I promised a post on why I think the Giants continue to be as well positioned for the future as any team in baseball. Here's my stab at it. Some of these ideas are interlocking and interwoven and some come from more of a mental picture than words so may be difficult to express clearly in a post. Bear with me, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.
The Dodgers, at long last, finally have what Giants fans have dreaded for almost 2 decades now, ownership with deep pockets, pockets so deep, in fact, there may be no bottom to them! Of course, the ultimate fear would be a deep pocket owner who is also baseball savvy and uses all that money to full advantage in fielding a superior team. That last part remains to be seen. Let's all remember, though, that the Giants may have some long term advantages in several areas that may not be as visible as how much disposable money ownership has to spend on players, but may be as important or more important to the long term health of the franchise.
A quick and superficial way of looking at it is the stark difference between games this season at AT&T Park and Dodger Stadium. If the Dodgers ownership panicked after the most recent Giants-Dodgers series, it was more likely due to the quiet, half empty stadium for the game, particularly games 1 and 3, than because the Dodgers got swept by their rivals from up north. It's more than just one stadium being full and the other half empty too. We have to remember that Dodger Stadium holds about 15,000 more people than AT&T Park so there can be a lot of empty seats and still have the same attendance. Games at AT&T Park have become a joyous, communal experience while games at Dodger Stadium remain a distant, aloof experience where many fans worry more about getting in and out of the parking lot than being at the game.
Dodger Stadium was built for the 1960' and 70's. It has a big, wide open, airy feel. It has a massive parking lot that is accessible from several major freeways. It was built on what I call the Walt Disney vision of the future. While the sight lines are excellent, most of the seats sit back from the field giving a detached feel from the game. I call Dodger Stadium the no-fun stadium because they don't let you bring signs. There is little, if any public transportation access to the stadium as the vision was, like everything else in Southern California, based on the idea of people driving their cars there and driving home.
Walt Disney was a futurist. He created Disneyland and Disney World in his image of the future. Disney's future involved big ideas about bigger, better, faster, sleeker, farther. Travel around the world, travel to outer space, travel under the ocean. When the future actually arrived, though, it was not with a colony on the moon or on Mars, it was in a microchip. Instead of traveling to space, around the world, under the ocean, people could travel to new worlds by staying at home. Instead of going to big concerts, people plugged in headphones. Instead of going to the shopping mall, they ordered things online. If the goal is to simply see a game of baseball, you can see it much better and in more detail by watching it on a HD TV at home, or now you can even go somewhere and watch it quite nicely on your iPad.
So, what is it that people are missing out on in the information age. What exactly is it that will get them out of their internet cocoons? My answer is, a communal experience. I don't need to go to AT&T Park to see a game. I can see the game just fine, thank you, with my HD TV and MLB satellite TV package. Here's why I want to go to AT&T Park to see a game: I want to sit with a bunch of people wearing orange. I want to see the fake and real beards, maybe wear one myself. I want to see the Panda hats and Giraffe hats. I want to see the Melkmen, at least I used to. I want to do the "Whatsamatta with Laaary" chant. Last year, I was listening to a game while driving up to the bay area. The fans were getting on Laynce Nix, "Whatsamatta with Laynce?" "There's no Y in Lance!" THAT's why I wanted to be at that game instead of listening to it on the radio or watching it on TV. I want to be able to give Ryan Vogelsong a standing ovation when he walks off the field and be close enough to see the look on his face. I want to stand and sing When the Lights Go Down in the City with all the other fans in the 8'th inning. Those are all things that AT&T Park gives you that Dodger Stadium can't. Dodger Stadium is a place you go. AT&T Park is a home for Giants fans.
You can drive to AT&T Park and fight traffic and pay a ton of money for parking, but you don't have to. There are a wide variety of ways to get there ranging from walking on foot, to BART to trolleys to even boat! At Dodger Stadium, you pretty much have to drive.
Vin Scully is a HOF announcer. He doesn't really get it though. You can complain all you want about Krukow being a shameless homer, but Krukow gets it. He gives a private pitching clinic every game on TV, but he also sells the AT&T Park experience every single game. He exhorts people to bring their gloves to catch foul balls with and by the time he's done, I can't wait to go to AT&T Park with my glove and try to catch a foul ball. He makes up a silly expression like Gamer Babes from Half Moon Bay and now groups of girlfriends can't wait to get together, go to the park with their sign and be gamer babes from Petaluma or wherever. Of course, they have to buy tickets to get there with their signs!
Make fun of Larry Baer and his marketing all you want. Go ahead and laugh about Hunter Pence and lobster hats. The Giants have elevated marketing the AT&T Park experience to genius levels. Their TV ads have it right. It's the players, the manager, the stadium, the fans. Fans can easily see personal quirks and characteristics of the players from the closeness of the seats and feel like they can participate in the game too. It's not enough to see Brian Wilson's beard on TV. You have to go to the park and WEAR A BEARD!
Of course, winning helps. The Giants are still benefitting in huge ways financially from the World Series win in 2010. If they go several years without making it back to the playoffs, it's doubtful they could maintain the community lovefest they have right now, but it's also doubtful that they could have kept the attendance this strong for this long without the community experience thing either. Fielding a winning team and community participation have to continue to be a two pronged model for continued success. If the Giants ownership and management get that, and it appears they do, the Giants will continue to be as well positioned for the future as any team in baseball.
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Let's say you (any team) are baseball savvy and you have money. When you win, make that if you win, you can never prove that you would have won without money.
ReplyDeleteThere will always be doubts.
No legitimacy.
Better to start out without too much money.
Otherwise, even if you win, people will always say, yeah, but you bought it...
Where is the fun in that?
Good point!
DeleteA baseball franchise probably needs to be backed by some minimal amount of money or have some minimal payroll that is probably higher than, say, what the A's can afford to field a consistent winner. Beyond that, there is not evidence that a payroll that goes over the luxury tax is going to buy you championships. If anything, recent evidence tends to show that if you try to put too many expensive players on one team, you get to a point of diminishing returns.
I've been saying this for years. People like to point out the Yankees as how they can buy championships but don't realize that their string of WS rings in the late 90's were built on the backs of the great personnel acquisitions they did in the early 90's (Sabean was their scouting director then). Once they aged, they started buying a lot of expensive players. As someone I read recently (I think here) noted, the Yankees over the last 10 seasons have made and won exactly the same numbers as the Giants, 2 and 1.
DeleteExcept for the Yankees in the 70's when they bought Reggie, but he was different, I think.
Boston didn't buy their championships either, they had a lot of young talent that supported their push, from what I recall (like the trade with Marlins to bring in key personnel). Even then, they needed a miracle from Dave Roberts to win one of the championships.
Money can get you into the playoffs, but it can't win you the whole enchilada.
About the A's, since the new owners have come in, they have been spending about $10-15M less each season on the payroll, pocketing the money. That would have bought them some good players had they chose to do that. Let's see if they bump up the payroll to keep this team going or not.
Nice post. I want to see a pic of DrB wearing a fake beard fo sho.
ReplyDeleteI had not really thought about the on the field type design much in context of the Doyer Giant rivalry. That is an interesting one. We certainly know whose fans are rabid (maybe a bit too rabid on the interwebz!) and who shows up in the 4th looking for celebrity kiss cams.
Everybody has different opinions on this one, but I am in the welcome the Doyers striving to be competitive and the best in baseball. Now lets beat em.
Glad to hear you found it interesting. I don't put out crazy stuff just to be different, but I do hope I have some original ideas to post from time to time that folks won't get by reading elsewhere.
DeleteIf you go to the Dodgers website, you will see a blurb about how they are spending $500 M to upgrade Dodger Stadium. It sounds like it's kind of modeled, once again, after Disney's idea of a shopping mall next to the park. Also a bit like Universal City Walk. Nothing about changing the basic structure of the stadium because that's not possible to do. Also, 2 lines about being more friendly to public transportation, but nothing specific. I'm not sure if these are McCourt's plans that the new ownership hasn't had time to change of if that's what is going to happen in the future.
I've read that the new ownership wants a brand new stadium. Not sure where they would put it, but I'd recommend as close to a Metrolink station as possible.
My understanding is that the Dodgers just hired away the Orioles person (a woman) who handled stadium renovations, so I believe that this talk is all from the new owners, and not McCourt. Also, the fact that he was in bankruptcy suggests that he could have started any plans to spend $500M on renovations.
DeleteOne rumor I read is that they might go into a joint real estate deal with the owners of the Staple Center, building a new baseball stadium next to it, plus the Disney style (and to me, Universal had that first, with the mall-ization of the theme park experience). Then they would build on Chavez Ravine a huge business and home complex.
Great post Drb.. Everytime I watch a NBC Bay Area telecast from AT&T here in Hawaii, I can see how much fun it is to watch a ballgame at AT&T seeing fans in Panda hats, beards... Thats what makes me want to visit and see a ballgame live which I have.. I enjoyed the experience so much, I didn't really care who won the games .. Does anyone else in MLB market their players better then the Giants? They are brilliant
ReplyDeleteI can relate to your communal experience point.. We once had an AAA team The Hawaii Islanders, who started out playing in a 20,000 seat stadium, which was a great communal experience because the seating was close to the action, many fans could walk to the games, they had great promotions, it was very accesssable to buses, ample parking(my dad use to drive me).. I remember bringing my glove when we sat in the outfield waiting for a homerun to come my way.. Well the stadium had to be torn down because it was too old, and the team was moved to brand new Aloha Stadium which seats 50,000.. The attendance went down because it was too big a stadium for a minor league team, poor assessability to public transportation, so in 1987 they moved away.. It sounds like the Bums need a new stadium..
LG
I've been to Dodger Stadium many times and AT&T Park a few times. I've been to Petco and Anaheim. My personal opinion is the Dodgers need a new stadium. Just because once upon a time, Dodger Stadium was the crown jewel of baseball stadiums doesn't mean it has to last forever. Even Yankee Stadium finally had to come down. IMO, the worst mistake the Yankees made with the new Yankee Stadium was insisting it had to be an exact replica of the old one. I mean, come on! Just admit the RF porch was ridiculous and get rid of it in the new stadium!
DeleteI think the Yankees needed to keep the short RF porch as a nod to Babe Ruth and his legacy. Would have been PR disaster, I think, not to do that.
DeleteNow, they could have made it different too, maybe make a LF short porch too, or a high CF wall to create a pinball effect. So something different, so that there are nods to the future as well as to the past.
Great positive spins. Sabes and Baer just fist pumped knowing that they will forever be the "underdog" now. This is a dream come true for our chicken shit ownership who spends most of their time making excuses, here is one less they will have to invent.
ReplyDeleteThey have a business plan that gives us a reasonable chance to compete each year without sacrificing the future while still paying off our stadium and keeping our home grown talent around and oh is that a record of consecutive sell outs I just saw?
How does a room full of obviously successful business people not realize that all they would have to do to justify signing someone like Prince or Pujols last offseason would have been to raise prices? Oh, right again, they did raise prices but decided to keep the profits instead of giving back to the fans.
I really wish I could have a positive take on this like the rest of you but I think you need to wake up a little and realize that our owners just don't care that much about winning. Their moves are calculated based on the minimum they need to do to compete so they can keep the fans interested.
I wouldn't expect them to make rediculous moves like L.A. is making now but you really can't question the motives of a team that opens their wallets. Boston spent the money to compete with NY but I doubt our ownership has the balls to step it up.
Yes, I am being negative. Yes, I do love the Giants. No, I have no idea why you guys can't figure out that ownership sees this team as a cash cow not as a baseball team.
I just read what I posted there and wow do I have some bent up anger towards ownership!! I like to blow it out of proportion most of the time but this goes back to when Vlad was a free agent, all the Bonds years when all we wanted was one more bat, and now when we still can't find anyone who can hit for power at AT&T.
DeleteI think we deserve better and I think onwership is making a lot of money off of the fans. There are many solutions out there but I see ownership as having a very low risk approach to managing this teams finances and they aren't willing to change until they are proven it doesn't work. Fans keep showing up and their plan continues to work.
Anyways, I actually like the trade as it will make it that much more interesting when we play LA. It should bring attention to the West Coast and who knows, Sabes could pull a rabbit out of his hat or we could end up missing the playoffs for like the 10th time in 11 years!!!!
Well Pato, why don't you just let it all out and tell us how you really feel? LOL!
DeleteYeah, Boston spent the money to compete with NY. How did THAT work our for them? Boston is breathing huge sighs of relief that LA was willing to take that smoldering pile of rubble off their hands! How many championships have the Yankees won in the last 11 years? Here's a clue! It's the same number as the Giants!
I just don't see how you can rag on a team's ownership for being cheap or not wanting to win when they 1. Have a player payroll of $130 M. 2. Just signed Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and Pablo Sandoval to multiyear contracts. 3. Spent $2 M of their allotted $2.9 M on 2 highly rated international prospects. 4. Traded possibly their top prospect for Hunter Pence who is making something like $10 M this year and is arbitration eligible for around $15 M next year.
As for Vlad, that is water LONG under the bridge. It is far from certain that adding Vlad would have won the Giants any more championships either. How many did the Angels win during his tenure there?
Anyway, I certainly welcome alternative points of view on this blog and you certainly have an alternative point of view. I just don't happen to agree with it.
According to Ted Robinson, Vlad would have never signed with the Giants, regardless, because apparently he didn't like Felipe Alou at all.
DeleteBut to DrB's point, that was long ago. Or do you still have a problem with the Cepeda and Foster trades?
And I totally agree with DrB's point about spending. On top of that, I would note that Sabean asked management for permission to sign BOTH Pence and Melky to long-term deals when the trade went down, and that would have been a huge extra commitment and probably raise in payroll for 2013, even with all the salaries coming off. And management signed off on it. Don't know what more you can ask of ownership and management, except for first born and blood.
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteFirst, let me say that your enthusiasm for the Giants and the game is contagious. When the Giants won the series, I could say that I got addicted to the aura of "misfits" and "underdogs" winning it all. Let's face it, the "torture" is kind of fun and perhaps that is the communal experience you address.
I can't say I wholeheartedly think we are really well positioned, primarily because although Sabean is savvy, we did just lose a very good Cabrera and in recent years we have been willing to part with high ceiling prospect arms in order to give ourselves a "chance" to win the big one. Perhaps being "addicted" to winning makes those moves sensible, but the future will require young arms nonetheless. Certainly I view our window to be the next 3 years unless we are able to continue stocking our farm system with homegrown pitchers that will graduate to the majors once Timmy and Zito are likely to depart. If I recall our experiences with Rueter, Schmidt, and the other great Giant pitchers their peak performance is likely not more than 3-5 years at best. And while we thought the mighty Phillies are great with free agent arms, this year has probably shown that Lee, Hamels, Halladay and Oswalt aren't the bulletproof rotation that will last forever.
Those things being said, I love the community of Giants fans and keep the "torture" going. It sure is fun to watch Giants baseball!
BTW, the Dodgers went to Colorado with Josh Beckett on the mound and got blasted 10-0!
DeleteBeckett came within an out of a QS, but their offense, led by Adrian Gonzalez managed just 4 hits off Jeff Francis and the Bullpen Brigade.
So, their record is 1-2 since The Trade.
DeleteOnly high ceiling prospect arm traded was Wheeler. Rosin is not considered one, nor any of the other arms we traded away. We have not had a lot of high ceiling arms recently, Foppert, Williams (maybe), Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Wheeler.
DeleteMeanwhile, we have Crick and Blackburn percolating in A-ball, maybe 3 years away, plus now Stratton, maybe 2 years away if things go well. They are all quality high ceiling prospects, I think. I'm also thinking of adding Kickham to this list given how well he's doing in AA.
Meanwhile, you are comparing the Phillies old rotation (Lee 33, Holiday 35, Oswalt 33 last season), heck, Hamels is 28 himself and he's the baby of their group, with the Giants where Vogelsong is the old man at 34, but Lincecum is the oldest of the younger set at 28 (similar age as the Phillies youngest), Cain is only 27, Bumgarner is a baby at 22. And there are a lot of good pitchers who stay good into the mid-30's, so Cain could be good for the rest of this decade before we have to worry about replacing him, Bumgarner too.
Lincecum, who knows at this point. But with Vogelsong appearing to finally figure out how to pitch within his abilities and him not being particularly fast, he might be able to bridge us until one or more of the young guys are ready to replace him or Lincecum, if need be.
And comparing the Giants old pitchers from that era, 10 years ago, is comparing apples to oranges with this current crop of pitchers. Rueter, Ortiz, Livan, Estes, none of them really compares with our current young rotation. Only Schmidt is comparable, but he was already old when he figured things out and started doing well for us, and on top of that, had a history of arm problems already, so he was a time bomb waiting to happen, even when we signed him to that big contract (luckily it didn't blow up on us, but instead, LA who signed him making him happy because he was a Dodger fan growing up).
If you want to compare, I would suggest Marichal and Perry as more comparable level of pitchers, though I would not say our guys are anywhere near HOF yet, I think they are closer to Juan and Gaylord than they are to Reuter, Livan, Ortiz, Estes. Still, barring injury, our two-some of Cain and Bumgarner should last us this decade, and I still have high hopes for Lincecum lasting at least a few more seasons, until the young guys are ready.
No rotation is ever 100% bulletproof, but our rotation should have a longer shelf life than the Phillies, who piled it on because they realized that they didn't have much time left. They were at the end of their string of good years, while the Giants right now is at the beginning of their life as a perennial contender. If ownership and management does things right (i.e. spend the money and commitments), the Giants should be the Team of the Decade for the 2010's, as I've been predicting for the past few years.
On top of that, our lineup is really looking good. It would have been a heck of a lot better with Melky, but still, 2013 looks good if ownership ponies up (Pagan wants to stay): Pagan, Theriot/Arias/Scutaro (2B), Sandoval, Posey, Pence, Belt, Crawford, Blanco (where Blanco acts as a secondary leadoff hitter since he's good at getting on base). On top of that, Gary Brown still looks good for taking over CF/leadoff in 2014, either Noonan or Panik might take 2B by 2014, and Peguero might be ready to be a cheap option in the OF by 2014. And if Belt ever figures things out and do all that he has shown he could do, he might be the best hitter in the lineup.
I love this post DrB! Was not what I was expecting (more along my reply to Groo), but I loved it nonetheless!
ReplyDeleteAs Krukow said a couple of years ago in ads, "It's Magic Inside!". And a perfect example of what you wrote about here is what he said at the podium when speaking at the World Series parade. It is the experience, not just your own, but the communal one you share with other fans, as well as your loved ones who you bring to the games.
Sports is all about experiences that we can share with others. I can talk about Estes' 2-hitter, the 89 Earthquake game, my attending the 49ers' only loss of the season the year they won all but one game. I can still remember celebrating with my son in the car as the Giants won the NLCS and got into the World Series again. My daughter and I watched Wilson get the Rangers out 1-2-3 in the 9th in a local Costco. I remember crying when I heard Fleming's voice crack when Renteria hit his 3-run homer. I still get verklempt when I hear that call, or even think that call. Sports is all about memory, and sharing of memories and experiences.
You hit the nail on the head with this.