Post-match: New York Red Bulls - San Jose Earthquakes (Saturday, 3/16) postgame thread [R]

It was always about baseball first

 

failure to devote resources = cheap

 

Fisher came in and inherited or invested in the team in 2008 with a very cheap fee. I'd say somewhere between $10-$20 million.

In ten years time, that franchise fee has increased to $250 million. This coupled with the stadium, the team name and logo, I believe the overall value of the club is now somewhere between $400-$500 million.

When you consider he spent $110-$120 for the club and the building of the stadium to $400-$500 million in the last decade, I think it’s a pretty good 10 year investment. This isn’t even taking into account TV revenue, merchandising, profit sharing that goes along with owning a professional sport team in a single entity league.

I’ve heard some say he could have done the same thing by investing in other business ventures but we don’t really know that for certain. Maybe another venture wouldn’t have allowed him to build The Coleman Highline or maybe he wouldn’t have gotten the same tax breaks that San Jose is allowing him because he ownes the team and is building on that blighted area.

Actually, for Fisher, buying or investing in the Quakes was a very smart move…

 

No doubt, great for Fisher, nightmare for anyone who cares about soccer in San Jose.

 

Sadly, we have to endure this thing. There has to be a reason on why he isn't seeking outside investors though.

 

Generally, as a coach, you are only good as your player's. Some excellent coaches can get production our of average players, but there are not a lot of them. Steve Kerr mentions it often that he is lucky to coach the Warriors with the amount of quality. While I think Steve is a good coach, his results would be far different with New Orleans than the Warriors.

 

Makes you wonder if it was Mark Jackson or Steve Kerr who turned the team around? They didn't win much with Jackson so you have to give credit to Kerr....

 

Interestingly, if you visit the technical staff page on each team's website, the Quakes list a head of scouting, while NYRB do not.

It seems that a year ago, the NYRB scouting director, Benjamin Ehersmann, was "recalled" to RB Leipzig. (Isn't that where Jesse Marsch went, as well?)

https://www.onceametro.com/2018/2/6...ulls-head-of-scouting-home-benjamin-ehresmann

Perhaps Ehresmann has been replaced in the interim, although I see no evidence of it on the NYRB website or a quick Google search.

Perhaps, as well, Ehresmann has been a key ingredient in formulating the NYRB roster, with a global access to scouts from the mothership. Perhaps the fact that NYRB is merely a provincial outpost of a much larger operation explains it's relative success in finding talent bargains.

Perhaps NYRB doesn't even need a scouting head, because the whole process has been offshored to HQ.

 

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was just talking about this over the weekend. Granted he’s a Manchester United legend and this is a homecoming for him, but he had a terrible time with Cardiff City. He said it’s all about the players and of course MU is stacked with talent. It was stupid to think Matias could take basically last year’s roster and have much better luck, we just don’t have the talent to compete, bottom line. And we’ve shown no willingness to spend what it takes to turn this around. I think Doyle and Jesse haven’t been great GMs but I expect they could’ve done much better if Fisher was willing to invest appropriately in players. Granted Jesse and Doyle have made some ridiculous moves but their limited experience is compounded by having to shop at the dollar store. Same with our coaches, they come and go with alarming frequency but even Stahre could’ve done better with a quality roster. It all comes down to spending on players and Fisher has crashed this team because hes just not willing to spend what it takes to field a viable team - it really is that simple.

 

My guess is Fisher is trying to develop a sustainable business model that likely incorporates things he’s learned from billy beane’s moneyball system.

Instead of getting into a spending war for players that are traditionally high valued he’s looking for an edge on discovering lower valued players that fit a system.

So far he’s failed badly and judging from what’s visible the strategies so far have been insufficient and stupid (in hindsight). I wonder if they believe they’ve made any progress?

 

Their strategies were stupid in foresight, not merely in hindsight.

There is no edge in "discovering lower valued players" when you have no actual mechanism for discovering them. The Quakes were way behind the curve in establishing their academy and a scouting department. They are still way behind.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish. What they thought was "sustainable" is collapsing around them, and only a very serious infusion of lots of money will solve things now. You cannot skimp on R&D or you wake up some day without a competitive product.

 

The carly fiorina method. Slash your R&D budget and get rid of all of your best engineers and use the money to double down investment in producing declining old tech.

 

Correct. In order for money ball to work you have to have a legitimate ‘edge’ in evaluating players- some metrics that other teams don’t know about or are ignoring. Without this ‘edge’ spending on under valued players is a bigger waste of money than just paying for the high valued players in the first place.

So in a way Fisher is the opposite of cheap. He’s recklessly throwing money at players he probably doesn’t have sufficient reason to believe will perform well in our league. Probably in hopes of discovering an edge in the process? Who knows.

 

Both. Steve credits Mark for establishing a good foundation, especially on defense. I think Steve improved the team on the offense end.

Unfortunately, we had a series of coaches Yallop, Kinnear, and Watson which were essentially the same coach. You could try to give Kinnear on setting up the defense, but he failed on the offensive end. Unfortunately, most of us don't think that you can build on Kinnear's vision.

 

Yeah, I'm sure that's it .

 

How about that! That means if Almeyda starts winning, he can give credit to Doyle, Kinnear , Leitch , Kaval, Fioranelli and last but certainly not least , Stahre! ..

 

I think the losing more or less money depends on how the players perform. If the expensive players end up playing better than the undervalued guys, then Fisher probably saves a little money. But if they still lose bad and he's paying more money, then he's losing more money.

Of course, in MLS, the overall amount spent on players is so low, it's hard to justify not spending in the top half of the league. The Quakes have hung around midway, for the most part, but they've made terrible decisions on most players, especially their DP slot players.

I doubt Fisher is thinking much or at all about finding good value for the money with regard to players, specifically. From an overall perspective, he needs to figure out how much money gets him a good team, but the details are Fioranelli's responsibility.

Fisher hasn't been that far off the mark in terms of overall budget, though he certainly could (and should) spend more. Lately, I think he's probably fallen a bit behind as well. His ops people have not even come close to figuring out how to maximize the value out of the money they've been given to work with.

 

I believe there is indeed a lack of understanding on your part as to my position. I seem to recall that you don't believe in the concept of a Club. We're all just customers, right? Maybe I'm mistaking you for someone else in harboring that perspective. If so, I apologize.

Maybe I'm not making myself clear enough. If so, again, I apologize. Let me reiterate: I care far less about wins than I do about the sense of community that following a sports team engenders. I can hardly think of a pro sports team more antithetical to the concept of community than the New Jersey Energy Drinks and their false pretension about representing New York. Certainly a segment of New Yorkers feel the same way, or they would not have bolted at the earliest opportunity in favor of Yankee Stadium.

You may not care how many people show up to Red Bull Arena, but since the Red Bulls win so regularly, what could possibly be the reason for their empty stadium in a region of several million more than we have in the Bay Area? Perhaps it is apathy about the absence of any real sense of community embodied in the over-the-top corporatism and blatantly false advertising about who they are. Perhaps I'm not the only one who attends sporting events for reasons other than merely wishing for a win.

Maybe it's just a Buffalo thing. You wouldn't understand.

 

But all you're saying is that it is a bad value to add a couple high valued players to a team full of non-competitive players. That's true, but ideally the team won't have any non-competitive players.

The point I was making was that if Fisher (via Jesse) tries to get under-valued players with very ineffective scouting and metrics evaluations what he is likely to end up with is over-valued players and possibly non-competitive players.

Examples: Magnus is probably over-valued (according to rumors we couldn't sell him) but I would say he is competitive - he gets minutes and he's our top scorer.

Qwiberg was both over-valued (I'm sure they tried to sell him before buying out his contract) and non-competitive (he barely got minutes for the Quakes or Reno).

Going for high-valued players the most likely worst case is you end up with an over-valued player. But when you go after under-valued players with bad scouting and metrics you can easily end up with non-competitive players that are the biggest waste of money possible. They shouldn't get minutes but if they do you will lose and you can't sell them.

 

Joseph Lowery in TheAthletic wrote this analysis. Do you guys agree with it?
Just curious...

• San Jose’s man marking system means that when they don’t have the ball, most of the Earthquakes’ players “match up” with opposition players and follow them around the field. This means that opposing teams can create space by pulling San Jose’s players around the field with timely runs. In the Earthquakes’ case, these runs make the team especially vulnerable in the space directly in front of their backline.

 

No. I tend to trust Almeyda more than Joseph Lowery, whoever that is. Almeyda just needs better players for his system to work

 

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if the team is more expensive as a whole and still loses the same number of games, then he loses more money. If they win more games, maybe he loses a little less money.

I hate to say it, but basically MLS team has non-competitive players, frankly. Some have a lot more than others, but there are always guys hanging around that aren't up to MLS level, that's just how every sport works. The idea of every player truly vying for a spot and that could contribute positively to the team is a bit of a fantasy. If you had a team like that, you'd never bother changing the roster.

Eriksson has one goal so far this season. I'd hold off on calling him the team's top scorer and I don't consider him competitive compared to league average. He gets minutes probably because of his salary, not because of his actual talent level.

Like I said before, I'm not arguing that Fisher spend less money, and I'm not sure that Fisher consciously thinks about player value and scouting undervalued talent. He doesn't have to think about that. It's Fioranelli's job until it isn't anymore. And I very much hope it isn't anymore very soon.

 

And if they win even more games he can actually make money due to increased attendance, merchandise sales, concessions, and in the long run the league gets more exciting and tv contracts go up and so on. It's an investment.

Of course signing bad players is a waste of money and will never be sustainable.

Always trying to sign under-valued players and doing a bad job of it is the quickest way to Rock Bottom.

 

A few years back, Dave Barry, Amy Tam, and a bunch of other writers and associated figures started a band called "The Rock Bottom Remainders". Perhaps this is an apt description of our current roster?