Tipping Pitches

@tippingpitchespod.com

Baseball for the many, not the few. A podcast trying to nationalize our national pastime. Hosted by Bobby Wagner and Alex Bazeley. https://pod.link/1265588219 https://tippingpitches.myshopify.com

@NapiChulo Typically when I say small market I consider the bottom 10 markets by MLB market score, mid market is middle 10, big market top 10. though truthfullu it’s more like a triple Venn diagram with a lot of overlap

@trapjpn if you think Major League Baseball players will stop wanting to play in Southern California after every team is contractually obligated to offer the same amount of money, I have bad news for you

@south_side_fan7 you quite literally ARE spending money on the Marlins and Rays. the money you give to your team is centrally shared among all 30 MLB teams. despite your perception that you’re supporting these individual teams, economically speaking you are supporting Major League Baseball

@crewsin1234 The Dodgers don’t defer $1.1 billion, obviously. They put it away in escrow, per the CBA rules (which you’ve never read), like every other team who defers money. Deferred money helps “small market,”non-liquid much more than large market, liquid teams like the Dodgers

@Bill_McAlonan There’s no way to know the exact figure that Pittsburgh gets because they play in markets that MLB assesses differently, and their local revenue picture is not fully public (it’s more than just TV), but yeah, their overall revenue picture is very similar to Miami’s

@snugumbrella I think a “150% of rev sharing” rule makes more sense narratively than financially. You can’t know exactly what your rev sharing is going to be heading into a season, so it would be hard to punish a team for not spending 150% of a number that they don’t know I like floor tax tho

@snugumbrella the craziest part of these quotes is that these teams don’t actually pay for these things themselves!! they either force taxpayers to subsidize it or they take out a hilariously low-interest loan from their close personal friends at JP Morgan or Bank of America

@snugumbrella where are these “reports?” they got $70m in revenue sharing — how could they possibly spend that on recent college grads making $62k a year to look at trackman data sets?

@purpledrank0 without a hint of irony you can draw a direct parallel between this and the housing crisis. very few Americans actually have experience or a functional understand of escrow or net present value

The owners don’t really even try that hard to hide these things! How could they? Anybody with a shred of economics experience can connect these dots Part of what they didn’t like about early-tenure Manfred was that he was constantly putting his foot in his mouth about this stuff

Reporting on leaks from the Pirates org showed that (15 years apart!) the Pirates spent the EXACT amount of money on payroll as they made in gate receipts. That means that their local TV revenue, their rev sharing check (similar to Miami), and ANY other income is mostly profit

Revenue sharing is so much more transformative and comprehensive than 75% (80%? 95%) of baseball fans understand, yet the owners don’t take any flack for it. The Marlins got a $70m revenue sharing check last year, on top of their $70m national share!! Have your cake, eat it too!

One of the things that makes me feel like we (baseball fans) are most cooked: It is a regular occurrence for people in our mentions, while arguing about how to “fix baseball,” to cite a solution that already exists. Like, it’s already a thing they’re doing, outlined in the CBA

@south_side_fan7 I get what you’re saying, genuinely. And I know how frustrating it is as a fan. But it’s really important that we be clear that the fans are NOT a third party in this labor market. They are not part of bargaining at all. Neither are Amazon customers vis a vis ALU-Amazon barg

@south_side_fan7 yes I think we should expropriate these teams, split revenue more equally, and send it back to their communities, but as it stands that doesn’t really seem possible so we have to have nuance about what is best for this labor market (not more handouts to billionaires)

I didn’t hear the Pirates complaining when the Dodgers investing to build a dynasty created the biggest revenue stream the sport has ever seen, trickling the revenue down to make Pittsburgh one of the most profitable teams in the league while losing 90+ games every year 🤷‍♂️