Andrew Baggarly suggests a reason the Giants are trying to hold down Tim Lincecum’s salary this year, competition for San Jose:
The reasons for the bunker mentality are well known. The Giants attract a significant percentage of their corporate sponsorships, season-ticket and suite sales, ballpark advertising revenue, etc., from companies in Silicon Valley. Their ownership group is a who’s’ who of the tech sector. It’s part of their identity as well as their bottom line. They simply cannot afford to let the A’s cut into their interests in Santa Clara County.
And what’s the only way their territorial rights can be overturned? A three-quarters vote of the 30 major league owners, who’ll basically do whatever Commissioner Bud Selig tells them to do.
How does Lincecum and his arbitration status enter the equation? It’s simple. The No.1 way to tick off baseball’s owners is to establish a new salary threshhold. And Lincecum has a very good chance to clear Ryan Howard’s $10 million bar for a first-year arbitration player.
So you’d better believe the Giants and Neukom are going to snap into line as best they can. That means doing everything in their power to keep Lincecum’s 2010 salary under $10 million. (Thus, the two-year offer for what undoubtedly would’ve given Lincecum less money up front.)
It’s a decent theory. I wonder if the need for an Oakland move outweighs the Giants desire to keep San Jose in their territory. I guess a trade of Oakland for SJ won’t cut it.
Geographically, it would be a huge win for the Giants if the A’s move to San Jose. Most of the A’s current territory is much closer to SF than SJ, including Oakland, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Vallejo, and even Sacramento. Fans living there simply won’t make the schlep to SJ, especially if it means driving on clogged Bay Area freeways (BART to San Jose is at least 15 years off).
In addition to those gains, the Giants will keep many (possibly most) of their current fans in Santa Clara County due to good CalTrain rail service, and the fact that they offer a superior product: great ballpark, more star players, better announcers, deeper traditions. (I concede the A’s could build a good ballpark, and when they finally jettison Beane perhaps they’ll keep some star players and generate some fan loyalty.)
But what scares the Giants isn’t so much the loss of raw population — they’ll actually gain — but rather the loss of Silicon Valley corporate customers. The East Bay territory the Giants stand to add has virtually no equivalent of Santa Clara County’s Apple, Yahoo, Google, Intel, Cisco, eBay, etc. This is who buys expensive advertising and posh suites.
It’s depressing to be reminded how insignificant we ordinary fans are, but there you are.
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And it wont make any diffrence to MLB-If they can get more $ from an A’s move to wherever, they will OK it. Bud’s allegiance is to the DOLLAR and not baseball purity
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That is preposterous.