Man, I had totally forgotten that the third year of pre-arbitration was only added in 1985. I’m not going to do the math to figure out how much total that has saved owners over the years, but given the widening gap between pre-arb salaries and those set in arbitration, I’m going to guesstimate “a buttload.”

But that’s not even *good* collusion. Good collusion would be everyone pretending they’re bidding when they’re not — leaking this is just waving a red flag in the union’s face to no end whatsoever.

I just agreed with you 100% in some comment up there somewhere^.

It hasn’t always been more profitable to field a barely competitive team, not in baseball. There was a time not long ago when player salaries were lower and marginal revenue product was higher, and at that point the only way to make money was to spend money. (At least if you were the Yankees or Dodgers; if you were…

Sustainable pay for the rank and file is way harder, though, because those guys are more or less interchangeable — I mean, there’s not an infinite number of Brian Doziers, but there’s a hell of a lot more of them than there are Manny Machados.

Really the only way to stop owners from employing a stars-and-minimum-wagers…

I believe the playoff bonus is factored into the marginal revenue/win calculations by Tyler et al — it’s why the value of a win is greater once you clear the .500 mark. But I’d have to go back and double-check their papers to be sure.

Yes, that’s an important distinction! Each “additional” win is above what you’d get from a replacement-level player, so you count up from 48 wins.

Though in actually existing baseball economics, the guy you’re likely playing instead of Bryce Harper (or instead of Moustakas or some other aging-but-semi-talented guy) is…

What, and give up show business?

Hey, that’s the same argument that the Washington Post used to kill an op-ed of mine (which they had specifically commissioned) about the Nationals stadium. Word at the time was that “someone important in editorial” had objected to the notion of taxes on D.C. businesses and on stadium concessions being, you know, tax…

The ferry system is actually horribly expensive and provides a carrying capacity smaller than a single bus line:

I initially thought so too, and the BQX people are already lobbying for it. But $225 million isn’t anywhere near enough to fill the BQX’s $2 billion budget hole, so I think that project, at least, is probably still dead.

I’d say any expansion fee would have to be at least $1 billion, and probably more. However, there are a lot of crazy rich people out there right now and only so many teams up for sale, so I wouldn’t rule it out.

If Vancouver weren’t in Canada, I bet it would have an MLB team already. I can’t see MLB approving a Vancouver team before Montreal, though, and I really can’t see them approving two Canadian teams, so, yeah, not holding my breath.

There have been several studies guesstimating that New York could effectively support five MLB teams. (Where you’d have them play is another story.) And it would have the nice side benefit of diluting the Yankees’ market power to where you wouldn’t need such byzantine revenue sharing rules anymore.

Nashville is bigger than Hartford. I didn’t start out typing that to damn with faint praise, but it’s where it ended up.