Nationals Arm Race

Nats fans have seen Adam Dunn do this for the last time. Photo: seasonticketdc.com

Several years ago, I began a rant about the Nats payroll levels vis-a-vis our market size that essentially continues through to today.  Washington DC as a market is clearly a large market:

• We are 7th in total population (when measured by Metropolitan Statistical Areas); just behind Miami/Ft. Lauderdale and Dallas and just ahead of  Houston and Detroit.
• We are 9th in terms of DMA TV households (just behind Atlanta/Boston and just ahead of Houston and Detroit again).

And yet, in 2010 we had the 23rd ranked payroll of the 30 teams, spending just $66M in salary (2010 opening day number).  Meanwhile the teams located in comparable cities spent much much more.  Houston had a $92m payroll, Detroit $122M, Atlanta $84M.  Miami and Boston are outliers for separate and obvious reasons (Boston essentially services the entire NE area while the Florida Marlins owners are the worst examples of owners taking advantage of the revenue sharing system in the league).

According to my estimates (available here or via the link in the Nats Creations section to the right), the Nats (as of publication) have $29M committed for 2011, and likely will have a payroll that is around $46.5M once all arbitration cases are settled.  Notice this is almost exactly $20M less than in 2010 (Dunn at $12M and Guzman at $8M neatly equal the delta).

Clearly, the Nats need to be increasing payroll.  I’m pretty sure this is one of the reasons Kasten left the team frankly; I don’t think he saw eye to eye with the Lerners in terms of payroll outlay.  Certainly not in terms of the 2009 opening day roster team, which was an abomination of a roster and successfully gutted the season ticket base and fan satisfaction leading into the new stadium.

BUT, and this is a large But, we should not just arbitrarily spend money just to spend it.  So we have a conundrum.  With Vazquez and De La Rosa off the market, the FA pitcher market is, as Jayson Stark put it, a disaster area.  With the exception of an experimental flyer on Webb, I wouldn’t want a single guy left.  Jon Heyman ranked the top 15 or so FAs and it has to be one of the weakest FA markets ever.  Of the hitters out there, we definitely could use them (especially Werth in right and Crawford in center, as well as the probable eventual signing of Pena for 1B), but the question is, will they come to Washington?  Why come to the Nats if a perennial playoff contender comes calling with more money and longer guaranteed contracts?  Isn’t that why Dunn just left?

Tom Boswell put out a post expressing some worry about the Nats and this off season, only somewhat alluding to the payroll issue.  And I agree.  Who knew that we’d be seeing a spending spree this off season, after two relatively frugal off-seasons preceding it.  Now that Dunn has left, one has to wonder what the team really should do.

I’m afraid the Nats are stuck frankly.  We have money to spend, and NEED to spend money to show some good will towards a fan base that clearly sees the Lerners as incompetent, penny pinching and too cheap to really deserve a $600M baseball team.  But, who are we going to spend this money on?  At this point the best moves seem to be to try to acquire guys via trade ( Greinke or Garza come to mind) but these guys will cost us what few prospects we actually have right now.  Is it worth it to give up 4 upper end guys to acquire 2 years of Greinke’s services?

As much as I hate to say it, I believe the best course right now is to NOT spend money, play out 2011 with what we have (and perhaps a couple of lower end, one-year FAs) and regroup for 2012.  Let our prospects play and get experience, find out if the likes of Espinosa, Desmond, Morse, Morgan, Bernadina, Ramos, Zimmermann, Maya and the rest of the bullpen are really quality guys.  Trade Willingham for more kids. Wait for Strasburg to get healthy. And go firing into NEXT off season with a vengeance.

I wonder how much this Qatar-ian paid to win the 2022 world cup.

Russia to get 2018 World Cup, and Qatar to get 2022.

SI’s Grant Wahl already has a story out beating me to this rant, but i’ll say it anyway.

FIFA has to be the most corrupt, the least transparent, and the most egotistical organization out there.  I’m not necessarily saying that Russia or Qatar are necessarily bad choices.  Russia represents the first time an eastern European country hosts the WC, and the trend in both Fifa and Uefa has been to try to get more interest in European soccer out of the 3 power leagues and further east.  Qatar would be a decent choice to bring soccer to the middle east, since money leagues in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar itself are starting to be come somewhat legitimate alternatives for players as they wind down their careers.

But clearly, there were two better choices.  England is without question the epicentre of world soccer right now.  Real Madrid and Barcelona may be (arguably) the 2 biggest and best teams in the world but the payroll, the player diversity and the coverage of the EPL is without peer.  In terms of European Rotation, England clearly is the next in line.  Every major western european country has now hosted the cup and it should have gone to England.

Meanwhile, the USA bid made so much sense for Fifa that it is mind boggling that it was turned down.  The two “downsides” of the USA bid were these: 1. distance between cities and 2. heat of american summers.  Uh.  Lesse; to get from Moscow to the other side of Russia is an 10 hour flight.   And its 130 degrees in Qatar in the summer.  Yeah they can air condition the stadiums but you can’t friggin air condition an entire country.  The USA hosted cup in 1994 remains to this day the most attended and most profitable cup ever hosted, and since we’ve simply upgraded most  major hosting facilities (from RFK to fedex, from Cowboys stadium to the “new” cowboys stadium, etc) to promise even more revenue and more attendance.

The voting results show some very questionable voting patterns.   How is it possible that England received only 2 of 22 initial votes for 2018??  Is it because English politicians and reporters have spent the past 2 years showing just how corrupt FIFA officials can be (exposing voting promises and bribery attempts at the highest levels). Likewise, the USA was clearly the country that made the most sense for 2022, yet received FEWER first round votes than the Korean Republic, who JUST hosted the cup and (frankly) shouldn’t be considered for another 40 years.

The only bright side to this is that the USA is probably a mortal lock to host in 2026. Why? They seem to be in a “2 off, 1 on” pattern of moving the cup in and out of Europe.  And they want to move it around to different federations.  Russia, Qatar means 2026 goes to another non-european federation and it almost clearly will be Concacaf.  By 2026 Europe, South America Africa and Asia will have had cups since North America last hosted, and there probably won’t BE a selection process (similar to the way Brazil was basically given 2014) for 2026.

Still.  Hard to stomach such clear sleaziness in the voting.  Two votes for oil-rich countries given all the known vote buying and corruption says to me there was more chicanery than the public knows about.  The losers here are the die hard fans of the losing countries.