DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Missing the point

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Missing the point

[Music] [Applause] I feel like baseball, like all of baseball, could use an intervention on the subject of the South Capital. Morning to you. Good Monday morning. I’m Dan Kvatovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into football andor hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins that I hope you’ll check out as well once the Dodgers casually cast the Brewers out of the National League Championship Series. Four game sweep, just brutal like the Milwaukee guys didn’t even exist. The onstage ceremony that was conducted at at Dodger Stadium turned out to be highlighted by the following 10-second statement from none other than Dave Roberts himself. I’ll tell you, before this season started, they said, “The Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball. Let’s go.” Okay, let me be really straightforward on this. That’s stupid. All of it’s stupid. The idea that the Dodgers are ruining baseball is stupid. The idea of using it as some sort of, I don’t know, self-motivational thing for his clubhouse also stupid. Meaning, you know, they’re professional athletes. they should want to win the World Series regardless of any external narratives. And let me try to clarify my own stance on this before I go further because I’ve been saying on this show for a while, the Dodgers need to win it all. They need to win it all this year. They need to win it all next year because that sends the single most powerful message in the plainest possible language that even all of these people expressing these opinions currently might be able to wrap their heads around. It doesn’t mean that I think the Dodgers are evil. It doesn’t even mean that I think the Dodgers are doing anything wrong. They’re not. It’s the system again and again and again. It’s the system. The Dodgers can spend $300 million plus because the system doesn’t have in place any mechanism to spread revenues that are legitimately amassed as the result of having 30 teams, not one. I can promise you that if the Dodgers played at their stadium on a regular basis against three or four or five teams or even it’s just them and the Savannah Bananas, they wouldn’t be pulling in a fraction, not a micro fraction of the revenue that they do through that local TV contract. Also stupid, the idea that somehow the Dodgers owners care more because they’re spending more. Oh, they just have more. That’s all it is. I can promise you, and I mean promise you, there is no team in Major League Baseball that’s also more profitable than the Dodgers, which again is fine. Just don’t cast them as being heroes because somebody hit real big on a local TV contract. Part of the reason I think that this stuff ends up getting so confusing and and really gets twisted, I think intentionally by a lot of people is that there’s a genuine lack of knowledge about how the salary cap system works in the NFL, how it works in the NHL. There’s a guy named Dan Clark, and I’m not being glib when I say I I don’t know who he works for, and I hadn’t heard of him before yesterday, but he had 60,000 followers on Twitter, and it purports to be a Major League Baseball account, right? He typed onto his Twitter screen yesterday, “A salary floor will do more good for baseball than a salary cap ever will.” Woo, there’s something novel, huh? haven’t heard only about a billion people express this so far. One problem with it, it’s wholly inaccurate. It doesn’t exist. All salary cap systems come with, say it with me cuz you’ve been with me for a while, a ceiling, a floor, and greatly expanded revenue sharing to make sure that everybody can afford being into that same range. The range is tight, meaning usually only about 20 or 25 million. That applies to the NFL. That applies to the NHL. That’s the system. That’s the salary cap system as it exists. Can you create some variance of it? Sure. Are the NFL system and the NHL system identical? No, absolutely not. Neither is the one in the NBA, to the best of my knowledge, although I’m not an expert in that one. But what’s heartening is to see the replies across the top of the stack of them underneath this guy’s tweet. First off, I’m up there and I say, “LOL, they’re one and the same.” Cuz I just can’t resist. Mike L from wherever says, “Bro, for all the posts you’re making about this, do some homework. All cap systems have a floor. NFL teams are required to spend a minimum of 90% of the cap. NHL teams have to spend at least 65 million out of the 84 million cap. NBA teams must spend 89% of the cap. And Doug underneath that says every cap has a floor. Shouldn’t someone who works in sports know the blanking basics. Well, Doug wins for me. If you’re going public with opinions on this stuff, it’s not okay to just repeat the last thing that you heard on some random talk radio show. Also stupid in addition to the stupidity already expressed here is this notion that the Dodgers are evil. They’re not doing anything wrong. But also the pirates aren’t evil. They’re not spending what they should. I’ve been saying for years and years and years they’re around 10 million, sometimes a little bit more below where they should be, but nowhere near enough to make any kind of impact on wins and losses. Doubly so. If you have a terrible GM, what’s wrong, what’s messed up principally, is the system. And this system solves all of that. Now, last stupid thing on my list, and this one’s one of my favorite. When somebody brings up that a salary cap won’t fix what’s wrong with the pirates. Really? No kidding. Heck, I’ll take that further. A salary cap system would further expose what’s wrong with the Pirates because they would still be run horribly. They would look even worse in a salary cap system. So, this isn’t about fixing the Pirates or making them winners. It’s about a fair system at the foundation of the sport. The teams that I feel bad for in this system, believe me, the Pirates aren’t one of them. They might have been in 2013 to 15, but they sure aren’t now. They can’t spend the money that they have intelligently. Whereas, here’s the Brewers with one of the smartest executives in all of sports, Matt Arnold, who’s put together a perennially competitive, not just major league roster, but the whole organization the way it’s been structured in Milwaukee. They’re there every year, just like the Rays and a bunch of other teams that are run by similarly smart people, and they’re never able to get over that final hump. The one time it happened in Kansas City about a decade ago, those people, the people who tweet stuff like this guy did. Oh yeah, but what about the Royals? Yeah, once in a quarter century. You’re only bolstering the point. When we come back, J1Q. If you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. Located directly across Federal Street from PNC Park, next door to Mike’s Beer Bar, Northshore Tavern is Pittsburgh’s home for steak on a stone. Enjoy your steak finished on a hot lava stone in front of you, where you ensure each piece is cooked to exactly your liking. or try their rotating selection of entre, hot sandwiches, salads, and burgers, all while enjoying the ambiance dedicated to the great players in history of the Pittsburgh Pirates all around you. Come see why everyone’s talking about Northshore Tavern and Steak on a Stone. It’s Gun Storage Check Week. Help prevent unwanted access to your firearms. 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The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/hit and enter hit at checkout. That’s joined me.com/hitcodeh hit. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Bill, who says, “DK, since Bob Nutting appears to be spearheading the fight for a salary cap system in baseball, wouldn’t it behoove him to field a competitive team, considering he’s in possession of the best pitcher on the planet until 2029?” I’d think even the small market teams must look at this current clown show and think, “How are we supposed to take this guy seriously when he appears to be completely interested in winning. The Brewers make an infinitely better case for the salary cap than the Pirates do. Well, yeah. I don’t know how many times I can say this not just to you, Bill, but to everybody. This isn’t about the Pirates. They’re terribly run. I only make that very point on about 90% of these shows. They’re embarrassingly bad at what they do. Not because of the system, just because they’re embarrassingly bad at what they do. They’re bad relative to all their peers, but especially so when it comes to their revenue peers, like the Brewers, like the Reds, like the Guardians, like the Rays. And I know this is going to be impossible for a lot of people to do, but you you almost have to take them out of this equation when talking about this. When I’m talking about it, I’m talking not just about what’s best for Pittsburgh, because in the long run, one would imagine at some point Ben Cherington’s not going to be the GM here anymore. And maybe you’ll have a chance at having things happen that are, you know, logical. But in the moment, in the moment it’s just about the entire sport. The whole bleeping thing is broken. And you know, sometimes the the phrase top to bottom can be just spoken and and not heard. I really mean top to bottom. I mean from the Dodgers to the Pirates. It’s broken the whole thing for everybody, including to at least some small extent the Dodgers themselves. They’ve got now I was going to say the whole country. It’s two countries really since the Blue Jays are still around. You’ve now got two countries looking at the Dodgers like what you’re doing isn’t even real. You found the cheat code and you’re running up the score at a level that you don’t belong. It’s probably fair to an extent. It’s probably unfair to an extent. As I said earlier, they’re not evil. They’re not breaking any rules. But if a cap system does come into play from the 2027 season or onward, and we look back at all these championships that the Dodgers won, including the one they’re about to win, we’re all just going to say, “Oh, yeah, but that’s remember when they had that like $400 million payroll? That doesn’t count.” They were just outspending everybody. Fix the system. Fix it at its core. By the way, to take one small issue with a bit of phrasing that you had there, Bill, you referenced nutting. Uh you said he appears to be spearheading the fight for a salary cap. I have never gotten that impression, including from him. He’s not spearheading anything. He’s involved. He’s talking with people and he wants it. I don’t know that I’d be able to describe the role he’s taken so far that strongly. Oh, and while I’m at it today, there’s another one. Nutting wouldn’t want the salary cap because he’d have to spend up to the minimum. That’s that’s unbelievable that that one comes up because there’s immensely expanded revenue sharing in this system. So, he has the money. He’s required to spend it. And oh, by the way, don’t think I’m going to be one of those people who ignores this. All of the owners become that much richer in a salary cap system, even as more players get more money. I appreciate the question, Bill. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll do another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

The Dodgers — and those who hate them — are missing the point.

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