I'm sure glad we traded for Grossman

So you're telling me there's a chance?

Aren't we making more than 73million from tv this year? And didn't mlb say they would help with money so next year we should make more than the Astros again? I genuinely don't understand how the tv deal can impact us this much. I understand if we were going from 110 million to 50 million. Or can you explain how we make more tv money than the Astros yet they spend more on payroll. Is it just a simple case of crane willing to spend more of his own money? I've been curious about this topic for a while but never got a real answer.

I think you are talking about 3-4 different numbers.


According to Statista... Revenue is:
Astros: $445M
Rangers: $425M

According to COTs (Projected):
Payroll:
Astros: $242.2M
Rangers: $228.6M

CBT
Astros: $258.6M
Rangers: $250.6M

We're both over the CBT, so, I don't know that we have been at any major disadvantage financially in 2024. Neither team has blown out the spending and neither has skimped. I think "within range" is likely. Revenue seems to be sufficient that I think the real balancing is done with the CBT. There is a financial penalty and at some point could impact draft.

2025 will be interesting.

Eovaldi (34.190) goes Friday night and is 29.0 IP from vesting. His schedule indicates 7 GS left (max).

Assuming he vests his $20M option for 2025...

Without knowing him, but based on how he is with the other/young pitchers the off-season will be interesting.

I think he probably looks to get a multi-year deal. Rangers could benefit from signing him.

CBT and cashflow considerations and how an Option factors in. He could decline the $20M with the Rangers and instead be creative with a multi-year deal.

Goldie Wilson said:

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3 out the last 4. Now if they can go 30-4 the rest of the way I think they'll take the division

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Goldie... keeping it real!

Okay, it's safe to say this guy is pretty good 🤯

Kumar Rocker's final line:

4.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

*his ERA now sits at 0.47 (1 ER in 19.2 IP)

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— Frisco RoughRiders (@RidersBaseball) August 22, 2024

To piggy back off this and to shine some light on the minor league guys, for all the hell Jack Leiter gets he's had a really solid year with RR. He's numbers are 3.66 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, with 101 SOs and 34 walks. He has his issueS, the long ball being one of those, but I'm pretty impressed with the year he's had in stretches.

Tksymm7 said:

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To piggy back off this and to shine some light on the minor league guys, for all the hell Jack Leiter gets he's had a really solid year with RR. He's numbers are 3.66 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, with 101 SOs and 34 walks. He has his issueS, the long ball being one of those, but I'm pretty impressed with the year he's had in stretches.

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Jack Leiter & Kumar Rocker have pitched on the same night in consecutive starts. Totals: 18 IP, 3 runs, 4 walks, 33 strikeouts.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) August 22, 2024

I just want Rocker to come up and be successful so the talk radio inspired mantra of "WhY cAn'T tHe RaNgEr'S dEvElOp StArTiNg PiTcHiNg????" will go away.

Of course, then it will morph into "the Rangers have only developed one starting pitcher", which of course if a lie. Everyone ignores Colby Lewis, Martin Perez and The Dutch Oven like they never existed.

On my way into the office this morning I was listening Cowherds podcast on his network, and while I don't love him (especially when he starts talking politics and what not), I do think he's really good at providing a slightly different angle on issues in sports and how they are linked to other areas.

This morning he was talking about how and why baseball is struggling as a sport, and I think he was spot on. Baseball is struggling because its gotten too hard. This sounds pretty soft and weak, and on one hand I think it is, but the fact of that matter is that it has gotten extremely difficult. Pitchers throwing 99+ have broken the league. It has shrunk the player base in terms of guys who can play this game because fewer and fewer guys can effectively and consistently hit 99+. When your starter is throwing 96, gets pulled in the fifth, and then the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th are all guys throwing 98 MPH sinkers with 89 MPH frisbees that move like a mfer, there are going to be less and less guys who can effectively hit that. Simply put, it's gotten overwhelmingly difficult for normal dudes to hit because of where pitching has gone.

On top of that and like we have talked about ad nauseum, pitchers are getting injured at an astronomical rate which also KILLS your product. Instead of getting to see Spencer Strider or or Jacob deGrom on the mound for a weekend game, you get to see Dane Dunning or some scratch from AAA.

Last point and to tie this all together; these things I have mentioned are a huge reason baseball is struggling for viewership and cannot get a good plan together for TV deals. The Rangers are experiencing these pains more than most, but don't get it twisted, the MLB is being watched less and less by the year. Doesn't matter if you are the Yankees, Dodgers, Astros, Rangers or Royals, everyone is hurting because baseball is hurting.

All the more reason we need the ABS system. Hitting is hard enough as it is without figuring in the weird cross eyed strike zone the umpire is seeing.

Couldn't agree more. The game has gone well past what humans were meant to handle, both at the plate and with the dudes behind them.

This is an interesting point of view, and I can agree with it... though it does kind of contradict itself with injuries causing lesser pitchers to take the reigns.

My thought is, though... hitting (for the Rangers at least) was a lot of fun to watch last year. Why the drastic drop off from last year to this year?

Yes, but even minor league dudes are throwing 98+ these days. And my point about the injuries to big name dudes was more geared towards people being less interested in the game because they have to watch Johnny Wholestaff throw instead of Gerrit Cole or someone else of that stature.

Tksymm7 said:

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Yes, but even minor league dudes are throwing 98+ these days. And my point about the injuries to big name dudes was more geared towards people being less interested in the game because they have to watch Johnny Wholestaff throw instead of Gerrit Cole or someone else of that stature.

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Agree with that too.

I was mainly responding to your bolded point.

It's a slow game with a 162 game regular season.

There's just too many other options out there, and too many other options that have a lot more action per second.

MLB has made some tweaks that have helped -- pitch count leading to faster games, expansion of playoffs so that more teams are still in the hunt come August/September...

But there's just not anything out there that is going to suddenly make someone want to tune into 1 of 162 games.

Is that actually true though? I don't think the average runs per game scored is lower than any other era outside of the steroid era. There are as many home runs as there have ever been.

I agree that baseball has issues, but I'm not sure that it's because pitchers are just too good to be hit. Baseball is very hard in general, and maybe that's why it has lost some luster. Maybe modern humans just can't appreciate a game with a 3/10 success rate for the best players.

It's probably a really stupid analogy, but I think it's for the same reason that some people don't like to use smokers. They love the end product, but they don't have the patience to allow it to cook.

The WS being the end product, it takes a whole lot of patience to watch the build-up necessary to win one, and even more patience to develop a long-term winner. There's really only the Yankees - they've won 27 WS and the team with the 2nd most only has 11 (Cardinals). I would also suggest that in the modern era of baseball, it's increasingly hard to string together championships long-term like the Yankees did back in the 50s. FA and the salary cap being a big part of it.

I really think that baseball has to get in front of the injury issue. I completely agree that it's a turn-off to fans if you can't expect your team to remain reasonably healthy through the course of a season. It's out of control IMO.

I agree with much of what you said.

I agree with a lot of this and also would point out there haven't been back to back WS champs since 99/00. It does make what the Astros have done super impressive. I do think it's fair for us to expect to string together competitive/playoff runs in this window.

Baseball is naturally just a difficult game, no doubt about that. I think pitchers doing what they are doing today has created a really big gap in your haves and have nots. The best players will be able to do their thing against anyone, but your average joes are no longer average because pitching has gotten so overwhelming. They are now flat out "bad" players. This is just speculation, but I think Leody Taveras is a solid example of a guy who might be a better baseball player in a different generation. Instead he's stuck in this one with guys throwing rockets ships to the plate and he can't touch it.

Not to pile on or go on a tangent, but youth baseball isn't helping with long term popularity for a variety of reasons.

First, it's not a poor kid's game anymore. In most areas, if you want to play high school ball, you need to get on a select team. That costs money and most of them want you on the team for fall ball if you want to be on the spring/summer team.

Second, because it's a year round commitment, kids get burned out and a lot of them don't want to play high school ball once they get there. Some of them end up hating the game because they were forced to do it so much.

Third, with that non-stop playing during the development years for coaches that are paid to win tournaments so they can attract more and better players to grow their organization, injuries are going to start showing up in the late teens and early twenties. Avoiding injuries isn't even really an option anymore with pitchers. It's how long can they go before TJ.

I don't know how any of that gets fixed, but my twin boys have started their senior years in high school and we've lived in that world for a long time. I can go on and on about select baseball, college recruiting and all of that, but I'll end it there to avoid too much of a monologue.

Baseball is hard, but if you have a player hitting 99mph isn't that a player that has honed his craft and excelled at baseball?! Hershiser went 59 consecutive scoreless innings, throwing 6 SHO in a row with one being 10 IP. It was some of the most exciting baseball I ever followed.

This article dispels the myth that baseball is dying:
https://www.mlb.com/news/youth-baseball-participation-high-2023

Baseball is a different sport than basketball, football, and hockey and the audience is different. The demographics are different. Baseball is a strategic game that requires attention to detail and forethought. A bit like chess. Hockey is a finesse sport that requires incredible hand-eye coordination and I would argue a much more difficult sport than baseball.

Football is mostly a game of force. It is about running over people and imposing your will on the other team. That is why it is so popular. It requires little to no mental development. I have to listen to year-round radio talk about football and it is all meaningless and dumb and caters to the college journalism major that can talk but not think.

Agree about Leody. I think most of baseball's viewership decline has more to do with society in general than it does the sport.

That said, baseball has been slow to adapt to technology helping the game. Replay challenges were well overdue. The pitch clock was well overdue. Robo umps are well overdue.

People thought the VAR would ruin soccer in Europe and that sport is more popular than ever and they are making VAR even more automated going forward to help speed up the process.

Get stuff right and keep the game moving. That's what people want.

Slow paced game in an increasingly short attention span world. Pitch clock helped a bit, but it's a bandaid.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Slow paced game in an increasingly short attention span world. Pitch clock helped a bit, but it's a bandaid.

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Yeah the pitch clock was well after people stopped paying attention, so it was too late. The people who stuck around appreciate it, but it was too late for some. Baseball has not been proactive. Stubborn, even.