Dollars must make sense in baseball's offseason

As I watched the World Series last night, I found myself thinking what 2010 might hold for baseball. While some people might say I’m looking too far into the future, I would remind them that, even in early November, Major League teams must have their eyes on the season ahead.

The smart front offices do. They are focusing now on revenue – specifically, on how to grow revenue in an economy that has shown faint signs of a recovery. That’s also an important area for fans to concentrate on, because revenue concerns will explain the timidity in which teams they follow will enter free agency.

The odds of seeing a mega-contract such as CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira signed last offseason are about as good as the NFL changing its mind about allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a stake in the St. Louis Rams.

Unless you root for the Yankees, you likely won’t see money flowing on talent. What you will see is your team packaging all sorts of come-out-to-the-ballpark incentives to get butts in the bleachers.

That’s not just my belief here; Forbes.com raised the same issue with Bob DuPuy, the No. 2 man in the Commissioner’s Office, when it asked him last Wednesday to discuss the state of the game.

DuPuy sounded hopeful.

Conceding the revenue challenges, he offered what might be the only solution the sport has if it intends to return soon to the salad days of the mid-2000s. Nothing is better for baseball than a good ol’ pennant race.

The lack of good races – and the economy -- slowed the turnstiles as the dog days of August rolled into September this past season. Most of the divisional races were locked up by then, and who would want to shell out top dollar to see small-market teams like the Indians, Pirates, Nationals, Royals, Padres, Reds, Orioles and Athletics play?

They weren’t the only bad baseball teams. They were, however, teams with the most economic limitations. None can do what big-market teams like the Cubs, White Sox, Tigers and Mets can: spend their way into contention. So the small-market teams will have to show creativity to draw crowds. Those teams can’t sell championship baseball, because they would be peddling a lie.

You never know about sports, though. Strange things have been known to happen; one or two of those small-market teams might surprise. They could pull off what the Tampa Bay Rays did in ‘08 and wind up in the World Series.

If they do, they won’t do it because they brought in a high-price free agent. They will have to rely on what they have in their organizations, which is young, cheap and unproven talent.

Unproven talent is a hard sale to fans who want to see stars in the lineup, if they can’t see a winning ballclub. So if they can’t have either, they’ll need a reason to go to the game.

And that’s the dilemma baseball faces, one that is uncomfortable for the lords of the game to discuss. But if they can’t discuss tense pennant races, what else is left?

They know what pennant races will do. They know what $1 hotdogs, fireworks and $5 bleacher tickets will do when fans are watching lousy baseball. Those promotions might draw some people to the ballpark, but promotions won’t full the place.

That’s the challenge in 2010 for DuPuy, a fact he’s mindful of. As he told Forbes.com: “Holding our own would be a good objective.”

DuPuy is correct.

Yet even that might not be possible next season with a bad economy and no decent pennant races to keep fans interested in spending money at the ballpark.

Valentine's day makes a lovely impression

Bobby Valentine got nostalgic. He sat with journalists Thursday inside Progressive Field and reminisced about the glory days of Cleveland baseball. Valentine remembered those days, as does any person who calls himself an Indians fan.

He relished an opportunity to bring those days back. That was the reason he was in Cleveland talking baseball. He was making a case to GM Mark Shapiro to hire him as the next manager of the Indians.

“I had a great day – a great day,” Valentine said. “I talked to baseball people – talked baseball. I couldn’t be happier with that.”

His hours-long interview with Shapiro and his lieutenants, Valentine said, went seamlessly, if an interview for a high-profile job can be described as such. He called the process “interesting,” and the word should come into use again if he’s the man Shapiro picks to manage the Tribe next season.

For Valentine won’t be taking over a team stacked with top-shelf talent. That fact is that he admitted he didn’t know much about what the Indians have or what the American League is about these days.

How could Valentine?

He had spent the past six years managing the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan.

“I had a six-year love affair with baseball in a different country,” he said.

Valentine was being overly modest. The love affair was mutual. As much as he loved baseball in Japan, the people there loved him. He was a “star,” although describing any manager as a star isn’t easy.

Parting might be sweet sorry, but people don’t weep over it in baseball. Didn’t anybody learn that from watching “A League of Their Own”?

In meeting with the Cleveland media, Valentine didn’t forget to talk about his time in Japan. For him, the experience there enriched his life; it taught him lessons that might be useful in managing in the big leagues.

He admitted he will have things to catch up on, particularly the statistical information that drives front offices and Fantasy Leagues. He will also have to get a better feel on who the Indians players are.

Can’t tell the players with a media guide, right? Hand Valentine one, and he could have used a media guide before his talk with Shapiro.

Before the interview, Valentine didn’t bone up on the team. He could have, he said; he decided to go in cold, he said.

So if anybody in the Shapiro’s front office favored an outsider’s perspective, a candidate who was selling a philosophy and not someone who was pitching his unflagging loyalty to the organization, it found that outsider in Valentine, who compared his managerial style to an orchestra director.

“I can put the right sounds in the right places and the right instruments in the right places to make something that’s pleasing to the ear and to the eyes – and, hopefully, to the baseball community,” he said. “That’s what I do for a living. Hopefully, that’s good enough.”

His words sounded the right chords. He impressed with them – at least the men and women who heard his interview with the media thought so.

Whether he struck those same notes with Shapiro will be decided down the road. He has other candidates left to interview, including an organizational insider in Triple-A manager Torey Lovullo.

None of the others on Shapiro’s list have Valentine’s experience. He played in the bigs, and he managed the Rangers, the Mets and the team in Japan. Shapiro probably focused on that experience during the interview. He had to wonder, however, whether Valentine, now 59, had the fortitude to take on a rebuilding project as massive as the Indians.

The straight-talking Valentine said he didn’t avoid the question. He told Shapiro he did: He wants to manager the Tribe. Nor did Valentine avoid many other questions. Probably the only question he clearly sidestepped the whole day was the last one the media pitched to him.

Somebody asked Valentine, now a baseball analyst with ESPN, what specifically he discussed with Shapiro and other men he met. He didn’t touch it.

To answer that question, he said, would give the candidates who have not met with Shapiro a hint of what to expect.

“Nobody gave me any heads-up,” Valentine said, laughing.

Santana down, out ... so are Mets

This is another misfortune in a lousy season for the New York Mets that keeps getting lousier: millions of dollars more on the disabled list.

The latest millionaire to land there is left-hander Johan Santana, once the most dependable aces in the game. Oh, and Santana’s got a couple of Cy Youngs to prove it.

Now, he finds himself looking not ahead to his next start but to an appointment with a surgeon. Santana’s balky elbow shortened his season. He fought the pain and the discomfort since Spring Training, but the pain and the discomfort won.

Nobody expected this in New York City, not with a sparkling new ballpark and expectations as large as the Yukon Territory. Of course, injury to a pitcher’s arm can never be predicted, but if you fancy yourself a baseball fan, you have to hope it never happens to the Johan Santanas of the game.

Without the 30-year-old Santana (13-9,  3.13 ERA) to anchor the rotation, the Mets have little to look forward to themselves as they wind down their inaugural season in Citi Field. No Miracle Mets this season.

They might as well be the Pirates or the Nationals, two deadbeat franchises in flashy ballparks that months ago baled on the ’09 season. Or even the Indians, a team that has also seen its season come unhinged.

At least Mets GM Omar Minaya can be hopeful about next season, prospects that elude his counterparts in Pittsburgh, D.C. and Cleveland

Minaya can also take comfort in the fact that Santana is only having bone chips removed from his elbow; luckily, he’s not facing Tommy John surgery, an operation that might ruin what has been a brilliant career.

Yet such news offers little solace to Mets fans, men and women who see the high-priced Santana’s trek to the disabled list as the final chapter in what has been a Shakespearean tragedy.