Take, for instance, Blue Jays season tickets. Yes, I'm glad I didn't buy them during their playoff run, only to see the hype and hope come to a crashing halt this week when David Price signed with rival Boston. It's nice to know I didn't waste money on those tickets, but it's hard to feel smug given that I couldn't have afforded them anyway.
At the time the Jays traded for Price in the final year of his contact, sports pundits/killjoys warned everyone that it was unlikely they'd be able to sign him beyond this season. So I'm sure that those pundits are currently telling tut-tutting fans for being disappointed. But that misses the point.
In baseball - as in all non-salary-capped sports leagues - there's two ways to be successful, business-wise:
- Low-income, low-costs - don't spend much on players, meaning that your expenses are low, and you make money despite having less success, thus fewer fans, thus less income.
- High-income, high-costs - you spend big to build and maintain a winner. That costs a lot, but you make up for it by having more fans, this more income.
For some teams, the decision is made for them: a team in a smaller city can't pay big, because even a successful team won't bring in enough money to pay for high end salaries. You have to hope you can succeed by developing talent quickly (like this year's World Series winners, Kansas City.) But more likely you'll languish at the bottom (like Kansas City in the previous two decades.) On the other hand it's hard for a team in New York or Los Angeles to justify sitting on their big pile of cash while watching the team lose year after year.
But for cities in the middle, like Toronto, it's not clear which direction to go in. To make matters worse, the two strategies tend to be self-perpetuating: is hard to sell a low-budget loser to fans used to competing, and its hard to convince a cheap team to start spending on the hope that fans will open their wallets.
It's kind of forgotten now, but the Blue Jays we in that big budget category in their World Series years; although those teams were mostly built on drafts and trades, they also bought free agents to fill in weaknesses and departures, and had one of the highest payrolls in the Majors. Now, of course, they don't, and occasionally people ask, when did everyone decide Toronto was a small market?
The answer is probably sometime around when then-owners Labatts was bought by Interbrew, and became less interested in paying big for ballplayers. But however it happened, they've been caught in that small-market vicious circle for a while now, and its hard to get out of. That's why we Jays fans with an eye economics were overjoyed for this year's turn around: it wasn't just the fact that they were winning, and the positive vibes of a full SkyDome had returned. It also seemed like they had jump started the big-market set up. The team took chances to bring in big names, and the fans responded with attendance and ratings. Suddenly, there's no risk: the guys writing the checks know the fans will respond.
And that's why the Price deal stings. It's not just seeing a player leave. It's losing him after we just signed Happ, a good-but-not-great pitcher who has already had one stone with the team, and left without most of us noticing he was gone. And it's the fact that he's going to one of our two big-spending division rivals. The message could not possibly be clearer: last year was an aberration, and everything is back to the way it had been during our playoff drought, with the Yankees and Red Sox buying whatever they need, while we take mediocre players and hope for a miracle.
I realize there are plenty of reasons why this could be bad for the Red Sox, like the fact that they're going to be paying a 37-year-old pitcher $30 million in 2022. But for now I'm not optimistic. But hopefully this post will prove to be as accurate as last week's "Donald Trump has finally gone too far" article, in which case the Jays will probably sign Zach Grienke.
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