Shocker: Randy Levine reveals the Yankee Ticket Exchange is a huge failure

Would you buy Yankee tickets
from this man?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have interviews this weekend with New York Yankees president Randy Levine. He's doing damage control for Lonn Trost's elitist comments when the COO tried to do damage control over the team's ticket kerfuffle. This is like Yasiel Puig advising Jonathan Papelbon how to be a good teammate. Like David Ortiz telling Jose Bautista to tone down his home run celebrations. You catch my drift. 

When are the Yankees going to learn the first rule of holes? When you're in a hole, QUIT DIGGING!

Instead, Levine is out there, shovel in hand, still trying to justify the Yankees' new policy as protecting the fans against fraud. But, just as Trost's damage control went awry, so did Levine's, as he inadvertently confirmed the real reasons for the new policy -- that the team doesn't believe in the free market when it comes to showing the true value of tickets. And that the Yankees Ticket Exchange is a big fat flop.

He told Billy Witz of the Times: “We strongly believe that we have the right to maintain control over our inventory as long as the market provides ample opportunity to have choice in other ways.”

Levine told Jared Diamond of the Journal: “This is our product and our inventory. We have the ultimate right to protect the value of our inventory as long as it’s done in the free-market society.” 

He also admitted to the Journal that only fewer than 10% of the tickets sold on the resale market go through the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And the Journal's story also revealed that, according to StubHub, 40% of their Yankee ticket sales occur in the 72 hours before the event. Which this new ticket policy would not-so-coincidentally negatively affect.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

Levine is confirming what Yankee fans like myself have been saying all week. This is all about increasing the resale value of Yankees tickets, and nothing about protecting fans from alleged "fraud."

Like all too many people in Yankeeland, Levine is living in the past. He wants a monopoly on ticket sales, at the very same time he's claiming he's all about the free market. Child, please.

Fans understand economics better than Levine does. The tickets are overpriced, and the free market, as evidenced by the secondary market, is showing that. The proof is in the pudding. The one secondary ticket venue with a price floor is the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And even though they are the easiest for season ticket holders to use, with integration with the team's ticket system, and even though they are integrated into Yankees.com, the exchange, by Levine's own admission, has only captured under 10% of the secondary market. That is an amazingly bad number.

This is why Levine and Trost are pushing this ban on print-at-home tickets and trying to stop fans from using StubHub for these last-second ticket sales. Because three years ago, they sold team owner Hal Steinbrenner on the idea that StubHub needed to be smashed. And they had the Yankees spend the money on this rival ticket exchange, figuring fans were so stupid, they would go to it because it was the official one. 

Yet it is a colossal failure. So now, the Yankees are trying to smash StubHub in another way -- by preventing their own fans from getting good deals on tickets.  They love the free market when it comes to corporations spending big bucks for boxes, but not so much when it shows that their ticket prices are too high.

That's not all that Levine said about the ticket brouhaha. From the Times:

After Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, was lambasted as elitist for suggesting in a Thursday radio interview that some fans do not belong in premium seats, the team president, Randy Levine, in an interview Saturday, said StubHub had stoked the controversy, accusing it of putting out a narrative “that’s completely fraudulent and completely false.” 

1. What did StubHub have to do with Trost insulting the Yankee fan base? (Incidentally, it's been 72 hours and counting, and the Yankees still haven't apologized for what Trost said. Shows how much the front office cares about the fans.)

2. What part of the narrative, exactly, of what the Yankees are doing by banning print-at-home tickets is “completely fraudulent and completely false”?  That the Yankees has been on a vendetta against StubHub for the last three years? That the Yankees sued to force StubHub to move their Last-Minute Ticket Center from 68 East 161st Street, across the street from the Stadium, to the Bronx Terminal Market at 651 River Avenue and 151st Street? That despite the narrative that Lonn Trost pushed, that StubHub is not the entity holding up them being able to access mobile tickets -- the Yankees are? (And Levine even admits that the Yankees are holding this up, but still blames StubHub for it.)

Individual Yankee ticket sales for 2016 start tomorrow. But the team's brass has spent the last week doing the worst PR you could imagine for selling their own product. Good grief.

Cheer for the Red Sox? Never!

I wrote something for The Faster Times site about the Wall Street Journal's piece, "Enough With the Boston Glee Party," which exhorts Yankee fans to root for the Red Sox. Jason Gay, the writer of the article, seems to think that Yankee championships are more meaningful with a competitive Sox team.

But that's just silly. Most Yankee titles were won when the Sox were pathetic. Yet I don't think Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle sat around crying, lamenting the lack of a pennant race with Boston!

I don't want to sound like a cranky old Squawker here, but the complete lack of historical context in these Wall Street Journal pieces is simply breathtaking. When they're not acting as if there have always been strong Yankees-Red Sox teams at the same time, they're decreeing that Mickey Mantle was only the sixth greatest Yankee position player ever, and somebody who benefited from "dumb luck." Or they're twisting around statistics, leaving 1/3 of the Yankees' homers out, in an effort to prove that A-Rod has the longest home run trots.

Anyhow, there is no way I'm going to root for the Sox to do well so that they have a pennant race with the Yankees. You can read more of my thoughts on the issue at The Faster Times' site.

One other note - it was Squawker reader Alvaro who came up with the Boston Glee Party phrase in 2006. The WSJ should pay him royalties for using his phrase in their headline!

Mickey Mantle was more lucky than great, according to the Wall Street Journal

It looks like The Wall Street Journal's new beefed-up sports section is trying to be all edgy these days. They've come up with a very controversial list of the top 10 Yankee position players. But the WSJ are unable to really back up their picks with anything more than "because we said so" criteria. And the way they downgrade Yankee greats like Mickey Mantle is just ridiculous.

Here's their list:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Lou Gehrig
3. Joe DiMaggio
4. Derek Jeter
5. Yogi Berra
6. Mickey Mantle
7. Reggie Jackson
8. Alex Rodriguez
9. Joe Gordon
10. Tommy Henrich

 The WSJ explained their grades this way:

The categories included postseason batting, fielding range, on-base plus slugging percentage and wins above replacement player. We also included the player's impact on team attendance and his effect on the value of the franchise. To give a more rounded portrait, we scored each candidate by their relevance in popular culture, upstandingness and earning power in the collectibles market. The totals were compiled by giving each player a score (1 to 10) in each of 11 categories and tabulating the results.

Collectibles? Is this the ranking of great players or bobbleheads?

As for their top 10 list, 1 and 2, of course, are obvious choices. But the WSJ put DiMaggio at No. 3 instead of No. 2 because of a rather bizarre reason. The WSJ writes:

In the end, DiMaggio fell to third in our rankings, behind Lou Gehrig, for another reason: likability. At the Yankees' Old-Timers' Day celebrations, the famously petty DiMaggio insisted on being introduced last, according to long-time team PR man Marty Appel.

The WSJ can't even get that tidbit straight. The egotistical part wasn't DiMaggio being introduced last. After all, Yogi Berra gets that treatment today. No, what was over the top about it was that Joe insisted on being introduced as the "greatest living ballplayer."
 
At any rate, I wouldn't have DiMaggio even that high on my own list. He would be fourth, below Mantle. Nothing to do with likability, but with longevity. And if Derek Jeter gets 3,000 hits, I would put Jeter above Joltin' Joe.
 
But on the WSJ's list, Jeter gets ranked above both Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. The WSJ downplays Mantle, saying that "despite his many accomplishments, Mantle also benefitted from dumb luck."
 
Yeah, right. It was really lucky when the rookie Mantle got his spikes caught in a Yankee Stadium drainpipe cover in the 1951 World Series, and tore up the ligaments in his knee. And how he never played in another game without physical pain in his career, and injuries kept him from being even greater. Oh, and the fact that all the men in his family, including his father, died young (he and his father were side-by-side in hospital beds when Mantle first hurt his knee) helped drive him to drink. 
 
But the WSJ thinks Mantle was lucky because he "joined the Yankees in 1951, the same year major-league games were first broadcast in color and nationally" and "became the face of a loaded team that reached 12 World Series in 14 years." Never mind that most Americans didn't even have TVs in 1951, and color TV didn't become mainstream until at least 15 years later. And that Mantle was the No. 1 reason those Yankees were "a loaded team" in the first place.
 
Also, where the heck is Don Mattingly on this list? By the WSJ's own criteria on likability, value to the franchise, and importance in pop culture, Donnie Baseball should be in the top 10. He was only the most popular Yankee player of an entire generation, after all.

Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez are No. 7 and 8. The WSJ says "both of whom made the list largely on the strength of their offensive statistics -- in the regular season and the playoffs." Hmmm, has the paper already forgotten how much grief A-Rod got for his postseason numbers until 2009?

Besides, these are two of my all-time favorite Yankees, but even I wouldn't put Reggie in the top 10 - he was only on the team for five seasons, after all. And A-Rod should end up in the top 10, but I still wouldn't put him at No. 8 at this point, given that he's only been with the team since 2004.

Joe Gordon is No. 9 for "defense." But is he an all-time top 10 Yankee? I don't think so. Tommy Heinrich makes No. 10 because "the team's winning percentage during his career was the highest for any player." Huh? Was he single-handedly responsible for that? Please. Mantle gets downgraded because he was part of a "loaded team," while Heinrich makes the top 10 for being part of a loaded team? How does that make any sense?

I guess the WSJ is trying to make an impact on the New York sports scene, but between this article and the way that they twisted around statistics to make sure that A-Rod would have the longest home run trot numbers, color me unimpressed with their new sports stuff.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Why the Wall Street Journal's home run trot study is way off base

The Wall Street Journal is making a push to expand both its sports content, and its New York content. To that end, they've done a study showing which Yankee takes the longest time around the bases (in case you were waiting for an answer to this burning question!) But this statistical analysis raises more questions than it answers.

The article, by David Biderman, is entitled, "No Rush, A-Rod, We Have All Day." It claims:

In case New Yorkers needed another way to compare Derek Jeter to Alex Rodriguez, we've found something new. When Mr. Jeter hits a home run, it takes him 20.19 seconds to round the bases, the second-fastest time among Yankees starters. Mr. Rodriguez needs 24.94 seconds, the slowest mark on the team.

That sounds about right. A-Rod isn't a Manny Ramirezesque strutter, but he sometimes takes a second to look towards the Yankee dugout after hitting a homer. Plus, if it's a walkoff, he always throws his helmet in the air, which probably adds a second or two.

My problem with the study is the methodology used. The WSJ claimed to have "clocked how long every 2009 home run took" for the Yankees. But they really only include the "current Yankee starters with at least 10 home runs last year" in compiling these numbers. That team average is "22.1 seconds—all of Mr. Rodriguez's home-run trots were slower than that."

However, that criteria excludes 81 homers, a third of the 244 Yankees' home runs last year, but adds 30 homers by a fast player who wasn't on the team last year. Here's how:

* By confining the study to "current Yankee starters with at least 10 home runs last year," the 52 combined dingers (21% of the 244 homers the 2009 Yanks hit) Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon hit last season are not counted.

* When you add in the homers of other ex-Yankees, like Melky Cabrera, Eric Hinske, along with current Yankees like Brett Gardner who only hit a few homers in 2009, you have another 29 homers (12%.)

* Curtis Granderson leads the team with the faster home run trot of 2009, at 18.8 seconds, even though his 30 home runs were hit for the Detroit Tigers.

How in the world can you consider a "team average" home run trot that leaves out 33% of all the homers the Yankees hit last year? And then adds in somebody that wasn't even on the team then?

This playing around with the numbers doesn't stop there. Even though the WSJ's numbers include Granderson, they do not include new Yankee Nick Johnson, one of the slowest players in baseball. That's because he only hit eight homers last year, and the study defined the criteria as having hit 10 or more homers last year. Sounds pretty sneaky, if you ask me, and it sure makes it look as if this "study" wanted to have a predetermined outcome.

So the WSJ's big analysis features exactly seven Yankees: A-Rod, Jeter, Nick Swisher, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Mark Teixeira, and Curtis Granderson, and covers only two-thirds of the homers hit by Yankees last year, with 30 additional homers by a speedy player who wasn't even on the team last year. Not very fair criteria, if you ask me.

Now, it may very well be true that Rodriguez does have the slowest home run trot of the team, even if you count in all the homers. But the way the WSJ defined their criteria so narrowly doesn't exact inspire confidence.

The Wall Street Journal may be a new player in the New York sports arena, but this piece's storyline sounds all too familiar.

What do you think? Leave a comment!