a 20.5% increase over the 2006 season. Factoring in other revenue streams like overpriced hot dogs, beer, pizzas and souvenirs - and income from the cable TV rights to home games - Stadium income surpassed $319 million in 2007.The team’s annual rent report filed with the city Parks Department shows the Yanks netted $65.3 million in concessions last year.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Two excellent issues from editor Phil Birnbaum (Nov 07, Feb 08). Here are my thoughts:
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Dave likes to talk about him, and I like to look him up. Following the 2004 season, Beltre signed a 5/64 deal. Presuming a cost per win of 3.31 (in 2005), 3.64, 4.00, 4.40, 4.84 (in 2009), they were buying 16 wins above replacement for that money (and it makes little difference the shape of that distribution). This is what they’re actually getting:
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
At the very least, it gives you a starting point and historical perspective. Any baseball executive that allows himself to be quoted by the press that what Forbes does is cr-p is full of the same thing himself. Either you are part of the problem or part of the solution, and giving reasonable numbers as a starting point for bright people to manipulate is far better than not giving any numbers at all.
(Hat tip: SOSH)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Might as well follow the in-season moves as well.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Cool article by Beamer.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
No! Are you crazy?
The Marlins will end up trading Ramirez before he hits free agency. The Marlins exist to turn a profit, before they exist to make the playoffs. The trade value of Ramirez is highest if he plays at SS. Since there will be some MLB out there deluded enough to think that he’s a capable shortstop, Marlins will get the most value by keeping him at SS.
I mean, look at what they just did with Cabrera. He should be a corner OF or 1B, but they managed to convince the Tigers that he is a 3B, even though the Tigers already had one of the best fielding 3B in the game today.
It works out like this:
value = wins on offense + fielding wins relative to position + win value of position
Regardless of position, there will be some MLB team that will have “fielding wins relative to position” equal to zero. The win value of SS is 1.0 greater than a corner OF (MLB teams have figured that one out already). That’s 4.4 million dollars every year of non-free agency right there of overvaluation that the Marlins will trade against.
I can’t wait to see which team will overpay for him.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
This is Rob Neyer‘s list. Does it make sense? Has be balanced current talent level and aging? While I have big problems with Win Shares, we can make some use of my 5-yr Win Shares aging curves. The players we are interested in will follow the “20+ WS” pattern, so focus on that column. A guy who is 22 will generate double the wins as a guy at age 34, and 50% more a guy at age 30. How does Neyer do?
Let’s take ARod. He averaged 34 win shares over the last 3 years. Therefore, his 5-yr looking forward Win Shares for a guy who is 32, would be around an average of 54% of that per year. 34 * 0.54 * 5 = 92 win shares. That’s what we should expect from him over 5 years. Zimmerman (whom I love), at age 23 is expected to be at 84% over 5 years. In order to match ARod, he has to have a current talent level today of 22 win shares: 22 * .84 * 5 = 92. Zimmerman averaged 23 win shares, so that gives him a forecast of 97 win shares. Pretty good, Rob. Pretty good.
You guys can go through the list and see if it makes sense. In post 13, I have a smoothing function that will make life easy for you. In the case of ARod, that would be:
23 + 0.64 * 34 - 0.78 * 32 = 19.8 per year.
Multiply by 5, and you get 99.
Pretty close.
Friday, March 07, 2008
I introduced my salary scale last year. It works fantastically well. There’s nothing “black box” about it. You can create your own. It’s just very basic. Vince Gennaro introduces something similar, but instead of WAR, he simply uses the pitcher’s role. Does his conform to mine? Let’s see:
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008
This is a 140 page pdf. I haven’t read it yet.
I’d suggest that any comments made reference the page number (note if it’s the PDF page number, or the printout page number).
from Amazon
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