While I truly enjoyed Sunday's Futures game, Monday's Home Run Derby, and last night's All-Star game, all of that fun is over now. Even the talk of next spring's World Cup takes a back seat now. Soon we'll be back to baseball, but until we are, all there is to focus on is Bud Selig's drivel.
Yesterday Bud gave us this pearl:
While on the surface this comment is wholly encouraging, in reality it's probably anything but. Is there any reason to start believing anything that comes out of Bud's mouth? I didn't think so. It wouldn't surprise me to see moving trucks backing up to JRS as soon as the ink is dry on this morning's paper.
On non-Marlins' topics, but also had a few interesting observations. Aside from shots at the Rays, this one jumped out at me:
For those of you who are scoring at home (and really, I hope you all are), salaries are up 10.5% since 2002 (in 2005, the average salary is $2.6 million; in 2002, the average salary was nearly $2.4 million).
While that doesn't give us any insight into profitability, we do know that player salaries are the biggest expense in baseball. With revenue growth (+ 35%) exceeding growth in salaries (+ 10.5%), baseball clubs should be significantly more profitable this year than they were in 2002 (not necessarily profitable, if you believe ownership, but certainly more profitable than they were before).
Keep that in mind the next time you hear an owner crying poor. One also has to wonder where all of that extra money is going. It's coming out of our pocketbooks and isn't reaching the players - so...