Only 3 teams in baseball are debt-free, though KC has close to the least amount of debt in baseball.

A lot of fans just wildly exaggerate revenue sharing and basically presume a lot of expensive things are free. I just took a few minutes to take a stab at a couple: non-player payroll, and team travel.

http://kansascity.royals.mlb.com/tea...ce.jsp?c_id=kc

Ignoring the owner and the board, I count 154 names. What do you think is the average salary+benefit package? I dunno, I figured ~$60k might be a fair, maybe low estimate. Right there, you can eliminate another $9.25MM

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...126494236.html

I count about 37 trips needed on a chartered plane in 2013. If you took the low end of the WSJ estimate, there's another $2.775MM.

Rent to Jackson county (which they then use for maintenance) is about a quarter million plus up to 5% of net receipts, which who knows how much that is.

This isn't all just free nickle and dime stuff.

Apparently we offered Wil Myers to the Mets for Zack Wheeler and Jon Niese. The Mets said no.

Well then **** them.

That's interesting

Jon Heyman ‏@JonHeymanCBS

As @Gambo620 reported, brandon mccarthy has dbacks deal


Nick Piecoro ‏@nickpiecoro

Told Brandon McCarthy's deal with the Dbacks is for two years and around $15M.

Thank goodness.

I will say this: there are several things that the general population does not know about the Glass family that would probably help their image in this town. Their philanthropic ventures, for example, are pretty top-notch...but they don't make them public. David is not a public eye kind of guy, and that's not what this town responds well to. We want to see you. We want to see that you're a normal human being just like we are. They don't seem to understand this. I'm not defending them or their actions, but they are completely different than the people I thought they would be. They genuinely do seem to care and show a great interest in the team. That being said, they need to show the same enthusiasm with their checkbooks.

Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports that Brandon McCarthy agreed to a two-year deal with the Diamondbacks worth $15.5 million.
The deal is pending a physical. And that's no slam dunk given his recent brain surgery and previous shoulder issues, but the expectation right now is that he'll have a normal offseason. McCarthy owns a 3.29 ERA and 1.18 WHIP in 43 starts since the beginning of the 2011 season, so $15.5 million looks like a bargain. His numbers will probably go up a bit making half of his starts in Arizona, but he should still make for a solid option in mixed fantasy leagues.

That's actually a legit deal.

Wheeler's good. Niese is solid. You'd almost certainly get a #2 and #3 starter for the next 1/2 decade out of those 2.

I'm not shocked the Mets turned it down, nor am I surprised the Royals made it. In the end, that's the kind of trade offer that Moore should be making for Wil Myers.

This Myers for Shields crap has to go, though.

McCarthy 2 years for $15MM. Franceour money.

Damn.

How about revenue from tickets, concessions, apparel, etc.? Then you also have to include costs such as marketing, operations (cleaning, upkeep, etc.). Then you have your scouts, their travel, etc. You've got revenue from special events, but there's cost there as well.

Coulda had McCarthy for 2 seasons for what the Royals will be spending on Santana and Hochevar...with change.

The Santana deal was a poor one.

Ticket revenue is already embedded in my $115MM estimate. If we sell more than 1.7 million tickets or raise ticket prices, that could go up obviously.

Other than that, yeah some of the other things you mention I didn't try to quantify. We're not trying to balance a book we cant look at, but since I can figure out ways to explain 8-digits of non-player/prospect expenses (the Royals seem to be asking us to believe its around ~$25MM), then I figure good enough and expect a sizable increase in 2014.

Just out of curiosity since I got both my light and water bills today, I took a stab at utilities. I figure that'll be about $2.5MM or so, maybe more. I found two sources putting the utilities for an NFL stadium at about an average of $2MM. A baseball stadium is smaller, but is used a heck of a lot more with 4 times the attendance. (Jerryworld's utilities are over $200k/month!)

No such thing as a poor one-year deal. Saying otherwise is making an excuse for a poor owner, which is ironically what our Glasshole claims to be.

I hate Glass and Dayton....of course ill praise him if he pulls off a miracle.

That said tendering Hochevar and possibly dangling Myers is incredible stupid.