The Business of Baseball

Question: Can you do anything about equalizing the revenue source for the various Major League teams? I look at the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers and it seems to me they'll never have a chance against the Yankees or the Red Sox and some of the big revenue-producing teams. Is there some way you would equalize the revenue to make the game a little bit more equitable?

Question: I have been working with a number of companies looking at complex business problems. One of the things that struck me about Moneyball, and some of the other things around baseball, is now there is this great quantitative focus on evaluating individual players, as you were saying. What I think is missing is looking more at a broad portfolio and thinking about players, especially in baseball where you have a unique situation of players being developed all the way from high school or college to the minor leagues and to the major leagues. How much quantitative study is being done in terms of treating the entire player development system as a dynamic portfolio management as opposed to focusing on the value of individual players?

Question: There has been a lot of hostility expressed towards the Moneyball style of general management around the world of baseball. Do you think that will start to change twenty years from now when people like Theo and Paul DePodesta and Billy Beane are running every kind of major league organization or do you think those inefficiencies will stay intact for a while?

Question: One of the ways in which the business of baseball has changed the role of the manager over the last thirty or forty years is that I think teams now need someone who is much more like a manager than a leader. The personality of Earl Weaver, who thirty or forty years ago was successful, I'm not sure would be successful today. I'm wondering how applying the Bill James and the quantitative approach affects how you go about finding a manager.

Question: A couple of years ago we were at Fenway and a kid in front of us had a T-shirt that said, "If you think my music is too loud, you're too old." With that context, I'm really curious about the environment that you're creating at Fenway. Some of us that are too old think the music is too loud, and I feel that way when I go to Camden Yards, too. Is there a dollar and cents reason for creating the environment that you are at Fenway, these days?

Question: Peter, you said that over the last ten years one of the most important events that happened in baseball was the opening of Camden Yards, which really brought the fans back and made them more of the "king." We have a lot of the same players now at Fenway who were instrumental in doing Camden Yards. We have seen some of the effects, such as the monster seats, the right field roof seats, the larger concession areas. I realize you are really maximizing your revenue streams, but it looks like there'll be a point in the near future that you really won't be able to get any more revenue out of Fenway Park. What are the contingency plans to go into the future?

Question: To return to the statistical approach to baseball, I was wondering if there was any concern amongst the panelists as to whether that approach might be subtly corrupting, in terms of the long-term future of baseball. With players now thinking about these numbers and thinking about this matrix, there's feedback that might change their practice routines and might ultimately affect the flexibility of the player. You have guys who might fundamentally change how they approach the game. What you might end up with is the same thing that happened to the record industry in 1969 when they started implementing playlist...: it became fairly statistical. Is this bleeding the patience out of the game, or bleeding the risk-taking that players have to take, in some sense, in order to be a complete player?

Question: This is mostly for Tom, but also for Peter who goes to a lot of parks around the league. Do you worry about the rising costs of attending a game for a middle class family and how that will affect baseball 10 - 15 years from now, when the cycle of popularity drops again. Looking back to the time of the strike and the lock-out years when fans were not as ready to come to the park. If kids have not had the excitement of being in a park because it's so expensive for their families, what will carry baseball through in 2020, 2025?

Question: I hope you won't mind if the last question is baseball, rather than the business of baseball. I've been watching baseball for 45 years and 15 years with my son. We see numerous things that managers do, and announcers say that we don't understand and they repeat these things over and over. Here are just three and see if we can get your reactions: One, why is it only a left-handed batter who is able to drop the bat on a low inside pitch? They never say " Oh, the right-hander, don't throw him a low inside fastball, he'll drop the bat on it." It's only a left-hander. Second one is about runner on third, extra innings, last at bat, the home team is up. Inevitably, the announcer calls (and often the manager does) to load the bases first thing, nobody out, runner on third. Why in the world is the defensive team better off with the bases loaded? You load the bases and it's much worse for the defensive team, in our view, and they do it over and over again. Here is the last question. It deals with Derek Jeter. We're Met fans, so naturally we root for the Red Sox. Derek Jeter has for years profited from hitting the ball forty feet behind first base, Texas leaguers. Until this year, he never seemed to want to or be able to hit the ball to the left side. You never hear talk of a Derek Jeter shift. They always are playing him straight away as if he's going to pull the ball, which he never does. How many games have been lost to people playing the Yankees by balls being hit right over first base, not very hard, by Derek Jeter. Why aren't they moving somebody over there?