What is a New York payroll?
In a series of statements on Twitter, Adam Rubin wrote:
Here’s the reality: The St. Louis Cardinals won a World Series in 2006, stripped down the team, shuffled in 21 new players, then won another World Series five seasons later (while also making the playoffs in 2009) and did it while never spending more than $105 million in a single season (despite one player occupying a quarter of that money). The point is, what Sandy is trying to do is not impossible.
That said, where I do agree with the idea of a ‘New York Payroll’ is in terms of entertainment and relevancy. The difference between New York sports and other cities is that our teams have to compete with eight other franchises, not to mention Broadway, world-class restaurants, historic museums, and a variety of other ways to spend an entertainment dollar.
The Mets current front office will make the case that – and it’s the case every team in baseball (not named the Yankees) will make as well – in order to start spending big bucks on payroll, in order to become relevant and entertaining, the team must first develop a core of young players to lean on (Pedroia, Youklis, Elsbury; Rollins, Utley, Hamels, Howard; Posada, Jeter, Mariano, Pettitte, etc.); after which it can pull from a larger revenue stream (when they start selling tickets in Augusts and Septembers) so they can spend more and keep things sustainable.
The general rule is: MLB teams break even at the All Star break, they turn a profit from a pennant race and it’s all gravy in October. So, by struggling in the second half as they have over the last few seasons, revenue has dipped for the Mets and so their spending must dip accordingly. In other words, the goal is to ramp up to success and sustainability, because (as we’ve seen SO MUCH in the last decade) the only guarantee in baseball is that if you compete, get hot and get to October, anything can happen. This idea of using your off-season to build a post-season roster is laughable … just ask the Phillies. It’s about putting yourself in the best position every year to simply get there, after that it’s pretty much a crapshoot.
I get this. It makes sense to me. However, because the product in New York must be entertaining in a way that it can compete with other things (so to bring in that revenue), keeping a player like Jose Reyes should take on a different meaning for the Mets than it might for a team in a different city. And so, viewing him strictly as a ‘baseball player’ with a specific skillset and value – to me – is incomplete. Of course, I am pretty certain this front office would then tell me I’m being myopic, because success and sustainability (with or without Reyes) will be entertaining. The thing is, how long will that take, and what are we die-hard fans suppose to watch in the meantime?
