Lookout Landing

Comment from Joe

"If X team wins a world series while Y player is on the roster, signing them to that absurd contract made sense aftter all". Legitimate argument, or annoying homerism that people use to justify bad deals way too often?

During my daily musings of the interweb baseball blogosphere, I stumbled upon this comment from Joe during Dave Camerons Fangraphs chat. Unfortunately, Joe didn’t supply his last name, but I imagine he’s a pretty ordinary average guy, with average kids, and an average life (kudos to you Mr. Joe Walsh).

His statement got me thinking of a very interesting point which pretty much sums up, from my prospective at least, the end point, or goal of baseball the game. Not Major League Baseball, where organizations are most often run like businesses aspiring to max revenues. Don’t get me wrong, you can win and max revenues, but how these businesses operate can vary widely. Through the Yankees model of constantly contending by spending lots in a huge market, or the Florida Marlins of the 1990s and 2000s spending pennies, and maximizing on "windows" of core young players, if revenue is your goal it can be achieved in many ways. However, the goal of simply the game itself is to win the World Series. The only thing better than winning the World Series once is winning it twice, three times, four times, with the ultimate, highest pedestal being reaching dynasty status.

There’s a lot to be said about putting out a consistent contending baseball team, not mortgaging your future for the present. Winning now and winning later is obviously more desirable than simply winning now. The bigger question is if it is easier and more importantly, more valuable to your franchise if you try and build a consistent contender, or simply go "all in" at certain points in order to attempt to maximize your attempts to win the World Series?

Payroll obviously has a huge effect on this. It’s a lot easier to remain a contender if you can throw a truckload of cash at a free agent because you traded away your farm or your prospects didn’t develop as expected. For a team like the Ms operating with an average or so MLB payroll the answer becomes less clear.

For a title starved city such as Seattle (Remember when the Sonics won that title in 79? I sure don’t), there may be more value, to us fans at least, in simply winning 1 World Series at the cost of X losing seasons. Whereas teams like the Yankees or Red Sox value consistent contenders to appease their ginormous fan bases and justify their humungo payrolls. I think us Ms Fans would be more willing to forgive a bad season or two if the team seriously contended for the championship.

In no way am I advocating this organization take a risk like the Prince Fielder contract, pretty sure everyone agrees that is a wee bit steep. This team isn’t really in the position to address such a situation now, but when the time comes and there seems to be an open window, should this team be striving for that one World Series title at the expense of the future? Or should we be more focused on building a consistent team, perhaps with less upside that wins for a longer time? How likely is it that we can consistently contend with the big boys at our current payroll? I only hope that the young core of players we currently have can develop to the point where the organization has to face such questions.