2014 Pirates

[sychmd]

the pirates never drew fans even when they were good. they are always below average for their record compared to others of similar records. that is one reason why they built such a small stadium.

rarely does a football team not sell out (unless playing at the LA coliseum or a truly terrible team in the south). also they only play on sunday so people from up to 3 hours away can come to games. can't do that for baseball or hockey.

hockey, we were lucky getting lemeiux and crosby - both times when we were terrible, the worst team, for a while. the singular players saved the franchises from being moved. sheer fate. not spending because you have it or spending because tons is coming in. but spending to retain monumental talents and not pulling a red sox trading ruth mistake. even after winning 2 cups, higher attendance, and spending, they still were facing bankruptcy. why? pittsburg is not a major sports town that can support a team in signifiant ways so it has to be savvy with spending.

this is also why we can't support a pro basketball team.

 

[element1286]

The Pirates don't have the attendance or the income BECAUSE they don't spend money. Attendance is poor because the product is poor and the product is poor because they aren't willing to commit money toward improving it.

You don't create a shit product and then blame the customers for not buying it.

Now - especially now considering the timeframe on the soon to expire tv broadcast contract - is the time when you ought to be willing to take a loss. Invest in the product. Compete hard for a title. Build interest and good will. Then when you negotiate your new TV deal in 2018 you can enjoy a real competitive advantage for once instead of crying poor all the time. We don't have to be a "small-market" team. No more than the Pens or the Steelers are small market teams. The Pirates are the only one of the three that can't seem to scrape a few dollars together, and you can't blame that on the fans.

You are really comparing apples to oranges.

1. The NFL has a national TV deal, not a local TV deal, there is no competition on TV revenue.
2. Hockey makes next to nothing on TV, and makes money at the gate, the Pens make a lot of money at the gate. They are at no disadvantage.
3. Baseball TV contracts are based on eyeballs on the screen not ratings. The Pirates could have a top 5 MLB TV rating, and the Dodgers could have a bottom 5 TV rating, and the Dodgers would still kill the Pirates as far as # of eyeballs.

The Pirates are a small market team, no 'investment' is ever going to change that in the in the current MLB system.

 

[element1286]

That's why the Mark Cuban 'invest' in the franchise talk is so dumb. There is little to no market potential in Pittsburgh, sure winning will bring in more more, but some people think that winning will bring in exponentially more money. That might be true in a market like Dallas with 7 million people in the Metro areas not true in Pittsburgh with about 2.5 million people in the metro area.

If the Pirates do everything right, they max out in the 15-20 range in revenues, and that means they do everything perfectly. They are more likely to be in the 20-25 range in revenues.

 

[damien232307]

Honestly other than Burnett there was no feasible free agent out there I would of wanted the team to spend money on. To be honest I am glad we didn't get Loney as last year was by far his best season. I didn't want any OF on more than a one year deal because I want Polanco to have his spot when he is ready. Spending money just to spend money isn't a smart way to operate. Granted I wish maybe we could of tried harder on a SP and I think Fister would of been ideal but I agree with the idea of management otherwise

 

[Illinest]

That's why the Mark Cuban 'invest' in the franchise talk is so dumb. There is little to no market potential in Pittsburgh, sure winning will bring in more more, but some people think that winning will bring in exponentially more money. That might be true in a market like Dallas with 7 million people in the Metro areas not true in Pittsburgh with about 2.5 million people in the metro area.

If the Pirates do everything right, they max out in the 15-20 range in revenues, and that means they do everything perfectly. They are more likely to be in the 20-25 range in revenues.

You're off base in a lot of ways. We have incomplete knowledge of the revenue sharing process but there is revenue sharing.
We're also not limited to the range that you've established. The Pirates' population base is comparable to many teams that spend more than 100 million, and not all that different from that of the Cardinals either. It's not even necessarily about population, as the distribution of population is different in western pa than it is in other parts of the country.

Of course here i'm getting into demographics that aren't strictly related to sports discussions and it seems like a waste of time to try to make everyone come together on this. There's too much missing context to get into why i would look at a chart that lists mlb cities by population count and yet be willing to assert that it does not accurately reflect the number of eyeballs.
Just know that i have some basis to believe that the pirates have more fan support than the team's press releases have claimed. And the underlying bias for making thos false claims should be pretty obvious as well (justified cheapness)

 

[damien232307]

I live right outside of St Louis. The Cardinals draw not only from the metro area but most of the Midwest plains and south. They have affiliates in like 20 states. Most of middle America south of Chicago and west of Atlanta north of Texas and east of the Rockies are Cardinals fans. People come from hours away for a vacation to take in a three game series. In Pittsburgh you have Cleveland to the north and Baltimore and Washington to the south that are all considerably closer than the closest team to St. Louis. The Pirates revenues don't come close to what the Cardinals are able to bring in. The closest comparison to Pittsburgh is Milwaukee not St Louis. The Pirates are just limited by geography for potential revenue streams.

 

[Illinest]

I live right outside of St Louis. The Cardinals draw not only from the metro area but most of the Midwest plains and south. They have affiliates in like 20 states. Most of middle America south of Chicago and west of Atlanta north of Texas and east of the Rockies are Cardinals fans. People come from hours away for a vacation to take in a three game series. In Pittsburgh you have Cleveland to the north and Baltimore and Washington to the south that are all considerably closer than the closest team to St. Louis. The Pirates revenues don't come close to what the Cardinals are able to bring in. The closest comparison to Pittsburgh is Milwaukee not St Louis. The Pirates are just limited by geography for potential revenue streams.

Everything you said has been accounted for in my own views, and yet i still think that the pirates are close enough to the cardinals that it shouldn't make a difference. There's a lot more going on than that. For example the displaced pittsburgher phenomenon.
You're also significantly over-estimating the impact of baltimore and washington. I live an hour and a half north of baltimore and you will find pirates fans more frequently than orioles fans here in the midstate. Pittsburgh is more than twice as far away. You're failing to recognize the range of influence that all of the pittsburgh teams exert. Washington is a close fourth in this area btw, but it goes about like this in my estimation: 30% phillies, 25% pirates, 15% Orioles, 15% Washington, 10% Yankees, 5% other.
Each of those cities is closer than pittsburgh.
This has also been demonstrated every time a store enters the harrisburg market for the first time. They inevitably try to play up to the locals by stocking sports team merchandise. In pittsburgh or st loius it's not difficult to figure out, but in harrisburg they always assume that baltimore will be the #1 or #2 draw and they're always hilariously wrong. Target had tons of Ravens and Orioles crap left on the shelves after all of the philly and pittsburgh stuff was gone. Same thing happened in the new supermarket when we got our first Wegmans.

Perhaps the Pirates aren't aware of this? Incompetence. Perhaps they haven't communicated this? Incompetence.

If the story started and ended in the midstate then it wouldn't account for much, but any of you who've traveled should know that it's not just a central PA phenomenon.

Perhaps anecdotes aren't your thing. Well Coonely himself made some ill-advised statements regarding our existing tv contracts. We supposedly are in the top half in terms of tv revenue.

The truism about baseball "not being a tv sport" rings false btw. We already know that the Pirates enjoyed a 25 million dollar increase in shared tv revenue on top of whatever they were already making. You can calculate stadium revenues however you like but it's going to be really difficult to account for a 50-70 million dollar difference in revenue when any two teams are only separated by a half a million tickets, and at any rate the cure for empty seats has already been discussed. You need to give people a reason to come to the ballpark.
Not maroon 5 concerts and fireworks. Competitive rosters.

 

[dare2be]

The only thing I will say about the "displaced Pittsburgher" phenomenon is that not much of that will translate to gate sales. Even the draws from the extended tri-state area are less pronounced compared to the St. Louis area due to the local topography (mountains, tunnels and interstates).

 

[element1286]

You're off base in a lot of ways. We have incomplete knowledge of the revenue sharing process but there is revenue sharing.
We're also not limited to the range that you've established. The Pirates' population base is comparable to many teams that spend more than 100 million, and not all that different from that of the Cardinals either. It's not even necessarily about population, as the distribution of population is different in western pa than it is in other parts of the country.

Of course here i'm getting into demographics that aren't strictly related to sports discussions and it seems like a waste of time to try to make everyone come together on this. There's too much missing context to get into why i would look at a chart that lists mlb cities by population count and yet be willing to assert that it does not accurately reflect the number of eyeballs.
Just know that i have some basis to believe that the pirates have more fan support than the team's press releases have claimed. And the underlying bias for making thos false claims should be pretty obvious as well (justified cheapness)

C'mon the Cardinals, they are a legacy franchise because they have been so good for a long time, and everyone dad's listened to the Cards on the radio in the midwest because they had that enormous radio station, and passes down their Cardinals fandom.

I'm not even trying to argue against the Pirates spending more, just that they will never be a large market, and probably never a medium market, unless Pittsburgh starts growing 10% a year or they ditch ROOT and create their own TV network.

As for eyeballs, you are paying for actual eyeballs as much as you are paying for potential eyeballs. Houston is a terrible team, but they are a large market who has a lot of potential eyeballs, even if they aren't watching now. Pittsburgh has a low cap on the possible number of people who can watch their game. Who are you going to pay more money to advertise on a long term deal, the team with 5m in population with 1m potential viewers in great times, and 250k viewers now. Or the team with 2.5 million people with 500k potential viewers and 400k current viewers. And that doesn't' even get into the fact that many high population cities are also much richer cities as far as income per capita goes than Pittsburgh.

And the underlying bias for making thos false claims should be pretty obvious as well (justified cheapness)

If you want to believe this ok, but honestly think this is pure horseshit.

 

[sychmd]

why doesn't pitt fill the stadium on weeknights last year when they had a great year and were in the playoff hunt, and playing exciting games.

we are not a medium or big market city. it really has only had a couple stretches of success, but not sure what the fan engagement was during those years.
i know we got tickets to game 5 of the 71 WS and it wasn't sold out. unbelievable to think of. i am not sure what it was like in other cities.
1902-1910
1923-29
1959-62
1970-80
1990-92
we were terrible most other years except the 60's were more average.

 

[Illinest]

Atlanta Braves signing RHP Ervin Santana | FOX Sports on MSN

While we're viewing free agents as a "luxury", other teams are trying to build a competitive roster. The tag-line that leads to the article said something like "Braves make necessary addition".

 

[thedddd]

Atlanta Braves signing RHP Ervin Santana | FOX Sports on MSN

While we're viewing free agents as a "luxury", other teams are trying to build a competitive roster. The tag-line that leads to the article said something like "Braves make necessary addition".

There was some desperation with that move. With Medlen's tommy john, Beachy's elbow problems and Minor probably starting on the DL.

But on the side note if he pitches like he did in KC last year he will be worth the money.

 

[element1286]

So the Braves lose a draft pick for one year of Ervin Santana at the market rate, that's a bad deal.

 

[thedddd]

Losing the draft pick was a desperation move due to the lack of rotation help. But I can guarantee the Braves are expecting to compete with the Nats to win the division due to the hopes their offense pans out.

Per reports in Atlanta they weren't over budget for spending and to get the deal done ownership allowed it to happen.
Also with the sudden stadium move coming they need anything to stay competitive and this does scream desperation but it is not like it is a project player, he can contribute now.

 

[element1286]

Yeah definitely desperation, they are getting a draft pick for losing McCann, so that makes this somewhat more reasonable. And it's possible they receive one next year for Santana. But still, that's a lot of events to fall into place.

And then your paying the market rate. I still don't think it's a good deal.

 

[thecrow124]

That is a good deal for Santana, who is the only one I really care about in that entire scenario. It is not a deal I feel the Pirates should do, but with it being Atlanta I am fine with it.

 

[sychmd]

That is a good deal for Santana, who is the only one I really care about in that entire scenario. It is not a deal I feel the Pirates should do, but with it being Atlanta I am fine with it.

unfortunately, ridiculous deals under adverse circumstances often become the standard as most forget the adverse circumstances and just remember the cold hard numbers of dollars for this kind of pitcher.

 

[HammerDown]

 

[steelparrot]

I guess they will wait and see the results, if its a season ender, probably have to trade for a catcher.

 

[element1286]

There are reports Mazzaro is going to be the odd man out. I don't think that gets you much of a catcher, but it's something.