Game 17, Dodgers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Dustin May, 7:10pm
After another late rally earned them a series win over Houston, the M’s turn their attention to the best team in baseball, the LA Dodgers. The M’s are off to a good start, but there’s still quite a gap between a team that hopes to contend and one that hopes to become the winningest team ever and defend their Series title.
I promise I will talk about Dustin May, who’s one of the most watchable and electric starters in the game, in a minute. But right now, the biggest story in sports concerns the Super League, and I’ve been musing on how to shoehorn it in to an M’s blog post. Essentially, 12 of the biggest soccer teams in Europe – teams who often play in the richest club competition, the UEFA Champions League – released a plan to form a new league, a Super League, if you will, that would play alongside their regular domestic leagues. So, the teams from England and Italy would play in England and Italy on Saturday, and then against each other on Wednesday. But wait, you say – you just mentioned the UEFA Champions League. Isn’t that *precisely* what the Champions League does? Indeed, it is, but the problem these clubs are trying to solve is that both domestically and *even in* the Champions League, they have to face minnows who have absolutely no chance of winning. The Champion of the Belgian league gets to play in the Champions League, and they get plenty of money to do so. But they’re not…you know, going to win. They’re the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotting brands of the sport. You see the same thing domestically, where a lowly team just promoted in from a lower division is a fun story and can occasionally have a solid season (as Leeds is doing in England now), but they simply have no chance at all to win.
And the Super League teams know it, and like it. Their global brands have brought untold riches to the most popular sport, and the entire structure of European club sport seems designed to *produce* super teams. Promotion and Relegation help, but so does the lack of revenue sharing. You hardly even need to scout or develop players – just look around the world, find the best players someone else developed, and pay whatever you need. The contrast with MLB is stark: there’s only ever one top-flight pro league, and everyone in it is safe. They can’t be relegated. So much of the regulatory structure around baseball, including the CBA, is designed to produce a kind of balance that’s just not a part of European sport. There, the super teams sit on top of the vast pyramid of leagues and divisions and teams that proliferate across the continent. All of these tiny amateur or semi-pro teams have the theoretical ability to rise up the ranks over several seasons and join the top league. And when they do, they get a share of the TV rights to that top league (and conversely, if they’re relegated, they lose that money). It’s not going to happen for 99.9% of them, but it’s a possibility. So while there’s nowhere near as much direct sharing of revenue, TV rights are something of an exception. What if the big teams, the teams that nearly all American fans follow, created their own league and didn’t have share?
The reaction to this proposal has been near uniform scorn. England is postively aghast that anyone would think this was a good idea, but the reaction from the leagues and UEFA has been stronger still. UEFA is threatening to kick out any player who plays in this hypothetical league from any UEFA competitions and even the World Cup. Teams would be banned, coaches, anything that can be banned would be banned, and they’re checking with their lawyers to see if they can ban *harder.* The Premier League, which as this great column from Brian Phillips lays out, was created in 1992 as a sort of domestic super league to retain more of the TV revenue that was beginning to be fairly large. And now they’re incensed that some of its own clubs would try to create a new cash cow and leave the PL out! They do so by talking about the tradition and the sanctity of that same pyramid structure, and how beloved soccer is in each of the towns throughout the country that doesn’t host one of these super teams.
Having been there, I can vouch for how beloved it is, and how people will still turn up at tiny village games below in the Isthmian league. But everyone’s kind of dancing around the fact that people *love* watching the super teams. They hate the fact that Manchester United and Real Madrid get to even consider something like this, but they’re going to watch Manchester United’s next match. They point out that the whole thing is just a cynical cash grab, but what is the Champions League if not a cynical cash grab? A competition that runs *during* the regular season, televised worldwide? What’s that got to do with tradition and the beloved pyramid?
The problem is that the game’s gotten too out of whack. The teams with a chance at winning, say, the Premier League, or Italy’s Serie A can be counted on one hand. The global reach of those teams has never been higher, and there are bundles of money to be made from televising games. Right now, much of that goes to UEFA itself and domestic leagues as well, of course, as the biggest clubs. This “solution” is remarkably ham-handed and unlikely to work, but the clubs have, in their own way, called the question. Wouldn’t the Premier League really be more interesting *without* Man City and Liverpool, at least for a while? What use is that vast pyramid of clubs except to provide a couple of new no-hope teams for Man City to beat up on? The Super League really is just a cynical cash-grab, but that’s not to say that the leagues across Europe talking about the history and meaning in the current structure isn’t cynical as well.
To yank this back to baseball,* it reminds me a bit of the spiraling costs of regional TV contracts, and the spate of “baseball is dying” stories that are followed by soaring revenues. But baseball’s been soaked in money for a while. The imbalance now is the one between the pitchers and hitters. And like Europe, we’re going to get some out-of-the-box solutions to the problem, and we’ll get a lot of talk about tradition and how there isn’t really a problem at all. And as always, attitudes may change depending on the team you follow. Let’s just say I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope if the Mariners would be included in a short list of MLB’s super teams.
If you love pitching, you might say the game’s never been better. As the Pitching Ninja tweeted, strikeouts are up, we’ve already seen two no-hitters, and MLB.tv viewership is *up.* that may be comparing to the wrong baseline, you might need caveats due to increase in cord-cutting, but it’s notable. Not everyone sees the problem in the same way.
Dustin May is just the kind of player who embodies this debate. Blessed with a 99 mph sinker that moves like peak Blake Treinen’s, he’s either a ginger-maned star in the making, or the perfect symbol of how velocity and pitch shape work have made the game too hard for batters and upset the balance between offense and defense.
They may have a point, but I’ll admit I love watching May. I’m just like the Man City fans rejecting the Super League while thanking their Petro-state Prince for buying the worlds best players and making them dominant! I want balance, but did you *see* that sinker?! Sports captured us long ago, and while I still want to see a balanced game and a perennially great M’s team, my behavior suggests I’m going to just keep watching. So, uh, Go M’s.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 3B
3: Seager, DH
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Torrens, C
7: Trammell, CF
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
* MLB already IS the super league, and it’s worth considering how fans of NPB or KBO feel when a Yu Darvish or Masahiro Tanaka head to the US.
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8 Responses to “Game 17, Dodgers at Mariners”
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Up 2-0.
But, Can you please give some insight on MiLB players.
Where are they headed?
What are they doing?
^They’re in Vegas, drinking, gambling, and God knows what else.
Weird to hear ‘Seager homers’ and it’s Seattle’s opponent.
Hopefully that changes in the offseason.
Regarding the Super League and the predictable backlash, it aligns with something I’ve long believed: as much as people might intellectually demand parity, their wallets say otherwise.
Different kind of win tonight, but welcomed.
That was awesome. Great pitching and even better defense. France got nailed and will probably miss a few days. And then justice in the 9th. Betts looks to be sitting for a few days too. I hope Lewis is finally ready tomorrow.
“* MLB already IS the super league”
Yup, and that stability is worth something. In the earlier days of baseball, there was some chaos as leagues came and went: American Association, Union Association, Federal League, etc. Which leagues were “major”, and would teams jump, would players jump, etc. Similarly disruptive years occurred when the AFL challenged the NFL, the ABA challenged the NBA, etc.
European soccer is going through that right now (unless the Super League gets quickly shot down, as the powers that be are trying to do). There’ something to be said for existing structures and traditions.
But in the back of my mind is the possibility that the 12 or 15 super-teams in the Super League have enough strength in terms of finances and fan interest to tell UEFA, FIBA, etc. to take a hike and pursue their own vision. And given that fan interest will probably remain the strongest with the strongest teams, maybe the fans will vote with their pocketbooks and follow the Super League — and soccer might be overall stronger for it albeit with more money going to the very top teams.
Bringing it back to baseball, there’s no such disruption going on with the major leagues — but there certainly is with the minor leagues right now! It’s the flip side; if fan interest and money concentrates on the very top teams, i.e. MLB, what is to be done with the lower level leagues? How many should there be, what should the financial arrangements with MLB be, etc.?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m incredibly curious what will happen today when an update on France is made.
I’m assuming he won’t hit the IL, and if that’s the case, we’ll probably see more of Haggerty for a few days.
But if France does go to the IL, then what? Fraley is due back any day now and Walton is on the 40. They wouldn’t *have* to promote Kelenic, but does the fact that they’re in first change things?
Probably not, but the argument for a promotion couldn’t be more convenient.