By renovating the historic Fenway Park in 2002, Boston augmented their baseball ops department with the quickening revenue streams from an improved stadium experience – a strategy Theo Epstein brought with him to Chicago, writes Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, both Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, under Epstein’s leadership, have benefited from in-stadium advertising along the outfield walls – much like your local little league field. In Boston, the seats added above the Green Monster came complete with the ad billboards above. In Chicago, the bleachers were devoid of ad content until 2010 when a 360-foot Toyota sign was installed over the left field bleachers. Baseball purists may balk at these eyesores becoming a focal point of such historic stadiums, but the financial welfare afforded both franchises by these towering facades have produced previously-unmatched eras of on-field success. Lest we forget, Wrigley Field was called Weeghman Park until it was acquired by the chewing gum tycoon, so while it’s not as obvious a money grab as southside rival Guaranteed Rate Field, the Cubs’ northside stadium has long been financially-inspired – Epstein’s major contribution is making these influxes of cash obvious on the field.
Now, some coaching updates around the National League…
- Mark McGwire won’t be returning as the Padres bench coach for 2019, per MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell. McGwire is reportedly stepping down to spend more time with his family after two seasons as the bench coach in San Diego. Big Mac had previously spent three seasons apiece as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. For the Padres, they will seek to avoid an extended search to fill their three coaching vacancies for 2019 (bench coach, hitting coach, and infield coach).
- In other coaching news, the Washington Nationals will not be making any changes to their coaching staff prior to 2019, per Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. Manager Dave Martinez returns for the second year of a three-year deal, hoping for a turnaround after a disappointing first year in Washington. Bench coach Chip Hale, hitting coach Kevin Long, and pitching coach Derek Lilliquist will return to buttress Martinez in the Washington dugout. Rounding out the coaching crew: former infielder Tim Bogar returns to the first base coaching box, Greg Maddux’s former personal catcher Henry Blanco returns to coach in the bullpen and longtime third base coach Bob Henley returns in his usual role.
Wrigley was Weeghman, not Weegham…
Thank you!
The Cardinals should do all they can do to hire David Stern of the Brewers. Move Mozeliak out and pay him off. Move David Stern to the head of Cardinals baseball operations and have him work closely with Michael Girsch and give them the monetary support they need to build to the future by acquiring impact players instead of a complete starting line up of Mozeliak’s favorite phrase, “Low Hanging Fruit!”
The stadium was alway built for a now defaulted league and team and not the cubs.
The Chicago whales of the federal league
I’m thinking of taking my $1.6B lotto ticket and signing Harper, Machado, Donaldson, Corbin, and Keuchel for the Orioles, just to piss off NY and Boston
When I grew up advertising signage at ballparks was for low level bush league teams that couldn’t draw fans – not major league parks.
But it’s not enough that MLB players should earn 10-12 times more then successful people in the private sector, they need to make 20-30 times more. They have agents to pay. After all, it’s a free market for the players…..when it’s not a Union. Sweet.
It’s not a free market for players when there’s only one major league to play in, unless you count Japan, Mexico, or South Korea.
Please, don’t spew this nonsense, and instead take an introductory economics course. It’s sickening that people think players making half of the industries revenues is outlandish – why should owners keep more than half? If McDonald’s workers had an equal profit share with its employees, would you lambaste them for not following burger king’s model of shoving minimum wage and hazardous working conditions?
YOU chose to spend your money on jerseys, tickets, cable TV, MLB.tv
TEAMS chose to spend the it budgets on players while maximizing profits. The ads would be there regardless of whether or not the players would be getting more money.
And yea, unions are so bad because it was great when people worked 14 hour days and lost limbs at work.
Are you a CEO? Lol
“YOU chose to spend your money on jerseys, tickets, cable TV, MLB.tv”.
YOU talk out of your butt.
Neither I nor anyone in my family (or relatives families) wastes money on overpriced jerseys, tickets, or Cable TV.
We have MLB.TV because at just over $100 a year, it’s cheap entertainment. I couldn’t take the family to a major league game for that amount of money. And if they doubled the price to a bit over $200 a year, we’d find other things to do.
Heck, teams aren’t even teams anymore with players moving around so much. Look at the WS teams. What is the percentage of players that have been on those teams for 3 years? 2 years? Like minor league teams with the roster turnover. What a joke. A jersey……half the guys are off the team before the fabric wrinkles.
the 1970’s called, they’ve been wondering where you got to.
the rest of us prefer to live in this century, though, so you may not want to expose these opinions to public scrutiny, you’ll be happier if your own little world…
May I add….
Most of my kids and their kids can’t watch a major league game for 3 innings.
Told you Samuel, quite a few knuckle heads trolls on here that are clueless.
petrie000;
You’re a funny kid.
P.T. Barnum lived long before the 70’s, yet he had kids like you down cold.
Lament the movement of players. I can appreciate that from a fan perspective (especially from someone I’m assuming from reading this exchange is a fan who has been watching the game for most of their life), but can we all agree that free agency is undeniably better than the reserve clause? I’m not here to argue if players are paid too much, but if you’re upset at how much the players are making you’re going to see red when you find out how much the owners are making by comparison. Sports has been big business for a long time. The advent of players getting their share as they are the real product and entertainment has been a long time coming.
i’m not funny, i’m just educated
You’re whining about the fact that the players, the ones who in some cases literally bleed to make baseball a multi-billion dollar industry, as a collective get roughly half the profits on their own hard work… as opposed to the owners, who do comparatively little in the grand scheme of things
So yeah, you’re trying to argue a bunch of rich guys deserve more money for no reason that you can actually articulate beyond ‘things were better back in my day’
Just looking at the Dodgers WS roster, 11 of the 25 players have spent their entire MLB career with the Dodgers and no one else, for a combined 56 seasons of baseball.
This doesn’t include guys like Matt Kemp, who has spent 11 of his 15 years in the MLB with the Dodgers, across two stints. Or guys like Justin Turner, who bounced around for years before settling with the Dodgers (and has spent the last 5 years with them).
In other words, a pretty high percentage.
Anything else you want to complain about with no substance?
Free agency is better for the players but there is a point to be made with having a team you develop. How good could Tampa have been if they were able to keep their team together in the last ten years? How many WS would the 72-75ish A’s have made if they stuck together? Unfortunately greedy owners was a main reason for needing unions (in general) and for Flood, McNally, Messersmith and Hunter to become free agents.
There used to be a time when attending a game was family entertainment.
how is it not anymore?
i mean, seriously, nothing substantial has changed in the experience in decades. It’s not like baseball games taking 3 hours is a new phenomenon…
There’s a failed economic system that loves to claim that it’s the worker who is the means of production, and should reap the majority of the benefit from said production … you know their logo, I’m sure. Has a sickle and hammer.
Some people seem to have this weird notion that if baseball players made less money, than the owners would reduce the prices of everything out of the goodness of their hearts. It is so strange to me how non-wealthy people take the side of corporations and billionaires and want them to have more money, instead of the talented players that we all pay to see.
“i’m not funny, i’m just educated”
Sure you are petrie0002.
Where I come from, people that are educated show it in their work, respect for disciplines, and those that went before them to create and bring along those disciplines.
People today talk all the time about how educated they are after they demean someone with snark because they can’t discuss the issue.
Sort of like those that talk all the time about how much they’re getting…..cause they aren’t getting any.
This country now has an abundance of 30, 40 & 50 year-old NPC’s.
Justin Turner had only played for 2 teams..he hasn’t “bounced around for years”
petrie000:
News for you: EVERYONE lives in his or her “own little world”.
Basic economics. Have you ever received a paycheck from a poor person? Do you know what a “corporation” is, or how it was born?
@tharrie0820 Professionally, Justin Turner has been in the CIN, BAL, NYM and LAD orgs.
Always pays to double check.
“How is it not?”
1) have you priced season tickets lately?
2) Families used to be able to afford to go to several games a season, sometimes on a whim. Nowadays, MLB ticket prices are approaching NFL and NBA prices. So much for the “great American pastime” being simple entertainment – for many, it’s a once or twice a year “event” that is planned and budgeted for.
Tough to be a failure when it’s never been put into ACTUAL practice.
Sadly, the cost has priced many families into the grandstands or bleachers or worse to watching the game at home. The cost including parking and food has hone well beyond the rate of inflation. In the late 70s, I had my first job at minimum wage. Six prime field box seats at Yankee Stadium between home and third cost me $32.25 including shipping. Deal witb my dad was if I saved for the tickets, he’d drive the family from CT, two hours away. It was a learning experience I never forgot. To save for what I wanted. When the day of the game arrived, my dad handed me a deposit ticket. He put the cost of the tickets in my bank savings account. Those sane seats are probably $200+ each today (guess) . Not realistic now
i did show my work right from the start by pointing out you’re whining about something you don’t even have a cursory understanding of.
You’re just taking the tired and ignorant approach of ‘men who play a game shouldn’t make that much money, even though they make billions (literally, billions) of dollars for their employers’… which is frankly just stupid on any level. If you wish to actually explain why the rich owners deserves all the money simply because they had the money to buy a baseball team, feel free… but so far you haven’t even attempted to.
your definition of intelligence is as out of date as you’re opinions on baseball, frankly. You want deference to tradition, not active analysis and critical thought… basically you’re demanding respect for something because it’s old, not because it’s better.
you can take that nonsense back to wherever you came from, the modern world has progressed beyond it at this point.
“Tough to be a failure when it’s never been put into ACTUAL practice,” says every communist ever. Yawn.
Omg dude i saw the angels on a Sunday for 28$ each, bought two tix, great seats. Saw Othani saw Trout, saw all of the Athletics young crop too. $10 bucks for parking, $50 for food and beer. Had a wonderful day for what some people will pay for one meal at a restaurant.
and 20 bucks is about the cost for a ticket to some forgettable movie these days, so with any sense of perspective it’s not actually that outrageous.
3. Orioles, Mets, Dodgers. “Bounced around” I do not believe describes it well, but “wasn’t very good for a couple of teams before becoming an All Star in LA” would work.
Markets are different and perhaps cheaper seats might be available on the secondary market for non-impact games. Hard to plan a family event that way though and NY cost $40 to just park today. Agree everything has gone up and they should given it’s 40 years. But 75 fold? People who have to choose will select a new family TV for what it costs to go to a game.
Inflation calculator estimated the cost today of just those six prime seats as going from $32 to slightly more than $130, less than the cost of one seat today.
Petri000. Speak for yourself! Unless you lived and can remember the 70s then you can’t comment on them! Not saying he was right but there were a lot of things that were actually better in the last century! I didn’t say all I just said some! Oh and he is entitled to his opinion!
To me it doesn’t matter who gets the profits. They simply charge way to much for the whole experience.
Honestly though, at the price MLBtv is not a bad deal. Especially if you are an out of market fan with a little bit of time to watch and/or listen to your team. Or if you just like to watch baseball. In this era of HD, watching on tv is the way to go.
True, during the right promo tickets can be had at a reasonable price. But when your team of choice and/or the closest team to you is doing well, not so much.
The food and beer is ridiculously overpriced and the quality in most cases has gone down, down, down. This is where they really get you, and they wonder why attendance is lagging.
$20 for one movie ticket? No!
Maybe for a 3D matinee in Manhattan.
@cam – he did check. He was drafted by the Reds but made his MLB debut for the Orioles and also played for the Mets. So he is correct in saying that he had only played for two teams and hadn’t bounced around for years.
It helps if you pay attention.
petrie000… Educated? Try opinionated.
Over 95 % of players changing teams is caused by the teams decision to move on from player in one form or another. Releasing player. Trading player. Simply not signing player. So few players actually choose to leave a place they’ve been for years. Blaming players is easy but not really the case.
Rondon : one can be both. Combining the two is usually how one gets good opinions. Substituting the latter for the former is what’s lead to so many of the mind-bogglingly stupid comments seen on this thread so far…
How many teams does it take before you consider it bouncing around? You forgot Cincinnati, so 5 teams? 6? 10? Any more bouncing and Turner would have bounced himself right out of the league.
“Internet commenters are ‘mind-bogglingly stupid.'”
— Internet commenter
(Shamelessly stolen, paraphrased and adapted.)
Listen guys, if you’re broke…only you can solve that problem, not baseball prices. Some people can only afford the $5 admission to a county fair twice a year, some people go on vacation twice a year, some people couldn’t afford a vacation for the past 5 years, its all about life goals and priorities. If paying 700$ a month for a car and insurance makes sense to you then of course you cant afford nothing else lol
i do so love it when people who can’t address an actual comment make up one to respond to instead. makes them seem so much more credible….
The cost of tickets plus cost of food and drinks.
I remember when they had scheduled double headers. You’d pay for one ticket and see two games. Now, if a double header happens, they kick you out and make you buy another ticket.
heck, if you had t-mobile this year, mlb tv would have cost you zero bucks (and you could stream it on your ps4, roku, etc…)
The global ignorance of communism and socialism as economic theories is utterly mind boggling.
Thank you johntealtime, spot on
I agree. But probably not in the manner you think.
He never played at the big league level for the Reds. He was traded as a minor leaguer, I wouldn’t call being traded bouncing around. He did get bounced from the Orioles the next season though and landed with the Mets for 3 seasons. When they non tendered him LA picked him up and has signed him to an extension.
To answer your question more than 3 in 10 years.
Your lack of basic knowledge is appalling. Unions have nothing to do with federal labor laws. Unions and minimum wage laws are designed to help substandard and incompetent workers. People who are worth something hate unions. People who understand basic math hate unions. Just because a person decided to play in the league doesn’t mean they somehow deserve a huge percentage of income. Thousands and thousands of people contributed to the league and it’s ability to make money. Players do nothing but play. They didn’t form the league, they didn’t develop it, they didn’t take any risk or put up any money or time to make the league work. Workers are just that, workers. And workers barely deserve the meager pay they already receive. People who are worth it make more money. It’s sad that communists like you can’t comprehend basic economics or business.
“Players didn’t make the league”. How would there be a league w/o the players? I’m pretty sure players did/do make the league. The BEST of The BEST is what make the product what it is. Because of the PLAYERS billions are invested by networks/corporations. It’s too bad you’re too big of an idiot to see those simple facts.
this is either god-tier trolling or disturbingly sociopathic… please tell me it’s the former…
Your economic model is completely upside-down.
Shockingly misinformed regarding unions. Wow.
Dodgethis, I hope you are just trying to be a troll and aren’t really that ignorant of a person
@Dodgerhis – dude what you said is so backwards and twisted that most responders assume you must be joking, that you can’t be serious.
Based on your communists remark at the end I think you are not. IDK where you are getting this crap from but you need to take a hard look in the mirror bud.
Please, tell me more about basic economics. I, for one, am on the edge of my seat waiting for this education.
Firstly, this isn’t the forum for that.
Secondly, overcoming your indoctrination with actual education would be on par with teaching physics to a rock.
Well, that wasn’t directed at you, SDHotDawg, but since you brought it up… Physics was never my strong suit (Trig and Calc were a struggle for me as a teen), but I am very interested in the theory of relativity. Can you enlighten me? Imagine I’m a rock, this should be easy for you.
I agree with most of what you say but Yes! People definitely would lambaste McD’s or any fast food employees for way less than that.
They have time and time again when they have went on strike in NYC and/ or complained about the minimum wage anywhere else in the country.
talk about how much stock brokers make right out of colleges.
Stock brokers don’t make nearly as much as you think they do. Especially not right out of college.
i have several relatives in the industry. and they do.
they make millions doing the hard work that lets the owners makes billions…
when you can claim to be that valuable as an individual to your employer and don’t get paid at the same rates, then you can whine about how unfair it is.
Bingo. It won’t be popular on this thread I’m sure but you are spot on.
It’s different from how I grew up, therefore it’s wrong!
WTH does this really have to do with signage at the ballpark? You don’t even draw the comparison.
I’m fairly certain the players are not brokering that deal. And I’m also fairly certain that the owners are not doing because they have to to make their payroll.
Owners are wealthy, players are rich. Most of these guys don’t give a hack about anything but their own bottom line. Quit watching! Stop going!
Mac is scumbag
Agreed
Why?
At least he admitted it. More than Bonds or Sosa are willing to do. The guy honestly thinks it just helped him overcome injuries and that is just mwathead arrogance at its best. Which he is not the only 1 guilty of.
What about ARod? Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz? Why do they get a pass?
It was always so weird Mac got hired as a coach, was he admitting that he was a bad hitter, being that bad hitters make the best coaches? Were the roids REALLY that good?
McGwire and Sosa saved baseball, did some forget about the strike
did someone forget about how their methods for ‘saving’ it almost destroyed it a decade later?….
News Flash…MLB is barely on life support now.
The league exceeded $10 billion in revenue in 2017.
Google..the state of MLB
#3 sport and falling
you’re gonna have your work cut out for you proving that one, sparky. The actual data is not in your favor.
And still turning record profits.
Losing Fans, not adding fans, fans that they do have average age 55.
World Series games beaten by NFL games in Ratings.
Fallen behind NBA in popularity.
you telling us to google something is not the same as you supporting a dubious claim
my bet is you’re going to tell us it’s TV ratings, which are frankly irrelevant these days as a measure of popularity given how many people don’t even own TVs anymore.
baseball’s revenue streams are just fine as far as anybody knows
Oh forgot the present and growing animosity between the union and the owners.
Ratings are figured from all forms of streaming services. To say ratings aren’t relevant or don’t matter to anything is wrong
to say ratings include all forms of streaming services is actually wrong, because not all streaming services make their viewership data available to third parties to calculate them… which means any ‘ratings’ you’re going to get are going to be partially incomplete.
and baseball’s had it’s longest era of labor peace since the union became a thing, so you’re really grasping at straws with that one.
theories need to be crafted around facts, facts aren’t bent to fit theories.
Businessinsider.com..Nielsen ratings include all forms of streaming such as Hulu and Youtube. Services such as MLB.com’s broadcasts are from local cable contracts so those ratings are counted. Facebook just started carrying limited games and will soon be counted.
Too many outlets to list stating the troubles with MLB, but try USA Today.com. So which other thing I listed such as the age do you dispute, or maybe the loss in popularity to the NBA. How about the many things that is angering the union and a collective bargaining agreement ending soon?
no thanks, USAToday is a terrible sports journalism outlet. have been for a while.
but again, if you’re still basing this argument that they’re ‘dying’ entirely on an outdated and highly questionable system such as ‘ratings’, it’s not a subject you’re going to be taken seriously on.
baseball’s drowning in money, even the ‘small market’ teams. That doesn’t happen when you’re ‘dying’…
Whatever…
Comeback of the Year ! Did you make that “whatever” thing up yourself?
Stronger than your HS!
“No thanks?”
You can’t demand a source and then say it doesn’t count because you don’t like it.
Cofirmation bias at its worst.
i never sad it didn’t count, just said it was a pretty bad source. If you want to take anything USAToday says at face value, that’s fine… but one source that’s not exactly known for quality also is not irrefutable confirmation of a position.
But really the problem with his arguments is he’s telling us where to look for information that he himself apparently can’t articulate. Stating a position, then telling someone to google it when asked to explain it is a very poor way of convincing anyone you know what you’re talking about.
His basic argument is ‘baseball is dying because i read it somewhere’. And when asked to provide specific information, the response is ‘look it up for yourself’. Highly, highly unconvincing.
Was gonna also throw out the second of many sources/sites ESPN, but I’m sure that’s no good either.
Who pays most of the bills at tv/streaming services but advertising dollars. World Series isn’t streaming on twitter which carries ads) that I know of.
How about showing where you found MLB is growing, or adding fans. How about other than what it made, because the top two sports also profited..more by the way.
there’s a huge difference between growing and dying… there’s a vast middle ground known as ‘stable’, which is a very very good place to be as an billion-dollar industry. Ricky Bobby’s dad was high when he said ‘when you’re not first, you’re last’, remember.
and who pays the bills these days is mostly gate fees, merchandise sales and exclusive TV contracts for regional coverage, which by definition isn’t a nationwide deal and so, logically, is never going to have the same level of national ratings as the TV deals the NFL (which actually is having huge trouble) and the NBA.
You just honestly don’t seem to understand baseball’s economic model.. They’re not the NFL or NBA, who’s marketing campaigns are built almost entirely around the post season. Baseball is a far more localized model, which each team getting the lion’s share of it’s media revenue from local TV contracts that pay out extremely well. if baseball wasn’t earning these networks money, they won’t be paying for the media rights.
The fact that 28 fanbases are largely ambivalent about the WS doesn’t mean baseball doesn’t have fans, just means most of those fans aren’t Red Sox or Dodgers fans.
Yea. Teams like Marlins selling for over a billion dollars. Life Support??
Let’s completely throw out the fact that nfl only has 16 games that play on a weekend or at night while baseball will play 4 games at 1pm through out the week. NFL will be gone in 20 years, just like boxing is and stopped becoming popular after the head trauma.
lol “NFL will be gone in 20 years” and MLB in 10 years. What Bocephus failed to mention MLB attendance is at a 15 year low. Take what he said of the average age of fans, and almost all MLB fans will be mostly dead in 20 years.
MLB knew what was going on and turned their head because attendance was back on track. Cheating in baseball existed before the homerun barrage and probably still happens but not on the same manner. How does spin rate increase 100% in 1 year?
MLB was %100 complicit in what the players were doing. They feigned ignorance while cutting hefty to checks to these guys. The fact the Bud Selig will sail into the HOF without batting an eye, yet people like Mcgwire and Sosa get ostracized is a bad joke to anyone with half a brain
but the point still stands, did they ‘save’ it or did they just put it on life support until baseball cleaned itself up?
Loaded balls probably allows for the spin but also when contact is made, the off field homers.
Those two were not the only two juicing during that period. And at the time the substances they took weren’t even banned by MLB.
“And at the time the substances they took weren’t even banned by MLB.” is one misnomer that always gets me.
Fay Vincent banned all controlled substances on June, 7 1991.stating in an official memo….”The possession, sale, or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by major league players and personnel is strictly prohibited. Those involved in the possession, sale, or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance are subject to discipline by the commissioner and risk permanent expulsion from the game.” and specifically mentioned steroids saying “This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids or prescription drugs for which the individual in possession of the drug does not have a prescription.”
Vincent also outlined a testing program but the union, headed by Donald Fehr, rejected testing out of hand and “claimed, with great moral high ground, steroid testing would be a violation of the players’ “privacy.””
Notice the ” “….. you can google those remarks and find multiple sources.
Androstenedione was not on that list.
“Androstenedione was not on that list.”…..not until 2006 but “Mark McGwire finally came clean, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998. McGwire said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used steroids on and off for nearly a decade. During a 20-minute telephone interview shortly afterward, his voice repeatedly cracked”.
Jan 11, 2010 He also admitted to using HGH
it’s estimated that about 90% of all players of the era used steroids. even the pitchers.
90%??
Source? Link?
The strike is what hurt baseball.
It’s a myth that they saved baseball.
Baseball wasnt dying, but the along with Jr. gave it a boost.
What saved baseball?
Video killed the radio star!
I’m not sure what this means or where you’re going, but it’s a rabbit hole I’d jump down.
McGwire and Sosa didn’t roid up out of the goodness of their hearts, on a noble quest to save baseball. They are cheaters that happened to help the game but likely hurt it in the long run
The statement had to do with their merits saving baseball, not roiding..up to save baseball, but baseball was well aware of what was going on, as the hat sizes in baseball at that time were at an all time high.
Letting Big Mac be a hitting coach is like putting Sammy Sosa in charge of the bat rack.
You Do know that a lot of MLB hitting coaches never were Good ML hitters, right? I gather that’s what you’re referring to about Big Mac not being a “good” hitter.
He was a cheater.
Doesn’t belong wearing ANY MLB uniform…even on Halloween
The Mets Yankees and Red Sox have a bit of a history with cheaters also. Be careful throwing stones
You’re really not going to like what was in the Mitchell Report.
His second comment was even more ridiculous than the first one. LOL
And this is the guy complaining about trolls on this board. It’s like how Trump calls everyone else liars and corrupt. A troll calling others a troll is the ultimate troll move
Every team had and might still have cheaters.
The funny thing is a corked bat wouldn’t really help at all. Yeah, it’s lighter, but it’s also less dense.
Are you, by chance, referring to the Myth Busters episode? Because, if I remember correctly, they didn’t account for the increased speed the corked bat would provide and that always bugged me why that variable wouldn’t be accounted for in their experiments.
Not sure why the Padres would bother hiring a hitting coach…. he will just end up being fired at this time next year anyways…. like matt stairs…. and about 8-9 hitting coaches that preceded him
If the Cleveland Browns can finally figure out their quarterback situation after all these years, maybe the Padres will someday figure out how to find a hitting coach that sticks.
The solution is to acquire and develop players that can hit.
Yes, that would certainly help. But in order to keep most of them hitting well and making good adjustments at the MLB level, there needs to be a competent hitting coach. When players are openly ignoring the coaches’ advice (like they were doing with Stairs), there’s a problem.
Quitting to “spend time with his family” is possible, but it sure is a tired and dried out euphemism.
He might just be tired of coaching a bad team and having to deal with divas like Wil Myers. I don’t blame him. Not to mention the stigma he still has from his past steroid use as a player.
Aka Urban Meyer
Doesn’t it strike people as odd that two perennially profitable franchises couldn’t afford to staff their baseball ops department until they renovated their stadiums? This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Maybe Paul Sullivan unintentionally exaggerated?
Just like players, executives are paid more now than they used to be. With the high focus on analytics, execs have more responsibilities and thus get paid more
I’m not sure people truly understand how far behind the curb the Cubs were as far as staffing in their FO.
Paul Sullivan is a whiney hack. Always has been and always will be.
So many odd takes in this thread.
The level of toxicity and number of trolls in these comments sections has been growing each year since around 2013.
Padres should bring up Rod Barajas as bench coach and Morgan Burkhart as hitting coach. They were the Chihuahuas Manager and Hitting Coach.
Oh goody. Another year of Davey Martinez and his misfit coaching staff. Wonder how long it will take Kevin Long to screw of Juan Soto’s swing? Last season his launch angle obsession ruined Trea Turner pretty quick.
“… the bleachers were devoid of ad content until 2010 when a 360-foot Toyota sign was installed over the left field bleachers.”
A 360-foot sign?
That’s more than the entire length of right field (353 ft) or the height of a 40-story building. Unless people in Chicago are 10-foot giants, someone’s got their numbers wrong.
cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/102179522.j…
As I read about the enhancements in advertising—and what the author termed a “money grab”—I can’t get through the comments here without adds for some musical popping up every 20 seconds. The irony.