Lazy Man and Money

The Price of a World Series Championship

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It’s being reported today that the New York Yankees have signed free-agent first baseman Mark Teixeira. For much of the last few weeks, their rival (and my favorite team) the Boston Red Sox were rumored to be a front runner in negotiations. It all changed in a matter of a couple of hours when the Yankees made a run and got their man.

The latest signing got me thinking, what is the price of a World Series Championship? With this signing, the Yankees have committed to spending $423.5 million in the last month: $161 million for pitcher CC Sabathia over 7 years, $82.5 million for pitcher A.J. Burnett over 5 years, and $180 million for Teixeira over 8 years. The aforementioned ESPN article notes that the New York Yankees now have the four highest-paid players in Major League Baseball: Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Sabathia, and Teixeira.

This past season the Yankees paid a high price (resulting in a $26.9 million tax luxury tax) which resulted in them not making the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. The absurdity of the situation has columnists suggesting that they sign Manny Ramirez who may command $25 million a year.

Some quick thoughts:

  • The Economy is against the Yankees – The Yankees just spent a lot of money for a new stadium. Ticket prices are through the roof. On one hand, the Yankees are giving the fans a product truly worth watching. On the other, the average fan may be priced out the stadium. In this economy, I would expect people think twice about spending more to go a baseball game. Likewise, corporations are looking everywhere to cut expenses. I imagine at the top of that list you’d find the raised ticket prices for Yankee games. Plus, we know that Lehman isn’t going to be buying any tickets for it’s clients.
  • Big Budgets Don’t Equal Success – I think the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last year showed that it’s possible to compete on a lower budget. Then again we already knew that a big budget doesn’t necessarily make a successful final product. It sure helps improve the odds, but there’s a reason why I own Clerks on DVD and not Waterworld or Pearl Harbor.
  • Do You Believe in Karma? – As a Red Sox fan, I have mixed feelings about this. I remember when the Red Sox were positioned to get Alex Rodriguez only to have the deal fall through and the Yankees pick him up (despite having their franchise shortstop in Derek Jeter). The year was 2004 and the Red Sox went on to win the World Series. The Teixeira signing almost directly parallels that one. I’m never one to put a lot of value in karma, but it make me wonder.
  • Am I in Denial? – It’s quite possible that Red Sox would be worse off with Teixeira. If the Red Sox got Teixeria they would have looked to move Kevin Youkilis to third base and trade Mike Lowell. Lowell has been a very good player for the Red Sox. I don’t think the Red Sox mind their chances with him at third base. In a couple of years when he’s 36, the Red Sox may look to replace him by moving Youkilis to third base and bringing up a star prospect such as Lars Anderson to play first base. So while a bird in the hand (Teixeria) is better than a bird in the bush (Lars Anderson), it may turn out that the Red Sox get 90% of value of Teixeria for 10% of the price (rookie contracts are cheap). That’s a business decision that’s hard to argue with.
  • How Many People Would Take This Offer? – Though it’s ridiculous to think about, and I’m never one to be violent, but with the Tonya Hardings in the world, I have to bring it up. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was a bounty put out there on Yankee players. I’m going to start the conspiracy theory even before it happens. If something were to “happen” to one of the Yankees players this year during a hard slide, I wonder if the instigator would be praised in some circles as The Man Who Saved Baseball. This is the same world where you can join the Bernard Pollard fan club because he injured Tom Brady. That was in a sport where at least each team has the same resources – the Yankees have shown that’s not the case.

Reflections on Red Sox – Yankees (and some weekend links)

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This weekend the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees are getting together for another of their classic matches. (Having lived 8 miles west of Boston for 95% of my life, I fall heavily in that Red Sox fan club.) Though the Tampa Bay Devils (they choose to drop the Devil name, I choose to drop Rays) will probably take a playoff spot this year, it still feels like old times with the rivalry between Boston and New York as strong as ever.

Fans (including myself) often take the rivalry too seriously. You go to a game where the opposing team’s uniform and you are setting yourself for a rough day. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. This ugliness taints what should be a good-natured rivalry.

There are pockets of good coming from the rivalry though:

  • Earlier this year a Red Sox fan buried a Red Sox shirt in the new Yankee Stadium. When word got out the Yankees dug it up…. and promptly put gave it to the Red Sox to auction of for their official charity. The Jimmy Fund is now more than $175K richer… enough to make a difference in more than a few lives.
  • Perhaps not quite as touching the Red Sox made a similar move last month. The Hartford Courant reports, “Last month, the Red Sox scored points in West Haven when they brought a group of seventh-graders from Carrigan Middle School to Boston for a tour of Fenway Park. This came two months after the Carrigan students were denied a tour of Yankee Stadium because their bus arrived two hours late.” I’m sure the Yankees had a clear logistical reason for the issue, but it struck me as a good thing to do (even if it is a little self-serving of the Red Sox).

I’m sure most baseball fans have had enough Red Sox-Yankees talk for a lifetime. That being the case, let’s get to the personal finance links. From inside The Money Writers:

And from outside The Money Writers:

Major League Baseball and The Onion of Evil

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I made fairly sizable purchase last Friday. I called up Comcast, my cable operator and said, “Yes, I’d like to sign up for the MLB Extra Innings package.” My wife and I will pay $160 to watch the next six month of our favorite team, the Boston Red Sox from our San Francisco area home. It hurts me to spend money like this. It seems like living in a different location shouldn’t prevent you from seeing your favorite team. Alas, that’s the way things work today and I have to live with it. I imagine that in 5 or 10 years this business model will go the way of music stores like Tower Records.

There are a few options for Major League Baseball fans living away from their favorite teams:

  • Slingbox – We have a Slingbox back home, but there have been lots of technical problems getting it work with Verizon’s FIOS service. It’s partially Verizon having a complicated procedure for adding new televisions and partially the wiring of my friend’s house. It’s at the point where I’ve become too much of a burden to him and have dropped the subject.
  • MLB Extra Innings – This is the way we went. You give the cable operator or DirecTV $160 (or $200 if you don’t get their early bird special) and you get a set of channels with a bunch of baseball games. If you have the Dish Network, you don’t have this option, they weren’t able to reach a deal with Major League Baseball this year.
  • MLB.TV – This is an option for those who want to stream the games over the Internet. One of the pluses is that you can get a monthly subscription rather than buying a whole season. The price is a more reasonable $120 a year. You are reduced to watching it on a computer or hooking up your computer to your TV. However, the biggest negative is that MLB likes to steal your money or at least they liked to steal mine.
  • Streaming P2P services – I’m not sure these are legal and I bet the quality isn’t the best. Still I’ve heard of people using Sopcast and/or TVAnts to watch games. I don’t really consider this an option, but I’m adding it here for completeness.

On Saturday morning my wife and I woke up excited to watch the game while we do a little Spring cleaning (because of the time zone difference, it’s only 10 o’clock). We turn on the TV and go to our new channels and see that they are showing only four of the days 12 games – all starting at 7PM. I think that’s very odd since there were currently 6 or 7 games in progress.

I called up Comcast. It takes me about 20 minutes to explain to two people that I have no service problems, but an issue with the programming (or lack thereof) being offered. I get put on hold for a quite awhile and as the call approaches it’s one-hour mark, they direct me to InDemand’s MLB Extra Innings website. It seems that the program is their issue and not Comcast’s. I buy that, and the Comcast person is nice enough to give me a phone number for their offices. Of course InDemand’s offices aren’t open on the weekend.

I eventually got routed back to Comcast where I found someone who actually watches baseball. This is helpful because I’m fairly sure the other Comcast reps believed no baseball was being played at the time. He found some fine print about the MLB Extra Innings not being able to carry games during Fox’s or ESPN’s Game of the Week. Well, Fox didn’t have game on, so that couldn’t be it. Wait, looking through my TV guide, they are showing a game at 12:30. So that explains it…

Major League Baseball is paid a lot of money by Fox and ESPN to not show the other games at the same time on that service. It’s a fairly stupid thing, but I’ve never once thought, “The Red Sox game isn’t on, I’ll watch the Dodgers/Padres.” I’d guess that few people don’t have that thought either. If people are willing to pay $160-$200 to “follow your favorite teams” and “get access to ALL the hard-hitting, base-stealing action.”, they don’t care about the game of the week.

It’s at this point where I decided to look at the MLB.TV service again. They claim “April – September: WATCH and LISTEN to every regular season out-of-market game” as well as “WATCH every 2008 regular season out-of-market game LIVE or on-demand.” Eureka! So this how I can watch the Red Sox on Saturday and Sunday when they are not the Game of The Week – “every game” means every game right? There are no asterisks or footnote markets next to those claims. Scroll down the screen and in the smallest, lightest gray text they can manage, they mention that the service is subject to the same Fox/ESPN blackout.

At this point, the Red Sox game was nearly over. They were losing 10-2 and my frustration came to a head. I explained the situation to my wife, who can’t get over the fact that we paid $160 for most, but not all of the games that we got for free in Boston. The best I could do is say that Major League Baseball is an onion of bovine excrement – you pull off one layer and there’s another layer beneath it.

Of course as long as they draw such strong feelings from me (and fans like me), they will be able to continue these practices.