Florida Marlins contracted?

by craig on Mar 3, 2009 1:29 PM EST in News and Rumors

I know this much, it won't happen anytime soon and probably not ever.

Over the weekend, Bill Madden speculated in a column in the New York Daily News that both the Marlins and Oakland A’s could be candidates for contraction with their ballparks off the table (A’s) and on the ropes (Marlins). In his column, Madden addresses Sarnoff’s demands for the city and county to receive naming rights and the profits if the Marlins are sold. He even invoked a former Marlins owner, who also couldn’t get a ballpark financed, when he wrote: “…and more and more it appears former Florida owner John Henry was right when he said there is nothing more impossible than south Florida politics.”

According the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) no team can be contracted in the present agreement. The present agreement doesn't expire until 2012. And even after that there is no way the Players Union will agree to reducing the number of teams.

The A's and the Marlins have very astute GMs and they know how to put a competitive team on the field with a small payroll. Move them? Maybe. But you don't contract proven successes.

Rob Neyer had this to say:

Maybe baseball can't survive in Oakland or Miami in the long run. While I think that's unlikely, I'm happy to entertain the possibility. But either way, both franchises are worth a great deal of money to someone, and merely saying that baseball has "too many teams" doesn't make it true. I made a prediction eight years ago and I'm happy to make it again …

You'll see expansion before you see contraction. Baseball should expand, not contract. And it will, eventually. So maybe we should start talking about the e-word.

I fully agree. Your opinion may differ.

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Comments

C word

Economically, it can sometimes make sense to contract a team. It especially makes sense in a sport with an enormous pool of national revenue. Basically if you assume that getting rid of the 2 weakest teams will not affect national revenue that much, then that would mean there is 7% more annual revenue available for the 28 remaining teams. Like every thing else, it all comes down to dollars. You take that annual revenue and convert to a present day lump sum value, then if it costs less than that to buy off the teams and pay any other contraction costs (lawyer fees, leases, guaranteed contracts) then it could happen.

I just don’t see how a team could ever get 200M to go away. In baseball they could probably only afford 100M or so, while in hockey it would be 50M or less. There is also no sense in contraction when you have another sucker city waiting to give you money, but in this economy there are not many cities like that left (if any that could pay enough).

by elricsi on Mar 3, 2009 7:15 PM EST reply actions