Giants closer Brian Wilson will undergo his second Tommy John surgery tomorrow. Over the weekend we heard that his season was over and that another elbow procedure was likely. Make sure you follow @CloserNews on Twitter for all your fantasy bullpen needs. Meanwhile, here's the latest from around the league…
- Nationals southpaw John Lannan is still not drawing trade interest according to MLB.com's Bill Ladson. His $5MM salary continues to be a problem, with one executive saying "teams would rather use a low-paid Minor Leaguer for the fifth spot before dealing with Lannan's money."
- The Yankees have no plans to talk to Russell Martin about a contract extension soon, reports Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com (on Twitter). Martin will become a free agent after this season, and the two sides briefly discussed a multi-year deal this past offseason.
- Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports that a panel of baseball officials will help resolve a local television revenue dispute between the Nationals and Orioles. The two clubs share ownership of MASN, but the O's hold a substantially larger stake. The current deal was hammered out when the Nats moved to Washington in 2005.
It is overdue to give the Nats all their own local broadcast revenues. Diverting it to Angelos in Baltimore is not only unfair but keeps the Orioles in a state of mediocrity–without subsidies from the Washington area, Angelos would be more likely to sell the Orioles sooner to someone who cares about winning and will let baseball experts run the Orioles professionally.
I understand the Nationals wanting more of the TV deal and all but realize the Orioles point of view here also..
They were more or less forced by the league to allow Washington to have a team once again to invade their market area. If a team again were to move into a locale, where a team was (see A’s/San Jose) the move would be denied or tied up for years. Angelos has a point in wanting what he sees as possible loss in revenue with the Nationals taking away from his market.
Washington had a team first and allowed Baltimore in. Washington is not Baltimore’s market in the first place.
Excellent point. The Orioles used to be the St. Louis Browns….simply an awful franchise located in a city dominated by the Cardinals. The Senators did the Browns a huge favor letting them move into Baltimore, 40 miles from the Lincoln Memorial.
Yea and they couldn’t hold a team twice because no one down in DC cared about them. And if you want to get real technical the old 19th century Orioles were in Baltimore in 1882 before the Senators moved in 1891.
MLB allocates broadcasting rights not the individual teams. When a team moves in or out of a territory MLB allocates/reallocates the regions. The Montreal/Washington franchise had no broadcasting rights in DC. The Twins and Rangers franchises did but they rescinded those rights when they moved. If they put a team in Hartford, CT. The Yankees, Mets and Red Sox would be entitled to compensation and the Giants, Braves and Dodgers would not.
Right. Senators left DC years ago and thereby lost any rights they would have had decades ago.
MLB has had a hankering for a team back to the Nation’s capital for years, regardless of the fact a team already had the so called territorial rights established by their own rules in place.
This type of move would have been put on terminal hold or out right denied now as I tried to make plain earlier.
It’s pretty much a case of “take what u get” or back door diplomacy and try to bribe/get as many owners on your side with you against Angelos and vote your way, because Angelos has the high ground in this dispute and this is NOT a knock on the Nat’s, just another of the negatives towards fast tracking a team anywhere when everything has not been fully settled.
The league and the Nationals have a problem here and should not expect Angelos to subsidize it.
I’ve heard that the Nats want more annual revenue than the O’s currently get. They also have the lowest viewership in MLB.
Something doesn’t add up here.
I hardly think the AL East is the toughest division in baseball these days.
Per the terms of the MASN deal, the Nationals are allowed to renegotiate their deal.
Last year they received $29 million from MASN as the eight largest market in the country. This year the Rangers will get an estimated $150 million from Fox Sports. They are in the 5th largest market.
Granted the Rangers have a better recent track record, but the disparity there is huge. Needless to say the Nats are getting well under what they would receive for the television rights on the open market.
The thing is their market is also the Orioles market, and the Orioles get better ratings numbers. Maybe the deal goes a bit too much for the Orioles now, but since it was already their territory and they have more viewers, they should continue to get a good deal more.
There are several reasons that Nats have low viewership. First of all Angelos broke his contract with Comcast when MASN was formed and started broadcasting orioles games, so MASN wasn’t airing on the regions largest cable provider in all areas until 2010. Then on Verizon Fios, the other large cable provider, doesn’t have MASN 2, which is where the Nats are usually aired because MASN is a orioles heavy station, and instead air the game in a channel that no one thinks to turn to (channel 1).
There’s also the fact that DC is the biggest bandwagon town in the country when it comes to sports and the Nationals have been bad. Viewership and attendance will go up as the Nats win and the Nats should have a higher stake in their own tv rights than they do. I think currently the most the Nats can ever have is 33 percent which is a joke.
dude are you kidding me every city is bandwagon to a degree (except chicago). washington is no more bandwagon than the average city
DC is the biggest bandwagon town dude. It’s because its a transient population. People come here from around the country to work in DC and only care about teams that are winning consistently.
Look at the Caps. 10 years ago when they were awful nobody showed up. Then they started winning and went to the playoffs all these years in a row and had sellout crowds every night. Then this year they aren’t as good during the regular season and attendance dropped. Hell there were a few games i went to where Verizon Center was barely half full.
It’s not a bad thing necessarily because when they show up they still cheer loud for the DC teams, but let’s not kid ourselves about how DC is a bandwagon town.
“Every city is bandwagon to a degree (except chicago).”
Damn right!
Verizon has MASN2. Check channel 1 for non-HD and channel 501 for HD. When MASN2 isn’t broadcasting it is ESPNNEWS. Also the broadcast splits games on MASN2. For 2012 Orioles 95 on MASN, 65 on MASN2. Nationals 96 on MASN, 62 on MASN2. About as even as it can get. Totals don’t add to 162 due to Fox/Espn broadcasts.
Some people in Washington can change the rules right? If not, might the Nats qualify for some kind of Federal grant, seeing as how they operate in the nation’s capital city?