Brinbe wrote:lol as if any one of us should ever feel sorry for **** Rogers. Of all the ownership groups in baseball that could afford the future outlay in this team, it's them.
The perception of teams trying to win every deal and becoming financial economists has warped sports fans' minds that just rewards cheap-ass owners.
"Nobody cares about whether I make money or not," Middleton told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "If my legacy is that I didn't lose any money owning a baseball team on an annual operating basis, that's a pretty sad legacy. It's about putting trophies in the cases.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/phillies-owner-john-middleton-says-he-doesnt-care-how-high-payroll-goes-i-just-want-to-win/amp/
The Phillies' owner is completely right. Giving two **** about contract/salary efficiency is stupid and the sooner fans get out of that mindset, especially in baseball, the better. It makes a smidgen more sense in basketball or hockey due to the cap situations but MLSE should/could easily afford paying tax money.
There's two separate things at play:
- I think it's completely futile to expect owners to lose money, because they are all billionaires, and billionaires do not go out of their way to lose money (and megacorporations even less than your average billionaires). For that reason, contracts do matter, because Rogers simply isn't going to lose money. That doesn't mean one is sympathetic to Rogers, it just means recognizing reality. Moose Jaw will have a MLB franchise before the corporate overlords start willingly running in the red (and for Middleton's talk, he sure as hell isn't running the Phillies as a charity).
- Despite the above, MLB franchises crying poor is absurd. As far as I am aware, every MLB owner with the possible exception of Frank McCourt in the past 2-3 decades walked away significantly richer for their investment, and significantly richer than if they had simply thrown that cash into a Vanguard account or whatever.
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