Hasn’t it been that long since the Tribune put the Cubs up for sale? Something like that, anyway. A look at what’s still holding things up.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

Let’s do a quick cost-benefit analysis, from the Pirates’ perspective:

• Long-term value going out: Nothing.
• Long-term value coming in: Possibly something.

OK, that seems to work.

My take on Neal Huntington has always been that he’s had the right ideas, surrounded himself with good people, and hasn’t had any giant whiffs. But at the same time, he hasn’t hit any home runs either. Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris for Jason Bay, Jose Tabata for Xavier Nady, Gorkys Hernandez and company for Nate McLouth — none of these packages are particularly bad, but they’re not particularly good either.

It’s bound to happen eventually. Dave Littlefield traded Brian Giles for Jason Bay and Oliver Perez, which proves that if you make enough deals, a couple of them will turn out well. (A month earlier Littlefield traded Aramis Ramirez for Bobby Hill and Jose Hernandez, so I guess you win some, you lose some.)

Maybe this deal will end up being Neal’s first huge score. And even if it isn’t, it’s still a damn good idea. Milledge has always been a huge wildcard, but he’s at his absolute lowest possible value right now, and Nyjer Morgan is at his highest. This deal would have been laughed off over the winter, even with all of the issues Milledge has had. The Mets were torched for trading him for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church, but that’s a king’s ransom compared to Morgan and Sean Burnett.

The Pirates still have a ton of work to do, and I don’t really expect them to be competitive for a couple more years, at the least. The top line talent isn’t there yet, and other than Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez, none of their prospects are anywhere near sure-fire big league regulars (and keep in mind, even Pedro is still a bit of a question mark). But the organization has tons more talent than it did two years ago, and that’s a credit to Huntington and his staff, who walked into the emptiest of empty cupboards.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

Mostly via SBJ:

• The Yankees’ plan will cost $49.95 for the rest of the season, putting it more or less on par with the entire MLB.tv package. The theory is that if you buy MLB.tv, it’s usually to watch one team anyway. That’s probably true, but it isn’t really relevant here, since many people will use MLB.tv as their primary means of watching out-of-market games, while in-market customers will, by rule, already have the games on cable. $100 for a full season is a pretty steep price for what will undoubtedly be a supplemental package.
• BAM gets 50% of all net revenue. That’s higher than I had figured, but it’s tough to say it’s inappropriate considering BAM is supplying 100% of the technology and back-end operations. It sets an interesting precedent though, and I’m sure there’ll be many discussions over this as it gets to be a more and more valuable revenue source.
• It looks like MLB is brokering these deals. That will keep progress relatively slow, and it also decreases competition between teams. There are a few more in the pipeline, with the Padres reportedly next in line (oddly enough). But it could be a while before this is widely available.
• It doesn’t look like this is being integrated into MLB.tv, which I think is a huge mistake from a sales & marketing perspective. Increasing the visibility / availability of both can only help. And discounting a combo package would probably help increase total dollars for BAM, even if the discount had to come out of their end.

If we want to use a nine-inning analogy, we’re just about finishing the national anthem. There’s a long, long way to go, so stay tuned.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

I touched on this in my BP post on Wednesday:

The best solution may actually be to promote MLB.tv through the app. As it stands now, the best they can probably do is to continue to offer a limited slate of games, and try to up-sell from there. But since mobile phones aren’t such a great platform to watch live baseball on, this strategy seems limited. A better approach would be to expand MLB.tv’s capabilities, and create new products that actually leverage the mobile experience. Imagine if you could set up At Bat to notify you, via Apple’s push notification, every time one of your fantasy players was at the plate, and you could instantly watch on your phone.

I’m amazed by fantasy players. In this age of highly-available information and free content, people still pay for “premium” fantasy features. Whether they play in paid leagues or free leagues, lots of people will do just about anything to get an edge.

So it’s a little strange that BAM hasn’t incorporated much fantasy content into At Bat, aside from Beat the Streak. It would be trivially easy to add a player tracker, along with some push capabilities. If nothing else, this would help drive app sales, and would almost certainly increase engagement.

But the bigger opportunity, like I wrote on BP, is upselling MLB.tv through the app. Here’s the approach I would take:

1. Make two games available to everyone each day, like they’re doing now. Make all other games available only to MLB.tv subscribers.
2. Add a player tracker, and allow users to set up alerts when their players are at bat and/or after the at bat is over, with the result.
3. As part of these alerts, offer the option to watch the at bat if the player is involved in one of the free games, or if the user has logged into MLB.tv.

This could quickly become an addicting feature for fantasy players, especially if new users were given a three-day free preview after they download the app. It could also make At Bat an eight-figure revenue generator for the first time.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

With Will Carroll, Brad Wochomurka, and yours truly. Listen:

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

No, you probably haven’t heard of Boxee, and most of you probably won’t use it at any point in the near future. But this is a very significant move for MLB, in that it’s clearly saying it doesn’t care if you watch baseball through MLB.tv or MLB Extra Innings. That may not go over so well with cable providers, who agreed to put MLB Network on their basic tiers, in exchange for some equity and an agreement that MLB wouldn’t give DirecTV the exclusive rights to EI. Now, MLB has taken the first step toward making EI obsolete, leaving the providers behind.

This is obviously the right business decision, since MLB doesn’t need to share profits from MLB.tv like it does with EI. And it’s another step toward the inevitable future of sports broadcasting, where the leagues broadcast the games themselves and distribute them over the internet. But it’s still interesting, since most old media companies tend to stick together, and MLB is doing the exact opposite.

Note that Hulu, which is owned by Fox, NBC, and ABC, still refuses to make itself available on Boxee — its owners / content providers are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of you watching TV programming on your TV, if it’s distributed over the web. After all, if you had the option of watching their programs on demand, and on your TV instead of your PC, why would anybody buy cable?

But the cable providers should probably be more concerned about people watching sports on the web than scripted programs. A lot of people will keep cable as long as its the sole provider of live sporting events, even if every single episode of every scripted show is on the web on demand.

It’s not that the cable business will just die; the technology is still very powerful, and it is incredibly ingrained in our society. But that $100+ / month service bill… that’s probably on its last legs.

There’s a whole post to be written about the Comcast / Time Warner Cable “TV Everywhere” concept that was announced today, but that’s for another day. For now, it seems like MLB really gets it, at least on this issue, and they’ll be much better off for it in ten years.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

My full review, plus a look at how it will impact baseball’s business in the years ahead and some suggestions for how they can actually make some real money off of it.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

Naming rights deals have been dead in the water lately, as the Washington Nationals would probably tell you. The Mets’ 20-year, $400 million deal with Citigroup may have spoiled the party for everyone, as these deals are now getting a lot more public scrutiny than in the past.

So hats off to the NY Giants, who managed to score a 15-year deal with Timex or the naming rights to the team’s new practice facility. The number circling around in the press is $35 million, or about $2.3 million per year. But Giants CEO John Mara is actually claiming it’s higher:

The Giants are still looking for a partner for its new stadium, which they’ll be opening in 2010 and sharing with the Jets. As are the Cowboys, who will be opening their building this fall. It’s possible that the Timex deal could be a bullish sign, but it’s obviously on a very different scale than what these teams will be looking for in terms of their primary facilities.

As the WSJ article noted, Timex is a private company, which doesn’t have to answer to public shareholders. Public companies, particularly banks and insurers, are going to have a tough time spinning a naming rights megadeal right now. The Yankees were bitten by this in February, when Bank of America pulled out of a major sponsorship deal due to their not-so-great fall/winter. Could the Giants, Jets, and Cowboys find takers? Sure, but they better not leave any stone unturned.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

Fehr is leaving the MLBPA, and does so at a time of unprecedented labor peace. Both sides seem to be making out very well, and I personally think we’ve hit a pretty nice equilibrium. The players are making far more, relative to industry revenues, than they did when Fehr took over, but less than the 2000-01 period, when many teams were legitimately hemorrhaging money. I have always been a huge fan of Marvin Miller, but I’m not sure he would have been pragmatic enough to get through that tough period without a much bigger fight than we had in 2002.

That, to me, is Don Fehr’s legacy. But all the talk in the media, in the blogosphere, and on Twitter today was about PEDs. And to be honest, that sucks. Putting personal feelings aside (if you’ve read this blog long enough, you know how stupid I think this issue is to begin with), Don Fehr did all the right things in the pre-outrage period. No labor leader would make his workers subject to drug testing unless there was a vocal majority in favor of it. And to condemn him for utilizing the issue as a bargaining chip is pure ignorance; he is legally responsible to do the best he possibly can for the players. Had he given that up without looking for anything in return, it would have been a firable offense.

The one huge mistake he did make, though, was in allowing the PED survey tests from 2003 and 2004 to go on without the proper conditions. Those tests never should have been attached to names, and should have been destroyed the minute the results were in. Allowing them to remain intact is inexcusable, and it was, in the end, Fehr’s responsibility.

But overall, from a business perspective, Don Fehr was outstanding. He’ll get blamed for the 1994 strike in the papers tomorrow, but it wasn’t his fault that the owners at the time were unreasonable and incompetent. And while he won’t compare favorably to Marvin Miller, no one else would have either. Miller took the players from indentured servitude to a fairly equitable share of revenues. But Don Fehr took them the rest of the way, and that’s what he should be remembered for.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

From last night and this afternoon:

• The video quality on Wifi is outrageously good. And it’s actually more stable than the browser version, which tends to skip a lot. That’s a big credit to Apple for making an incredible mobile phone, and an even bigger credit to MLBAM for beating my already-high expectations.
• Video quality on 3G was also a lot better than I had expected. Considering how shoddy the highlight clips are without Wifi, I figured the games themselves would be unwatchable. Wrong. It passed the walking-around-Manhattan test with flying colors, although I almost got hit by a cab three times in five blocks.
• Now for the downsides. It eats the iPhone’s notoriously weak battery every bit as much as you’d think it would. Not only that, but after about 15 minutes the phone started getting very hot, which is usually a sign that it’s working its butt off. Keep in mind, I’m using an iPhone 3G, and this feature is purposely meant for the new iPhone 3G S, which has a faster processor and longer battery life. Once I have mine tomorrow, I’ll see if these issues are mitigated with the new hardware.
• The other major question is, when are you actually going to want to watch a game on your phone for an extended period of time? There are a few: if you’re at the beach, if you’re at a Bar Mitzvah, etc. But the reality is that these are very few and far between. It’s a great add on for At Bat, but it’s probably not a game changer like Gameday Audio was.
• That last point answers the next question: would BAM be able to charge an additional price for streaming games? I don’t think so. I would pay for audio, which I can listen to passively. But the video is something that’s cooler to show your friends than to actually use.

I’ll have the 3G S tomorrow. If anything is materially different than what I would expect, I’ll make sure to post it. Otherwise, I’ll have my full thoughts on BP next week.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com