Friday Bantering: Jays bits

Happy Friday. It is all weekend lately. Someone asked what I was doing for the ‘long weekend’. I said every day is a holiday at the moment.

So what I don’t understand about the 50/50 revenue split is that....

Most teams, like the Blue Jays are owned by a corporation and figuring what money the corporation gets is ‘Blue Jays’ money and what part is ‘Rogers’ money. The Jays sell broadcasting rights to Rogers at a discount because why would you own the Jays if you couldn’t get the broadcasting rights cheap.

And of course, the Jays own their build (or Rogers does, I’m never sure how this works) and Rogers name goes on it. Most teams get a corporation buy the naming rights, which would be revenue for the team normally.

When you sit in Rogers Centre, whatever direction you look you see advertising for Rogers. Which is understandable, but how much of that is team revenue and how much of that is Rogers using what they own to advertise.

It is all fine, until you start talking revenue sharing. I mean in front of the Jays ballpark they have a statue. You would think that they would have a statue of a player, maybe a big moment in team history. Joe Carter perhaps. The Twins have several statues of former players around their ballpark. We have a statue of Ted Rogers.

If players are to get 50% of revenue, how do you figure it out?

If I’m a player, I’m not trusting the owners to be fair.

In the Athletic, Jim Bowden has a list of top 10 second basement in the MLB. Cavan Biggio fits in at number 9 (trending upward)

Biggio, like Hiura and Moustakas, profiles more of as an offensive second baseman, but his elite baseball instincts and intelligence, coupled with advanced positioning and shifts should be enough to keep him at the position long term. Offensively, he brings to the table the potential of at least 20 homers and 20 steals for the 2020 season. In fact, last year at both Triple A and the majors, he hit 22 homers while stealing 19 bags in 20 attempts. One of his best traits is his knowledge of the strike zone and ability to spit on pitches just outside of the black edges of the plate. He walked 115 times in the minors in 2018 and 105 times at both the minors and majors combined in 2019.

John Lott sort of reviewed Bob Elliot’s new book:

Bob Watson passed away. He was a player I liked when I was a kid. He had that nice combination of power and on base average that was under valued in his time. His power numbers suffered from playing his prime years in the Astrodome where you had to be part gorilla to hit the ball out.