I love Major League Baseball for one odd reason: The game isn’t fair. No sport has been a better model of America than this league. We’re currently in a time where the top 1% control the world’s wealth, the top 10% have most of the money, and the bottom 60% of people having a negative net worth. If you’re in the middle 30%, you’re either split between pretending you’re in the 10%, or finding a way to help the 60%. We’re in an age of ridiculous inflation, which is causing housing and cost of living crisis that will only grow that 60% figure. Those who control the hedge funds at the top of our economy now control the game’s economy. Mets owner Steve Cohen also manages $31.4 billion in global assets with his Point72 Asset Management group. Mark Walter, owner of the Dodgers, controls $325 billion through Guggenheim Partners.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are currently on a spending spree that only they can accomplish. They signed Shohei Ohtani to a $700 million deal, where $680 million will be deferred until after Ohtani’s contract expires in 2033. The Dodgers are getting Ohtani for $2 million a year over the next ten years, but they’ll pay $68 million a year after that for past services. They also signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325 million deal, which also included paying a posting fee of $51 million to sign him from his team in Japan. Together, the Dodgers have committed $30 million a year for the next ten years to two pitchers, with the massive payout to Ohtani to follow. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Pirates have spent a little over $10 million for one year with their combined pitching additions of Marco Gonzales and Martin Perez.
Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting doesn’t control global assets. He controls national newspapers. The Nutting family owns over 100 papers across America, which is a vast empire. Pittsburgh has a surprising historical reach on the news around the country. When the rumor first broke about the Pirates being interested in Jack Flaherty, it came from Jeff Jones of the Belleview News-Democrat, which is a paper owned by former Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy. As we see with the Block family, who can’t run the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette while also providing his employees health care, news isn’t really a profitable business in today’s world. Thus, Bob Nutting is going to be an underdog in the MLB economy that is ruled by the hedge funds. That’s not because those hedge fund managers can inject more money into the game, but because their training revolves around creating asset value in any industry. That’s not the background of the people who control news outlets. One thing about me is I love an underdog — so long as the underdog embraces their opportunity to upset the system. That does come with risk — typically the type of risk that a hedge fund manager is comfortable with, not a newspaper owner. The Pirates can upset this system, but they’re going to need to take on more risk than the Gonzales/Perez type free agents to get there.
THIS WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
The MLB rules committee changed a few rules, including a reduction in the pitch clock time with runners on base. I wrote about the new rule changes, and how it might affect some Pirates pitchers.
Yesterday’s P2Daily looked at burnout while running this site in 2023.
FEATURES
**Williams: Curtate and Prolate Players in Baseball Development. I’ve been working on theories of baseball player development, after spending 15 years following things up close. This column taps into Geometry and Calculus to explain how I see the player development task at hand for each individual organization.
**Williams: The Battle of the First Overall Picks. The NBA has been my own sports escape this offseason. Recently I had a chance to watch the battle of two first overall picks from the NBA draft, and it had me thinking about the right approach for the Pirates to take with Henry Davis and Paul Skenes.
**Williams: Are the 2024 Pittsburgh Pirates a Winner Yet? I looked at the ZiPS projections to see where the Pirates stand after their additions so far.
TRANSACTIONS
**Pirates Designate Andre Jackson For Assignment. The right-hander plans to play in Japan, and I wrote about how that will be a good move for him. The Pirates lose a pitcher who could add a few productive innings at any point during a bullpen game.
**Minor Moves: Pirates Agree With Jake Lamb, Add Two International Players. Lamb and Seth Beer now give the Pirates two backup corner infield options in Triple-A, with Rowdy Tellez in the majors at first base.
**Andrew McCutchen Returns to the Pirates. This move was expected, but a good one. Not only is McCutchen the face of the modern-day Pirates franchise, he’s also still one of their more productive bats in the lineup.
**Pirates Sign LHP Martin Perez. The Pirates have had success the last few years getting reliable innings out of lefty starters. They went back to this strategy by signing Martin Perez yesterday.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 17
SONG OF THE DAY
Into the wild, wild style ghetto child running wild
Where the lions and the owls stay
The powers that be even offered up reprieves
Told us they ain’t take us out if we bow to our knees
But they can give that to the kings and the queens
And the worshipers of idols and followers of things
‘Cause I would rather be in the jungle with the savages
It’s kill or be killed, and I’m working with the averages
