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The Philadelphia Phillies are in the postseason, preparing to head to Citi Field to take on the Mets in their home after evening up the NLDS 1-1 on Sunday. Before the series began, Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein ran a story on the team and its owner, John Middleton, saying that he provides “an unsparing blueprint for his peers.”
The gist of the feature is that Middleton not only spends on payroll at a higher rate than most of the league — and does so consistently, with the team ranking fourth in opening day payroll in each of the last four seasons — but that he’ll invest in the players off the field, too. The food the players want? That’s what the team chefs make. When J.T. Realmuto said the team’s jet was behind the times enough that even the lowly Marlins had a better one? The Phillies got a new, much fancier aircraft. Clubhouse accoutrements, better equipment, an entire hibachi spread when Kyle Schwarber mentioned having a craving for that — if the Phillies want it, Middleton lets them have it, with Dave Dombrowski feeling confident enough in not even going up the ladder for the stuff that isn’t jet-sized to just authorize it himself.
Middleton isn’t doing this out of the pure goodness of his heart, as the point is that he figures this stuff makes the players more comfortable, and happier, and puts them in a better position to win. In Middleton’s own words:
“All those things just make people feel comfortable where they are. It makes them like where they are more. I love when people are happy and contented. They can focus on their job. You know, we’re not just throwing money at them because we just like throwing money at them. It means there’s a reciprocal obligation, which is: I’m trying to remove impediments to your happiness, so you can focus on what I want you to focus on, which is winning. And I want you to come back as hard and fast as you can if you’re injured, and I want you to play as hard as I can every day. That’s what I expect. And I don’t want you grousing to your former teammates, ‘This guy’s a real cheap guy who flies a lousy plane and we eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.’”
The piece ends with Middleton saying that spending this money builds a culture that makes players want to come to Philly, and which in turn will lead to trophies and a legacy. He even says that “Nobody cares if I make money or not,” and that his “great-great grandchildren might be angry,” but “I’m not going to know them.” God, that’s refreshing.
The Phillies haven’t won a World Series with Middleton as the controlling owner yet — a position he assumed in 2016, he was a minority owner in the franchise when they won it all in 2008 — but they’ve certainly been trying. In 2022, they lost the World Series in six games to the Astros, and last fall, they fell in the NLCS to the Diamondbacks. They have as good of a chance as anyone of bringing home a championship this postseason, and as long as they’re staying in this thing and look like they can eventually put it all together for a title, Middleton will probably keep spending like this.
He wants to build a legacy, he wants to build a reputation, and for the two to feed into each other so that the Phillies can keep having chances to win. The fans and dollars will keep coming if he keeps spending and they keep playing well, is the idea, and it’s difficult to say he’s off-base in his thinking when the Phillies had the second-highest attendance in MLB this year, up from sixth in 2023, up from 16th in 2022.
It works in the other direction, as well. Build up a reputation as a terrible place to play and work, with rundown facilities and awful catering paid for by a corner-cutting cheapskate, and players are going to talk about it. Be an organization that’s always worrying about money and constantly breaking up whatever core forms in order to trade it in for cheaper players, and players are going to talk about it. None of the talk is going to be good. If this wasn’t clear yet, this is the segue to the A’s portion of the article.
A’s general manager David Forst told Susan Slusser he expects to raise the team’s payroll up from 2024’s $63 million mark, and that’s even with $25 million in expiring contracts this winter. Can he do that, though? Will the A’s find players willing to take their money, if they’re actually offering it? They’re moving from Oakland to Sacramento, which, whatever cosmetic changes are made to the playing surface or the clubhouses and facilities, is still host to a minor-league stadium and not a big league one. It’s going to be hot, and the short porch means hitters might have a field day, but pitchers are not going to want to willingly spend their summers there.
Oh, and while this was on the minor-league side, the A’s do have a reputation for cheaping out on catering, and had to practically be forced into paying minor-league players a stipend during the pandemic-canceled 2020 season. Their minor-leaguers couldn’t even afford to play home games during the 2021 season thanks to Covid-19 housing protocols making it so they couldn’t perform the kind of shared-space cost-cutting measures they had in the past. It might have been on the minor-league side, yes, but players talk, and some of these players are in the majors now, a few years later.
The A’s lost 93 games in 2024, in no small part because they spent the last few years cutting payroll and trading away their better (and pricier) players for prospects when they had been right on the cusp of postseason contention — it’s easy to forget now, after consecutive 100-loss campaigns and an “improved” one with “just” 93 defeats, but the 2021 A’s won 86 games! Whatever you say about the Coliseum is probably true, but it’s also true that it’s a major-league stadium in a major-league city with major-league facilities. Their new supposedly temporary home lacks that kind of stadium and facilities. They aren’t heading to Las Vegas, at the earliest, until 2028, and that’s if Las Vegas even happens. What would the draw even be for most free agents, to willingly sign with the A’s?
Desperation is about all they’ve got to bank on here. The A’s are likely going to have to overpay for free agents if they want to rebuild their reputation and change the perception of them. The organization that’s purposely going to Las Vegas, the smallest media market in the league, in order to eternally qualify for revenue-sharing checks that owner John Fisher is likely going to pocket, is going to have to spend money just to get their foot in the door on the ability to spend future money. Does that sound like a likely outcome?
More believable is that the A’s are setting themselves up for a typical round of “we tried,” so that they can continue to kick the can down the road and say things will be better once they get to Vegas. And then when they get to Vegas, if things still aren’t better… don’t worry, we know what the playbook looks like here, too, because Fisher is already using it for the Major League Soccer team he owns, the San Jose Earthquakes. To save you some time, it’s a lot of finger pointing and blaming everyone and everything besides himself and his own decisions and lack of spending.
We’ll see, of course. Maybe the A’s do see a need to make a positive impression here, and will open their checkbook accordingly. It’s hard to envision, though, that the team that’s structured itself around the idea of being cheap — not efficient, not smart, not even thrifty, but outright cheap — is suddenly going to start spending and become an attractive option for free agents, and the home of a team known for its winning ways. It takes time, and perseverance, and commitment for that sort of thing to happen, like with Philadelphia. Has John Fisher ever exuded any of those qualities for any task besides getting the A’s to leave Oakland? Remember, too, that he hasn’t even successfully managed that much yet: the A’s might no longer belong to Oakland, but they also don’t belong anywhere else yet, either. Not in any kind of official capacity, which is the one that matters.
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