Breaking Down Baseball : One Out at a Time
The front office trend to lock up young, high-end talent is in full force– Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner signed an extension earlier this week that essentially buys out his arbitration years at guaranteed money (5 years, $35M). When moves like this involve elite talent (Bumgarner, McCutchen, Upton), they have a strong probability of ending up as team-friendly contracts.
As evidenced by the Dodgers soon-to-be finalized sale, the market for professional sports teams has drastically moved away from gate revenue and towards television revenue. That’s not changing anytime soon, especially when fan bases continue to spread out geographically.
A recent WSJ article helps explain some of the nuances of these new television deals that are streaming enormous amount of revenue into the pockets of MLB teams:
Here’s the middle tier of MLB teams based solely on minor league players yet to qualify for their rookie seasons.
The list is made from the average rankings of Keith Law (ESPN), Kevin Goldstein (Baseball Propsectus) and Marc Hulet (FanGraphs). The lower the number, the better the system:
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