“Nobody loves me, nobody cares,
Nobody picks me peaches and pears.
Nobody offers me candy and Cokes,
Nobody listens and laughs at me jokes.
Nobody helps when I get into a fight,
Nobody does all my homework at night.
Nobody misses me,
Nobody cries,
Nobody thinks I'm a wonderful guy.” –Shel Silverstein, poet and singer/songwriter

Shel Silverstein didn’t write this about the Marlins. For one, he died just a few short years after the club was christened in South Florida. Certainly, the Marlins are loved by some, just not by as many as they could, which is to say the current owners haven’t done themselves any favors. In poll after poll, column after column, Jeffrey Loria is ranked as the worst owner in all of North American professional sports.

Whether it was the release of the movie“42,” the anniversary of Hank Aaron surpassing Babe Ruth as the all-time home run leader, or one of many articles each year telling baseball it has an “issue,” Major League Baseball decided recently it was time to create a task force to deal with the decline of African-Americans at the highest levels of the game. Baseball, like other professional sports leagues, likes to create this type of task force. It shows that the league cares, and well meaning be damned, is often stocked with people that likely aren’t difference-makers. Recommendations will be made, but they will be around things that don’t get at the heart of the matter, because those things are difficult—if not impossible—to fix.

The “problem” isn’t really a problem in the way that MLB’s task force is likely to look at it. It’s about the change in society, the growth of other sports, the power of television, the internet, how fast players can transition, the growth of other minority groups now playing the game, and, yes, marketing.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

We often think of baseball players as being the Boys of Summer. We envision the warmth of the sun on our face while we are laughing with the kids who are on break from school. The ballpark experience is the full embodiment of “summer.”

The problem is, we’re not quite there yet. Just because the 2013 season is underway doesn’t mean that we’re getting summertime weather. Far from it.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

"I don't know how anyone can put on a uniform and not care about winning.” —Dave LaPoint

"I was trying to win at all costs" —Lance Armstrong, after admitting to PED use

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Attendance is a funny thing in Major League Baseball. Oftentimes, we pay so much attention to the correlation between paid-attendance numbers and on-field performance that we forget that the team’s performance during the previous season can have just as much of an impact on how many fans come to the ballpark.

Since we at Baseball Prospectus have just rolled out PECOTA’s player and standings predictions, I decided to go one step further and use this data to project teams’ attendance marks. Using historical data, the latest “Red Book,” and examining what has gone down in the offseason, here are my attendance predictions for each American League team. (Part two of this series, on the National League, will run next week.)

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Several years ago, when I was deep in the throes of researching Major League Baseball’s labor past, I contacted former MLB Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller to ask him some questions about the defining early moments of the players union. I knew well of Curt Flood’s struggles and eventually the Peter Seitz ruling that allowed for free agency. It was well documented, and only a scrub would phone Miller without having that information in his or her back pocket. But, I had latched onto another labor facet that preceded free agency. It was still fuzzy, but the impact of salary arbitration seemed larger than it was often portrayed, taking a back seat to the struggles of Flood and the breaking of the reserve clause. So, as I talked to Miller, I brought up the subject.

“Which was more important, achieving salary arbitration or free agency?”

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Depending on what you read, clubs in Major League Baseball are either making a massive profit, breaking even, or, if you listen to the owners, often running in the red. Since baseball is a private industry, trying to determine the truth is a matter of educated guessing, wild hyperbole, or a case of “no comment” coming from the league and clubs.

So when an owner talks about the financial status of the club he runs, it prompts a fair amount of discussion. As we’ve seen with the leaked financial documents from the likes of the Marlins and others, the truth typically is on the side of ownership not only making a profit, but a handsome one at that.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

First, it was Manny Ramirez. Then, it was Melky Cabrera. More recently, it has been Bartolo Colon, Gio Gonzalez, Nelson Cruz, and Alex Rodriguez. Now, according to a report by SI.com’s Tom Verducci, Detroit Tigers shortstop Jhonny Peralta has been found in the records of Tony Bosch and Biogenesis, the wellness clinic in Miami that is being coined the “East Coast BALCO.”

Read the full article...

Taking stock of the Yankees this offseason is a little like watching The Walking Dead. With the injuries to Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, the left-side of the infield has decimated, and who knows how their future Hall of Fame closer, Mariano Rivera, will rebound from his injury last year? At a time when getting aggressive in free agency would be part and parcel for the Yankees, they are, instead, paring back. As strange as it sounds, “fiscal restraint”—whatever that is for the Yankees—has become a hot topic. In interview after interview, be it Hal Steinbrenner or Brian Cashman, talk of getting below “189” seems to find its way into the conversation.

For the uninitiated, “189” is a reference to MLB’s luxury tax ceiling of $189 million in player payroll that is set to hit in 2014. The Yankees have said that they are serious about getting under the figure by then, when the tax rate for the club would hit a whopping 50 percent for every dollar over that $189 million threshold. Last year, the Yankees had a luxury tax bill of $13,896,069, and they’ll certainly be paying again this year when the end-of-year payroll figures are released just before the holiday. As of 2011, the Bronx Bombers have paid $206,109,142 in luxury tax penalties, or 91 percent of the $227,119,157 total collected since 2003. It’s been painful to the Yankees’ wallet, so getting under that $189 million threshold is all about avoiding the luxury tax, right? In part, but there is something else to consider.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Few recent club sales have altered the landscape in Major League Baseball as quickly as that of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Whether it was the unprecedented purchase price of $2.15 billion, the flurry of trades that including taking on over $163 million in contract dollars as part of the blockbuster trade with the Red Sox that included Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, or the media rights deal that the club is on the cusp of completing that is reported to be between $6-$7 billion, the Dodgers have become a juggernaut. The public face of the Dodgers now rests with Stan Kasten as their president and co-owner. On Monday we caught up with him at the Winter Meetings and asked him about his new position in LA; how the ownership group was assembled; what Magic Johnson brings to the table, and; how that massive TV deal factors into what the Dodgers do, not only now, but years to come.

Read the full article...