You get what you pay for: the AL/NL discrepancy

[Triumph36]

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I think if you put an exciting product on the field, the fans will show up. Boston and Atlanta are 2 good examples of that. In the early 90's, Atlanta had an extremly exciting team to watch, and the city became a baseball city seemingly overnight. As the team got older and more predictable/less exciting, the fans stopped showing up in hordes. A similar situation happened in Boston in the late 90's, but they've managed to keep an exciting team on the field for a long time.

Teams like NYY and NYM will always have a huge fanbase and tons of money/resources. You can certainly make up for lack of a huge payroll by having superior talent evaluation/development at the minor league level, teams like Minnesota, Oakland, and the Brewers(to a much lesser extant than the other 2, but I have a feeling they are going to continue to improve) have shown that over the years.

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this just isn't true. atlanta stopped selling out playoff games - would that happen in new york or boston? while atlanta certainly went crazy over the braves in the early 90s, there just wasn't that lasting impact.

furthermore, both the NYY and NYM have had attendance issues in the last 20 years, when they were awful. while it's unlikely that either team will be that bad again in the next ten years, the attendance will sag when the team starts to lose.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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kb4z, i am sure that they had down stretches - there is no debating that. the point is that when the team gets good people will definitely go pack the stadium. this is all i'm saying.

James

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I certainly agree with this. it's true of all teams to a certain extent.

I took a look at that attendance data, and calculated avg. yearly attendance of each team that has been around since 1969. (sorry for wonky formatting). some of this is surprising, as a lot of the mid-market NL teams, like Philly and Cinci, are right there with the big boys. they had huge attendance years when their teams were good. The Cardinals fans have always come out in droves.

Now, attendance is only one piece of the puzzle, but it's an interesting proxy for looking at, historically, how popular each team has been with its fans. Skimming through the data, it doesn't seem like there are many examples of great teams that didn't draw well.

as Triump mentions, the Braves have begun to have trouble drawing, even in the playoffs. but, that is at the end of a nearly unprecedented run of success. almost all other 4-5 years runs have seen the local team supported well.

LA 2,553,039
STL 2,284,767
NYA 2,161,100
BAL 2,156,733
BOS 2,135,705
PHI 1,994,835
CIN 1,967,352
NYN 1,943,505
CAL 1,814,940
ATL 1,813,456
HOU 1,751,849
MILA 1,723,027
CHIN 1,694,431
KC 1,686,815
DET 1,672,304
SF 1,636,253
SD 1,624,259
SEA 1,610,479
CLE 1,568,150
CHIA 1,553,299
OAK 1,471,828
MIN 1,406,198
PIT 1,395,733
MON 1,353,991

[Triumph36]

by the same token, you have to spend money to make money, and post-1969 is the free agency era.

also you have to take into consideration television deals - i'm sure the red sox receive millions upon millions more for their deal with NESN than, say, cincinnati.

and of course places where demand is naturally higher for baseball, ticket prices go up quicker, etc.

[MikeyPatriot]

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the "has to pay another hitter due to the DH" argument is flawed because of the fact that simply needing a dh doesn't make more money appear in the coffers to pay for one. let's move past that please.

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It is important because you made an argument that American League teams spend more than National League teams which gives them some sort of advantage. But when you factor in that AL teams are paying 9 starters in their lineup vs. 8 in the NL AND the outlier of the Yankees payroll, I would imagine that there isn't much of a payroll discrepancy between average teams.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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also you have to take into consideration television deals - i'm sure the red sox receive millions upon millions more for their deal with NESN than, say, cincinnati.

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yes, this is what I was referring to above. astute teams like BOS and NYY took advantage of their situations and built a cash cow in their local TV deal; revenue which they don't need to share with other teams.

this isn't possible in all cities (perhaps Cinci is one of them), but it's one of those opportunities that smart business people will take advantage of. it's part of the reason why the Red Sox were sold for so much money - NESN was to be included in any deal.

does anyone know what the deal is with the Cardinals TV deal?

[Kneel B4 Zod]

another factor which I hear a lot about is the "Arms Race" factor. basically the Red Sox have increased spending to keep somewhat close to the Yankees, which has an immediate affect on the other AL East teams, and a trickle down affect to the other AL teams who are competing for the same Wild Card playoff spots.

[James282]

Yes Mikey, but they still get to use this extra player when they play the NL so it is an advantage to them. Did you see where I said even removing the top 2 teams in the AL while leaving all the NL teams, the average AL salary is still higher? Or where 7 of the top 10 highest paid teams are AL? Also, I don't have the link in front of me right now but off the top of my head 6 of the bttom 7 lowest paid teams or 7 of the bottom 8 or something are NL teams.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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Yes Mikey, but they still get to use this extra player when they play the NL so it is an advantage to them

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it's definitely an overall advantage for the AL teams, but NL teams have the advantage of a roster constructed for NL play. IE AL teams have guys like the Big Hurt, who probably would not still be playing if the DH was abandoned. so, most NL rosters are better suited for NL play than AL rosters...while AL roster are MUCH better suited for AL play than NL rosters

[MikeyPatriot]

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Yes Mikey, but they still get to use this extra player when they play the NL so it is an advantage to them. Did you see where I said even removing the top 2 teams in the AL while leaving all the NL teams, the average AL salary is still higher? Or where 7 of the top 10 highest paid teams are AL? Also, I don't have the link in front of me right now but off the top of my head 6 of the bttom 7 lowest paid teams or 7 of the bottom 8 or something are NL teams.

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Yeah, I did. There's something like $6 million difference between the teams when you exclude the Yankees/Red Sox. That's probably somewhere in the realm of the difference between the average NL team's highest paid bench player and DH's in the AL.

The AL being able to use the DH player when the play the NL is pretty irrelevant because they AL teams only play NL teams a handful of times each year and the use of the DH as a pinch hitter is such a marginal move.

This argument seems like it should be able to be solved conclusively with some use of VORP, MLV, etc. compared to payroll.

[James282]

"AL teams only play NL teams a handful of times each year..." right, but people still use this as a metric for which league is better and in term which GMs are doing a better job.