Cubs Dynamic Pricing Probably Not As Dynamic As They’d Like

In Commentary And Analysis by aisle424199 Comments

I've been keeping an eye on the Cubs' bleacher ticket prices for a little over a week now because I got curious about how their dynamic pricing model is actually working out for them.

Previously, I had hypothesized that overall revenues would not be taking so much of a hit, because the Cubs would be selling some high profile games at exceedingly inflated prices to make up for the unsold tickets to the crappier games.  That assumed that there would be a number of high profile games that people are excited about and would be willing to spend $100+ on a single ticket.  But what I didn't know at the time was how few games the public seems to consider "high profile" versus what the Cubs considered "high profile" when they designated them in their multi-tiered pricing system.

Out of the 81 home games this season, 13 of them are considered Marquee (the highest level), 9 are Platinum, 21 Gold, 27 Silver, and 11 Bronze.

Since they are using their dynamic pricing model, the Cubs do not publish the base ticket prices anywhere on their website that I can find, so I had to do a little deducing. With the help of intrepid commenter, Wennington's Gorilla Cock (WGC for those uncomfortable with the visual), I managed to determine the base prices are: $78 for Marquee, $52 for Platinum, $38 for Gold, $27 for Silver, and $17 for Bronze.  If you bought a single ticket for every game of the year, it would cost you $3,196.  If you bought a single season ticket for the bleachers, they charged $3,055, so the season ticket holders are saving a little less than $2 per ticket per game. I'm going to round to $2 exactly for simplicity's sake.

I only started tracking ticket costs on April 10th, so I have no idea what tickets went for during the opening Washington series and the first Milwaukee game. I do know that Opening Day itself did reach at least $100 per ticket, last I had checked, but I didn't document that anywhere. Those games averaged about 37,000 per game so I'm going to assume a good number of bleacher seats were sold and therefore moved the price off of it's baseline starting point. So I am conceding that the first four games of the season sold at least some tickets at above the starting face value, as, I'm sure, the Ricketts hoped they would.

So let's take a look and see how the tickets are moving.

Three of the 11 Bronze level games have sold tickets above $17.  None of the Bronze games remaining on the schedule are currently selling for above $17. The high point I have seen was $35 for the Tuesday, April 10 game and Thursday, April 12 game against the Brewers. I have no idea why the tickets for Wednesday, April 11 topped out at $17, when the day before and the day after were double the price.

Six of the 27 Silver level games have sold tickets above the $27 base price. The high point was $50 for Friday, April 20th against the Reds, which seems to have now sold out. I find that odd, but you can not buy tickets for the bleachers at any price for that game. The Tuesday, April 24th game against the Cardinals was selling at $35 and suddenly disappeared as an option on April 14th. Did it sell out? How come the price never climbed up to the $50 level before selling out? Did somebody buy such a shit ton of tickets for that game that it bypassed at least 2 pricing levels?  I don't know and the Cubs have not responded to any of my inquiries about it. So, for right now, it is just a curious incident. The highest remaining price in the Silver tier are tickets for Monday, April 23 against the Cardinals at $39 each.

Three of the 21 Gold level games have sold tickets above the $38 base price. The Thursday, June 14 game against the Tigers leads the pack at $70. None of these games have sold out.

None of the nine Platinum level games have sold any tickets above the $52 base price.  These are supposed to be some pretty good games with some high demand for tickets, but that doesn't seem to be reflected in the actual ticket sales at this point.

Seven of the 13 Marquee level games have sold tickets above the $78 base price.  Now we're getting somewhere. The entire Red Sox series has tickets selling for $140 each, which appears to be the absolute highest that the Cubs will charge.  The Saturday Red Sox game was listed as sold out when I started charting the prices, but then some tickets became available and they have been since. For Friday's Red Sox game, you can buy as many as 12 tickets at a time (normal limit is 19 per game). For Saturday, you can only buy four at a time (yesterday it was limited to two, but it's back up to four today).  For Sunday's game, you can buy eight at a time. So those tickets are clearly running low, but they aren't gone yet (which again makes me wonder why a weekday April game against the Reds is unavailable, when the highest demand game on the schedule has tickets remaining).

The Saturday game in May against the White Sox and the Saturday game against the Cardinals in July are selling for $110 each, with no special limits. In fact, no other game on the schedule besides the Red Sox series has a limit below the typical 19 tickets.

Since I have been tracking the prices, not a single price point has moved. The only things that have changed that would prevent me from simply copying and pasting the data from one day to the next are the two games that suddenly became unavailable, and a couple of changes in maximum tickets you can purchase for the Red Sox series. Otherwise, everything has been identical from day to day.

So what does that mean? Well, nothing definitive right now. As we are fond of pointing out when players' stats aren't what we think they should be, it is a small sample size.  It's also an arbitrary starting point.  Ideally, I should have started tracking these things when they first went on sale, but I didn't. So all we can do now is keep going forward and see what happens.

However, what we know so far does raise some questions.  Have the Cubs mis-categorized some of these games?  Saturday, June 30th against the Astros is a Marquee game? Really?  I know it is a Saturday in the summer and those tickets have typically sold themselves, but it is the fucking Astros. I know I have better things to do with my $78 than spend a day in the bleachers watching two of the worst teams in baseball bumble around on the field. That sun is just as bright in a park or on the beach.

When I look at the Platinum level games, I'm equally unimpressed by most of them. Astros, Reds, Rockies, Diamondbacks… yay!

In addition, the Ricketts essentially stated that the dynamic pricing would really only go up.  They said they would not sell tickets below what season ticket holders paid, so that means they could conceivably sell those Marquee games against the Astros at $76, but at that point, who gives a shit? In essence, the tickets are priced as low as they are ever going to get for 62 of the games left on the schedule. Unless something changes pretty quickly, that would seem to indicate that those prices are above what the market is willing to pay. So then what? Sit there and watch as unsold tickets pile up on each other, or break a promise to Alvin and have a sale?  This is why I never would have told Alvin they would set the price floor. Because now he either leaves revenue on the table or he's a liar. Somewhere they will start talking about the cost of them being portrayed as liars on BCB versus the lost revenue of unsold tickets, if they haven't already.

Do they think that demand will pick up going forward? The team is pretty much doing what we expected and what most Cubs fans feared. Namely, being terrible. I'm interested to see if ticket prices move at all for the upcoming homestand. Maybe people are in a wait-and-see mode on the weather before dedicating dollars to these tickets.  Maybe people are just waiting to purchase until they kow they won't be freezing their asses off. I know that's how I was when I decided I wanted to go see Samardzija pitch. I waited until the day before to make sure it wasn't going to be horrible. I doubt that is the case, but it's at least plausible. So we'll see.

And how did a game go from being sold at a slightly higher rate than its base price suddenly get sold out? Are the Ricketts giving away tickets and counting them as sold? Are they simply taking tickets off the market to create a false sense of high demand and low supply? If either of those are the case, then those gaudy attendance numbers to start the season are more of a farce than we had previously thought.

Like I said, I don't have many answers here. The Cubs don't talk about this stuff and my data is very sketchy at the moment, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on.

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  1. Suburban kid

    I’ve been keeping an eye on the Cubs’ bleacher ticket prices for a little over a week now because I got curious about how their dynamic pricing model is actually working out for them.

    Previously, I had hypothesized that overall revenues would not be taking so much of a hit, because the Cubs would be selling some high profile games at exceedingly inflated prices to make up for the unsold tickets to the crappier games. That assumed that there would be a number of high profile games that people are excited about and would be willing to spend $100+ on a single ticket. But what I didn’t know at the time was how few games the public seems to consider “high profile” versus what the Cubs considered “high profile” when they designated them in their multi-tiered pricing system.

    Out of the 81 home games this season, 13 of them are considered Marquee (the highest level), 9 are Platinum, 21 Gold, 27 Silver, and 11 Bronze.

    Since they are using their dynamic pricing model, the Cubs do not publish the base ticket prices anywhere on their website that I can find, so I had to do a little deducing. With the help of intrepid commenter, Wennington’s Gorilla Cock (WGC for those uncomfortable with the visual), I managed to determine the base prices are: $78 for Marquee, $52 for Platinum, $38 for Gold, $27 for Silver, and $17 for Bronze. If you bought a single ticket for every game of the year, it would cost you $3,196. If you bought a single season ticket for the bleachers, they charged $3,055, so the season ticket holders are saving a little less than $2 per ticket per game. I’m going to round to $2 exactly for simplicity’s sake.

    I only started tracking ticket costs on April 10th, so I have no idea what tickets went for during the opening Washington series and the first Milwaukee game. I do know that Opening Day itself did reach at least $100 per ticket, last I had checked, but I didn’t document that anywhere. Those games averaged about 37,000 per game so I’m going to assume a good number of bleacher seats were sold and therefore moved the price off of it’s baseline starting point. So I am conceding that the first four games of the season sold at least some tickets at above the starting face value, as, I’m sure, the Ricketts hoped they would.

    So let’s take a look and see how the tickets are moving.

    Three of the 11 Bronze level games have sold tickets above $17. None of the Bronze games remaining on the schedule are currently selling for above $17. The high point I have seen was $35 for the Tuesday, April 10 game and Thursday, April 12 game against the Brewers. I have no idea why the tickets for Wednesday, April 11 topped out at $17, when the day before and the day after were double the price.

    Six of the 27 Silver level games have sold tickets above the $27 base price. The high point was $50 for Friday, April 20th against the Reds, which seems to have now sold out. I find that odd, but you can not buy tickets for the bleachers at any price for that game. The Tuesday, April 24th game against the Cardinals was selling at $35 and suddenly disappeared as an option on April 14th. Did it sell out? How come the price never climbed up to the $50 level before selling out? Did somebody buy such a shit ton of tickets for that game that it bypassed at least 2 pricing levels? I don’t know and the Cubs have not responded to any of my inquiries about it. So, for right now, it is just a curious incident. The highest remaining price in the Silver tier are tickets for Monday, April 23 against the Cardinals at $39 each.

    Three of the 21 Gold level games have sold tickets above the $38 base price. The Thursday, June 14 game against the Tigers leads the pack at $70. None of these games have sold out.

    None of the nine Platinum level games have sold any tickets above the $52 base price. These are supposed to be some pretty good games with some high demand for tickets, but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in the actual ticket sales at this point.

    Seven of the 13 Marquee level games have sold tickets above the $78 base price. Now we’re getting somewhere. The entire Red Sox series has tickets selling for $140 each, which appears to be the absolute highest that the Cubs will charge. The Saturday Red Sox game was listed as sold out when I started charting the prices, but then some tickets became available and they have been since. For Friday’s Red Sox game, you can buy as many as 12 tickets at a time (normal limit is 19 per game). For Saturday, you can only buy four at a time (yesterday it was limited to two, but it’s back up to four today). For Sunday’s game, you can buy eight at a time. So those tickets are clearly running low, but they aren’t gone yet (which again makes me wonder why a weekday April game against the Reds is unavailable, when the highest demand game on the schedule has tickets remaining).

    The Saturday game in May against the White Sox and the Saturday game against the Cardinals in July are selling for $110 each, with no special limits. In fact, no other game on the schedule besides the Red Sox series has a limit below the typical 19 tickets.

    Since I have been tracking the prices, not a single price point has moved. The only things that have changed that would prevent me from simply copying and pasting the data from one day to the next are the two games that suddenly became unavailable, and a couple of changes in maximum tickets you can purchase for the Red Sox series. Otherwise, everything has been identical from day to day.

    So what does that mean? Well, nothing definitive right now. As we are fond of pointing out when players’ stats aren’t what we think they should be, it is a small sample size. It’s also an arbitrary starting point. Ideally, I should have started tracking these things when they first went on sale, but I didn’t. So all we can do now is keep going forward and see what happens.

    However, what we know so far does raise some questions. Have the Cubs mis-categorized some of these games? Saturday, June 30th against the Astros is a Marquee game? Really? I know it is a Saturday in the summer and those tickets have typically sold themselves, but it is the fucking Astros. I know I have better things to do with my $78 than spend a day in the bleachers watching two of the worst teams in baseball bumble around on the field. That sun is just as bright in a park or on the beach.

    When I look at the Platinum level games, I’m equally unimpressed by most of them. Astros, Reds, Rockies, Diamondbacks… yay!

    In addition, the Ricketts essentially stated that the dynamic pricing would really only go up. They said they would not sell tickets below what season ticket holders paid, so that means they could conceivably sell those Marquee games against the Astros at $76, but at that point, who gives a shit? In essence, the tickets are priced as low as they are ever going to get for 62 of the games left on the schedule. Unless something changes pretty quickly, that would seem to indicate that those prices are above what the market is willing to pay. So then what? Sit there and watch as unsold tickets pile up on each other, or break a promise to Alvin and have a sale? This is why I never would have told Alvin they would set the price floor. Because now he either leaves revenue on the table or he’s a liar. Somewhere they will start talking about the cost of them being portrayed as liars on BCB versus the lost revenue of unsold tickets, if they haven’t already.

    Do they think that demand will pick up going forward? The team is pretty much doing what we expected and what most Cubs fans feared. Namely, being terrible. I’m interested to see if ticket prices move at all for the upcoming homestand. Maybe people are in a wait-and-see mode on the weather before dedicating dollars to these tickets. Maybe people are just waiting to purchase until they kow they won’t be freezing their asses off. I know that’s how I was when I decided I wanted to go see Samardzija pitch. I waited until the day before to make sure it wasn’t going to be horrible. I doubt that is the case, but it’s at least plausible. So we’ll see.

    And how did a game go from being sold at a slightly higher rate than its base price suddenly get sold out? Are the Ricketts giving away tickets and counting them as sold? Are they simply taking tickets off the market to create a false sense of high demand and low supply? If either of those are the case, then those gaudy attendance numbers to start the season are more of a farce than we had previously thought.

    Like I said, I don’t have many answers here. The Cubs don’t talk about this stuff and my data is very sketchy at the moment, but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on.

    You don’t say.

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  2. mb21

    I’m an idiot. So I’m leaving comments in the minor league thread before I see b’s new one. I leave a comment there and finally see this one. Adam?

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  3. Mercurial Outfielder

    And how did a game go from being sold at a slightly higher rate than its base price suddenly get sold out? Are the Ricketts giving away tickets and counting them as sold? Are they simply taking tickets off the market to create a false sense of high demand and low supply? If either of those are the case, then those gaudy attendance numbers to start the season are more of a farce than we had previously thought.

    Do you think there’s a real possibility that the Cubs are buying their own tickets?

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  5. Author
    Aisle424

    Mercurial Outfielder wrote:

    Do you think there’s a real possibility that the Cubs are buying their own tickets?

    I think I’d be surprised if they were, but I’m having a hard time coming up with plausible explanations for tickets going from $27 to $35 to unavailable when we know they have sold tickets at $50 for that same level. That’s skipping one price point at the very least and probably two.

    So what is more likely? Someone coming in and buying every single remaining bleacher seat (I’m guessing something like 500 or more) for an April weekday night in one shot, them giving a crapload of tickets away and calling them sold, or simply tossing them under the unsold hot dogs in the garbage and calling them sold?

    Those are all pretty unlikely scenarios. My money is on the giveaway, but why would they give tickets away to one of the only games that was actually selling? Why not to one of the 62 games that aren’t selling above base price? It doesn’t make much sense.

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  9. mb21

    This is why I never would have told Alvin they would set the price floor. Because now he either leaves revenue on the table or he’s a liar. Somewhere they will start talking about the cost of them being portrayed as liars on BCB versus the lost revenue of unsold tickets, if they haven’t already.

    Did he really tell Alvin this? I have a very difficult time believing a businessman promised some bleacherite this nonsense. I sure hope he didn’t. Alvin is one of the people in the group he doesn’t have to please. Those people are buying tickets even if Tom Ricketts sells slaves during the game. That would just be something that should not be seen at Wrigley, but oh boy was that Cubs game beautiful.

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  13. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Aisle424:

    Yeah, there’s certainly something here that doesn’t quite make sense. I have never trusted Ricketts, and this isn’t doing much to change that.

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  14. Author
    Aisle424

    mb21 wrote:

    Did he really tell Alvin this?

    I think he told him in that interview he did, but even if he didn’t tell Alvin directly, he indicated that at the Cubs Convention (or at least that’s how Al words it in his summary)

    The team is going to test out a dynamic pricing system for bleacher tickets, the idea being “the earlier you buy, the better price you get.” At no time would any dynamic price go below the season ticket holder price (which is lower than the single game buyer gets).

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  17. WenningtonsGorillaCock

    the dynamic pricing model has a floor, but there’s nothing stopping the Cubs from selling unwanted tickets at a discount through StubHub or another ticket broker and still keep their promise.

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  19. mb21

    @ Aisle424:
    That makes no sense to me. The goal should be to make the most money on ticket sales. If you have unsold tickets you’re kicking yourself in the ass. If they’re unsold because the price was too high you’re just being an idiot. I don’t want the Cubs to lower the prices for August games today, but when August or September rolls around I want the ticket prices lowered to whatever it will take to sell them and earn the Cubs the most money. Anything else is just stubborn.

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  22. WenningtonsGorillaCock

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Yeah, I wasn’t referring to that necessarily, just that there are ways around their “promise” not to sell tickets below the floor. If the team wants to “sell” unused tickets (that they already own, by the way) to a wholly-owned ticket broker or to StubHub (which shares a portion of the resulting proceeds back to the team, I believe) for less than face value in order to recover some otherwise-lost revenue, I have no problem with that. And I’m a season ticket holder. If that is considered gaming the attendance numbers, who cares? It should only matter to the Ricketts.

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  23. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ WenningtonsGorillaCock:

    Yeah, I suppose it doesn’t really matter to me. I just wish they didn’t trumpet it as something it’s not, because one things seems clear: people are entirely unwilling to pay Ricketts’ prices for Ricketts’ team.

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  26. Author
    Aisle424

    WenningtonsGorillaCock wrote:

    the dynamic pricing model has a floor, but there’s nothing stopping the Cubs from selling unwanted tickets at a discount through StubHub or another ticket broker and still keep their promise.

    That is true. It also means that we can know almost nothing about how much revenue they make since not only are the attendance numbers rigged, we have no idea how much any ticket sells for, no matter what the list price is. I’m sure that is exactly how they like it.

    I couldn’t even get them to verify that there really weren’t any tickets left for those two games. I thought for sure at least one of them had to be a glitch.

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  28. DK

    I personally think the secondary market determines the ceiling – especially on the bleachers. Experienced Wrigley goers, ones who go to 10-12 games a year ROTFL when they see $140 plus fees for bleachers. The secondary market won’t touch that number this season, regardless of the opponent. I’m waiting for the Stub Hub Cubs Ticket Near Giveaway this season!! You could get into a game for less than 10 bucks last season, and it’s going to happen again. At least you get to see one major league team when you go to Wrigley…

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  30. WenningtonsGorillaCock

    DK wrote:

    You could get into a game for less than 10 bucks last season, and it’s going to happen again

    You can get in for a lot less than that already. There are tickets on StubHub for Friday’s game against the Reds for $3. My buddy got 4 tickets to a weekday game last week for 19 cents each. There’s the $11 StubHub fee, but that’s per order. Divided by 4 or 6 tickets, that’s still well under $10 per ticket. Granted, these are 400 and 500-level seats, but when the stadium is only 1/3 full, you can sit wherever you want.

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  31. JJ Fannin

    I work in the bleachers and a theory for why tickets aren’t available for the Reds in April but are available for the Red Sox…

    A lot of the April games have tickets basically given away to local schools, charities and other people that would not normally get an opportunity to go to a game. It is called “Commissioner’s Initiative” program where the Commissioner’s office makes a block of tickets available for $1 to these groups. They are hoping to drum up interest in the league. The majority of these CI tickets for Wrigley are bleacher tickets.

    I do not know how many are given every game but there is A LOT of them floating around. Therefore, the Reds game probably has 1000 tickets (maybe more) basically given away. This might be why no more tickets are available…they may have given the majority of the unsold bleacher tickets to the CI program for that day.

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  32. Steve Swisher

    Well, it may not be new, but I thought it was an interesting overall look at the Cubs’ drafts. It’s pretty remarkable how they haven’t even been able to luck into a great player in the first round. And I didn’t necessarily agree with the whole thing about “the FO not understanding the park,” but I thought it was a new perspective. I dunno. (dying laughing)

    Mercurial Outfielder wrote:

    I don’t think there’s anything new there, besides the bizarre claim that Cubs FO’s don’t understand the ballpark.

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  34. mb21

    @ berselius — I’m glad you wrote what you did in the last thread. I’d been thinking about doing it too, but didn’t get around to it. Based on what we know at this point there’s no reason to think either of those guys have fallen off cliffs. Well, there may be more of a reason for Byrd considering he was hit in the face last year, but I’m not sure it amount to much.

    What surprises me is that their ZiPS rest of season is 6 points lower. I find that hard to believe based on so few PA. I think they’re weighting current season stats too heavily in my opinion.

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  37. Author
    Aisle424

    JJ Fannin wrote:

    I do not know how many are given every game but there is A LOT of them floating around. Therefore, the Reds game probably has 1000 tickets (maybe more) basically given away. This might be why no more tickets are available…they may have given the majority of the unsold bleacher tickets to the CI program for that day.

    Yeah, but why would they give away that game? Why wouldn’t they give away one of their $17 games? I’m not saying that you are incorrect. In fact, you are probably correct as it is the least conspiratorial theory there is, but it’s weird that they would give away tickets to one of the only games where tickets actually sold for above their original face value.

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  38. mb21

    Steve Swisher wrote:

    It’s pretty remarkable how they haven’t even been able to luck into a great player in the first round.

    It depends on what you consider a great player. Kerry Wood was drafted in the 1st round. So was Mark Prior. As was Corey Patterson. Wood and Prior were derailed by injuries and there’s just not much you can do about that. Patterson began to show some of the skills he flashed in high school, but was injured shortly after. If Wood or Prior didn’t get injured we’d still wonder why they’ve had such little success, but we’d be able to point to a star player or two they developed in recent memory.

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  40. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    speaking of league run environment, I think you’re using way too high a baseline when you’re calculating WAR for batters. The only average projection I’ve found is about .320 and I’d assume the others are close to that. As a result, you have a league average hitter with average defense and baserunning getting that many plate appearances and only worth 1 WAR? I’m getting about 1.5 WAR using a .325 league wOBA.

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  43. Suburban kid

    mb21 wrote:

    That makes no sense to me. The goal should be to make the most money on ticket sales. If you have unsold tickets you’re kicking yourself in the ass. If they’re unsold because the price was too high you’re just being an idiot. I don’t want the Cubs to lower the prices for August games today, but when August or September rolls around I want the ticket prices lowered to whatever it will take to sell them and earn the Cubs the most money. Anything else is just stubborn.

    This assumes the cost of running the stadium is the same when the stands are full and when they are nearly empty.

    I don’t know how the margins work in terms of labor cost relative to attendance, but you can be damn sure they’re a fuck of a lot more profitable when the stands are full at average ticket prices than when they are full at pennies on the dollar.

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  44. mb21

    Aisle424 wrote:

    Yeah, but why would they give away that game? Why wouldn’t they give away one of their $17 games?

    Maybe it gives the illusion of that game being sold out at which point others may be willing to pay more if/when tickets are made available?

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  45. mb21

    @ Suburban kid:
    That’s a really good point, SK. So I guess there has to be a floor, but that floor has to be lower than what the season ticket holder is paying. I have no idea what the floor would be, but I’m guessing once you get someone in the stadium for $10 they’re going to buy a drink, a hot dog and maybe something else. I don’t know, but when you factor in concessions I’d want to sell as many as possible even if I had to reduce the price. Not sure where the floor is though, but it’s lower than the season ticket holder.

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  46. scot7209

    The whole thing is insulting. The product they are producing every year is underwhelming in quality and in no way superior to that of a decade ago. In their infinite wisdom however the buck (or millions of them) for bad front office decisions keep getting passed to those of us who wish to see a game in person. I watched the Ryne Sandberg farewell game (Harry’s last home game as well, coincidentally) 40′ or so from the press box with my son and paid $6 a ticket if I remember correctly. Bleacher seats were $10 at the time as well I think. A decade and a half later, the product is poorer than even then and yet game-goers are being asked to cough up anywhere from double to 10 times as much for those tickets.
    Yeah sure. Keep dreaming front office. I can just as easily watch the highlights from my own couch, if indeed they can be called that, of a sub-par performance marred with stroke inducing relief pitching, defensive ineptness, and an offense about as intimidating as the triple A affiliate.

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  47. Mercurial Outfielder

    The product they are producing every year is underwhelming in quality and in no way superior to that of a decade ago.

    FWIW, the 2002 Cubs went 67-95. Seems to me the product is exactly the same as a decade ago. (dying laughing)

    an offense about as intimidating as the triple A affiliate.

    Actually, the AAA lineup might be a better than the current Cubs lineup. (dying laughing)

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  48. scot7209

    mercurial:

    Precisely correct! And yet payroll is still in the top ten for the majors, if I heard correctly.
    Pathetic.

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  49. scot7209

    Until they are playing like a major league team wanting to win. I won’t spend any more than the cost of the occasional cheap spring training tickets.

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  50. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ scot7209:
    Still a lot of cash on the books from the backloaded deals TribCo, Hendry, and McDonough made to pump up the value of the team.

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  51. scot7209

    Mercurial:

    I know….*sigh*
    Wait till next year huh? Or are we already thinking we’ll have to say that next year too probably?

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  52. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ scot7209:
    That’s your prerogative. I really do think THoyer are trying to build something, but it’s going to take a few years. They could have chosen to win now or to build something that can win long-term. They seem to have taken the latter option. If you don’t want to pay to go, then don’t. No one here will ever tell you that you should do otherwise. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this FO is like TribCo. These guys want to win. But they also want to win a lot and for a long time.

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  53. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ scot7209:

    I think realistically we’re looking at 3-5 years minimum before the Cubs are real contenders again. They could always luck into a playoff team, like in 89, 98, or 01. But that’s unlikely.

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  55. scot7209

    I agree 3-5 is likely…sounds like a prison sentance, (dying laughing).
    I understand that the FO is different in their realistic approach to winning in the long term but at the same time the whole damn thing is pretty disappointing that it even got this far.
    As far as the tickets go however, I don’t see any difference in the FO and that is my issue with them. Don’t continue the escalation in cost on a sup par product. It doesn’t seem to make any economic sense, particularly with the current mood that seems to exist amongst fans of ‘wait and see’. Then again my economics education didn’t go further than my 1st year gen ed courses in college.

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  56. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ scot7209:

    Building new facilities in Latin America (so that players can be developed in humane conditions), re-tooling your minor league coaching staff and scouting staff, implementing new analytical things, expanding what was the league’s smallest FO, signing FA…these things all cost money. Ricketts has to get that mney from somewhere, and since the luddites in the fanbase won’t let him maximize on ad space in the park or–heaven forfend–install a real JumboTron, he’s going to to keep raising ticket and concession prices while keeping payroll stable. He’s also got to demonstrate to the state and city, from whom he’s asking a substantial amount of money to repair the crumbling, urine-soaked relic his team plays in, that he’s got a stable business model.

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  60. mb21

    @ scot7209:
    I won’t spend any money on this team either, but I hope they charge every bit as much as they can for a ticket. If people are willing to pay a certain amount the Cubs should be charging it. They may suck at baseball, but they’d suck at business if they weren’t doing that. I’d rather they at least be good at something.

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  61. frysredjacket

    Two questions regarding Gameday.
    Is the pitch zone pretty accurate? If so, the ump is squeezing the plate pretty tight (for both pitchers).
    Also, what is the difference between release speed and results speed?
    Thanks, folks.

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  62. mb21

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Agreed. I think even 3 years is optimistic. For that to happen just about everything would have to go right and that’s not likely. I’ve said it before, the Cubs won’t contend before Starlin Castro would be eligible for free agency. Like you said though, they could luck into it, but I’m talking about entering the season as a legit contender.

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  63. mb21

    @ frysredjacket:
    It’s quite accurate. I believe it’s accurate to within a quarter of the size of the baseball. The release speed is the speed at 55 feet (that’s where the camera picks the pitch up. The result speed is the speed at the time it crosses the plate.

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  64. mb21

    mb21 wrote:

    It’s quite accurate. I believe it’s accurate to within a quarter of the size of the baseball.

    However, the cameras could be positioned wrong at which point they’d be off by more than that, but assuming they are positioned correctly, which they almost always are, they’re very accurate.

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  67. frysredjacket

    @ mb21:
    I had no doubt someone here would have the answers.
    Thanks again.
    I guess I should have said he’s squeezing the entire zone. Looks like he’s not calling the black of the plate, or the upper quarter.

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  68. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:

    Yeah. I mean, a big trade/FA signing or two might be able to get them better in a hurry, so I’m comfortable with 3 years as the floor, but anticipate that neither of those things will happen, so…yeah, at least 5 years.

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  75. Suburban kid

    @ mb21:
    My point is this. Let’s say I run a small brothel, with two or three prostitutes, and for some weird reason they have a contract that pays them by the hour (but no guaranteed number of hours per week).

    If there’s no navy ships docking this weekend, I’m not going schedule any whores for Saturday morning, and maybe only one for Saturday afternoon. I have to pay the decrepit jizz mopper whether there’s one whore or all three whores working.

    Would I really start giving 90% discounts just to get some bookings this weekend from cheapskate locals? It would be a false economy, as the normal costs of servicing would out-weigh the reduced revenue.

    Does that make sense?

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  76. mb21

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I think they want to win, but I also think past ownership and management did too. TribCo did hire a hot shot GM. They did so in the same manner that Theo was acquired. He won 2 world championships like Theo did. He won them with a much lower payroll than Theo’s Red Sox. One of those championshps was a team partly built by the previous GM just like the Red Sox. He then won another one that was entirely of his building just like Theo.

    When you really think about it, what the Cubs did this past offseason was the exact same thing the TribCo did almost 20 years ago. They definitely wanted to win.

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  79. Berselius

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:

    Sort of. 37 PAs from Byrd isn’t a lot, but 6729 PAs in the NL certainly is a big sample. Last year’s offensive numbers were ludicrously low, so far the league-wide stats agree. In some sense this year’s stats are further confirming last year’s data.

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  80. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:

    They also hamstrung Green at every turn, until he got fed up and left. And that was the last FO guy they hired that they couldn’t control.

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  83. mb21

    @ Suburban kid:
    I get what you’re saying, but let’s say the average employee at Wrigley makes $10 per hour and they work 5 hours per game. I doubt they make a schedule too far out. They probably have a tentative schedule and then tell people they need the or they don’t as the series or the game gets closer. Let’s say there is one employee for every 100 fans. You sell those extra tickets for $10 and you sell 2000 of them, which means 20 more employees. Those 20 employees make $1000 and the 100 fans have paid $1000. Those 100 fans spend an average of $20 on concessions. You’re still making money. You’d obviously like to make more.

    There’s also the idea that people want to go some place when there are a lot of people there. If a restaurant is empty people tend to stay away from it. If the restaurant is busy people want to eat there. I have no idea if this is true with sporting events, but I can’t imagine it helps. I watch the Pirates home games and if I’m a fan I don’t even want to go there.

    I do get what you’re saying and it’s not something I had thought of, but there has to be a floor which has to be lower than the season ticket price.

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  84. Berselius

    @ Berselius:

    Those WAR projections I posted for Byrd were based on pre-2011 numbers, because that’s the only calculator I had in hand. It’s not really fair to compare them because both numbers were predicated on a different run environment, neither of which I felt like trying to calculate (dying laughing).

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  86. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    what’s league average for ZiPS? How much of Byrd’s drop is because of a league average drop? Take a player who has a .330 wOBA whose projection was .330, what’s his wOBA projection now? Is it .325? (dying laughing) that’s a lot of questions (dying laughing) If Byrd’s is 6 or 12 points lower I’d hope it’s closer to .320. I still think it’s weighting this season far too heavily and that’s what Colin found too. Oliver’s updated projections don’t weight this season nearly as heavily as ZiPS does either.

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  87. Berselius

    @ mb21:

    I’m not sure what it was preseason, and am too lazy to look it up (laughing). Even if we had that number I don’t think we can get a spreadsheet with the updated ZiPS projections.

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  97. Recalcitrant Blogger Nate

    Do the Cubs ever do anything besides K, GO, FO, or single? Man this team sucks

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  98. Mercurial Outfielder

    I categorically hate bunts and I will die at the stake with that belief clutched deep within my soul.

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  103. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ josh:

    I hereby propose term be changed to “Vladed,” as in “Sanchez Vladed the shit out of that pitch.”

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  111. Recalcitrant Blogger Nate

    @ josh:

    yea, this is worse than I thought so far, and my expectations were low. I’m guessing Wrigley will be empty the second half of the season

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  126. Mercurial Outfielder

    For all the handwringing over Byrd and Soto, it’s funny that people haven’t stopped to notice that Reed Johnson has returned to being Reed Johnson, i.e. shitteh.

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  131. Mercurial Outfielder

    4-pitch walk. Because that was really all this game was missing from a shite pitching perspective.

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  147. Mercurial Outfielder

    This team is truly awful. JefF7 tomorrow. Can transformation save the Cubs? Will the dastardly fiends triumph over our heroes? Will Commissioner White Dude and Chief Insulting Irish Stereotype awake in time? Tune in tomrorrow…Same Bad Time, Same Bad Cubs Team.

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  151. ACT

    DeWitt’s a perfectly acceptable benchwarmer, in my opinion. Worse than an average starter, but better than replacement level.

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  154. ACT

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    1. If what holds? That looks like random year-to year fluctuation to me.
    2. You have to account for differences in playing time (e.g., he was full-time in 2008). WAR/PA would be better.
    3. His 2011 number is artificially low since he played a lot of his games in LF.
    4. Overall, he’s more than 1 WAR per 600 PA. He’s been closer to average than replacement level over his career.

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  155. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ ACT:
    I refuse to expend any more mental energy debating the relative merits of Blake DeWitt. (dying laughing)

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  178. josh

    @ Rice Cube:
    My hope, in terms of Cubs contention, is that if they can avoid getting locked into megadeals, these teams that have all their money tied up into players who are good right now, will inevitably have to let some younger talent go. I can see light at the end of the tunnel, maybe. It’d still be a couple of years down the road, though, probably longer.

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  181. Rice Cube

    I’m sure the Cubs will suck enough to ensure their first round pick next year is protected but I wonder how willing they will be to sacrifice second, third and fourth-round picks to snatch up whatever free agents are available. They might sign free agents anyway but they’d probably be the middling type that won’t cost a draft pick. I’ve been trying to go over that in my mind and it’s too early to guess whether they go balls out next year or stay the course and continue going young.

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  188. Suburban kid

    “I’m not going to say I’m not concerned,” Sveum said. “It’s tough to score runs when you don’t have slugging percentage and don’t get people on base.”

    No reason to be concerned here folks…(dying laughing)

    One bright spot: Marlon Byrd had a single and hiked his average this season to .081 (3 for 37).

    Nice snark.

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  195. SkipVB

    @ Berselius:
    You should make that the active thread now. This one’s getting long in the tooth. Or maybe it’s time for a DFP.

    Cubs have played two series this year (already) where the opponents came in under .500 and left at .500 or better. I know, it’s early. Just sayin’

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