Nestor Aparicio, Owner of WNST 1570 is for the third-time planning a ‘Free the Birds‘ promotion.
Mr. Aparicio believes this pathetic start of a season for the Baltimore Orioles, is just further justification for his rationale.

If you take Aparicio at face-value, FTB is ultimately about three-things:

1) Demanding accountability from within the Warehouse, for the on-field results since 1997.
1a) Belief that Peter Angelos is responsible for every-decision.
2) Raising awareness of how the losing has effected attendance, and is hurting the surrounding business community.
3) Challenging the O’s off-field record, and what they bring to the community as a civic-partner.

You will notice above that I used the qualifier of ‘if you take Aparicio at face-value.’ I have to say I go back-and-forth on my opinion here. I know from first-hand information by the Orioles, that the Organization believes Aparicio has made a calculated business decision with his on-air act. That there is the belief he intentionally goes beyond valid criticisms to effectively appeal to the least common denominator of fans. Some confirmation of that point-of-view was recently delivered to me in a received email from a WNST host. That host directly stated that while he roots for the team as a fan, he prefers the losing as a host – because it is good for the station. It is not much of leap to believe that Aparicio invents or overstates some ‘issues’ to drive calls to the station, and hits to the website.

When I see Aparicio stating the O’s are a failed organization, because they elected to make their Spring Training home in Sarasota instead of the Arizona desert – I shake my head and wonder is this an actual opinion, or is this shtick?

I guess where I give Aparicio the benefit of the doubt, is that I did have the opportunity to meet him several-times last year, and talk to him on and off the radio. I came away thinking that he was a good guy, that cares about his station, and Baltimore as a whole. I came away thinking he has some valid concerns, and that there were other points (no matter how loudly articulated) he just has wrong.

Below, I will argue point by point of what Aparicio and WNST has correct – and what they have wrong.

Aparicio is fond of stating that the Baltimore Media has been bought off by the O’s, and thus only WNST is capable of providing criticism. That is a very insulated point-of-view. The O’s receive daily criticism (and have for years) from numerous outlets around this City. The idea that only WNST is capable of providing ‘a fair and balanced critique’, is absurd.

If Aparicio were to respond to this blog, he would begin by claiming I am not impartial. He would base that argument on the facts that I have worked for the Baltimore Orioles, and because I have twice taken part in MASN’s Oriole Blogger night. I am going to begin, by refuting that argument before it can be made. I worked for The Baltimore Orioles in an extremely limited capacity during 2001-2003. I was a part-time employee working full-time hours in the Fan & Ticket Services Department. During the 2003 season, myself and a friend of mine were essentially told not to return by the O’s. The reason provided to us, was that certain members of the Oriole Front-Office at the time, had become aware of our criticisms of the organization as posters on Orioles Hangout. Both myself, and my friend were working full-time hours in the F&TS Department with the goal of obtaining an internship within the Baseball Operations Department. We certainly were not working those ridiculous hours (while in school) because we enjoyed making $7.25 an hour.

Working for the Baltimore Orioles within their Baseball Ops Department was a dream of mine. I risked (and lost) my position with the team because I was willing to criticize the Organization (not just on a message board) but also within the confines of the Warehouse wall when my opinion was asked. Knowing my own history, was just another reason for me to laugh when WNST recently bestowed upon me their ‘Oriole Apologist’ award.

I could be the petulant child that continues to cry and pout – holding some-type of irrational grudge against the O’s. Or I can be an adult capable of taking responsibility for airing my opinions in a public forum, and also capable of viewing the organization in 2010 not through the prism of a perceived injustice in 2003. I know I am impartial. I question whether Aparicio can look in the mirror and make the same claim.

That established, let us go through point-by-point of what FTB claims to be about.

1) Demanding accountability from within the Warehouse, for the on-field results since 1997.

As I said in the opening, there are things that WNST has correct. I am not aware of any Oriole fan that believes the on-field performance of this team has been acceptable during this 1998 through 2010 time-frame. Every fan of this franchise wants accountability for improvement.

I am incredibly frustrated by this 2-16 performance to start 2010. Aparicio harped endlessly last-year that the O’s were in the wrong for effectively stating they could not compete. No, this was an example of the Orioles finally getting it.

Mistakenly, Aparicio believes the O’s have been rebuilding since 1998. That could not be further from the truth. Until Andy MacPhail took over the Orioles Front Office on June 20th, 2007 the O’s were in a horrible cycle. Every single season, the O’s would attempt to fix broken-legs with band-aids. Meaning the Orioles could not convince themselves to do a correct rebuilding focused on improved drafting, youth, and player development. They attempted to convince their fans (and themselves) that they were on the periphery of better days. The Orioles were wrong, and it made this process longer and more painful than it needed to be.

WNST’s Drew Forrester essentially argued for more of the same last-year when he wanted the O’s to sign Derek Lowe. It did not matter that Lowe was turning 36 years-old last June, or that Atlanta was offering 4yrs $60M for obviously deteriorating returns – what mattered to Forrester was that Lowe had the chance to make the O’s slightly better in 2009. Maybe win 67 games, as opposed to 64. I’m sorry, but that is the type of thinking that led the O’s to signing players such as Marty Cordova, or an off-season plan of Walker, Baez, and Bradford. It is just short-sighted.

If you can not compete, you are by definition rebuilding. If you are rebuilding, you might as well be playing the guys that have a chance to be part of your future core. Based on what he had accomplished as a Minor Leaguer, and based on his age and limited (and inconsistent) playing-time with the Cubs; that led many O’s fans to believing Felix Pie needed regular playing time in 2009. That argument was lost on many at WNST. Aparicio, and Forrester regularly killed Pie at the start of last-year. Glenn Clark stated, “Do you want me to say something about Felix Pie? I already have. He has no business here. It’s borderline embarrassing. Joey Gathright can do the things Felix Pie does (and Joey Gathright is not a particularly good player either).”

http://wnst.net/wordpress/glennclark/2009/06/25/thursday-mornings-crabs-and-beer-61/

These are examples of arguments from WNST showing that they just did not get it. A crash-course in Sabermetrics would be good for Aparicio, and Clark. As I recently suggested to Clark in an email, he should review Bill Simmons’ recent piece on ESPN.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100402

Pretty pedestrian thoughts here, but if you do not understand these basic thoughts – you have no business commenting on baseball as some type of ‘authority.’ Sabermetrics is not knowing baseball. Understanding sabermetrical arguments is part of what allows you to understand the significance and context of actual baseball discussions. That way, you do not make claims such as Clark made to me, that Gathright’s career numbers are better than Pie’s.


As I broke down for Clark:

Gathright
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/g/joey-gathright.shtml
4/22/82
Minor League Totals 1,840 at-bats: .761 career OPS
Major League Totals (start of 2010) 1,175 at-bats: .630 career OPS

Pie
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/P/felix-pie.shtml
2/8/85
Minor League Totals 2,528 at-bats: .825 career OPS
Major League Totals (start of 2010) 512 at-bats: .688 career OPS

Clark does not seem to understand what those numbers mean. It means that Pie (while being 3 years younger) has out-produced Gathright offensively at both the Major and Minor League level.

When Aparicio and Clark make their rants against the O’s, I feel their arguments lose creditability by their basic lack of knowledge of the game, the system, and the organization in-general. Again, if Aparicio honestly looked at himself in the mirror, I think he would be forced to admit he knows very little about the sabermetric side of baseball, or the O’s 40 man roster in-general.


If I was going to make Aparicio’s and Clark’s argument for them, my only response would be 2-16. It is more than a fair point. As I said, every Oriole fan is demanding accountability and improvement.
The reason this 2010 season has been so frustrating so-far, is because enough of the core of players you want to move forward with, are existing on the roster. The accountability that needs to exist is demanding improvement and increasing production from that core of players.

In my eyes, the core is obviously Markakis, Jones, Wieters, Reimold, Pie, and Roberts as positional players in the Majors. Matusz, Hernandez, and potentially Mickolio as pitchers in the Majors. Tillman, Arrieta, Britton, (potentially Bergesen), Bell, and Snyder in the Minors. The discussion that should exist is who is the core, and how good is it?

I believe that is a talented group of players who have yet to put everything together. I believe they can. If you want to discuss how good that core is, or about how that core has to produce; those are valid discussions. Ignoring the talent of that group, or claiming it to be lies/propaganda disseminating from the Warehouse, is just lazy at-best, and agenda based at-worst. It is not very hard to find 3rd-party talent evaluations of each player.

The 2-16 start is ridiculously poor. Anyone that is just ignoring how bad that start is, or stating it is basically the result of injuries to Roberts, Pie, Gonzalez, and Uehara is ignoring reality. Anyone that looks at the collection of talent being assembled by this organization, and that does not believe the team is on the cusp of significant on-field improvement, is also ignoring reality.

1a) Belief that Peter Angelos is responsible for every-decision.

I know this is a popular opinion in Baltimore, but it really is not the truth. During my time working for the O’s, I came to know and develop relationships with a number of decision makers within the O’s Organization.

My impression at the time was that Mr. Angelos had limited interest in the O’s. He visited his office, maybe once a year. Management within the organization, were often left to wait extended periods of time for decisions from Mr. Angelos. If this was still 2001-2003, I could agree with Aparicio that it was an organization in disarray.


However, it is not 2003, it is 2010. The people I speak to within the organization say there has been improvement. Still, I understand that Angelos is still mostly detached from day-to-day operations. If you want to criticize him for being detached, maybe that criticism is valid. If you want to hold Angelos responsible for the decisions of the people he has put in-place – that is also valid. With all organizations you have to start at the top.


Anyone making the claim that Angelos oversees all decisions, and pulls all the strings; is just wrong.

2) Raising awareness of how the losing has effected attendance, and is hurting the surrounding business community.

Of course the losing has hurt attendance. Who could possibly argue otherwise? Of course that decrease in attendance hurts the surrounding businesses. Less people downtown, equals less people at the bars, and restaurants spending money and increasing the tax-base for the City.

You know who else the losing hurts? Oh, right the Baltimore Orioles. Major League Baseball is a business. The Orioles are in business to make money. They would make more money as a contender. They would sell more seats, they would sell more concessions, they would get more TV viewers and Radio listeners driving-up ad revenue. They would sell more Corporate season-tickets, they would sell more Sky-boxes.


The O’s are not intentionally choosing not to improve, and not to make more money. Despite the claims of
Aparicio, the O’s do not lie about their attendance. There is a difference between paid-attendance, and actual attendance. Only a handful of teams in Major League Baseball report actual attendance. Both matter, but a seat-sold, is a seat-sold.

One argument you never hear on WNST is the impact of the Washington Nationals. When I worked for the O’s, I saw first-hand that 20-25% of their individual game ticket sales, and their season-ticket sales were from fans in the PG / Montgomery County / DC / NOVA Metro area. The Nationals did not take all of those fans, but it is naive to say they did not take some. I also know it impacted the O’s Corporate season-ticket and Sky-box sales. It would be naive to say that loss of income, does not hurt the Organization. That is less dollars for the Major League product, and towards Scouting, and Player Development.


Again, WNST has some-things right. They would correctly point-out that the other-side of the Nationals move, is the money the O’s generate from MASN. Let us discuss that a bit.


The Orioles have a 90 percent stake in MASN and MLB paid the Orioles $75 million for 10 percent of the regional sports network. When the Lerner family bought the Nationals in July 2006 they became part owners in MASN. Over the next 23 years, the Washington Nationals’ stake in the network will increase to 33 percent. Under the current arrangement, MASN paid the Nationals $20 million to broadcast their games in 2005.


Angelos was quoted in the Baltimore Business Journal in April 2008 as stating, “Combined with the general revenue of a baseball operation it would give the Orioles every opportunity to compete with every other franchise.”

http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/bal…ml?t=printable

At the time of that article, MASN was reaching 5.2M homes from Harrisburg, PA to Charlotte, NC. MASN had not yet turned a profit, but the expectation was that a profit would be made for the first-time by calendar end 2008. It is my understanding at this point that MASN now reaches 7M homes.

Another point of that article was how a Regional Sports Network generates income.


“The ultimate goal is to be a fully-carried RSN as soon as possible,” CFO Michael J. Haley said. “Along with that comes full advertisements.” ‘Advertising will follow’ A new regional sports network generates just under 20 percent of its revenue from advertising, said Mansell, who is president of Great Falls, Va.-based John Mansell Associates. The bulk of the revenue comes from subscriber fees, he said. MASN could take in excess of $2 per subscriber within 50 miles of Baltimore and Washington, and half of that in outer markets, Mansell said. It can take regional sports networks as many as seven years to generate more than 30 percent of revenue from ads, he said. “In the early years, I think the critical thing is to get carriage deals and the advertising will follow,” he said.

This article linked below speaks to the importance of cash flow when valuing RSN’s.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6469981.html

“Cash flow, however, is the main benchmark used when valuing regional sports networks. And on that measure, the networks’ growth is healthy. Using revenue data from Kagan and assuming a 40% margin, Multichannel News research shows that cash flow at YES grew 2.3% in 2006. The network with the most dramatic rise in cash flow was MASN, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, majority-owned by MLB’s Baltimore Orioles. That network — which launched carrying games involving its minority owner, the Washington Nationals — nearly quadrupled its cash flow in 2006 to $11.07 million from $2.81 million in 2005. However, that increase was largely due to a huge increase in subscribers — from 425,000 in 2005 to 1.8 million in 2006 — and the inclusion of Orioles games on the channel.

MASN has grown tremendously,” Mansell said. “They have both of the baseball teams; they really have two networks now on most cable systems.”

So in 2006, with 1.8M subscribers, the cash-flow was $11M. Clearly, a huge increase from 2005 due to a large increase in subscribers. If I am correct, and MASN started 2010 being in 7M homes.

1.8M is 26% of 7M. The question is how many subscribers of that 7M are withing 50 miles? If you assumed 25% (which is likely low) that would be 1.75M people.


(1.75M @ $2 per subscriber-fee = $3.5M) + (5.25M *$1 = $5.25M) = $8.75M from subscriber-ship only.

Now take that $8.75M * 12 months = $105M in MASN revenues from subscriber-ship only.

Of course that does not take into account expenses, and the money divvied up between the Nationals and the O’s – but it is a substantial amount. Frankly, I am sure there is something I am not accounting for, but I think WNST is correct when they state the O’s are now making significant money from MASN.

As an Oriole fan, I could not be happier that they are. The O’s are always going to be at a financial disadvantage to the Yankees, and Red Sox; so I am glad the O’s have MASN behind them to at-least make the O’s financially viable going forward as an Organization.


WNST objected to seeing the O’s payroll go from roughly $90M in 2007 to $67M in 2009. For the 2010 season the Oriole payroll is roughly $81.5M. At the start of the 2008 season, there were 8 or 9 teams (depending on who you sourced) that had a payroll over $113M. I believe the O’s can annually be one of the 10-12 highest salaried teams in baseball. I do not vilify the O’s for not reaching that level of salary yet. I hope (and expect) the O’s are reinvesting money into their Scouting and Player Development Departments.

Again, as you bring this core of players to the Majors, they are going to cost less. The O’s are correctly bringing younger, cheaper (and most importantly) better talent to the Majors. What I will hold the O’s accountable for, is getting these young players extended long-term. Markakis was a start, we will see what happens with Jones, Wieters, etc.

3) Challenging the O’s off-field record, and what they bring to the community as a civic-partner.

Could the O’s do more in the community? Perhaps. Does Aparicio appear to be grasping when he makes this arrangement? I believe he does.

Aparicio loves to compare the Ravens and Orioles. There are so many apples vs. oranges items at play here, starting with the respective sports.

In a 16 game season vs. a 162 game season, there is simply more opportunity (downtime) for the Ravens players to be active members of the community. The Ravens off-season is also more conducive to those players staying in-town the entire year. The Ravens players can train in Owings Mills in April, a lot easier than the Orioles players can train at Oriole Park in December.

(I want to stick do discussing the Orioles as a civic-partner, but while I have brought-up the Ravens, and by extension the NFL and MLB – lets discuss that point a bit further. There are logical reasons of why the NFL has become the dominant sport in America. The salary cap and revenue sharing that has existed has allowed nearly every franchise to believe they can be a playoff team in quick-order with competent management. You are able to have that level of revenue-sharing to begin with, because teams play just once-a-week, and are able to evenly share the TV revenue.

Is there any Ravens fan that actually believes if the Steelers, and Bengals had the same financial advantages the Yankees, and Red Sox have over the Orioles – that it would not be that much harder for the Ravens?

Another reason the NFL is so dominant, is that playing once a week appeals to those with limited attention spans).

Getting back to what the Orioles do in the community, it is not very hard to go to Orioles.com and view their community section.

http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/bal/community/index.jsp

Here is a link to O’s players in the community:

http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/bal/community/community.jsp

Here is a link to some of the O’s respective charities:

http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/bal/community/charities.jsp

If you want to argue the Orioles could be doing more in the community, fine. If you are making the point that the O’s are not a civic-partner, and do not give back; you are either not paying attention, or deliberately avoiding the truth.

The O’s performance from 1998 through today has been abysmal. The start this year is pathetic. Some of Aparicio’s overall concerns have merit. The majority of points he articulates, however loudly, do not.

Chris Stoner
Chris Stoner

Owner

Chris Stoner founded Baltimore Sports and Life in 2009. He has appeared as a radio guest with 1090 WBAL, 105.7 The Fan, CBS 1300, Q1370, WOYK 1350, WKAV 1400, and WNST 1570. He has also been interviewed by The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Business Journal, and PressBox (TV). As Owner, his responsibilities include serving as the Managing Editor, Publicist, & Sales Director.

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