http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7853268/ex-mlbpa-diector-marvin-miller-players-salaries-more-justifiable-ceo-pay

Per the above link, 95 year-old Marvin Miller, former head of the MLBPA, says corporate CEOs' salaries are outrageous; MLB players' current salaries are OK; the 1980s owners' collusion cases were worse than The Black Sox scandal, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis was a Klu Kluxer.

Regardless of whether one feels Miller's influence on baseball was beneficial or detrimental, he is certainly a baseball historical figure. There is no questioning his influence on the game. I thought his remarks were worthy of comment.

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Over at fangraphs, Alex Remington has an excellent piece on the deep financial pookie in which The Mets find themselves. I would bet $$10,000 (if I had it) that The Mets will not be forced to shed player contracts like The Pirates. As they say, read the whole thing: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/are-the-wilpons-about-to-lose-the-Mets/

Apologies: this should have been a fanshot but for some reason I couldn't make it work.

That's the question CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell asks at cnbc.com/id/45554847

The mistake would have been made by allowing Owners to connect revenue sharing with the luxury tax, "effectively putting a soft cap on player payrolls and discouraging traditionally heavy spenders from spending more."

The details: Fifteen mostly big-market/high-revenue stream teams are disqualified from receiving revenue-sharing dollars: The usual Boston-NY-Philadelphia-Chicago suspects, plus Toronto, Nats, Braves, Texas Two, Giants and A's (?). What? No LA teams? No StL?

Beginning in 2013, Rovell says, teams can get a rebate on what they pay in revenue sharing: 25%, rising to 100% by 2016. BUT, they only get the rebate if they are NOT paying the luxury tax, which is triggered by a payroll of $178 million in 2013, rising to $189 million in 2014-2016. A team which exceeds those payroll levels pays the tax AND loses its rebate.

Moreover, according to Rovell, a provision in the new CBA allows a big-spending team to lower its tax if it gets back into spending line and doesn't exceed the threshold.

And this: Rovell says the latest agreement requires teams receiving revenue sharing -- presumably including the Pirates -- to spend 25% more than they receive on payroll. Easy Peasy.

Rovell concludes it's hard to understand how the MLBPA could have agreed to spending caps without demanding a spending floor as well. Of course, the players might claim the revenue sharing plus 25% IS a spending floor.

Another thought occurs: If Rovell's characterization of the new CBA provisions is accurate, it might explain why outrage over the new draft spending caps has been confined to sites like Bucs Dugout, with nary a peep from those lovable loudmouths in the Pirates FO. Some draft spending flexibility was given up, some leveling of the ML salary playing field (if Rovell's report is accurate and I'm understanding it correctly) was received in return. To be fair, as we've noted before, current MLBPA members also benefit by having more of the available cash flow directed to their salaries.

A final caveat: Analytical reporting like Rovell's piece rarely happens by accident. IIRC, the new CBA hasn't been ratified by Owners or Players. Someone may be trying to upset the applecart. Paging Mr. Boras!

ESPN, citing an LA Times story,  has posted a report that nine major league teams -- not including the Pirates -- are in violation of major league baseball's rules concerning how much debt a team can carry.

Other than the obvious cases -- the Mets and the Dodgers -- the report names four other NL teams, the Phils, Cubs, Marlins and Nationals; and three AL teams, the Rangers, O's and Tigers.  Other than the Mets' and Dodgers' cases, which are well-known, no specific reason for any team's debt troubles was reported.

Looked at another way, while small to medium-sized market teams like the Marlins, Nats, O's, Tigers and Rangers can run into financial difficulties, large-market teams like the Mets, Phils, Cubs and Dodgers are not immune from the same troubles.  On the plus side, none of the teams named, with the possible exception of the Nats, is likely to face Dylan Bundy's reported $30 million or Danny Hultzen's $13 million signing demands.

The ESPN story cites no specific figures for any club other than the Mets, which it says carries $427 million in debt and is expected to lose $70 million this year; but points out that MLB's $7 billion in annual revenues are twice what they were eight years ago.  They are also equivalent to what the approximately 325th-ranking company on the Fortune 500 would earn in a year.

ESPN's report quotes Rob Manfred, baseball's EVP of Labor Relations, as saying "We are not concerned about the overall economic condition of the industry."  Well, Rob, you should be.  Baseball's business model is broken.

I watched Danny Hultzen pitch six innings in Virginia's 7-2 victory over Florida State to win the ACC baseball tournament yesterday. He allowed wo runs on six hits in six innings, with five strikeouts, one walk, a hit batter and a long home run (only the third the's given up all season). The end result was fine. But Hultzen seemed to struggle all the way.

Hultzen's delivery is peculiar: he starts from a strange-looking crouch, straightens up quickly, then moves through a herky-jerky motion that seems all arm and especially all elbow. (I am not a scout and am in no way qualified to be delivering definitive judgments.)

The on-screen radar gun seemed to show him sitting in the high 80's, but he can definitely crank it up - to 93-94 in a couple of instances, and once to 100 though I'm not sure I believe it. He threw from the right side of the rubber. He also served as the DH, going 0-for-2 with a walk.

He seemed to rack up a lot of pitches, and had a lot of trouble locating his pitches. The broadcasters from CSN noted that he seemed to be running out of steam at the end of a season in which he's pitched more innings than any before. After six he was gone; UVA was ahead, and the Coach may be trying to save him for the NCAA Tournament. Honestly, his mound opponent, Hunter Scantling, looked better to me. He was a big guy, 6-foot-7, 270 pounds, sort of a right-handed C.C.Sabathia. Easier motion, not quite as much steam, but way lower pitch counts. Scantling gave up two bombs in old Durham Bulls park, a bandbox with a 302-foot left field line and a 30-foot wall. Neither Scanting nor Hultzen made the All-Tournament team. 

I've been kind of pulling for Hultzen.  He seems to be a high-character young man, and I like UVA's baseball program. Watching this game makes me think Neal Huntington's job is harder than it looks. I still think Hultzen is worthy of consideration as the Bucs' No. 1 pick (worried about Anthony Rendon's injuries and Gerrit Cole's overuse/up-and-down effectiveness) but something about watching Hultzen pitch yesterday made me think of Tim Alderson's unorthodox delivery and the temptation some might have to 'change' or 'improve' it.

USA Today ran a story 4/28 on baseball's attendance problems in four Rust Belt cities:  Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Detroit. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2011-04-28-baseball-attendance-population_N.htm.   Some highlights:

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According to this story on ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/news/story?id=6397488.  Without looking it up, I believe the Dodgers and Mets are two teams that pay the luxury tax.  Could be wrong.

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Tim Marchman has an interesting column/bookreview in today's Wall Street Journal online, titled The Religion of Prediction (sorry, no link).  In it he discusses three recent books on sabremetrics, which he calls, "the province of cranks and eccentrics,"

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Michael Lewis, Moneyball author and current Bloomberg columnist just appeared on Bloomberg's midday interview show with Tom Keene.  Keene asked Lewis about the book.  Lewis replied that, when written, the impact of the book derived from the idea that statistical analysis could be applied to an activity like baseball to assign responsibility and uncover inefficiencies to be exploited.  No news so far.

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Check out www.newgeography.com/content/001041-baseball-goes-for-broke; or just go to newgeography.com and look for the article by this title by Matthew Stevenson.  Apologies.  I can't link directly.

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