The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a piece on Friday outlining the situation brewing between the state of Wisconsin and its professional baseball team, one which comes back to a familiar refrain: The Brewers want money from the public. The public’s elected representatives do not want to give money to the professional sports team.
Every situation among these is unique, and the Brewers’ appears at a glance to be milder than that of the Rays or the A’s. The Brewers aren’t asking for a new ballpark. They’re asking the state to fund a mix of renovations and maintenance on the current building, one whose roof has been known to leak a little bit. To my knowledge, the Brewers aren’t asking for a massive real estate package to accompany the stadium renovations, though I’m sure there are commercial interests involved. If they are asking, it’s probably just a negotiating tactic.
That’s what this is. This is negotiation. The Brewers don’t appear to have much serious interest in moving, and the state doesn’t want them to go, and there are plenty of complications to iron out, but there’s time to do that and get to a spot where everything is neat and tidy again. It’s a little bit like when meteorologists identify a system that could theoretically become a hurricane. Maybe this will blow up, but we’ve got a long way to go before we start sounding any real alarms.
A few interesting things with this:
- The Brewers are currently a little worse than the MLB median when it comes to attendance, but they’ve been above that median every season since 2017.
- Major League Baseball appears to be using its planned relocation of the Oakland–Las Vegas A’s as a demonstration that it’ll follow through on this kind of thing.
- The Journal Sentinel piece specifically named Nashville and Charlotte as relocation options, but that sounds fairly off-the-cuff (which is heartening for those of us pulling for baseball to return to Montreal, though to be clear, we do not want the Brewers to move).
The ACC Got Pretty Close
The ACC is reportedly closer than we thought to adding Stanford and Cal, falling one vote short. UNC, NC State, Florida State, and Clemson have been named by multiple reporters as the four schools which voted no, though Matt Norlander reported that “a couple other schools may be soft-yeses, as to not rock the boat.” I took this to mean that somebody, let’s say Wake Forest and Boston College, wanted to vote yes but voted no because they didn’t want to piss anybody off too much.
It’s possible one of those four schools could be swayed, and NC State would seem to be the most different from the others in terms of presently perceived value. But we’re seeing the following dynamic:
- Even Stanford, probably the most valuable brand available in the conference realignment market right now, might not be worth $30M in TV revenue per year. Its strength lies in sports other than football. Factoring in travel costs—which work both ways—it doesn’t sound great for the Cardinal.
- One of the forces pushing hardest for Stanford’s admission is Notre Dame, who appears to be using the, “This shit is crazy!” argument. Notre Dame does not care about the ACC. Notre Dame cares about Stanford.
- Florida State is talking a big game about leaving the ACC, something that would have to happen any minute now before they’re legally obligated to spend the 2024–25 academic year with the conference. Florida State’s stated primary concern is money.
What I’m taking away from this is that money isn’t on Stanford’s side in this, let alone Cal’s (SMU is another animal, but I don’t get the impression much of anything is on SMU’s side in all this). Eleven of the fifteen ACC schools, though, would like to be in a conference with Stanford. And with Cal.
Why do the ACC schools want this?
One explanation being offered is that the ACC’s remaining schools are worried about Florida State and potentially others leaving the conference. They want reinforcements now to avoid needing them later, when they’re harder to get. This would track. At the same time, though, a lot of these schools voting yes—Duke and Virginia and Notre Dame especially—want to be top academic brands. Joining with Stanford, and to a lesser extent with Cal, helps that mission.
There hasn’t been much noise on this front today, nor was there much over the weekend, which makes the issue sound rather dead but doesn’t mean the issue is dead. What we do know is that Stanford and Cal and Washington State and Oregon State are exactly twelve months away from starting an athletic season as full-blown independents in all sports, something that is not going to happen. Some sort of decision has to be made, and the assumption is that the other three are looking at Stanford to make the first move, but Stanford is in the midst of a presidential transition and isn’t sure if the ACC wants it. If Florida State leaves, somehow, Stanford has an invitation, because it becomes 11 to 3 in the voting rather than 11 to 4. So, maybe we’ll get some answers after FSU’s deadline passes tomorrow. Either way, this is unrelated, but I’m not sure Clemson’s value is going to hold up. It needs its football team to keep winning. It wasn’t all that great a brand before the winning started, and the winning has slowed. Those are our thoughts for today.
The Louisville Mess Continues
Louisville men’s basketball lost an incoming five-star freshman today, with Trentyn Flowers pivoting and deciding to go pro in Australia.
What happened?
I have absolutely no idea.
It’s possible this is a poor reflection on Louisville’s program, that Flowers got in there and realized he needed to get out. It’s possible this is a poor reflection on Louisville’s recruiting, that they targeted a guy who was a flight risk. It’s possible too that Louisville knew this was a risk but accepted it for the upside. If that’s the case, it’s hard to fault them. Who among us hasn’t placed some sort of bet, literal or figurative? But regardless of explanation, it makes an even bigger mess for a program that was already trying to rally after one of the worst seasons by a power conference team in recent memory, let alone by a program with national championship capability when run effectively.
Speaking of bets:
Did Iowa Get Lucky With Its Bets?
Iowa has not seemed as hard-hit as Iowa State with the gambling investigation, and from what we know so far, they’re not as hard-hit. They only had four people accused, and only one is a player currently with the team (two transferred, one was a grad assistant).
It’s such a hazy situation that I’m not sure if others are going to be named or if the list we have is the final list. It seems like it’s final, but we don’t know, and it’s possible there are still some out there who were doing the same thing but haven’t gotten caught yet. But if you were wondering where the Hawkeyes were in this, they’re there. They just didn’t have as many idiots (that we know of so far) as Iowa State did. Hate when that happens.
In related news, Isaiah Lee has reportedly left the football program in Ames. Not a big surprise. Hope things work out for him.
The Cubs’ Farm System Got Better
On July 18th, not even a month ago, we complained that the Cubs’ farm system kept dropping down the FanGraphs rankings after each developmental stint. The Cubs were acquiring prospects just fine, but they were not developing them. In conjunction with disappointing on-field results, this was especially troubling, and led us to publicly doubt Jed Hoyer for the first time.
The on-field performance wasn’t the only thing that changed.
Despite buying at the deadline, the Cubs are up to second in the FanGraphs Farm System Rankings, updated post-trade deadline and post-draft. They trail only the Pirates.
A lot of what happened here isn’t actually that the Cubs started improving their prospects’ lots. A lot of it is that other teams graduated a ton of high-value prospects, guys like Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll and Elly De La Cruz. The Cubs graduated a few of their own, though, most notably Hayden Wesneski and Javier Assad, and even without considering that, the top of the system has gotten a lot better relative to the rest of league. Where there were previously five top-100 prospects, there are now five in the top 75. In short: The timing situation the Cubs were wrestling, that in which the Cubs’ prospects were younger than those of their peers, is now starting to flip in the Cubs’ favor.
I’m still not sure the development is going beautifully, but Assad and Christopher Morel sure are producing, with Assad’s seven innings of one-run ball on Friday sensational for a team that needed to bounce back after losing that series to the Mets. We like it.
The Packers Started Preseason Play
The Packers won their preseason opener on Friday, beating the Bengals 36–19. It’s the preseason, there’s not a lot to say, but Jordan Love mostly looked solid, Emanuel Wilson provided a feel-good moment, Anders Carlson missed a pair of extra points, and Sean Clifford was electric if not always great. A mixed bag, as you’d expect. Probably most significantly, Tyler Davis is out for the year with a torn ACL.
