Yeah, football stadiums and even new baseball parks are being built with smaller capacities, because the revenue per person from luxury box and club seating makes it financially smart to have more luxury boxes and club seats. Miami for example, spanking new ballyard, only 37400 seats, one of the smallest capacities in baseball.

However, looking at safeco the past few years, its amazing how many of the luxury boxes and club seats are empty it seems about 2/3rds of the time.

So yeah, the specific math of VO's post, I'm not buying it. But the Ms might be well-advised to be good/entertaining enough to at least fill those luxury boxes and club seats more than 1/3 of the time.

The Mariners need to learn in order to make money, they gotta spend money. Fans aren't going to magically come back without them putting a competitive team on the field. At the current rate we should be competitive by 2018 though.

Well, with the team they're running out every night, I don't think not exceeding 75% stadium capacity will be much of a problem for the Seattle Mariners and Safeco Field. But still, by not having more butts in the seats, they do lose out on revenue - on tickets and, more importantly, merchandise and refreshments.

so what are you saying? Empty seats are a good thing?

"The Mariners need to learn in order to make money, they gotta spend money. "

Wrong....

2008 --- 110 million = 100+ losses

building a team with Core players, then spending like banshees to keep competitive is what will put butts in the seats.

This notion you can spend like the Yankees in Seattle...can't an wont happen, unless you can import another 15 million people into the seattle area.

I'm not proposing that we try to spend like the Yankees, but why do you say we'd need 15 million more people in the area? Are you assuming that we could build a cable network like the YES Network if we had the additional (potential) viewers?

Your confusing budget with execution.

The issue in 2008 was not having a $110 million payroll.

It was having a $110 million payroll that ultimately was a horrific collision of bad signings and bad outcomes.

The most shocking thing about 2008 in retrospect is just how bad the pitching was. A Safeco based team giving up all those runs. Bedard gets hurt. Silva is a disaster. Washburn had his worst year as a Mariner. Morrow is poorly utilized. The season really came down to these four players. And you can really only blame Bavasi for the Silva part, and possibly agreeing to put Morrow in the pen (assuming he was part of that). Did anyone going into 2008 really expect Bedard and Washburn to contribute as little as they did?

That's a good idea. I remember when I lived in NY and all or most Yankees games were on the local CBS channel or whatever. When they switched to YES Network and I remember listening to ESPN 880 the team payroll was between 100-200 million. Since the switch their coffers have skyrocketed and they can afford to do whatever.

"In other words, if the F.O.'s Moneyballing Saberheads and their simpleminded minions truly believe the organization is saving money by constantly/aggressively/progressively scaring its fans away -- year after bloody year -- they're freaking delusional and insane."

"Your confusing budget with execution."

Yeah, so what the Mariners need to do is develop two HOF talents (Griffey, Randy) and trade them for young replacements (Cameron, Garcia, Halman, Guillen), sign another top hitter from Japan (Ichiro), then find a ton of under-priced veterans who all have career years (Olerud, Boone, Javier, McLemore, Sele, Abbott). Oh, and one mulligan (Martin). It's so simple.

Let's not forget that what built up that fanbase in the first place was the in-house development of four HOF level talents (Griffey, A-Rod, Edgar, Randy), getting lucky with a few other young talents (Tino, Wilson, Nelson, etc) and making key trades for other team's young talent (Buhner, etc). I wonder why other teams have never thought about going along this path. After all, it's so dammed easy people on this board figured it out.