Moneyball Open Thread

You’re kinda entirely wrong…

When Rogers bought the team, the Jays were showing massive losses year after year (like -50m, which means closer to -30m since sports accounting is nearly as cheater-y as hollywood accounting). It took several years to get the losses down to even a reasonable level (like 10-15m/yr). Ricciardi’s initial mandate when hired was specifically to slash payroll while remaining reasonably competitive. He did that. There was nothing about “Do well and we’ll give you more money,” it was just “Make us stop losing money – and fast! – while keeping us from turning into the Pirates.” It’s hard to cut costs while both staying competitive and spending big in the draft.

Furthermore, there are a handful of factors that have changed in both the non-baseball sectors of Rogers (chiefly the purchase, rebranding and, most importantly, eventual growth of Sportsnet, in which they only bought a controlling stake in 2001 (and it had barely existed for 2 years at that point)) and on the Jays-related side (mainly purchasing, renaming, refurbishing the SkyDome). So, again, saying “Rogers has already said it would increase payroll for AA, if the conditions are right. So they are willing to have a larger payroll” and “Rogers has chosen not to follow the same route, at least not up to now” and attempting to port that over to the JP days while ignoring the changes both in the company’s holdings and in the team’s finances is ridiculous and a bit intellectually dishonest. For all you go on about “Or, one can increase the expenses, hoping that this will lead to a better product, and consequently to higher income,” you don’t solve major problems by throwing money at them. Before your plan is feasible, you first have to get to a point of reasonable stability – breaking even or, at worst, turning sustainable losses. Also keep in mind that the Jays are a corporate asset, not a rich guy’s toy – as most pro sports teams are – and thus are beholden to a higher level of financial management than would allow Rogers to go “oh here, have some money, try your best to win. If you don’t win, such is life, we had fun along the way” when they’re already losing upwards of 30 million a year.
(Before you attempt to lambast me for flip-flopping since I’m generally on the other side of the corporate asset debate, you’ll note that I specifically referenced the early years of Rogers ownership, when the team was hemorrhaging cash, not the current day, when the team is, at worst, very stable)

After finally getting the finances under control, Ricciardi was granted a higher payroll ($240m from 2006-08) – yet still miles below what the Sox (400m) and Yankees (600(!)m) were spending – and you know what he did with it? He assembled a teams that won 87, 83 and 86 games over those three years, after winning 67 and 80 in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Let’s stop here to point out that in 2006 and 2008, the Jays would have won the NL Central and West by 3 and 2 games respectively despite their AL-East-heavy schedule massively (especially in 2008) deflating their record.

Obviously I don’t believe JP was perfect or infallible – far from it – but, really, you can’t simply leave out the most important aspects of his tenure and then blame him for not performing up to some at-the-time-impossible standard.

tl;dr No, for much of JP’s tenure, he did not have the ability to do what AA has been doing.

but 120 certainly seems reasonable.

The Jays went as high as 97MM one year, though that was mostly to use up the remainder of the cash committed for the 3 year span mentioned above (which is odd, because I’m pretty sure Rogers committed 210MM/3 years, not 240… maybe, since cot’s doesnt do detailed breakdowns that far back, it was counting non-major-league-roster expenses too.)