Interersting article. Thanks for sharing.
Baseball will be fine. If there is one takeaway from the Ken Burns Baseball series it is that baseball endures just about anything. This era of baseball is no different.
So, I tend to compartmentalize these topics not generalize. There is the fan in me who loves to watch his Red Sox and Nationals plus any college game you can throw at me. Which leads me to the business side of baseball. Baseball content has many, many delivery methods. I voluntarily pay for them through MLB.TV as well as fees to MASN. There is an entire channel dedicated to MLB. If the economics are out of whack then there will be an adjustment and people can decide whether or not they want to watch professional baseball. I've gone baseball seasons without MLB baseball and I can do it again just as many of you have as well. As for the style of today's professional baseball, I try not to get too wrapped up in that because I know it will change over time. A team like the Yankees is offensively one dimensional. Yes they are going to clobber some teams in the regular season. But once you get to the playoffs with dominant swing and miss pitching it becomes a different game all together. Bunting, contact slash hitters and speed will come back in vogue. Baseball is very Darwinian.
As for MLB front offices this is the free economy at work. Everybody is trying to get an edge, but at the end of the day there is talent, talent evaluators and people that make financial decisions about that talent. Sounds pretty straight forward to me. The labor pool of baseball talent is pretty deep, so every front office is trying to find that diamond in rough before the other guy. It seems to me that one MLB front office can separate itself from other MLB front offices through better information, quicker decisions, and intellectual horsepower. Again, pretty straightforward. So, hire a guy at the top who knows what he is doing, and let his team make decisions since they are close to the data. Sounds like any modern successful business.
Travel baseball organizations are going to go the way of travel basketball organizations. I've seen this over the last 15 years, and it is not going to stop. College coaches have to rely on field people to be their eyes, ears, and screening evaluators because they can't be everywhere. Enter the travel organization that has a relationship with the college coach. Now multiple that times 10 or 20 or 30. There have been feeder organizations in the Southeast for years that have put their players in front of college coaches. I've seen it in SC, NC and VA. If it hasn't happened in your neck of the woods, it is coming. So, what does this mean? It means you are either part of one of these travel organizations or you take your chances on your own. You can swim with the tide or against the tide.
As always, JMO.