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		<title>What Ticket Sale Data can Tell us About Future Blue Jays Attendance</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/20/what-ticket-sale-data-tells-us-about-future-blue-jays-attendance/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:20:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jon Shell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11955</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In an article last month arguing that the Blue Jays shouldn’t trade Josh Donaldson, Jonah Keri leaned heavily on a financial argument: “Losing games would be one thing. Losing games and trading Donaldson could signal to fans that a full teardown is underway, and that the next several years of Blue Jays baseball might be [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In an<a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/jonah-keri-case-trading-josh-donaldson-season/"> article last month</a> arguing that the Blue Jays shouldn’t trade Josh Donaldson, Jonah Keri leaned heavily on a financial argument:</p>
<p>“Losing games would be one thing. Losing games and trading Donaldson could signal to fans that a full teardown is underway, and that the next several years of Blue Jays baseball might be tough to watch…Keeping Donaldson around for as long as possible could help prolong the franchise’s off-field momentum, the kind that’s supercharged attendance and TV ratings, and more intangibly made the Jays a hot topic of conversation on those glorious Toronto summer patio nights — like they were 25 years ago.”</p>
<p>Keri here is making a guess about something we don’t really know much about &#8211; namely, fan reactions to head office moves, and the implications for franchise revenue. It’s not that the financial side doesn’t matter – in fact, especially for a corporate club like the Jays, it’s crucial! It’s just that we tend to attach too much credibility to our gut instincts when we don&#8217;t have facts to lean on. I doubt Keri, or anyone else, wants to be like that scout in Moneyball talking about “the good face.” But when it comes to the economics of baseball, that’s who we often are.</p>
<p>The revolution in baseball analysis hasn&#8217;t extended to the financial side, despite its large influence on team decision-making. Even high-effort attempts to understand teams&#8217; current state and future prospects limit their financial analysis to current payroll levels, such as this otherwise <a href="http://www.hardballtimes.com/ground-rule-doppelgangers-2017-edition/">very cool concept </a>at the Hardball Times.<a id="ref1" href="#1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> But to a large extent, current payroll is a backward-looking metric, as it reflects decisions made in the past in potentially different circumstances. For example, the Detroit Tigers are an aging team with a high payroll and a collapsing attendance base. Current payroll may be an indicator of what they’re willing to spend in a good situation, but may not be a good indicator of their willingness or ability to add quality players over the next few years.</p>
<p>Since we currently often use hunch-based economics to support our arguments about what each team should do at the trade deadline, it might be useful to have some analytical tools or theories based on research. For example, what’s the actual “signalling” impact of trading someone like Josh Donaldson or Roberto Osuna? Does attendance reflect who the players are, and how long they’ve been with the team, or is it just about winning? How much does team revenue influence the player budget, and how does that differ based on the type of team owner?</p>
<p>While these questions would require some pretty painful historical research, we probably have enough available data today to create some useful metrics. The rise of Stubhub has produced accessible data about demand for tickets that scalpers never published. This data can be like the “peripherals” of revenue, using current market sentiment to predict a team’s season attendance, which is a good proxy for their revenue.<a id="ref2" href="#2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> This is exactly the same way xFIP tries to predict long-term ERA. Call it xREV, or xATT.</p>
<p>I think it would be pretty cool if Jonah Keri could say that the xREV for the Blue Jays is looking down about 10% for 2017, so we can’t expect the player budget to increase and need to think about things like trading Roberto Osuna. When <a href="https://bluejaysnation.com/2017/06/16/dont-trade-roberto-osuna-commit-to-making-him-a-starter/" target="_blank">Andrew Stoeten says</a> “unless something with their budget changes dramatically, the Blue Jays&#8230;aren’t quite going to be in that 2015-like push-in-all-your-chips, our-window-is-right-now kind of place,” this reasonable argument would be helped if xATT showed little reason to expect a dramatic change in their budget.</p>
<p>While we don&#8217;t have this metric, I&#8217;m going to make a lazy attempt at something similar.</p>
<p>First, let’s look at actual attendance so far this year compared to the last few years:</p>
<table width="385">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="4" width="385">Blue Jays Attendance through 36 Home Games</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Year</td>
<td>Record</td>
<td>Total Attendance</td>
<td>Average Per Game</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2014</td>
<td>39-27</td>
<td> 914,601</td>
<td> 25,405</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2015</td>
<td>37-33</td>
<td> 949,648</td>
<td> 26,379</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2016</td>
<td>40-34</td>
<td> 1,369,090</td>
<td> 38,030</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2017</td>
<td>33-35</td>
<td> 1,400,638</td>
<td> 38,907</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Well, that doesn’t look too bad. On the face of it, the Blue Jays seem to be holding on to the gains they made last year, where they finished the year with 3.3 million fans. As Jonah points out, first in the AL!</p>
<p>But the underlying demand that would go into a predictive “xREV” paint a different picture. To look at it, I used seatgeek.com and my friend Dan. Seatgeek.com has a cool tool that shows you average ticket price on the secondary market for a team over time. My friend Dan lives in Calgary and actively sells every one of his season tickets on stubhub, which he has so he can get playoff tickets.<a id="ref3" href="#3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> He’s better than your friend Dan because he also keeps really good track of his sales stats.</p>
<p>Here’s the Jays picture on seatgeek.com since Feb, 2014:</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Since-beginning-of-2014.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11956" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Since-beginning-of-2014.png" alt="Since beginning of 2014" width="500" height="405" /></a></p>
<p>Average ticket prices last year dipped as low as $57, but this year they’ve barely ever been at that level, and are currently at $42, similar to prices in 2014 and early 2015 when attendance and interest was much lower. They did sell a lot more advance seats this year, so some of this would be expected as there’s a lot more supply in the market, but this should be a good indicator of a reduced interest in walk-up tickets.</p>
<p>Obviously, the team is doing worse, so that&#8217;s to be expected, but there have also been times this year where their record was very similar to last year, and it&#8217;s the same story.</p>
<p>For example, this year the Yankees came to town for a weekend series June 2-4, with the Blue Jays just under .500. The series drew 138K fans. Last year, the Red Sox came for a weekend series May 27-29 with the team just under .500, and drew 142K fans. That was almost exactly the same situation. According to Seatgeek, last year the average ticket price for the Red Sox series ranged from $45 to $58, while this year it was $39-41 for the Yanks. Dan’s results were even worse, averaging $61 a ticket this year versus $91 last year. <em>Even when the team performance was equally bad</em>, demand this year is a lot less than last year.</p>
<p>In fact, so far this year Dan’s getting crushed.<a id="ref4" href="#4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> Here’s his stats through 36 games:</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="5" width="349">Dan&#8217;s Ticket Sales (through 36 games)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="38"></td>
<td width="78">Total Sales</td>
<td width="61">Average</td>
<td width="116">Sales above $90</td>
<td width="56">No Sale</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="38">2016</td>
<td width="78">$2,242</td>
<td width="61">$62.29</td>
<td width="116">12</td>
<td width="56">3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="38">2017</td>
<td width="78">$1,228</td>
<td width="61">$34.11</td>
<td width="116">1</td>
<td width="56">10</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>And if you think he’s being lazy, he’s actually working harder this year. “Last year I held back the tickets because we knew there’d be real demand for the big games. This year, I have to post them way in advance, actively manage the change in prices and keep adjusting. I’m not going to do it again next year.” So, the Jays are already down two seats in 2018!</p>
<p>The change showed up very early, as last year’s home opener average on seatgeek was $61, while this year’s, after the miserable 1-5 start, was $39. Dan’s story was worse again, selling last year’s tickets for $260, and this year’s for $67.<a id="ref5" href="#5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
<p>If demand continues to be this soft for new ticket sales, you’d expect to see a much lower average attendance for the rest of this year than the 47K per game they had from this point forward in 2016. Even keeping our league-leading current average attendance of 39K per game leads to a loss of 350K fans for the year. And there’s some evidence (the Yankees/Red Sox series comparison) that even if the team rallies back to take a wild card, interest would be lower than it was for the same result last year. If I had to take a stab at xATT, it would be 2.9-3.1M.</p>
<p>In Keri’s <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/osunas-dominance-present-blue-jays-tempting-options/" target="_blank">perfectly reasonable article about trading Roberto Osuna</a>,<a id="ref6" href="#6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> he says this about the Jays fanbase: “Balanced against all that is a fanbase that’s been energized by the team’s recent success, with two straight ALCS appearances producing the best home attendance for any American League team this year, as well as surging TV ratings and a more intangible buzz around the ballclub, the kind that hadn’t been felt since the back-to-black glory years of 1992 and 1993.”</p>
<p>We’ll see how the rest of the season goes, but it’s possible that momentum has already swung the other way, and that underlying attendance “peripherals” may point to a lot less money to work with going forward. Before we trade Donaldson and “tear it all down,” this is pretty lazy analysis, and could easily be useless. But there’s a big gap in the baseball analytics world, and developing some useful tools on these topics would make predicting a team’s moves a lot more interesting and better informed.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline"><strong>FOOTNOTES</strong></span></p>
<p><a id="1" href="#ref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>The analysis attempts to find a historical match for each current team based on a number of dimensions.  The Jays are, as it happens, compared to the 1990 San Francisco Giants, who won 85, 75 and 72 games from 1990-1992.  Let’s hope not!</p>
<p><a id="2" href="#ref2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>Attendance is a team’s primary revenue source, and you’d expect it to drive merchandise sales, which are two of the three main drivers of revenue. TV is the other, and for most other teams, this is a long-term contract unaffected by attendance. Because the Blue Jays don’t have a TV contract for a specific set amount of money, TV revenue for the Blue Jays/Rogers is directly tied to advertising revenue, which is directly tied to ratings and therefore fan interest. So, attendance is a better proxy for revenue for the Jays than other teams.</p>
<p><a id="3" href="#ref3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>This worked out really well for Dan last year, as he made enough of a profit on the regular season seats to more or less pay for his trip to Toronto to see the playoffs. This year, not so much.</p>
<p><a id="4" href="#ref4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>Before you scream “small sample size,” Stubhub works largely like a stock market for tickets, where there are many buyer and sellers, so an active seller’s result will be indicative of the actual market rate.</p>
<p><a id="5" href="#ref5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>To be fair, last year was a Friday against the Red Sox and this year was a Tuesday against the Brewers, but these are some pretty dramatic differences.</p>
<p><a id="6" href="#ref6"><sup>[6]</sup></a>Not to get too deeply into this, but Osuna’s going to cost somewhere between $25-30M in his last three years of arbitration eligibility if he stays healthy. Kenley Jansen signed for $16M/year, or about $50M over the same time period. The recent hauls for players like Ken Giles and Tyler Thornburg were worth more than the difference, and Osuna’s better than those guys (not to mention the Andrew Miller and Craig Kimbrel deals). I’m not saying “do it,” but it’s certainly not crazy. And my love for Osuna runs deep…</p>
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		<title>Buying A Bullpen: How Do The Jays Compare?</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/04/19/buying-a-bullpen-how-do-the-jays-compare/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/04/19/buying-a-bullpen-how-do-the-jays-compare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2016 10:15:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dave Church]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston Red Sox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bullpen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kansas City Royals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Yankees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Payroll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tampa Bay Rays]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=1128</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s a common refrain of the sabermetrically inclined that you shouldn&#8217;t spend money on bullpens. It&#8217;s easy to see why this is: a pitcher that can throw 180-200 innings in a season (a starter) will usually be more valuable than someone whose peak is around 70 innings (a reliever). Even accounting for leverage and situations, the best [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s a common refrain of the sabermetrically inclined that you shouldn&#8217;t spend money on bullpens. It&#8217;s easy to see why this is: a pitcher that can throw 180-200 innings in a season (a starter) will usually be more valuable than someone whose peak is around 70 innings (a reliever). Even accounting for leverage and situations, the best reliever in baseball by WARP (the Yankees&#8217; <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=49775">Dellin Betances</a>) isn&#8217;t as valuable as someone like<a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=5034"> R.A. Dickey</a>, a player <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/03/22/how-we-can-appreciate-reliable-starter-r-a-dickey/">whose public perception doesn&#8217;t necessarily line up with his value</a>. And Betances&#8217; number is less than a third as much as the best starter in baseball by WARP, <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=49786">Clayton Kershaw</a>.</p>
<p>We did see a bit of a different trend in the last offseason, however. With the Royals having made the World Series two years in a row, and having had excellent bullpens both seasons, other teams set out to form their own fantastic relief cores. Boston traded for <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=70812">Carson Smith</a> and <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58350">Craig Kimbrel</a>. The Yankees acquired <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=53014">Aroldis Chapman</a>, even with <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=49617">Andrew Miller</a> and the aforementioned Betances already in tow. Even the Blue Jays got in on the action a bit, acquiring deposed Nationals closer <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=59345">Drew Storen</a>. All sports tend to copy success, and the Royals having success with their bullpen meant teams were going to try and emulate that.</p>
<p>In building these better bullpens, however, teams had to commit resources to doing so, in prospects and/or cash. In that vein, for money and value, let&#8217;s see how the Blue Jays compare to some of their competitors. We&#8217;re going to stack them up against the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays, and Royals- three divisional competitors, and the team that set the gold standard for bullpens. For the purposes of this comparison, we&#8217;re using the 2016 PECOTA projections, and the 50th percentile of those projections- in plain terms, the average outcome. Innings were rounded to the nearest third of an inning, and $ per WARP rounded to two digits after the million. I generally went with the team&#8217;s current bullpen, and limited it to seven players, though there are some exceptions that will be explained when we go through the teams.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-jays.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1504" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-jays.png" alt="bullpen - jays" width="666" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> For the Jays, I did not include the DFA&#8217;d <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=50390">Arnold Leon</a>, and did included the recently injured <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=48448">Franklin Morales</a> over the less recently injured <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=60619">Aaron Loup</a> or call up <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58768">Pat Venditte.</a> That&#8217;s an educated guess as to who spends the most time on the roster, given Venditte having options, and Loup&#8217;s struggles last season. It should also be noted that the Jays could cut Morales and save three quarters of his salary, which they may do if he&#8217;s below replacement, as his projections suggest. The projections also include a handful of starts for <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=47279">Jesse Chavez</a>, <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=31534">Gavin Floyd</a>, and Morales, which I would deem as probable, possible, and unlikely, in that order. Eagle-eyed watchers will note that Storen&#8217;s salary is lower than it&#8217;s actual number, because I accounted for the money that the Nationals sent over to cover part of his salary.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong> The Jays are spending <strong>$6.22 million per WARP </strong>on their bullpen, based on these projections. With the late inning trio of Osuna, Storen, and Cecil, most would say this is a fine bullpen. After an uneven season last year for the Jays&#8217; bullpen, there was a focus in the off-season in adding depth, and pitchers capable of starting games if needed. Storen was the flashy pickup, but Chavez and Floyd provide additional value with less fanfare. It&#8217;s interesting seeing how the value is distributed according to money, because Osuna, who makes the minimum, grades out the best pitcher. But let&#8217;s see how the Jays stack up against the rest here.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-yankees.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1508" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-yankees.png" alt="bullpen - yankees" width="666" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> Even though <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=53014">Aroldis Chapman</a> is not currently on the team due to his suspension, it would have been disingenuous to not include him in the Yankees&#8217; calculations, given his talent level. That meant dropping one of their current pitchers, so I kept <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=68506">John Barbato</a> and <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=59239">Kirby Yates</a>, and dropped <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=66339">Luis Cessa</a>, because he has starts included in his projections, and skews the calculation the most. <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=49832">Ivan Nova</a> also has starts included, but he&#8217;s more likely to stick with the team, given his history.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis: </strong>The Yankees have a top-heavy bullpen, but they, like the Jays, will probably get the most value from a young pitcher making the minimum. Betances&#8217; ascension has given them a fearsome late inning combination, one that will be bolstered further by the pending return of Chapman. With players like Betances and <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=67118">Chasen Shreve</a> (and the departed <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=60759">Adam Warren</a>), the Yankees have done a good job over the last couple years finding value to fill out their bullpen, to compliment the high priced assets. Though they&#8217;ve spent more money than the Jays, they certainly have more talent, so they grade out a little better at <strong>$5.76 million per WARP</strong>.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-red-sox.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1506" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-red-sox.png" alt="bullpen - red sox" width="666" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> Another one where we accounted for an injury, and this time, I put in <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=70812">Carson Smith</a> over <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=55935">Tommy Layne</a>, who is currently on the roster. No one&#8217;s quite sure when Smith will come back, so this projection could be less optimistic than the results. PECOTA doesn&#8217;t differentiate a lot once you get past the top few here.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong> PECOTA seems more bearish than I would be on Boston&#8217;s bullpen, which seems to have reasonable depth at first glance. One suspects they don&#8217;t care for <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58350">Craig Kimbrel</a>&#8216;s move to the tougher American League East, or figure that <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=44014">Koji Uehara</a>&#8216;s age will slow him down at some point. Or perhaps this just reinforces the idea of relievers not making a ton of difference. The projections make the view of the Boston bullpen less flattering, as they&#8217;re spending <strong>$10.57 million per WARP</strong>. Given the struggles their relievers at points last season, the acquisitions of Kimbrel and Smith still made sense for a team that sees themselves as contenders.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-rays.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1505" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-rays.png" alt="bullpen - rays" width="666" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> The Rays started the year without presumptive closer <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=65809">Brad Boxberger</a>. He&#8217;s in for this one, and <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/p/49130">Ryan Webb</a>, who is currently in the bullpen, is out, as he had the least optimistic projections of the current group for the Rays. Former Blue Jay <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=45525">Dana Eveland</a> checks in with six spot starts in his calculation.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong> The Rays&#8217; opening day budget was under $70 million for their entire roster, so it&#8217;s unsurprising that their bullpen is a who&#8217;s who of &#8220;who&#8217;s that?&#8221; And while they certainly did an excellent job of saving money, as their efficiency gives them a rosy <strong>$1.75 million spent per WARP</strong>, there are questions that come with the course they&#8217;ve chosen. There&#8217;s a lower ceiling for performance with their lesser talent, and there will be questions as to defined roles until Boxberger returns. But on a team that&#8217;s always concerned about their budget, this is the best approach, even if they lack the upside of the others teams in the division.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-royals.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1507" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/bullpen-royals.png" alt="bullpen - royals" width="666" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> I desperately wanted to find a way to include current Royal <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=31803">Chien-Ming Wang</a> in this group, but with <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=59266">Mike Minor</a> scheduled to return in May, I assume Wang&#8217;s the one that will bite the dust. <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=56197">Danny Duffy</a> has fifteen starts in his projections, which inflate his numbers.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong> We notice a couple things right away about the Royals&#8217; collection of arms. First, that they intentionally spent money on everyone, with not a single player making the minimum. Secondly, there are a lot of former/failed starters in this list, with only <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=56449">Kevin Herrera</a> having been a reliever for his entire major league career. I&#8217;m surprised by the results here, though. The numbers have the Royals as the least cost-effective of our sample group, spending <strong>$10.78 million per WARP </strong>on their bullpen. It should be noted though that PECOTA hasn&#8217;t liked the Royals in the past, either. The loss of an effective <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=57708">Greg Holland</a> hurts them, though their track record and high-end talent will probably make this group better than the numbers suggest.</p>
<p>Even with these four teams, we have seen several different ways of building a bullpen. From a statistical standpoint, it may not make a lot of difference- the spread between the worst relief corps to the best is only 2.3 WARP. Each team had a clear philosophy in who they acquired, and how much they paid for them. The Rays clip coupons and cut corners wherever they can, taking home trophies for being efficient and saving money, but are rarely able to crack the glass ceiling in a cutthroat division. Would an improved bullpen help that? Probably not as much as a bigger budget overall. So saving money makes sense.</p>
<p>The Yankees and Red Sox throw their financial weight around, supplementing any bargains and fixing problems whenever they come up. The Yankees didn&#8217;t really need Aroldis Chapman, but saw a bargain (for unpleasant reasons) and decided that another elite arm would help them get back to the top of the A.L. East. Boston&#8217;s pen struggled with depth at times in 2015, with only Koji Uehara and <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58984">Junichi Tazawa</a> as reliable options to finish off games. Their offseason saw them add two crucial pieces to their bullpen puzzle.</p>
<p>The reigning champion Royals are the trend-setters, and have built their own philosophy, with a clear belief in proven performers and defined roles in a bullpen. Various projection systems have never been able to quantify that value, but the Royals don&#8217;t worry about what the projections say. They have the results. No amount of regression or bad luck will take away the two American League pennants, or the World Series banner that hangs in Kauffman Stadium. If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, perhaps the Royals are entirely sane to keep doing something that has been working until it doesn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>As for the Jays, they grade out fine, looking at their competitors, sitting smack-dab in the middle of these teams in how they&#8217;ve spent. They&#8217;ve acquired the arms in a variety of ways: free agency (Floyd, Morales), trades(Chavez, Storen), a Rule 5 pick (Biagini) and their own homegrown talent (Cecil, Osuna). Their bullpen has had rough games so far, and like any bullpen, will have a few more blown games before the season&#8217;s out, but the talent is there, and they weren&#8217;t afraid to add when the opportunity to acquire Drew Storen came up. They&#8217;ve got more depth this year at AAA, which they&#8217;ve already had to tap into because of injuries (hello, Pat Venditte), and more arms ready when someone else gets dinged up.</p>
<p>For now, the Jays should have confidence in their bullpen &#8211; both how it will perform for the rest of the season, and the process by which it was assembled. They probably won&#8217;t be the best relievers in baseball, but the Jays don&#8217;t need them to be the best. They just need it to be fine, and it can definitely be that.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>On the NHL-Sized Elephant in the Blue Jays Room</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/04/12/on-the-nhl-sized-elephant-in-the-blue-jays-room/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/04/12/on-the-nhl-sized-elephant-in-the-blue-jays-room/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Apr 2016 20:14:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Gideon Turk]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Payroll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rogers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=1392</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The National Hockey League playoffs are starting this week, and they are going to look a little different this year; all seven Canadian teams will be sitting out and watching from home. You may be wondering why I&#8217;m writing about the NHL playoffs on a strictly baseball site, but that&#8217;s because of the lack of Canadian [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The National Hockey League playoffs are starting this week, and they are going to look a little different this year; all seven Canadian teams will be sitting out and watching from home. You may be wondering why I&#8217;m writing about the NHL playoffs on a strictly baseball site, but that&#8217;s because of the lack of Canadian content in the playoffs. And more specifically, because of how the state of the Canadian hockey teams this season impacts the Toronto Blue Jays. As many of you may already know, two years ago Rogers signed a 12 year contract with the NHL for their Canadian broadcasting rights for a staggering $5.2 billion. To say the deal has been a failure thus far is quite an understatement. The Globe and Mail&#8217;s David Shoaltz <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/top-hockey-producers-firing-before-nhl-playoffs-hints-at-rogers-turmoil/article29548827/" target="_blank">wrote last week</a> about the firing of one of the top executives in Rogers&#8217; hockey programming, Gord Cutler. In it, he described the downfall of what should be Rogers&#8217; top hockey program, Hockey Night in Canada:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;While Cutler cannot be held responsible for a 16-per-cent decline in Hockey Night In Canada ratings through late March, which follows a 16-per-cent decline in the first year of the deal from the 2013-14 season, CBC’s last year broadcasting the show, his departure is a sign there may be unhappiness with the on-air product at the highest level of Rogers, even above Sportsnet president Scott Moore and Rogers Media president Rick Brace.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>That&#8217;s a pretty big hit.</p>
<p>So how does this have anything to do with the Blue Jays? Well, Rogers sells the advertising spots for the HNIC shows before the season with the promise of a certain audience. However, when they don&#8217;t meet those audiences, which happened ever so often this year because of the most attractive teams to Canadian fans being awful, Rogers needs to give them free advertising spots to make up for it, called &#8220;make-goods&#8221;. Most of those free spots are going to come during the NHL playoffs. Not all of them, though. From Shoaltz:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;The company is putting some make-goods on its Toronto Blue Jays broadcasts and entertainment shows, and that, too, cuts into the sales of advertising time.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>This is ridiculous.</p>
<p>When the deal was signed, then President of Rogers Media Keith Pelley appeared on the Fan590 and <a href="http://www.bluebirdbanter.com/2013/11/27/5151826/rogers-nhl-deal-will-not-affect-blue-jays-payroll" target="_blank">stated </a>that &#8220;it does not affect the Blue Jays payroll in any way whatsoever.&#8221; That seems like it may no longer be true.</p>
<p>The minimum TV contract the Blue Jays sign every year with Sportsnet (for the purposes of revenue sharing) is calculated by the firm Bortz Media &amp; Sports Group, and takes into account both ratings and advertising revenue. From <a href="http://www.bortz.com/sports.aspx?Ctrl=MediaRights" target="_blank">their site</a>:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Our &#8216;Television and Radio Distribution Rights Valuations&#8217; include the following services: Provide a competitive assessment of the broadcast, cable TV and DBS marketplaces for your programming—including an analysis of competing distributors, advertising, cable network license fees and audience levels.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>From that it seems clear that the loss of ad revenue caused by the Hockey programming should have an impact on the Blue Jays.</p>
<p>All we have heard for the past few months from Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro is that if the fans continue to show up to the Rogers Centre, and people still tune into the broadcasts, the payroll for the club will rise next year. But suddenly, the Blue Jays won&#8217;t even be able to be worth their entire value to Sportsnet, and their parent company, Rogers Media, the same company that owns the Blue Jays. Rogers Media&#8217;s profits are taking a hit because of the hockey contract, and because of the make-goods, the advertising dollars the Blue Jays will be able to make for Rogers Media are also being impacted. Rogers Media making less money combined with a potentially lower than reasonable valuation of the minimum contract could definitely have a negative impact on Blue Jays television rights revenue.</p>
<p>And this all matters because as Canada proved last summer, the people are willing to tune into Blue Jays broadcasts, and the pre and post game shows, if the product is good. And that has continued into this season. Just check out what the audience was for the Home Opener on Friday night against the Boston Red Sox:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Welcome back to the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/6ix?src=hash">#6ix</a>! Friday’s <a href="https://twitter.com/BlueJays">@BlueJays</a> game was the most-watched Home Opener in <a href="https://twitter.com/Sportsnet">@Sportsnet</a> history, with avg. audience of 1.77 million</p>
<p>&mdash; Sportsnet PR (@SportsnetPR) <a href="https://twitter.com/SportsnetPR/status/719636043553718273">April 11, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>In other words, more than five percent of the country was watching the Blue Jays on Friday night. And Rogers Media was not able to fully take advantage of that because they had to give some of those prime advertising spots to HNIC advertisers. How does that seem fair? It doesn&#8217;t, and I guess that is just something we have to live with, as Rogers has time and again decided that their hockey content is more important than the Blue Jays. They give the Maple Leafs seemingly endless resources to improve the aspects of the game not covered by the NHL salary cap, yet when no such cap exists for the Blue Jays, they demand that fans show up before committing to increasing payroll, rather than the other way around. I&#8217;m not naive enough to believe that they have been operating in a way that doesn&#8217;t make smart business sense, but with the abject failure of their investment in hockey recently, it opens up some questions as to why they are willing to take multi-billion dollar risks in the hockey department but seem to be frugal penny pinchers in baseball, when they should be operating with one of the top payrolls in the league.</p>
<p>Now, the obvious caveat to this piece is that we have no way of knowing what percentage of advertising dollars would be put back into the Blue Jays. Rogers tends to keep that information very secret. However, this <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/how-the-blue-jays-dropped-the-ball/article547204/" target="_blank">wouldn&#8217;t be the first time</a> the Blue Jays are getting messed over from at TV perspective. When the Jays approach the deadline and try to take on a contract or two, the money just might not be there.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll leave with this tweet from @James_In_TO, because it sums everything up pretty nicely.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/GideonTurk">@GideonTurk</a> It&#39;s sad the biggest loser of the NHL playoffs not making any Canadian markets may very well be the Blue Jays.</p>
<p>&mdash; James G (@james_in_to) <a href="https://twitter.com/james_in_to/status/719723025621327872">April 12, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>Sigh. Do better, Rogers.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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