Quote:
Originally Posted by JayP
You do realize that AA and Paul Beeston don't set the budgets, right? Why exactly are you so sure they are slashing the budget (beyond hiring someone who worked for a small market team - which is evidence of nothing)?
First of all, no one around the league cares about AA. Jays fans & the Canadian media treat him like some god now, but ask other fans and he's just another guy. The guy was basically on the edge of being canned and traded away the farm to make the playoffs to try and save his job- that's his reputation around the league. When he left, most people around the league didn't really blink.
There was never a Price debacle. That was invented by people who thought the Jays could somehow get Price if they offered him $30mil per season for 5 years instead of 7 - ignoring the fact that it's a $60million dollar difference and not even in the ballpark.
Looking for cheap bullpen arms is something every good team does. Again, you make this ridiculous deal of things like that and then the Jays acquire an elite reliever in Drew Storen. It's a long off-season and even though you over-react to everything, everyone else waits to see how the entire off-season plays out. The contracts handed out to relievers this off-season were ridiculous and to be disappointed the Jays didn't partake is just dumb.
Again, if the Donaldson "non-sense" (your word for taking a player to arbitration) is such a big deal, why is no one in a large baseball community even talking about it? The entire issue was created by someone (without any inside information) trying to create content when there isn't any in January. Basically, your argument is that the Jays should just pay him whatever he wants since it's only 450k. Setting that precedent sounds like a really good way to improve their alleged terrible reputation with other teams around the league - they all love inflating player salaries.
Basically it comes down to you wanting Rogers to open up the pocket books and spend like crazy because the team raked in cash for a couple months last season. Ignoring the fact that to spend that money, you have to get locked into 5+ year deals with very little assurance that revenues will be that high for the duration of those deals.
If the Jays keep winning, great - it works out for everyone. If the Jays don't win (which happens every year to championship favorites), then the attendance and viewership numbers drop back to mediocrity, but the owners are still committed to hundreds of millions of salary. It's pretty obvious to see the risk from Rogers perspective.
If the Jays make the playoffs for 3 straight seasons, you have a point. But basically you want a budget based off last year's revenues only and to ignore all the years before. It's nice to want this as a fan, but it has zero basis in the realities of business.
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See that is where you are wrong. My desire for the Blue Jays to spend has nothing to do with last year's results. I've been make the argument for the better part of a decade. It has everything to do with the Jays being in the third largest market in baseball and having a fan base across and entire country, but running your team like a small market team (in the Stadium they were given for pennies on the dollar). This team is run in a method closer to the Tampa Bay Rays than they are a big market team which is completely absurd. The only difference is from time to time Rogers gives in to public pressures and spends for a couple of years (never enough to win it all though) and destroys the prospect pool in the process, while TB stays the course and benefits every 2 or 3 years.
I don't expect them to spend like Boston and New York, but I expect them to be consistently in the top ten, and when the opportunity presents itself, be willing to go over their BS Rogers imposed budget. Price is the perfect example of that. Argue about the merits of his contract all you want, but when a guy like that is willing to play in your market, you make it happen, or at least try to. The Jays wouldn't have signed Price regardless of the Boston offer and anyone who suggests otherwise is fooling themselves. You want to talk about Storen. The Jays are giving up some minor league prospects to be named later because they refused to take on Storen's contract unless Washington ate the difference between what Revere made and what Storen made. That is an absolute joke. They are desperate for some bullpen arm and they are more worried about making up a 1.8M dollar shortfall in salaries because they can't go over Rogers imposed salary cap by $1. The Jays have shameful history of such nonsense. Just two years ago they had Erwin Santana signed and he changed his mind last second after he found out the Jays were asking players to restructure their salary so they could sign him. Not signing Santana ended up being a windfall, but the point still remains.
You keep talking about the Jays operate like a normal business so these frugal moves makes sense. Yeah, I agree they are run like a normal business, and that's what the problem is. MLB teams are not normal businesses. There's two reasons why people own major league teams and none of them have to do with daily operations. First and foremost, MLB is an investment. The owners want to keep building the value of the team so they can someday cash out with a huge ROI. The majority of the teams could care less if they ever turned an operating profit. So long as they aren't losing money and the value of the franchise is increasing, they are happy. Wins and prestige are what build the value. The second reason MLB teams are that it's simply a dick measuring contest between rich men. There's a reason why the NFL does not allow for corporate ownership, and there's a reason why there are only two teams in MLB that are corporately owned and both are not very successful franchises from a purely baseball point of view.