The goal of baseball shouldn't be to be cheap. https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/1199822782298755073

Rays fans are going to scream at me again for this and that's fine because they always do but nobody should care about payroll except the owners. Build a good baseball team. Build a World Series baseball team. That should be the goal.

Stop citing $/WAR. Stop caring about future value. When did winning stop being the point?

The Rays are good at finding talent. Great! Congrats! Complement that with stars. Pay good players. It doesn't have to be one or the other, nor should it. But I don't care whether Sternberg's checkbook balances at the end of the year and you shouldn't either.

I want to watch great baseball players. I want to watch Mike Trout and Manny Machado and Jacob deGrom. I want to watch my baseball team win. I don't want to be lectured about how I didn't spend enough money on merchandise and tickets for ownership to pay for talent.

This isn't a Rays problem. The Orioles just waived Jonathan Villar simply to save a few bucks on his salary. This is a baseball problem and someone has to stand up and say they want to try to win.

And reporters have to stop repeating talking points of ownership. Every contract is framed as the best value. Not the best talent. The most talent for the lowest cost. Why should anyone care about that except owners?

Baseball won't change because the league and the owners have no reason to change. I'm never going to stop watching or going to games. You probably won't either. But we don't have to just let them get away with destroying the sport for profit.

Anyway I'm having a terrible week and private equity ghouls ruin everything we love and it just really sucks.

Related! Stop saying "we" and "us" and "our" when you're talking about baseball teams. You're not part of them. They don't care about you. What you want does not matter.