[Hendu Style]

Sam Arkwright Diary
July 25th, 2022

I don't know if there is anyone on this planet who enjoys a 15-hour flight more than I do. I suppose a large part of that comes from having an entire air cabin to myself and hurdling through Earth’s atmosphere at a blistering 600 mph across the Pacific Ocean in a private aircraft. Owning a Gulfstream G800 certainly has its perks.

I got a lot done on my way to Shenzhen on Friday evening, and even more on the way back to Boulder City Sunday night. Sandwiched around my time at the Arkade production plant in China, I made some serious headway on coding my new OOTP (Out of the Park) Baseball program. I inputted the A’s entire minor league system in about 90 minutes, and it took me a few more hours to apply that templates to build a complete framework for MLB and MiLB. Every roster, lineup, and statistic is now in the OOTP program.

It’s really interesting to look at all the in’s and out’s of every team, especially in real-time. The Mariners, for example, had a pretty eventful past few days. They took a 14-game win streak into the All-Star Break. But their hopes of setting a franchise mark for most consecutive wins were dashed by a 3-game sweep at the hands of the Houston Astros. One has to wonder if things might have gone differently had Julio Rodriguez been in the lineup, after missing the entire series with a sore wrist. The Mariners outfielder has had a meteoric rise in his rookie campaign, shaking off a slow start to become one of the league’s best hitters, capped by a second place finish to Juan Soto in the MLB Home Run Derby. I’m looking at Julio's first half statistics, and his growth has been exponential. He was batting .056 after an 0-for-4 performance in Minnesota against the Twins on April 13th, but has seen his batting average steadily climb to its current .275.

I’m sure there’s something behind Rodriguez's big gains. Maybe he got a tip from the Mariners coaching staff to crowd the plate. Or maybe he started identifying pitches better as he adjusted to big league pitching. That will be covered in the next phase in this program, once I can start gathering scouting reports.

I spent the remainder of the flight to Shenzhen just dinking around the OOTP program, examining each team, with an emphasis on the A’s division. The American League West is, in a word, unstable. The team with arguably the best two players in all of baseball, the LA Angels, are grossly underperforming despite having Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. There’s something to be learned from that. Two stars may win you a ring in the NBA, and a star quarterback might just get you the Lombardi Trophy, but that is not the case in baseball. I haven’t quite identified a common thread among all the recent MLB champions, but I can tell you it goes well beyond having one or two superstars. Maybe I’ll figure that out the next time I’m on a flight across the Pacific.

My business in Shenzhen only took a couple of days. Typical production problems. Whether you’re in the United States of America or the People’s Republic of China, someone’s always looking to cut a corner or shake you down. I’ve been dealing with this kind of stuff for years, and I have developed a keen eye for it. I can see it coming from a mile away — or 7,200 miles away in this case. It’s why I flew all the way out from Boulder City. You know the saying, “If you want something done right, you do it yourself.” I have my own saying: “If you want something done wrong, let someone do it for you.”

I’m able to maintain a certain level of privacy and discretion because I like doing things myself. I could’ve very easily had one of our programmers from Sol write me a program to run all this data from the A’s. But then that programmer would inevitably ask me what it’s for, and then before you know it, rumors are circulating that I’m going to buy a baseball team. That’s the last thing I want, especially with a big console launch coming up. I don’t want any doubt about where my focus is right now.

Acquiring the financial data for the Oakland A’s and the other Major League teams proved to be one heck of a task on my flight home from China. Baseball teams aren’t exactly an open book when it comes to finances, and it would literally take an act of Congress to see a team’s ledgers. I will of course get a good look at the A’s financials once I go through the process of purchasing the team. That’s standard operating procedure. But I need that data for my OOTP program now.

So I did something I’m not proud of.

I hacked the A’s system.

It was surprisingly easy. For a billion dollar business located not too far from Silicon Valley, the A’s are sorely lacking in cyber security. Or maybe I’m just not giving myself enough credit for my hacking skills. Regardless, I was in their financial books for a good 8 minutes. More than enough time to get all the data I needed: costs and income, all the way from player payroll to season ticket revenue. It was a veritable treasure trove of information.

My findings were interesting to say the least. Between season tickets ($14 million), total gate ($19 million), media revenue ($79 million), and merchandising ($17.9 million), I saw revenue totaling just over $130 million in 2021. Expenses, by comparison, were significantly lower. The biggest expense is player payroll at $52.5 million, followed by player development ($12 million), scouting ($11 million), and coaching staff ($5 million). All said and done, the A's actually seem to be making money. Like a lot of money. I see a P&L (editor's note: Profit & Loss) of $49,455,465 in the black for 2021. That's a profit of dang near $50 million. The numbers look almost identical for 2022.

But without another team to compare the data to, the financials only told me so much. How much are the A’s charging for tickets compared to, say, the San Francisco Giants? What kind of season ticket retention rate does Oakland have in comparison to the New York Mets? I suppose I could go and hack each and every team in baseball to get that info, but that’s risking some serious jail time. Besides, I can justify digging into the A’s books — I’m going to get that info eventually. And it’s my right to know if there are any skeletons in the closet before sinking a couple billion dollars into this operation. I really can't say the same about sniffing around in the St. Louis Cardinals private servers.

Luckily, I was able to get a mountain of data from one team: the Atlanta Braves. Since they’re owned by Liberty Media, they are a publicly traded company. The only one of its kind in Major League Baseball. That means they are required by law to disclose all of their financial records to their shareholders. It’s pretty convenient when you think about it, considering the Braves just happen to be the reigning World Series champs.

Atlanta's payroll is significantly higher than Oakland's. $175 million in salaries were on the books for their championship season, and they're looking at $200 million for this year. That's nearly triple what the A's are paying their current roster. And while gate revenue, season tickets, and merchandise help cover much of those expenses, the biggest boon to Atlanta is its $120 million in annual media revenue. By my calculations, the Braves are pulling in close to $80 million a year... about $30 million more than the A's. And that's with a significantly higher payroll.

It's not perfect, but it's a good leaping off point for determining the value of the Oakland A’s franchise. When the time comes, I want to make sure I have a very good idea of what the A’s are worth, and what I’m getting myself into. But so far, I like what I see.

Oakland A's (left) and Atlanta Braves (right) Financial Data, Dated 7/25/22: