Monthly Archives: November 2010

11.02.10
by

Experts: Giants winning good for A’s to SJ

Saturday’s post on the Diridon tour included a quick note from me about the Giants:

I’ve given this some thought the last few days, and I think that if the Giants win the boost in ticket and merchandise sales could provide enough economic ballast to make arguments about economic hardship somewhat moot, at least for a few years.

The Merc’s Tracy Seipel reports that premier sports economics experts Andrew Zimbalist and Roger Noll (co-editors of Sports Jobs & Taxes) think that the Giants’ success will actually be good for the A’s, insofar as Lew Wolff’s designs on moving them to San Jose.

“To the extent that the commissioner’s office would be concerned about the Giants’ financial well-being if the A’s were allowed to move to San Jose,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist and baseball expert, “that concern would by allayed given the success the Giants have had.”

Zimbalist estimates the Giants will net between $13 million to $16 million from their share of ticket sales and concessions for the postseason and World Series.

“The owners want it (a team) to be as economically successful as it can be,” said Zimbalist of the A’s proposed move. “And I think fundamentally that is what Selig is looking at — if he think’s it’s a plus economically.”

There are also quotes from Noll, CSUEB professor Paul Staudohar, and South Bay cheerleader Larry Stone. From the inception of the blog, I’ve driven home the point over and over again that it is always about the big picture. How does MLB benefit best? And if the answer to that question means breaking thousands of Oaklanders’ hearts, they’re not too concerned about it. That’s the sad part of it all. People demonize these billionaires for hating Oakland or wanting to destroy it. It’s much worse. They simply don’t care one way or another. It would be one thing if they cared enough to hate Oakland, but they are in fact completely indifferent. That’s not to say that they (other than Wolff) love San Jose. They don’t. It’s just a better economic opportunity there.

Last week I posted that I felt the Giants’ success is a blip, not something that should shift MLB’s long-term thinking towards the A’s and Giants. If the indicators point to a South Bay move, and Noll and Zimbalist are right about the World Series boosting and stabilizing the Giants, then yes, the Giants’ arguments are moot. Down the road, I wonder what this means for compensation. If the Giants are sufficiently covered in the short-term by revenue hikes from this WS win, is long-term compensation for territorial rights valued more or less?

P.S. Despite not participating in this year’s playoffs, A’s players will get something out of it. Since they finished 2nd in the AL West, the players are entitled to a whopping 1% share of the annual players’ pool. That should boil down to $9,000-10,000 per roster spot.

11.01.10
by

Have You Heard the One About…

Way back, all those eons ago, when Baseball San Jose released the renderings of the potential Cisco Field, I noted that there were two questions that seemed to be on every A’s fan’s mind. The first was, would the park be hitter, or pitcher, friendly. The second was, What the heck is that thing in Right Field?

While we know (thanks to ML) that the answer to the second question is a “colonnade,” the first question has yet to be answered in any sort of educated way. Until now.

A fellow named Greg Rybarczyk runs a very cool website called Hit Tracker. On the site, he tracks things like the actual distances of Home Runs across the league, the atmospheric conditions when the home runs are hit, the angle that the ball left the bat and the speed at which it traveled. The best part of all of this is that he can take this data and, through a highly scientific method, derive a HRPF (Home Run Park Factor) for each of the Major League stadiums.

Long time reader, gojohn10, reached out to Mr. Rybarczyk and he graciously agreed to build a model for the potential Cisco Field using some assumptions about field dimensions and fence heights combined with actual data based on the positioning of the field and it’s geographical coordinates. Using this model, we can safely say the answer to the first question can be phrased something like this, “Did you hear the one about the ballpark in San Jose?”

The punch line would then be, “150/101/100/168/142.”

HRPF works a lot like BPF (Batting Park Factor). The Park Factor is calculated such that 100 means “MLB average.” A number below 100 indicates a park where home runs are less likely. A park with numbers above 100 indicates “Band Box” designation. The further a number is from 100, above or below, the more/less likely it is that bombs will be droppin’ like rain in Seattle. The aggregate HRPF for Cisco Field, as rendered, would likely be something around 132. The highest HRPF presently is Coors Field with a whopping 118.

What’s worse? The easiest Left Field HR, presently, is at the erstwhile Enron Field, 132. The easiest Right Center Field is at Coors Field, 145. The easiest Right Field is at Miller Park, 137. Cisco Field would best all of them. Today, only one park is the most easiest place to hit a Home Run to more than one field, Coors Field is the easiest to CF and RCF. Cisco Field wouldn’t only be the easiest, it’d be the easiest by a landslide and to 3 different parts of the park.

The numbers in the punchline are the projected HRPF at the potential Cisco Field starting in the Left Field corner and moving around the outfield to the Right Field corner. Left Center and Center Field would play fair… Everywhere else would resemble Slow Pitch Softball. Greg theorizes that Bay Area weather conditions could bring that number down by about 10 points. Even so, Cisco Field would still be an easier place go yard than Coors Field. Start signing sinker ballers, and guys who fly out to the warning track 20 times a year, now Billy!

Some important things to note:

  • The Right Field line fence height in the model is 24 ft. There was some debate amongst the three of us (ML, gj10, me) as to what the real height would be. I estimated 35 ft. gj10 estimated 30 ft. ML, the brains of the operation, estimated 24ft. So this is sort of a worst case scenario in the Right Field corner.
  • Similarly, we all had different guesses for the rest of the fences. Though, the differences in our estimates were pretty insignificant. The model is based on 9 ft. fences in Left and 12 ft. fences in Center and Right Center.
  • The upshot is, while the Right Field corner could be moved considerably closer to the magic “100” with a fence as much as 10 ft. taller, Left Field and Right Center would need to be moved back quite a bit to be closer to average.

Uncle Lew, if you are reading this… Please consider changes similar to what ML suggested here. Thank you!