MLB Offseason 2013-2014

Outside of its terrible location, not much. But the location is pretty bad, considering they're lucky to draw 15,000 fans on a good night. What the Braves are doing is moving out towards areas like Marietta, where the actual money is in the area (and where it's also 98% white and horribly regressive, politically). Cobb County voted down $7.5 million for new public school textbooks ... but may finance up to $450 million of this new beast. Ugh.

The Braves, like 98% of other teams out there, tried to extort a few hundred million bucks out of Fulton County and the City of Atlanta for renovations; both municipalities said "fuck no," so the Braves started looking elsewhere. Public financing for stadiums is bullshit.

The Georgia Dome does have pretty significant structural issues. And the Falcons are hardly burning cash on the project -- the City of Atlanta is forking out several hundred million dollars for the new stadium.

Edit: Jacoby Ellsbury turned down his qualifying offer from the Red Sox, so he's hitting the market. God, I can't wait to see what team overpays out the wazoo for him.

 

That was merely the qualifying offer, which is set each year by the league under the terms of the bullshit new CBA. By making the QO (and McCann turning it down), that means the Braves will now receive the first-round draft pick of the team that signs McCann. They can still negotiate with him, of course, but McCann is probably looking at a 5 / 80 deal, possibly higher given how fucking terrible this year's free agent class is, and the Braves have enough depth in their system to let him go for that price, considering they couldn't exactly move him to DH when his knees turn to dust, and Freddie Freeman seems to have first base locked up for some time to come.

McCann's going to the AL, mark my words. He'll wind up in Texas, New York, maybe Detroit ... possibly Boston, but they still have luxury tax concerns to deal with and they seem to be avoiding super long-term deals. (I still think Henry is looking to sell the team.)

Not for much longer. The Cubs opted out of their agreement with WGN last week; WGN has an exclusive negotiating window for the next 24 days, and then the 70 or so games that are on WGN will be up for bid. So the Cubs will be on WGN for the next two seasons, but after that is anyone's guess. (This is why Bob Brenly left the TV booth after 2012, by the way; he had agreed in principle to a five-year contract, and the Cubs suddenly demanded it be a two-year deal because they already had the wheels turning to open up the TV rights for bids.)

 

It's rather socioeconomically depressed (and will likely become a near-ghetto if Turner Field gets dumped), for one -- crime is high and getting worse, and as a result storefronts all throughout the area are abandoned. It's not like the area around Camden Yards, which is relatively safe and has a large amount of pre-game festivities. I'd love to see how Fulton County responds to an empty, desolate husk of a stadium, given how rough the neighborhood already is.

And getting there is a massive pain in the ass. You have to drive (or walk) to MARTA, take a train to Underground Atlanta, walk through Underground Atlanta, then take a bus to the stadium. Doing this to get to the stadium isn't a huge pain, but leaving the stadium is annoying as hell.

 

Atlanta's a football city, and they can barely sustain the Braves (and even Georgia Tech football is having attendance issues). The answer to whether or not Atlanta can support two teams is somewhere between "no" and "hahahaha, fuck no."

Edit: Mayor Reed confirmed today that the Braves attempted to extort up to $250 million in City-financed renovations in exchange for staying at Turner Field, the City said no, and now Turner Field will be demolished following their departure.

 

Yes and no. Almost every MLB team has a partnership agreement with StubHub, under which they get a commission on ticket sales, and several teams actually sell their tickets directly to StubHub or put them up for sale themselves on the marketplace, essentially scalping their own tickets (unless they're brazen enough to outright scalp their own tickets publicly, like the Cubs do with Wrigley Field Premium Ticket Services).