It’s nice to always have constants in the world to rely on. For example, in late January, when the Giants aren’t doing anything particularly interesting and I’m contemplating, if just for a second, writing about the 49ers (no one wants that!), I can always just flip through the last couple days of baseball headlines and write about the owners being a bunch of rich turds.
First it was Phil Castellini, president of the Reds, who on the 14th gave a talk to a group of Reds supporters where he said, among other things, that the team is run like a nonprofit, that guaranteed contracts are ruining the game, that Major League Baseball is in crisis because too many teams have no shot at the playoffs at the beginning of the season, that the Reds have a strong farm system full of players who will be great Reds and then will be ex-Reds, and that it is unfair that the Red Sox can get $17 million for selling on-uniform advertisements while the Reds can only get $5 million.
Before we continue, let us also recall that Phil Castellini is the Reds executive who repeatedly put his foot in his mouth last year, when he essentially challenged Reds fans angry that the team traded most of its good players to not come to games, saying:
The answer is, are you gonna abandon being a Reds fan? Are you gonna abandon following this team?
The Reds then went on to have their lowest attendance (2020 excepted) since 1984.
Now, let us address this year’s absurd Kastellini Klaims, as they’re called by me.
The team is absolutely not run like a nonprofit; even with low attendance last year, they had plenty of revenue and did not put it into their major league team. They might have put some into their farm system or international scouting, but nowhere near the windfall from national TV/streaming deals and their local TV revenue. The reason they are not opening their books to let people see this is that people would then see that they are lying.
Guaranteed contracts are good. What’s ruining the game is shitty owners who can make money for several years by slashing payroll to the bone and not trying to win.
If Major League Baseball is in crisis, it’s because owners have chased easy money at the expense of growing the game. It’s because almost every TV game is locked away behind an expensive cable package, and the games themselves are ridiculously expensive to attend, because they can all make more money this year by pricing out The Poors.
Also, the numbers Castellini used to prove more teams had no shot? They were lies. The 2021 and 2022 numbers were accurate, but all the years before that were just made up to make a point. Castellini’s data said Fangraphs had 9 teams in 2018 out of contention (defined as less than a 25% chance at the postseason) before the season started. The actual number? Eighteen. The number has remained essentially flat since 2014. It’s the exact opposite of the point he wanted to make.
Saying, even jokingly, that all the great prospects the Reds have will leave one day is just fucking pathetic, man. Like, I understand it’s a joke, but the joke is, “We’re fucking pathetic.” Not the joke I’d want to hear if I were a Reds fan!
Perhaps, if you wanted to get more money for the advertisement patches on your team’s uniforms, you might consider having a team that isn’t terrible.
The Reds, it seems are trying to be the mid-2010s Royals, who after having been bad forever, had a good non-playoff season (though in the current format they might have made it), then made two World Series, then were .500, then were bad forever again. If everything goes right for the Reds, they’ll have a few good years and then fade into irrelevance again. Just like the Pirates around that time too. It’s clearly what they’re aiming for.
There’s no reason they can’t be the Brewers or the Guardians, both of whom perennially compete in small markets, other than their own incompetence. But their own incompetence can’t be the problem because then they’re the problem, and since the whole tenor of Castellini’s talk was that a hostile system makes it impossible for the Reds to compete, well, gotta throw that one away.
The Reds are a bad organization, intentionally run badly because it makes them more money. But if we’re being fair, which I occasionally like to do as a lead-in to an ironic segue, it is legitimately harder for them to compete because of their small market. I’m not saying it excuses anything they do or that it’s impossible for them to run their organization competently, but they do have a smaller margin of error than a rich team like the Giants, for example. Or the Dodgers.
Or the Angels.
Arte Moreno, who has been an unequivocal failure as an owner over the last decade, has decided not to sell the Angels after flirting with the idea for several months. In his statement, he mentioned the unfinished business of winning a World Series and that he wanted to make a positive impact on the team’s future and the fan experience.
But, like, why start now?
Despite having an MVP-caliber performance every full season since 2012 — that’s 10 in a row! — the Angels have made the playoffs exactly once in that time and did not win a game. They have wasted Mike Trout, one of the great players the game has ever seen, and are in the process of also wasting Shohei Ohtani, who absolutely will not re-sign there after this season with Arte Moreno still owning the team.
Moreno has not invested in the community or the team. Under his watch, the Angels have shit on their Spanish-language broadcast, an absurd thing to do for the Los Angeles Angels. They’ve been cheap and bad and an afterthought, even with Trout and Ohtani. He is a terrible choice to own this team.
And he won’t sell, because he doesn’t want to. The team had five potential bidders, according to The Athletic, and was expected to sell for $2.5-$3 billion. Presumably a new owner would operate like a big-market team and do at least a half-Steve Cohen, making massive investments in order to improve the team in the short-term and hopefully keep Ohtani in the long-term. Presumably a new owner would do whatever necessary to build fan excitment for the entire team. Presumably a new owner would own competently.
Instead, the Angels are stuck with Arte Moreno, like they have been for two decades now. One man’s ego will ensure that the Angels remain a hopeless quagmire for years to come. He’s bad at owning the team, but he feels entitled to it, so he’ll keep doing it as long as he can.
That’s what Moreno and Castellini have in common. They both feel entitled to have their positions. They don’t see it as a public trust, a responsibility to their fans to do everything they can to put out a good product. They see it as their right, something they will keep doing and doing until they finally, for once, do it well. They are each letting down millions of people solely due to their own egotism. And no one can make them stop.
I mean, sure, in theory Phil Castellini’s dad Bob, the actual owner of the team, could step in and remove him, but he won’t. In theory, Rob Manfred could pull some levers and make Moreno’s time in baseball unpleasant enough that he wants to sell, but Manfred won’t.
These are rich men, and rich men have to be Donald Sterling-level racist to ever see a single consequence of their own failures. Castellini and Moreno are both just garden-variety shitty. And their baseball teams will be too, for as long as they’re in charge.