MLB Draft: Dodgers select UNF's Austin Drury in 34th Round

Congrats to UNF LHP Austin Drury, who was selected in the 34th round of the MLB Draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Drury joins RHP Frank German, who was drafted in the 4th round by the New York Yankees.  

Good for the program here at UNF, but still behind Mrs. The Slav's alma mater, the University of Tampa, who cranked out four pitchers drafted. So she has bragging rights for another year. 

Tampa to Montreal? Sacre Bleu!!!

Just so my friends in Tampa - St. Pete understand that this is not just conjecture by a bunch so slide-rule toting SABR-metricians, here is a local story from ABC News. Not that you should believe everything you hear from them, but.......where there's smoke?



from ABC Action News:

http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/rays-targeted-by-montreal





from Seamheads.com

Tampa to Montreal? Trotting Out the Same Old Tired Narrative | Seamheads.com:

What an insult to the people of the Tampa-St. Pete area. How low have you sunk when you are worse than Montreal? Well, let’s look at the numbers. Attendance in Tampa is the worst of any major league city and has never been above 2 million for any season other than their inaugural season when 2.5 million came to see the Rays lose 99 games in 1998.  But there are still about 19,000 people who will come out to see the Rays play on average. Montreal in its best years could draw more than 20,000, but they never topped 30,000 and in their final seven seasons when the team was buffeted by the same winds of change as have begun now in Tampa, they barely managed 10,000 a year.

In his interview on the subject Steinberg actually spoke lovingly about Stade Olympic where the roof crashed down on the field and halted play for more than a month while the mess was cleaned up and the place was declared fit for baseball again. MLB is at least true to their mantra and is demanding that Montreal commit to a new stadium before any serious talk is made about another team in Canada.

My guess is that this is just the first ante in the poker game between Steinberg and the mayor of St. Petersburg–who will not let the Rays out of their contract to play at Tropicana Field, which is owned by his city. The ante will be upped when a more realistic alternative location for the Rays is found in the next round of betting. It might be Charlotte, the 23rd largest metropolitan area in the US (Tampa-St. Pete is 18th) with a population of 2.3 million. Charlotte has hosted an NBA team successfully twice and with Michael Jordan as the principal owner of the team they have bee relatively successful. They are just an example of a large city that does not rob from an exiting MLB team’s TV market area and has many of the attributes for success.

'via Blog this'



My guess is this is typical war-games tactics from the MLB playbook to help an existing owner wrangle concessions from local politicians.St. Petersburg has experience in these type of affairs, but they were on the Montreal end of the proceedings. Now they are on the other side.



Seems like they are going to get it AGAIN, and good and hard.



That's what happens when you put things in the hands of politicians and oligarchs.

Value Of Average NFL Franchise Is Nearing $1.2 Billion

		Home Tech Finance Markets Politics Strategy Entertainment Advertising Retail Sports Life Friday, Aug 16, 2013 Value Of Average NFL Franchise Is Nearing $1.2 Billion The average NFL franchise is now worth just under $1.2 billion according to the latest valuations released by Forbes.com. With a rise in value of 5.2% from last year ($1.11 billion), this marks the second straight year in which franchise values rose at least 5.0%. This comes after a three-year stretch in which the average value actually decreased slightly. But while the growth is promising, it is still not as accelerated as the glory years of the mid-2000s. From 2001 through 2006 the average value grew at least 9.5% each year and peaked at 34.7% in 2003... Read »

I see a graphic like this and I think back to 1995 when Malcolm Glazer purchased the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for $192 million dollars and people thought he was absolutely insane. Using these "average" numbers, his investment would have doubled in value by the year 2000. The city of Tampa looks pretty good as well, building a state of the art stadium for a "mere" $200 million dollars.

from wikipedia.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Glazer

In 1995, Glazer purchased the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a National Football League franchise, for a then-record $192 million following the death of former owner Hugh Culverhouse. The front office staff of the team includes sons Bryan Glazer, Edward Glazer and Joel Glazer.

Immediately upon purchasing the Bucs in 1995, Glazer declared the team's home field, Tampa Stadium, inadequate and began lobbying local government for a replacement.^[7] Glazer entertained relocation offers from other cities, but kept the Bucs in place after the local government agreed to build the franchise the $200 million state-of-the-art Raymond James Stadium, construction of which was funded by a local sales tax increase. Due in large measure to a very favorable lease agreement in which the team collects most of the revenue from the stadium while the local government must pay almost all of the expenses, the franchise was valued at $963 million by Forbes magazine in 2007.^[8]

"How much would one of them there "state of the art:" facilities cost you today, Goober?" 

"Shucks, I don't know, maybe a billion or so of them there Bernanke Bucks?"

We're measuring things with a B for billion that used to be measured with an M for millions. 

Those were the good old days. 

And there is no inflation. 

Trust me, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. 

Would I lie to you?

Citing attendance woes, Foster says Rays should be allowed to look in Tampa | Tampa Bay Times

Finally, some common sense out of St. Petersburg. But a sad day, nevertheless. This will make the geographically challenged muppets on ESPN very happy.

This has to be a tough realization for St. Petersburg to finally come to. On a civic basis, this is almost as gut-wrenching a conclusion to come to as a mother who doesn't have the means to support her child putting it up for adoption.  Civic pride gets in the way and nobody wants to admit that perhaps the area bit off more than it could chew. In hindsight, as a "major-league" city, St. Pete. over-promised and under-delivered.

For years and years, as potential suitors like the Mariners, White Sox, Giants and others came a courting, MLB was told by the city fathers that this was indeed a legitimate major league city and not some hapless burg. The city was anxious to shed it's image as God's Waiting Room and enhance it's tourism chops. There would be 30-40,000 fans salivating for a chance to pack the Dome. Whenever their efforts were rebuffed, they cried out that they were being unjustly denied their rightful status as a big-league city.

Well, that 30-40,000 projection melted down to 10-15,000 quicker than snowman in St. Petersburg.

Perhaps the city fathers owe MLB an apology as well. The were right about the area, in many ways, and you were wrong. Better late than never coming back to reality. And good luck with the Thunder Dome.

from the Tampa Bay Times:
Citing attendance woes, Foster says Rays should be allowed to look in Tampa | Tampa Bay Times:

ST. PETERSBURG — Mayor Bill Foster has reached the reluctant conclusion that keeping the Tampa Bay Rays in the region means he has to let them cross the bay to explore a new stadium.

Three years ago, Foster adamantly refused a team request to look at stadium sites in Hillsborough County — citing a contract that binds the Rays to Tropicana Field through 2027.

"If your goal is keeping the Tampa Bay Rays in Tampa Bay until 2050, you have to let them look in Tampa," Foster said.

Attendance might not improve markedly at a Hillsborough site, Foster said. "I think there is a big question mark as to whether or not Tampa Bay is a major league region.''

But letting the Rays explore all options now will enhance chances that the team stays for the long haul, he said.

'via Blog this'


It is best for the team and MLB.
It is best for the city of St. Petersburg.
And it is best for the entire Tampa Bay region.

They better hope they haven't burned so many bridges with MLB that they are even given the chance to lateral the ball to Tampa, so to speak. I think that they will, some dollars will change hands, some leases will be torn up. Life goes on.

Better for the city and the few fans they have in St. Pete that they simply jog across the Howard Frankland Bridge. The alternatives would be a much longer commute.

 I would imagine that MLB would like to keep the other sites that think they could support the Rays open for the inevitable and maybe overdue expansion to 32 teams. At the prices the next round of expansion-ites are going to pay, they better have a great chance of success.