Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Sure I can.
A) Any owner that wasn't effectively gifted his team and hasn't had it paid for free and clear for 25 years isn't in the same boat as the Cardinals. Debt service matters, I'll acknowledge that. What's DeWitt's excuse when he sold the !@#$ing parking garages that came gratis for 80% of what the team cost?
B) Any team that can't count on 35,000/gm to come out to watch a product even when it's demonstratively lousy isn't in the same boat as the Cardinals. Risk matters and DeWitt has none with the ballpark and the team this ingrained into the culture of the city.
C) Any team that doesn't have it's own bar district that is doing damage to the rest of the downtown scene while continuing to line the owners pockets isn't in the same boat as the Cardinals. That's a cash register that's come at the expense of the rest of downtown but far be it for DeWitt to put some of that money back into the ballclub.
D) Any team who doesn't go from a potential WC team to a genuine contender with the addition of a desperately needed LH bat who they could add to the lineup to replace one of the 2-3 worst regulars in baseball last year is not in the same boat as the Cardinals.
Now I am aware that this probably doesn't pare the list down to zero - there are other teams that goddamn well should've made this move and have no excuse to have sat on the sidelines. But I do not root for those teams and thus give zero ****s about them.
Bill Dewitt, the billionaire owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, who has sat on a decade of year over year record profits, who's team is sitting on literal billions of positive equity and who presently has the worst RFer in baseball playing at the top of a RH heavy lineup and has spent several seasons now looking up at their chief rival, has not one single mother****ing excuse at all for not pursuing Bryce Harper.
No, I'm not going to hold every team in baseball as accountable as the Cardinals. Apart from just being equal parts cheap and stupid over the last several years (previously stupid, now cheap), they have no reason not to have made this move.
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I agree with you on the Dewitt comments and financial state of the Cardinals. Your spot on.
I would have been happy with a 13 year/$330 million contract. I just posted 3 posts above that I advocated $350 million if that’s what it took. That said.....I understand from a state of baseball, risk/reward perspective why they didn’t pull the trigger.