Warren

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SABRMatt sez he likes pitching changes, a lot of them, in fact:

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I/O:  The Red Sox are behind the Mariners.  Hey, c'mon, everybody wants to win! 

CRUNCH:  One thing we can agree on:  competition at the highest levels is tougher than it sounds.  ;- )

......

Here is my argument against the idea that "everybody wants to win equally."   I could be wrong.  :: ahem ::

OK, wow, we look up this morning and the Mariners have a chance make the playoffs this year!  Dr. D is positively choked with admiration.

What about the last 37 years, gentlemen, shall we consider those also?  The Mariners have a track record, which track record includes "this year's Robinson Cano free agent followup."  Everybody around baseball was mystified by the M's lack of free-agent support for Robinson Cano.  Remember?

And here we are, 10 runs in 7 games or whatever .... what was that year the M's were .500 in July with unbelievable starting pitching (Felix, Bedard, Pineda, Fister, Vargas or somesuch) and then the offense's futility caused them to give up, lose 17 in a row :- ) and throw in the towel?

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Maybe this year they win.

Perhaps an incoming tidal wave of young, cheap, cost-controlled players will override their organizational insincerity about fighting for a championship.  Perhaps they'll win despite the fact that they don't want it as much as Arte Moreno does.  It won't prove anything, to me, about their sincerity.

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Another Layer of Complexity:  the Paradigm of Prioritization

The "mantra" is "everybody wants to win."  Let's nuance that, and recognize that everybody wants a lot of things.  The question is balancing your wants.

Two priorities, among many, for which CEO's are responsible:

• Winning the World Series*  (or becoming a primary concern, or leading Market X, or "branding" yourself as youthful, or whatever)
• Maximizing this year's positive cash flow

30 teams want both, yes.  In that sense "everybody wants to win."  But!  Each of the 30 teams has a subtly different prioritization of those two things.

I don't think you can seriously argue that there is a problem with the 1976-2013 Mariners' prioritization of those two things.  Right after the Cano signing and the sound of crickets following, the East Coast -- not me! -- loudly called into question the M's commitment to winning.

I don't think anybody IN baseball DOES argue about whether there's a problem here.  There is.

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One (Not-So-Great) Investor's Remarks on the Subject of "Cash Flow"

1) Profit, by the way, is realized on sale.  This year's cash flow is not "profit" as my accountant would define it.  The Mariners are realizing a colossal profit, whether or not this year's cash flow is positive.  This year's cash flow is really just an "operating expenses" issue.

2) For those who just joined us:  you buy an 8-plex for $200k, you sell it later for $500k ... whether your rent was +$1000 to your plumbing in this calendar year is incidental.  Slum lords, like Donald Sterling, make sure their yearly cash flow is +$1000 just on principle.  Not because they need it.

3) And, that $300k profit on the 8-plex ... of course you can spend it now.  It's called a "line of credit."  You take out a $100k second mortagage now, spend the $100k on your wife's Xmas, and then when you sell the 8-plex you get back $200k in pocket (rather than $300k) from the $500k sale price.  You can easily move $100k of profit from "sale date" to "today."  Real estate investors in fact DO this.  Constantly.  I've done it several times myself.

I don't know any fellow RE investors who view this any differently than I just explained it.

All 30 MLB teams have these lines of credit -- "early profit extraction" -- and it is why they can take a $27M "loss" for the 2013 season.  

The Mariners prefer to lead baseball in "yearly positive cash flow."  If this means they lose on the field, well .... you have to set priorities, right?  As Chuck Armstrong put it, quote, "You can't get carried away with" the idea of winning.