2011 Mariners Payroll Will Not Drop
by Jeff Sullivan on Nov 11, 2010 5:27 PM PST
in Seattle Mariners Regular News
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PrintI don't really want to write a post about the Mariners. Not a day after Dave Niehaus' passing. It feels a little too soon. I don't know when it won't feel weird to write about something else, but I know it feels weird tonight.
Nevertheless, I think this is sufficiently important news that it merits some kind of mention. If you can forgive me for changing the subject real quick:
Earlier in the day Wednesday, however, it was all baseball at Safeco Field. It was the annual owners' meeting, and the owners set the budget for the 2011 season.
According to a source who was in the room, the Mariners, whose problems in the 2010 season started when they trimmed about $10 million from the 2009 budget, won't be going down that road again.
"The player payroll for the 2011 season will not go down," the source told FanHouse Thursday.
Now, Matthew has already established that, even with a similar budget to last season, the Mariners won't have much money to play with this winter. Guys like Felix, Ichiro, Chone Figgins, Milton Bradley, and Carlos Silva are eating up a lot of scratch, and there's little wiggle room left.
However, remember that attendance was down about 5% last year. It would've been very, very easy - and justifiable - for ownership to say that, okay, we can't make that kind of investment again. It would've been borderline unmanageable, but it would've made financial sense.
So, overall, this is good news. The M's won't have much money to spend, but they will have some, and they could clear further space by, say, moving David Aardsma, or Bradley somehow in a deal where they don't cover the whole cost. Basically, there are options.
A little theory of mine is that, in any given offseason, there exists some combination of doable moves that could turn any team into a championship contender. Hopefully Zduriencik is able to figure them out.
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According to the referenced article, the M’s owe Milton Bradley $2 million more than King Felix next season, and $1.5 million more to the Cubs for Silva than they owe Gutierrez. No wonder they can’t put a good product on the field.
Yes, Bill Bavasi is responsible for Silva, but surely you aren’t blaming the Cubs for Milton Bradley’s crappy contract, Jack Z did make the decision to take it off their hands. Talk about throwing good money after bad, though I have to admit, at the time I thought anything would be better than having Silva on the team another season.
The only extra money spent is the money sent to the Cubs to take Silva off of our hands.
The organization didn’t decide to pay Milton Bradley $2 Million more than Felix Hernandez. The Cubs and Bill Bavasi constructed the contracts paying the two players as much as they’re getting paid.
(On a side note: Always include a subject in your comments as it is a rule here)
Do people really think
that the 2010 problems amounted to a $10 million payroll shortfall?
I mean, obviously you can’t add $10 million to the 2010 roster and come up with a contender. But is there a prevailing theory that the budget cut caused some kind of chain reaction of moves, all of them disasters?
by Jay on Nov 11, 2010 6:19 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
Rec'd for being ballsy enough to continue to be consistently wrong in public.
... I wish he was here. November 10, 2010
by CapSea on Nov 11, 2010 7:00 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Had the M's returned the same payroll in 2010 as they had in 2009, the offseason would have been different
Who knows how things would have played out.
by Jeff Sullivan on Nov 11, 2010 7:19 PM PST up reply actions
"A little theory of mine is that, in any given offseason, there exists some combination of doable moves that could turn any team into a championship contender"
Your theory got me thinking; most likely, most moves that a 100+ loss team could make (or WOULD make) will NOT result in turning the team into a championship contender. So how badly did 2009 screw with Mariner fans’ expectations? I mean loosing 100+ games two seasons after loosing 100+ games is not that unthinkable, especially when you consider how little help there was in the upper minors at the end of 2008. But win 85 games, add Cliff Lee, and BOOM, playoff contender. And that reasoning made sense to everyone, both Mariner fans and non-Mariner fans alike.
Hasta tu suenos.
It was because 2009 was a mirage.
We kinda fell into that “oh so last year we’re so close now we just need to add more names” type of deal again in 10 like we did in 08. A lot of the smarter fans when we had the success in 09 never thought we were a contender in 10, but 11. Jack Z made some smart moves last year, but his gamble of pitching+defense failed. The base of that theory is still there, but the Mariners desperately need some type of offense to make that theory work
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul - Invictus
The offseasons preceding 2008 and 2010 were different.
2008 was betting the farm that one pitcher would push the team over the top. 2010 was a collection of gambles on high variance players on short contracts.
2008 crippled the farm system. 2010 only left the budget a bit worse off than it was before but managed to improve minor league depth via Cliff Lee.
And of course I forget that Chone Figgins exists
but at least he didn’t cost the team Jones, Tillman, Butler, and Mickolio.
At no point last offseason did I feel we got fleeced.
2008…
Dawg! He put da team on his back!
Well, there was the Morrow trade
but that still didn’t approach the fleecing of the Bedard trade
Yeah, that didn't end up too well.
But at the time I remember being so frustrated with the whole situation I figured if Morrow was going to be successful, it probably wasn’t going to be here.
Dawg! He put da team on his back!
Yeah - that's a tricky assertion
I think it’s more appropriate to say that the possible combinations of moves range from moves that create a solid foundation for future progress on one end to moves that hamstring the team for years to come. Our hope is that the front office is sufficiently savvy to consistently select options that create success as compared to failure.
This is not the same thing as moves that might turn a team into a championship contender. Sometimes, due to the luck of the draw, bad process leads to good results. I don’t think we want success that is based on a serendipitous stroke of good fortune. What I mostly want from the front office is good process, as that is the optimum way of consistently producing good product.
That doesn’t mean that good process always produces good outcome. It means that over the long haul, though, good process will increase the probability of yielding good outcome.
My hope is that, despite the results of 2010, the Mariners front office will continue to recognize the importance of good product, and not neglect that in 2010- other teams that recognized defense was undervalued in the market had different results from the Mariners (hello San Diego).
Part of having faith in a process is trusting the process even when results in a specific occasion don’t necessarily follow. In the short term good process can lead to bad results. It does not liogically follow that the process must therefore be bad.
"Most all good Americans hate the Yankees. It is a value we cherish and pass on to our children like decency and democracy and the importance of a good breakfast." - William B. Mead
by Steve Nelson on Nov 11, 2010 9:51 PM PST up reply actions
Baseball is business first, sport second.
It seems to be if you’re in the biz of running a baseball team, (which I’m not, so add the salt here), you don’t base the business aspects of the game (like payroll) on how well your team is doing. From a business cost/benefit point of view, saying “we’ll add $XX million in payroll and because we’ll get better, we’ll reap $XX million + $YY million in income” is crazy. If your guys gets hurt, unlucky, or whatever, you’re out your $XX million.
I’m guessing the payroll is more determined by the larger business issues at hand. We make $X on our TV deal, we sell about $Y worth of tickets, beer, jerseys no matter how crappy the team is, we pay $Z amount for our stadium, etc.
Whatever is left over you put towards profit and payroll. If you’re the Yankees, that leaves you $200 million. If you’re the Padres, you’ve got $40 million.
If your team does awesome and you rake in the cash, good for you, but I don’t think any team (other than perhaps the Yankees) has ever wagered profit on winning.*
I’m not saying the overall picture of your revenue or income won’t change over time. Certainly if you put a losing team on the field ten or twenty years in a row your overall business will be affected, but I’m guessing the budget for payroll and such floats above issues like losing 100 games twice in 3 years.
- perhaps “has ever wagered being profitable on winning” is more appropriate here, but you get my drift.
doh
That last bullet point is the other end of my asterisk. The site changed it from * to •
by doublemazaa on Nov 11, 2010 10:30 PM PST up reply actions
Well I certainly hope it wouldn't go down. Especially when I read things like this:
“The Rangers have enough spending power to add Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez, according to Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. Texas is pursuing both free agents and has approval from ownership to boost payroll above $90MM. " -From MLB trade rumors.
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