Name: Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr.: 'The industry isn't very profitable, to be quite honest' - MLB | NBC Sports
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Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr.: 'The industry isn't very profitable, to be quite honest' - MLB | NBC Sports

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Whenever Major League Baseball and the players square off in labor battles, the owners attempt to claim that owning a baseball team is not a lucrative endeavor. They cry poor and claim that they’re losing money and argue that if the players do not make financial concessions that baseball simply cannot continue.It’s generally baloney.As we’ve argued so many times over the years, baseball finances are notoriously opaque and ownership claims that they are losing money are rarely if ever documented. What we do know, however, is that baseball revenue has gone up dramatically, year over year, for around 20 straight years, and franchise values are skyrocketing, with every team being worth at least a billion dollars.&nbsp;Meanwhile, over the past couple of years, overall baseball payroll has gone down.If you have dramatically increasing revenue, dramatically increasing team value, and slightly decreasing player costs — and if, each time a team goes up for sale, billionaire investors fight for the chance to join the ownership club — it sort of strains credulity that the one unknown in all of this — team profits — is negative for major league baseball owners. Yet that’s what the owners typically claim.The latest owner to claim it is Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr., . He claimed that baseball is a bad business to be in financially:“The industry isn’t very profitable to be quite honest, and I think they understand that. But they think, you know, the owners are hiding profits, and you know there’s been a little bit of a distrust there.”Maybe that distrust comes from some of the owners’ other implausible claims. Like the one DeWitt made just moments before when he argued that increased revenue and decreased player salaries are all being eaten up by other costs.“Don’t think for a minute that the reduced payroll added money in the pockets of the owners, because it didn’t,” DeWitt argued. He says non-player personnel growth has eaten up a big chunk of that revenue growth, noting that the Cardinals have gone from 240 to 400 non-player employees. He says that after “training, conditioning, promotional work, front office, analytics, it’s a bit of a zero sum game.”That’s fairly rich when one realizes just how much revenue has gone up. Specifics are hard to come by, . And that’s before you add one-time gigantic payments , when each owner got around $50 million over and above annualized increases. Even if the Cardinals added 150 trainers and analytics employees EACH YEAR and even if each of those new employees were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a piece — which they are certainly not — there’d be far more left over for profit, which the clubs are most certainly seeing.DeWitt isn’t just claiming that his baseball team isn’t profitable. He’s also claiming that his team’s real estate investments aren’t either.Referring to Ballpark Village — the Cardinals real estate development around Busch Stadium — he claimed that “we don’t view [Ballpark Village] as a profit opportunity. We think it’s great long term for the franchise and downtown St. Louis and what’s good for St. Louis is good for the Cardinals.” I wonder if his fellow investors realized that they were investing in a philanthropic act of public works? I wonder if they thought they were doing so to make some money? I bet they thought they were making money. And I bet they are.Finally, DeWitt claimed that new stadiums are, for all practical purposes, non-profit too:“There’s been talk by one of the angels that teams build new stadiums so that they can generate more revenue which will help them when they sell the team. The fact is, it generates more revenue and the more revenue the more money the players get too.”Which directly contradicts what he said above in response to the idea of player salary going down while revenues go up, but we’ll let that one go. For now I’m just wondering why anyone would every want to own a major league team given how, according to DeWitt, there’s no money in it at all.I’ll let all of this go after two more little notes.The first one: never trust a baseball owner when they talk about profitability. If you doubt this, just remember what Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston once famously said: “I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss and get every national accounting firm to agree with me.” If you think that’s not still happening, I have a Ballpark Village to sell you.The second: that will, almost certainly, be his second or third home (he lives in Cincinnati and likely has a residence in St. Louis), how much bigger a joint could he have bought if the Cardinals weren’t such a money loser?TORONTO – pitched six shutout innings to win for the fifth time in six decisions, drove in two runs and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-2 in a doubleheader opener Tuesday to stop a three-game losing streak.Yandy Diaz had three hits and scored twice as the Rays (79-61) leapfrogged Toronto (79-62) and moved a half-game ahead of the Blue Jays. Tampa Bay tied Seattle (79-61) for the first of the three AL wild cards.Springs (8-4) allowed three hits, all singles, extending his scoreless innings streak to 16 2/3. He struck out five and walked two.“I felt good,” Springs said. “From early on, I felt like all three pitches were working, able to attack the strike zone early, keep the pitch count down.” allowed two runs in 1 2/3 innings, and got four outs for his seventh save in as many chances.Toronto put runners at first and second with one out in the ninth but Fairbanks struck out Vladirmir Guerrero Jr. and retired on a groundout that ended an 11-pitch at-bat.“That was a pretty epic battle,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “I’m glad that we got the ground ball.”Bichette, whose two-run homer in the eighth inning helped Toronto win 3-2 Monday, went 2 for 5 and scored a run.All-Star right-hander , scheduled to start for Toronto, was scratched with a stomach illness. Instead, the Blue Jays opened with right-hander before turning to right-hander , who was called up from Triple-A Buffalo on Tuesday as the 29th man.Blue Jays manager John Schneider said Manoah was well enough to start Game 2.“He’s feeling fine,” Schneider said between games. “I expect a normal outing for him.”Rays right-hander was added as the 29th man for the doubleheader and was to start Game 2.Tampa Bay opened the scoring against Merryweather when Arozarena beat out a double-play grounder as Diaz scored.The Rays added three more against White in the third. Arozarena hit into a run-scoring forceout, hit a sacrifice fly and, running on the pitch, Arozarena scored from first on ‘s ground single to left, taking advantage of some inattention and a high throw from left fielder Teoscar Hernandez.“Sometimes he’s his own third-base coach, and manager, and he’s invisible,” Cash said of Arozarena.Schneider said the Blue Jays need to be better prepared to react to Tampa Bay’s aggressive style.“That’s how they play and you have to try to stay ahead of it,” Schneider said. “Hopefully people learn from it and it doesn’t happen again.”Fairbanks, who watched Arozarena’s dash on the weight room TV, called it “incredible.”“He will turn nothing into something and when it happens, it’s fascinating to watch,” Fairbanks said.Making his first start this season, Merryweather (0-3) gave up one run and two hits in one inning. White allowed three runs and seven hits in six innings, matching his longest outing of 2022.Toronto didn’t advance a runner to scoring position until the fifth, when and walked, but stranded both with a popout.Kirk and Chapman drove in runs against Armstrong as the Blue Jays halved the deficit in the eighth, but Fairbanks came on and retired Jansen to end the rally.“Pete came in and picked us up in a big way,” Cash said.ROSTER MOVESRays: Tampa Bay returned RHP Cooper Criswell to Triple-A Durham and recalled LHP Josh Fleming from the taxi squad.STRUGGLING WITH SOUTHPAWSThe Blue Jays are 11-18 when their opponent starts a left-handed pitcher.TRAINER’S ROOMRays: 2B (back) was held out of the starting lineup for the second straight game.UP NEXTRHP (7-4, 3.03) starts for Toronto Wednesday night. RHP (10-4, 2.57) goes for the Rays.Powered by

Whenever Major League Baseball and the players square off in labor battles, the owners attempt to claim that owning a baseball team is not a lucrative endeavor. They cry poor and claim that they’re losing money and argue that if the players do not make financial concessions that baseball simply cannot continue.It’s generally baloney.As we’ve argued so many times over the years, baseball finances are notoriously opaque and ownership claims that they are losing money are rarely if ever documented. What we do know, however, is that baseball revenue has gone up dramatically, year over year, for...

Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr.: 'The industry isn't very profitable, to be quite honest' - MLB | NBC Sports

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