This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
It’s kind of incredible that no one inside of Tropicana Field was injured when Hurricane Milton ripped the stadium’s roof to shreds, but thankfully, that’s how things played out. It’s unclear how long it’s going to take to repair the roof — it simply does not exist anymore, an entirely new roof is needed — or what it’s going to cost to do so. There are some educated guesses out there, however, given similar work once done to the Metrodome.
According to the Rays themselves, the roof was designed to hold up against 115 mph winds; Milton blew harder than that, and the roof is no more. While it will take time to fully assess the damage, and opening day is a little over five months away, this process also can’t be rushed — hurricane season isn’t even over yet, after all, and we’re in an era of much larger, and more frequent, major hurricanes, as well.
And that’s something we’re going to have to get used to. These massively damaging events are going to become even more of a constant. And yet, we’ve got cities like St. Petersburg devoting over a billion dollars in subsidies to teams like the Rays to help them build a new ballpark, right in the same neighborhood as the park whose roof was just shredded by a hurricane. In a coastal city, in a state that seems destined to end up underwater in the long run for the same reasons we’re now seeing this uptick in ultra-powerful hurricanes. Surely there’s a better use for those resources than for a ballpark for a professional sports team owned by a guy who would get the money from other sources besides the public, no? A little doomer-y from me this morning, yes, but consider the state of the world right now, and explain to me how to feel differently than that about this sort of thing.
In more optimistic news, Twins’ ownership announced that they’re exploring a sale of the team, which would mean no more Pohlads in MLB. Back in November of 2022, Jim Pohland handed control of the organization over to the younger Joe Pohland, and I had this to say about the move:
The Twins often operate like an aw shucks we’re just getting by franchise, a sentiment that was surely bolstered by their being one of the likely clubs to be contracted back when Bud Selig was bandying about that idea in order to gain sympathy for the plight of the UwU smol bean owners against those big bad players. Carl Pohlad was, at one time, the wealthiest owner in all of MLB, however, and something tells me that the family business is still doing well thanks to all of that inheritance — from what I can tell, the Pohlads still own the entire franchise, so they can invest as much money as they want into the club without diminishing the value of outside minority ownership stakes in the process, and don’t have to answer to a slate of stakeholders in the same way as other clubs if the whole family is fine with going for it with a big free agent signing or what have you, at the possible expense of smaller profit payouts in for the year.
So, it’s worth keeping an eye on how the Twins operate under sort-of-new management: will there be more of a push in free agency, instead of only going legitimately big with contracts for when a homegrown star like Joe Mauer is developed and wants to stick around? Will the Twins seek out an expensive but comparable alternative at shortstop if Correa decides to go elsewhere? Will they increase spending now that simply being in the Central alone isn’t enough to work with toward a postseason spot? We’ve got all kinds of questions to consider and no answers yet, but this offseason should at least give us an indication of where things are going under new-ish leadership.
The Twins brought their payroll up for 2023, and then dropped it again in 2024, with some of the blame for that going toward their involvement in the Diamond/Bally broadcasting issue. They finished in first in the AL Central in 2023 and in fourth this past season, despite losing just five more games — the 2023 team was in first because someone in the Central had to be, not because the Twins had anything special going on, and Carlos Correa’s big contract wasn’t the start of something so much as the only thing: the next-biggest contract on the roster is for Byron Buxton, who’s making all of $15 million per year.
Maybe new owners will finally stop treating Minneapolis like a tiny market that can’t sustain itself, or they won’t pretend they’re lacking resources like the Pohlad clan has for decades now — when Carl Pohlad died in 2009, he was the league’s wealthiest owner; yes, even wealthier than George Steinbrenner. I’m not expecting new owners that I’ll like, by any means, but it’s like John Angelos ceding control in Baltimore. There’s at least a chance things will be different this way, instead of like they’ve been for too long.
Part of this is just negotiating and leverage and posturing, but the other part is MLB bringing this upon themselves by overreaching with their streaming deals. ESPN is apparently upset about MLB devaluing their streamed games, by doing things like accepting a measly $10 million from Roku to broadcast Sunday morning games. And the expectation is that they’ll opt out of the current deal to negotiate a new one, in which they’ll maybe get more for their dollar than they were before.
As I said, part of this is just how negotiating works, and ESPN, per John Ourand, has its eyes on a much bigger prize than just a reduced cost for national games. They want to be MLB’s solution for local broadcast streaming:
Those talks have not started yet, but it appears likely that ESPN and MLB will start negotiating before ESPN can exercise its out. (For what it’s worth, viewership for the wild card round was up 25 percent this year.) And the executives in Bristol aren’t merely interested in national games. In fact, they’re just as focused on picking up local rights to MLB teams, which would provide a powerful lure for the company’s forthcoming streaming service, internally known as “Flagship.” [chairman Jimmy] Pitaro has said that he wants ESPN to be part of the local rights solution.“I could easily see a scenario where you have your national games on ESPN or ESPN2 or ESPN+, all of which will be made available as a part of Flagship,” Pitaro said a couple of weeks ago on The Varsity podcast. “I could easily see a scenario where we geotarget and make local in-market content available to the sports fan. But the leagues have to embrace that strategy.”
I’m very curious about how this is going to work out for both ESPN and MLB — the league certainly won’t want to give ESPN anything on the local side without giving another ultra-rich alternative like Amazon start putting some bids in, too, especially if there is concern that the product has been devalued. That’s a problem that will have to be fixed by revaluing, as it were, and nothing makes that happen like a little bidding war between conglomerates.
Visit my Patreon to become a supporter and help me continue to write articles like this one.