Wow the promo thing. I didn’t see that. How far they have come. In the Kingdome, they had a separate season ticket holder entrance (sort of like at Cheney I believe) and you were pretty much guaranteed of getting the promo item if you showed up by game time. The promo items at Safeco have sucked so much recently or been strictly for kids, that I could never envision paying for them (e.g. an Edgar statue that doesn’t look like Edgar). Quite a change from them sending you an autographed Lou Piniella ball as thanks for renewing your season seat.

I would not expect to get into a focus group. My guess is that these focus groups are not entirely random (like the prize drawings on Fan Appreciation Night). Probably the larger accounts, newbies who are most likely to bail, club seat holders etc. – the marginal baseball fan w/ money who is more important to their bottom line. I just wish that this organization had as much baseball savvy as their marketing savvy.

Also new is the option to buy season tickets for the left field bleachers, and of course, to pay extra money to have guaranteed promo items (something the Rainiers GIVE you just for the sake of BEING a season ticket holder, as I pointed out in my long long letter). That hair-brained idea, of offering us the option of paying MORE to get guaranteed promo items sent to our homes is, so Ms. Traisman told me, something that some other teams do and something that those dreaded focus groups (who told the Ms they didn’t really care about promo items at all) thought was a swell idea.

My response was ‘om, wait, I just sent you a 5 page letter telling you how the Rainiers treat me better, value me more as a season ticket holder than the Ms do, and how I don’t feel I’m getting good return on my decision to spend a huge amount of money (for me) on Ms tix, and your response is to offer me a chance to spend MORE to get what I feel I should be getting in the first place????

She seemed very nice and all, but… (oh, and she also skipped over my complaint about how the Ms offered discount tix for some games this season and I thought they should have just mailed me a check for $6 for each of my seats that they sold for $24 this season, while I, their VALUED season ticket holder paid $30.)

Good luck with your letter; maybe someday we can work our way into those focus groups.

It looks like their only response so far to the drop off in season ticket numbers is the return of the Businessman/Weekend Season Ticket Plans (1/2 season tickets).

IIRC they were being heavily discouraged in ’97/’98 under the threat of “buy a full season ticket or lose playoff priority/Safeco seating priority”. And gone completely in 1999 with the move to Safeco

You might tell your partners about the Weekend Plan. They’ll play Boston twice and SF on weekend homestands. One scheduling item to look forward to: next year they’ll host Texas twice for weekend homestands in September – three weeks apart. That looks to be the most unusual schedule quirk in years.

Also, yeah, I got the same damn letter today and yeah, I’m irritated by it as well. I’ve been a season ticket holder for enough years to push me to the edge. I had written Howard and Chuck a 5 page letter in August, basically telling them I was sick and tired of being taken for granted. That no matter how addicted I am, it has its limits. Their response was to have the Director of Sales call me, and spend over an hour making me feel all validated and listened to, while promising things would change. During that conversation, I heard about those season ticket holder focus groups who, well, I don’t know where they find these folks but they sure as hell don’t speak for me.

They (ownership) know they’re in trouble. They lost 4K season ticket holders last year, and they’re going to lose a helluva lot more this year. My partners aren’t renewing, so I’m dropping to a single seat, and I know at least 5 other long-time season ticket holders who aren’t renewing either and that’s just in my extremely limited orbit.

M’s brass (as written up in the Media guide):

Dan Evans (age 45) is the only member of M’s front office management to list his age in the Media guide(DePaul grad).

Howard Lincoln – Cal Berkley (same as Frank Mattox and Brian Price)
Chuck Armstrong -Purdue & George Argyros School of Management
Pat Gillick – USC (same as Barbara Hedges and Ron Fairly – a teammate of Gillick’s)
John Ellis – UW
Bill Bavasi – U. Of San Diego
Bob Fontaine – no higher education listed in bio
Lee Pelokoudas – Arizona State
Benny Looper – Southwestern Oklahoma University
Mariner Moose – created in 1990 no higher education listed

Anyway, if you want some evidence of the shennigans/finnegans of The Howard, I suggest you read DMZ’s brilliant post from the archives (whatever happened to that guy?) dated July 14, 2004 dated 4:01 AM (at the very bottom of the link…assuming I get the link to work)

http://ussmariner.com/?m=200407&paged=11

I don’t think ownership lacks passion. They have a misplaced passion for profit before wins.

I wouldn’t put it quite that way; I’d say that they don’t have a good sense for assessing risk that’s inherent in getting wins, nor do they trust the analysis on what each additional win will generate you in revenue.

- I don’t think ownership lacks passion. They have a misplaced passion for profit before wins.

- I can’t, yet, point to any tools that objectively evaluate ownership, management or coaching, especially over time. That doesn’t mean no effect exists, it just means I haven’t got a tool yet.

- Personally I try to avoid discussing ownership or management except during the off season for exactly the reason you note: these discussions tend to degrade quickly.

It is pure speculation that any of the owners have made Bavasi make personnel decisions based on who is popular with fans.

Hm. From the feed notes, there’s a quote that this is no longer the case. WHich implies it WAS the case previously.

This whole site, as I understand it, is about a quest for knowledge, a more scientific, testable/provable way of looking at the game. For those who feel that the current Ms ownership is the problem, where is your proof of this? (and please, don’t trot out tired old pieces of quotes that beatwriters and radio sports jocks take completely out of context specifically in order to inflame and excite their readers and listeners). This does not constitute proof. Opinion, restated no matter how many times or in how many different formats, is not equivalent to truth.

This ownership has been in place since 1992. Since then, we have had winning years and losing years and many other facets of the franchise (managers, GMs, players, even home park) have changed as have the circumstances and performance of the teams in our division. But ownership has remained (relatively) constant. So if you’re going to allege that ownership is THE problem, what explains the years we might quantify as successful? What facet of ownership is the problem? Somebody alleges above that having an owner who doesn’t attend the games is the problem, as if that somehow proves ‘lack of passion’. That statement alone is based on two assumptions – 1) that you’re not passionate about it unless you attend the games in person and 2) that being passionate about the sport as an owner actually makes a difference in whether or not the team performs well.

This site has amazing discussions about the merits of players, and sometimes even coaches (though, as pointed out by the authors themselves, so much of an evaluation of pitching coaches for example, is subjective and based on things that we, as fans, simply can’t know because they are not easily measured or quantified). But man, when this site enters into discussions of ownership, the quality of reasoned discourse takes a quick dive.