Ryu In My House

No, he typed it.

Right? Also, who the f*** is Chucky?

Tellez was not involved in any trade talks. Sorry.

Said no one, ever.

Clearly ownership instructed him not to go over the luxury tax.

Since no one moderating gives a f***, here is a solid $$$ article on the Blue Jays, courtesy of http://www.theathletic.com INVITE FRIENDS Following Cities Fantasy Football NHL MLB NFL NBA CFB CBB Soccer Motorsports MMA • • •DiscussionsPodcasts Stoeten: 20 years in, how should Blue Jays fans feel about Rogers ownership? By Andrew Stoeten 1h ago 9 Twenty years ago this week, on Sept. 1, 2000, Rogers Communications Inc. purchased 80 percent of the Toronto Blue Jays for US$112 million. Fifty percent that price would be “satisfied by the issuance of Rogers Class B shares.” In other words, for US$56 million in actual capital, Rogers had purchased a baseball franchise that, according to Forbes’ list of 2020 franchise valuations, is today worth US$1.625 billion. It’s been a hell of a transaction for the company. But how would Blue Jays fans describe the past two decades of life under Rogers ownership? Frustrating is a word that comes to mind, though perhaps not as quickly as it might have at other points over the past 20 years. In 2020, the venom that flows from the fanbase toward ownership is less poisonous. Last winter, the team forked out US$80 million for 33-year-old NL Cy Young runner-up Hyun Jin Ryu. Entering play Thursday, the team was in a playoff spot with just a month left in the season. For the first time since 2016, the Jays were trade deadline buyers, and were one of the most active teams on the market. This current era of Blue Jays baseball is new enough, and the team is young enough, that expectations don’t yet weigh on them. Most fans are just happy to be here, and out of the rebuild. The future looks bright and it feels close. The situation wasn’t the same back in September 2000, but many of the feelings were. Back then, the Jays were owned by Belgian brewing conglomerate Interbrew, who in July 1995 had purchased the club’s original owners, John Labatt Ltd. The sale of Labatt to Interbrew was a hasty one in response to a hostile takeover bid launched by Onex, a Canadian private equity firm. Labatt shareholders spurned Onex, choosing instead a bid from a company that had absolutely no interest in owning a baseball team. The spectre of another sale hung over the Jays throughout the Interbrew years, affecting GM Gord Ash’s ability to implement a long-term vision for the club. Add in Ash’s own shortcomings as a GM — a topic which I delved into back in May — and the franchise Rogers purchased in 2000 was a dysfunctional mess. New ownership offered stability. And in the early 2000s, when MLB was openly contemplating contraction, stable, Canadian ownership was a huge plus. There was a honeymoon period. After a lost half-decade, things were finally looking up. Hopefully, the parallels to today don’t extend much beyond that, because MLB success — at least how fans measure it — didn’t come quickly for Rogers. As a baseball team, the Jays from 2000 to 2015 mostly lurched from low point to low point, with brief periods of excitement and optimism in between. Sure, there were also moments of individual brilliance — Bautista’s 54 home-run season in 2010 and Roy Halladay’s entire career — but during that period the Blue Jays were a far more successful business property than a baseball club. In the early 2000s, the Blue Jays provided Rogers’ fledgling sports network, then known as Rogers Sportsnet, with incredibly valuable live content 162 days a year, eventually helping it supplant the once thought-to-be unbeatable TSN as Canada’s No. 1 sports network. Under Rogers, the Blue Jays became early adopters of “Moneyball,” slashing payroll following the 2001 season in the name of forward-thinking cost-efficiency — a concept that now rules the league and has seen MLB’s highest team payroll rise from US$182 million in 2004 to $227 million in 2019, despite franchise values closing in on tenfold growth over that time. (According to Forbes, the average MLB franchise was worth $263 million in 2000. The average franchise today is worth $1.85 billion, per their latest list.) As I wrote in a June piece on the J.P. Ricciardi era, the Jays’ bottoming out of their on-field product in 2002 made the position of Sportsco, the company that owned SkyDome at the time, so untenable from a revenue standpoint that Rogers was able to buy it from them for C$25 million, or about four percent of the original cost of the stadium, and $55 million less than Sportsco had paid for it when it bought the building out of bankruptcy in 1999. Rogers immediately changed the name of the building to Rogers Centre. In ensuing years, they pushed some Jays games onto a new and not-widely-available Sportsnet channel, Sportsnet One, in an attempt to compel competing cable companies to carry it, and viewers to subscribe to it. Just this year, MLB re-implemented blackout restrictions for Canadians looking to watch Jays games on MLB’s excellent digital streaming service, MLB.TV, forcing them instead to pay for Sportsnet NOW, Rogers’ own streaming service. That’s all worked out very well for Rogers and its shareholders. In 2013, the company chose to immortalize its founder, Edward S. “Ted” Rogers, with a statue in the courtyard by the southeast end of the building. The monument to ownership — one literally shoved in the faces of Blue Jays fans outside the stadium — is largely reviled by fans. It’s even more galling given the absence of any other statues elsewhere around the ballpark celebrating the team’s rich on-field history. In the years since 2013, however, it feels as though the sports world has largely caught up to the Blue Jays in terms of their commitment to the bottom line, first and foremost. There was a time when Jays fans would pine for a free-spending maverick of an owner like the Yankees’ George Steinbrenner or the Tigers’ Mike Ilitch, but those kinds of owners have become exceedingly rare. Today, even when a team’s owner is individual in name, they’re almost always corporate in their conduct. For example, John Henry is the Red Sox’ principal owner, but is so through his ownership of Fenway Sports Group, LLC. Larry Dolan owns Cleveland’s MLB franchise, and Jim Crane owns the Houston Astros, but their teams aren’t the playthings of the rich like they once were; they’re now tightly controlled investments. Today the best style of ownership Jays fans can hope for is something modelled after Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. MLSE is, of course, the partnership between Rogers, their hated telecom rival BCE Inc. (aka Bell Canada), and Larry Tanenbaum. The company owns the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, Argonauts, and commercial real estate projects. But because Rogers is a publicly-traded company, unlike MLSE, it needs to disclose big expenditures, such as badly-needed stadium renovations or major increases to the Blue Jays’ payroll. Those kinds of investments can be a drag on Rogers’ newly-renamed sports and media division’s profits. When profits fail to meet expectations, it can negatively impact share price, and that can lead to tighter purse strings. From letting Delgado walk after 2004; Ricciardi conceeding in late 2009 that a bigger payroll was necessary in order to compete; missing out on Yu Darvish; Alex Anthopoulos having to go hat-in-hand to his players to try and sign Ervin Santana; or the inability or unwillingness to extend or re-sign stars such as David Price, Edwin Encarnación, Josh Donaldson and Marcus Stroman, “cheap Rogers” has been a common refrain among Jays fans over the past 20 years — often with a choice expletive added in for good measure. Yet over the past several years the tension between fans and Rogers has somewhat eased. That’s in part as a result of then team president Paul Beeston’s ability to convince ownership to behave like the big market team they are, by approving a major payroll jump following the blockbuster trade with the Marlins in 2012, and also because the team has been in a rebuild since the late stages of 2017 following the highs of back-to-back ALCS appearances in 2015 and ’16. Signing Ryu last winter was certainly a bold financial move, but many fans remain hesitant to let go of their belief that ownership will never do fully right by the team. Under Rogers, the Jays are now in the middle of their third rebuild. The benefits of owning a baseball team while not spending very much on it at times are just too great to pass up, I guess. Rogers’ ownership of the Blue Jays has been an excellent case study in that theory over the years. Back in December, my colleague Stephen J. Nesbitt graphed out every MLB team’s total free agent spending since 2006 for a piece on Bob Nutting, the Pirates’ frugal owner. The data excludes the Ryu signing, which would occur a few weeks later, nor does it include the B.J. Ryan and A.J. Burnett contracts, which were signed in late 2005. Still, it covers 14 years, and during that period the Jays’ free-agent spending ranks 25th in all of baseball. Over the same period, according to Forbes, the value of the team grew by $1.214 billion. Under the stewardship of team president and CEO Mark Shapiro since late 2015, who in Cleveland was at the vanguard of MLB’s new-age shift toward unwavering business school principles even within family-owned organizations, the Jays have focused on maximizing their revenue potential from within the confines of life as a Rogers entity. They’ve instituted dynamic ticket pricing and pushed general ticket prices considerably higher, despite any recent success on the field. They’ve moved the Rogers Centre press box away from its Day 1 location behind home plate and out to left field in order to add a “premium” lounge. Rather than griping about having to play in “the big man’s division” like Ricciardi did, or running cover for ownership by invoking “payroll parameters,” as Anthopoulos once did, Shapiro’s Blue Jays are trying to capture as much revenue as possible straight from the source: your pockets. Being ultra-efficient and ruthless on the business side may prove to be the Jays’ best bet to become a truly big spender within the confines of the Rogers empire. It is, at the very least, untried in their history. Gone are the days of the Ballpark Pass, Toonie Tuesdays, or any pretense of affordability. Now the Jays can have thousands of unsold tickets for a home opener and yet Shapiro can still boast it will be the highest-revenue game in the history of the building. All of that is on pause here in 2020, of course. In addition to the team’s legitimate shot at a playoff spot, the physical distance between fans and the team has, for at least the time being, eased the tension. The money the Blue Jays have invested in upgrading Buffalo’s Sahlen Field perhaps even suggests that more money will be there for additional investments on the free-agent market this winter. But the overall lessons of the past 20 years say its best to keep expectations low. Yes, there have been free-agent splashes and trades to add payroll over the years, and yes, the Canadian dollar can often be a problem for the team. But on the whole, life for Jays fans under Rogers ownership has been about feeling that better things aren’t attainable. The Jays may be an incredibly valuable TV property with a national reach and hundreds of thousands of viewers each night — millions when times are good — but it has never been enough to consistently vault them into the payroll stratosphere of the Yankees and Red Sox. It’s left fans to ask: but why not? Who that question ought to be posed to is another matter. Rogers and the Jays are deliberately opaque about financial matters, so it’s not always easy to know where fans’ ire should be directed to. However, we do know that Edward Rogers, Ted’s son, has a close relationship with the club. Officially, Edward is the chairman of the Toronto Blue Jays and the chair of the board of directors for Rogers Communications. And it’s worth remembering that in 2017, he personally got involved in the re-signing of José Bautista. “I’d rather not get into the specifics of exactly how he was involved,” GM Ross Atkins told The Athletic’s John Lott at the time the signing was announced. “But … his leadership and desire to help (were) abundantly clear.” That same week, Sportsnet’s Jeff Blair said the following on his radio show in the aftermath of the Bautista deal: “What really makes me feel better about this deal is I’m hearing, and I trust the people I hear this from, that Edward Rogers gave Mark Shapiro additional money to get the Bautista deal done — knowing full well the team still needs to address the bullpen and backup catcher, effectively removing the last impediment to putting the Bautista contract to rest.” In the years since, we’ve heard less about Ed Rogers’ involvement with the team. But if that was possible in 2017, maybe more of it will be possible as the Jays move closer to competitiveness and their budget again pushes closer to its limit. The first 20 years of Blue Jays ownership under Rogers has been largely defined by Ted Rogers and how the franchise was operated as a business. The opportunity now before his son is to make the next 20 years about establishing his own, distinct legacy with the franchise and the city, one defined by on-field success, and hopefully, a World Series championship. Maybe baseball’s next great win-first owner is already here, right under our nose. But even if that’s true, it’s going to take an awful lot for fans to actually believe it. More likely, there will come a point when Jays fans again find themselves seething at Rogers for placing some marginal gain for the company’s bottom line ahead of the baseball team’s best interest. The fact that just about every other team now behaves the same way will provide cold comfort. What did you think of this story? MEH SOLID AWESOME Andrew Stoeten is a Blue Jays columnist for The Athletic, and co-host of the Birds All Day podcast. Follow Andrew on Twitter @AndrewStoeten. 9 COMMENTS Add a comment... John S. 1h ago 2 likes Can someone lend me a few billion to buy a pro franchise, seems like a great investment. Marshall A. 1h ago 1 like @John S. Especially when you can buy an asset like the Rogers Centre for about 15% of what the Government paid to build it. Andrew M. 1h ago 1 like Tampa truly is a low budget team, They’ve accomplished 1 World Series Appearance, 5 Playoff Appearances, 2 Division Titles. Blue Jays 2 Playoff Appearances and a whole lot of not trying at All it’s sad Marshall A. 1h ago 1 like The additional sums deployed to upgrading Sahlen and the Ryu signing all seem to point toward the promise that Shapiro made a few years ago: namely, that when the team looked like it was on the threshold of being competitive again, Rogers would spend the $$. So far so good. The next few years will be very telling, as will the long-awaited renovations at the Rogers Centre itself. But I confess I'm feeling more optimistic about ownership than I have for a while. The Jays don't seem to be viewed simply as an afterthought any longer. Iain P. 47m ago 1 like Rogers Centre renovations (or a new stadium which is easy to get to) will tell us how good Rogers is as an owner... Chris W. 45m ago The thing that always seems to come up in these discussions is the split in what fans and owners view the ownership as. Fans look at the valuation and say they should have huge payrolls. Owners look at it like real estate. We’ve seen enough owners come out and say year to year profits aren’t big it is the valuation of the property that matters to them. And this they won’t get most of that money til they sell the team down the line. So even if the jays went up by a billion dollars that doesn’t mean they have that much more for payroll. Look at the Yankees their payroll has been pretty flat for years. Their 2000 era teams might have higher payroll than their current team and their valuation has gone up too. So yeah expect teams to be worth way more money but don’t expect salaries to outpace inflation. Just not the reality of the sport. Robert M. 35m ago Shatkins. *spits Greg P. 31m ago 1 like Ranking 25th in spending while the teams value grew by 1.214 billion is staggering. Gordon B. 10m ago mlb and other so called major leagues, have taken the game away from the fans. tickets are too pricey READ MORE Bowden: Handing out trade deadline grades for all 30 teams By Jim Bowden Sep 1 Rosenthal: Evaluating a weird trade deadline turned upside down Ken Rosenthal Sep 1 45 Comments Sarris: Trade deadline trends can tell us a lot about the state of the game Eno Sarris Sep 2 44 Comments 10 stray thoughts on the Blue Jays’ trade deadline, and where they go from here Kaitlyn McGrath Sep 1 12 Comments There’s no amount you can place on Hyun Jin Ryu’s value to the Blue Jays Andrew Stoeten Sep 2 32 Comments Who would you rather have: Troy Tulowitzki or Trevor Story? 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The Brewers DFAed Smoak and signed Vogelbach lol

Huh. I am 51-years old and never seen him pitch.

In it's a small world portion of our program(me), The Brewers have DFAed Smoak and signed Vogelbach lol

In the off season the reports I read about him said that his bat is MLB ready, but everything else needs works. But like others, I would love to call him up just for the entertainment factor. When Jansen or Reeese arte up to bat I usually just FF to the next batter. I always watch the live action a little behind live so I can do this. The catchers we have are like auto outs in slowpitch when only nine players show up. They are awful.

I am not sure that makes it okay. But it is not my forum.

Bwahahaha. I hurt inside now.

Are we allowed to post $$$ content? I have a sub and pay for it. I would be a little cheesed if someone posted what I pay for. That may make me out to be a dick, though. Oh well. FYI, I have signed up for The Athletic three boxing days in a row for 70% off each time. It is worth it.

Two more years. He's a FA in 2023 according to fangraphs.

I would never bat Villar 9th. 7th seems right. I would honestly be open to batting Shaw last. Panik, Espinal, players like that should get the least amount of bats. Batting 9th or riding the pine accomplishes that.

Semantics, but Tabler always says "big and strong" to describe "baseball player". Same idea, though.

Yeah, he's a good defensive second string catcher. I don't think any FO this off season figured he was the next coming and wanted to trade for him based on that MLB SSS.

You can look on fangraphs to parse the contract/club control status for each.

No all star gets, but a lot of solid gets that will incrementally improve everything. And once everyone is healthy, we have a great bench. Buh-bye Drury and Panik.

He looked pretty good prior to 2020, and we have control (IIRC) until 2023. Who knows about this guy?

No it doesn't. He's better than anyone we have on the bench.

Me, too. If he wasn't the son of a former MLB player, I wouldn't give two shits for him.

And also Bundy.

Cabrera? Wuck?

You get into the $M/WAR at that point. We can give up prospects and back fill with free agents because this FO is loaded, willing to spend when required, and has a minimal payroll after 2020.