I defend analytics

 Something happened a month ago that I just didn’t feel like talking about, even though it was in my wheelhouse.  It was something where I would defend a decision that everyone in the world was attacking, but I guess the attacks were so ubiquitous I figured what would be the point?  I love tilting at windmills but it gets tiresome.  But the attacks have gone on for a month and at some point my natural contrariness gets backed into a corner and has to come out fighting.

The event I am speaking of was the decision of Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash to pull starter Blake Snell from Games Six of the 2020 World Series in the sixth inning while he was pitching a 2-hit shutout.  The relief pitcher, Nick Anderson, proved less capable and the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

Cash subsequently won the AL Manager of the Year award (for his work during the regular season).  Snell has said he was disappointed by the decision and he now is the subject of trade rumors.  Last week on ESPN one of their personalities opined that the award for “Turkey of the Year” should not only be given to Cash, but named after him in perpetuity for making the dumbest decision of all time.

The decision was motivated by analytics, namely the fact that Snell had gone through the Dodgers’ line-up twice and that he was not as effective when facing batters for a third time.  The most vociferous attacks on Cash have come from the anti-analytics community, who see the Rays’ loss as conclusive proof that analytics are stupid.

First of all, using analytics to make decisions does not me that the decision is always going to work out 100% of the time.  Analytics is about probability, that over time you will more often come out ahead if you make rational decisions based on past observation of outcomes.  Part of the allure of non-analytics is that practitioners remember when their “hunches” paid off and forget all the times that their gut led them astray.

Second, decisions have to be executed.  If Nick Anderson had come in and pitched two shut out innings, we might not be having this conversation.  But he gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Mookie Betts, and the Rays’ fate was sealed.  News flash—Mookie Betts is a pretty good hitter.  Maybe if he had faced Snell for a third time, he would have timed a fastball and hit a home run.  Anderson’s subsequent failure to execute does not impact the decision made to pull Snell before he started facing batters for a third time, which had historically proven to be a bad idea.

What might have happened if Snell had been left in?  Let’s go back to the 2015 World Series.  Mets starter Mat Harvey is pitching a gem in Game 5, cruising after eight innings.  Harvey, who had only pitched one complete game in his entire history (and that was a blowout, not a close game), convinced his manager to ignore what the numbers said and to leave him in.  Mets’ manager Terry Collins eventually gave in and . . . the results were not good.  Harvey blew the game in the ninth, the Mets lost the game in extra innings, and thus lost the Series 4-1.  Analytics doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

As far as I can tell, people who don’t like analytics have one thing in common; they aren’t good at math.  They hate what they are incapable of understanding.  Analytics are responsible for getting the low-payroll Rays into the Series in the first place; analytics is the only weapon teams like the Rays and the “Moneyball” A’s have to compete against teams who can afford to make mistakes and overpay players who don’t work out. 

I concede that analytics has made sports less interesting.  Analytics says home runs are the most efficient way to score runs, so we have to put up with most at bats ending in a strikeout, base on balls, or home run.  In basketball, the mid-range jumper is dying because the most efficient strategy is to combine dunks with 3-point baskets.  In football, the short passing game is preferred to a “ground and pound” rushing offence or unleashing a mad bomber at quarterback because it has proven most effective.

But it is evolution, not heresy.  Yes, I miss the days when Bob Gibson would have punched his manager in the nose before giving up the ball before the ninth inning of a World Series game.  Yes, I miss the days when the 1971 Orioles had four 20-game winners on their pitching staff, when now there aren’t four 20-game winners in all of the majors (in 2019 there were exactly two).  Yes, I wish modern hitters listened to Wee Willie Keeler who said the secret to success was to “hit it where they ain’t,” instead of hitting into a shift when a bunt down the third base line would be an easy double. 

I miss those days, but they are in the past, not the future.

Memo to Mets owner Steve Cohen--don't start planning your parade route yet

 

The Mets new owner plans to win World Series; isn’t that cute?

The New York Mets were sold to Steve Cohen, about whom all I know is that he is rich enough to buy a sports team in New York, which doesn’t predispose me to liking him.  At his press conference after the sale was announced, he said he would be “disappointed” if the Mets didn't win a World Series in 3-5 years.

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed.

Non-sports people often buy sports teams and announce that the reason why the team hasn’t won recently is that they haven’t tried hard enough, didn’t plan strategically, or just didn't have enough heart. The baseball people who had been in charge, who had spent 20-30 or more years in the game, didn’t have the keen business mind that allows people to succeed in any field.

Let me remind Mr. Cohen of a few facts from recent history.  The Chicago Cubs recently ended a 108-year drought.  The Red Sox, despite the best efforts of Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk, had 86 years of frustration.  Currently, the Cleveland Indians are at 72 years and counting for a championship.   The vaunted Dodgers, one of the premiere franchises of the National League (and one of the richest) just won their first World Series after 32 years.  The Minnesota Twins, who haven’t won in almost 30 years, have lost 18 post-season games in a row.  The Oakland A’s, who haven’t won it all in 31 years, this year won their first post-season elimination game since 1973,  47 years ago.  Currently, 15 of the 30 franchises have championship droughts of 25 years or more.  One of those teams is the Mets, working on a 34 year drought.

Heck, four teams, the Rangers, Brewers, Padres, and Mariners, have never won a World Championship: for the Rangers that’s a 6-decade span.

But this Steve Cohen guy is going to come in, take a team that had a losing record in 2020 (okay, the 2020 season was hardly typical; they did have a .531 winning percent in 2019), and by virtue of his superior intellect, make them World Champions in 3-5 years? 

Because of its rich history with statistical analysis, table-top simulation games like Strat-O-Matic, and the Hot Stove league busy every off-season, there is a long tradition of people thinking they know more than the managers and general managers that play the game.  In some cases, this may be true; but it’s rare.

I would direct Mr. Cohen to the words of wisdom from the late Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti, who once said, “Baseball breaks your heart.  It was designed to break your heart.” You may be planning a parade in Manhattan sometime in 2023-25, but the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Astros, Nationals, Cubs, Indians, Tigers, Reds, Royals, Rangers, and 18 other major league teams have other ideas. 

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed. 

 

Lucifer Season 5 Review; there's still life in the old Devil

 

Life is full of tradeoffs.  Taking a job for more money may mean less time to spend with your kids.  Buying something that is more affordable usually means getting something more cheaply made.  Going out and having fun means risking catching a potentially deadly virus.  What to do.

A perennial trade off is that of quality versus quantity.  Let’s take the example of television programs.  Once upon a time, a “season” of a TV show meant a lot of episodes.  For example, the 1950’s half-hour Western “Have Gun – Will Travel” produced 39 episodes in its first season.  At this early stage of network television, the “TV season” started in the Fall and literally ran a new episode every week until it was time for the “summer rerun season” when networks showed repeats.  As you can imagine, the pace was grueling on the regular actors.

The number of episodes in a “season” slowly went down to where, in the mid-1960’s, a season was an episode count in the mid-20’s, such as Star Trek’s third season which produced 24 episodes.  The number continued to fall until at some point an equilibrium set in at 22 episodes, usually an initial order of 11 and then a “back order” of 10 additional episodes if the show was successful.

But then came a revolution when Premium cable started producing original shows but only 13 at a time.  Imagine, a season with one-third as many episodes as a show in the 1950’s!  But here is where the trade off comes in; the shows are higher quality, but there are fewer of them.  It is a lot easier to maintain high quality in scripts if, like The Sopranos, you only have to do 13 instead of 22, or 39.  This is probably why the last network show to win an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series was 24 way back in 2006.  In 2019, Game of Thrones season 8 won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series despite producing only six episodes.

This is a long-winded way of my getting around to reviewing Season 5 of Lucifer, which was on Fox for three seasons and now resides at Netflix.  Fox gave the show a limited order for season 1, then showed confidence with an 18-episode order in season 2 and a 26 episode order in season 3.  But now that the show is on Netflix, fans have to comfort themselves with a paltry 10 episodes in season 4 and only 8 in season 5.

But here’s the thing—Lucifer has never been this consistently good during its run.  Don’t get me wrong, after a mediocre season 1 the show made some wonderful course corrections and proved to be a source of good-natured blasphemy thereafter.  But there were more than a few episodes where the case of the week seemed a little thin, or the plot twists with lucifer’s backstory seemed a tad arbitrary, or Lucifer’s sexual puns were more lame than usual.  I have seen the first five episodes of season 5, and they have been five of the best episodes the show has produced.

One thing possibly improving the quality is that, before Netflix belatedly decided on a sixth season, this was supposed to be Lucifer’s swan song, and as the saying goes there is nothing like the prospect of being executed at dawn to focus the mind.  The show has shaken up the loose bounds of its formula (Devil solves crimes in Los Angeles) and is having more fun in how it tells stories.  Just as the show’s best episode, Season 3's "Off the Record," broke with its format, the show is now rising to new heights reveling in its new-found freedom.

Gratuitous spoiler alert at this point; proceed no further if you want NO information about Lucifer Season 5 (then why are you reading this?).  Episode 1, “Really Sad Devil Guy,” adopts a wonderfully executed concept where Lucifer, in Hell, decides to investigate the same murder as Detective Decker, only Lucifer can only access the murder victim’s memories.  This means he is recreating experiences that happened about 36 hours before Decker visits the same locations.  The second episode trots out the long-spoiled revelation that Lucifer’s twin brother, Michael, will attempt to impersonate him, with star Tom Ellis doing very impressive double duty (even if his American accent is lame).  Episode 3 gets delightfully meta as Lucifer and Decker investigate the murder of a showrunner for a TV show called Lieutenant Diablo, about a crime solving Devil in LA with an attractive female partner. 

Episode 4, “It Never Ends Well For the Chicken,” goes two places where it is surprising the show has not gone before: a black-and-white filmed homage to film noir, and Lucifer telling Trixie a bedtime story (their relationship is one of my favorite ones since the first episode).  The last episode I’ve seen, “Detective Amenadiel,” teams up Lucifer’s brother with Decker, revealing new sides of him, and also gives us some much-needed back story for Doctor Linda.

The show has never been better at balancing the needs of a large and talented cast, with only Aimee Garcia’s Ella getting some short shrift (made up for by her playing mobster Tommy Stompanato in Lucifer’s retelling of the story of how he got his ring; you have to see it to understand).  But there are three episodes remaining, so maybe Ella gets another visit to the nudist colony she and Lucifer went to in season 4.  D. B. Woodside and Kevin Alejandro both get to flex their comedic muscles, Lesley-Anne Brandt gets more to do as Mazekean than just glower and kick ass (she sings!), and the always wonderful Rachel Harris does more than just look exasperated when Lucifer is in her office.

I still wish season 5 was more than eight measly episodes, but so far season 5 is looking better than the slightly larger (10 episode) season 4, which was mainly notable for the aforementioned trip to the nudist colony (of course Lucifer would be enthusiastic, but who would have pegged Ella as his equally enthusiastic companion; shame about the unfortunately very long [and strategically placed] hair).  Eight great episodes of Lucifer is better than no episodes, but is it preferable to 20 mostly good episodes? 

As Woody Allen said in Love and Death, “It’s not the quantity of you sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality.  On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely have it looked into.”

 

The beginning of the end for college football?

“When people of privilege lose their privilege, it feels like oppression.”—Source unknown

 

It has been a tumultuous couple of years, and I am not referring to COVID-19.   Before the pandemic started, women in Hollywood discovered that they had an option other than a) shut up and take it, or b) shut up and quit.  A group that had been marginalized since anyone could remember suddenly put their collective feet down, and suddenly Harvey Weinstein is doing in depth research on a movie about prison conditions. 

Then, four year into Colin Kaepernick’s exile from the NFL because teams agreed that having a Super Bowl caliber QB who cared about social justice was a “distraction,” a Black man dies in police custody and now entire sports leagues are embracing Black Lives Matter, much to the chagrin of those who continue to think Black lives don’t matter but remain politic and silent.

The latest earthquake to shake up the fault lines of American society are the demands of a group of Pac 12 football players, who made a number of demands relating to player safety, working conditions, and social justice.  College football players have been fighting the system for years, struggling against the monolithic NCAA juggernaut for a few meager crumbs of the billions of dollars generated by an unpaid labor system.  They had about as much chance as a AA baseball team against the Yankees, but the tide may have turned.

Why might this latest attempt succeed, when previous attempts to gain power by unionizing and other form of organizing have failed?  One reason is success breeds success, and the players have made gains in the area of name, image, and likeness compensation.  The NCAA dragged its feet but had to take notice when California gave student athletes rights, but then Congress joined in and they had to at least give the appearance of capitulating.

But a bigger and more important factor is that the Big Bad NCAA doesn’t look so big and so bad when COVID-19 threatens the billions of dollars generated by the system.  Suddenly, strength becomes weakness; the prospect of losing all that revenue shows how terrified the colleges and the various conferences are of the loss.  After all, the students won’t lose any money because they don’t make any; but the coaches and athletic directors who make millions have a lot to lose.  And that gives the students power.

It's an application of the jiujitsu principle, allowing a smaller opponent to defeat a larger and more powerful adversary.  The schools in the NCAA have far more to lose than the students, and the students, sensing the fear in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the prospect of no autumn football, are taking the upper hand.

The loss of football revenue also revealed the importance of that money, as schools started shutting down non-revenue generating sports that lived only while football money was flowing into the system.  Universities needed football revenue like junkies need fixes.

Also, the power dynamic is different than in the pros.  If a sizable chunk of the Dallas Cowboys demanded Jerry Jones kneel for the national anthem, he could fire them all and find descent replacements.  But the bench isn’t as deep for college football teams.  If a coach has to replace a good part of his football team, he can’t poach players from other teams; all he can do is recruit hard for the next class (or start recruiting walk-ons from assorted calculus classes and anthropology seminars).  And who would want to go to a team likely to lose because of all those defections?  After a couple of seasons, he just might lose that multi-million-dollar coaching job and have to find work at a less prestigious college.

Aiding the students’ position is the fact that the NCAA is not really a monolith.  It turns out to have little actual power over the college landscape and has no way of reining in schools, especially those in the “Power 5” conferences.  The myth of NCAA power has been exposed as an emperor with no clothes, as each conference has responded differently to the pandemic, with no central authority asserting control. 

If you read a list of the demands being made by the Pac 12 players, it is notable both for its audacity and its circumspection.  These are not orphans asking for more gruel, please.  Who can argue against safety measures to avoid becoming victims of the COVID-19 pandemic?  Given support for the BLM movement, who can argue for increased financial aid for Black students?  Does it make sense to give coaches making millions per year a small pay cut that would contribute to social justice, increased player safety, and better working conditions?  Of course it does.  These aren’t a bunch of hippies taking over the administration building and demanding an end to the war; these are Stanford and UCLA students making reasonable and extremely feasible demands. 

Pac 12 college students are asking the questions that were asked generations ago by those same hippies: if not us, who?  If not now, when?

The seamy underbelly of food delivery

The world is replete with stories of people who regret not buying things when they could have, like stock in IBM or Amazon.  Everyone is looking for that high-risk investment that, in retrospect, was a sure thing.  The latest in the “Boy, if only I had known about this sooner I would have bought that” file--Uber has picked up food delivery service Postmates for only $2.7 billion!

The amazing thing about this news?  It comes right on the heels of several reports that these businesses will never make a profit, they can’t turn a profit even with a captive audience, and they are beset by legal difficulties involving fraud.  

I find the conclusion in the Newshour report the funniest, that people are investing billions of dollars in some pie-in-the-sky scheme that will probably fail because throwing a couple of billion of dollars at a plan that will probably fail is better than putting that money in a nice index fund that is certain to return a solid 4% - 5% per year, or even a moderately risky investment that might return 7% - 10%. 

This demonstrates some sort of psychopathy on the part of investors.  Following on the heels if the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, investors are conditioned to expect excessively high returns as the norm.  It is almost as if investors think “high risk means high reward” and they think it means that making a risky investment is certain to produce a high return.  That is not what high risk means; in fact, it is the opposite of what high risk means.

This reminds me of the TV series Suits when the lead character quit being a fake lawyer and became an investment banker, and his boss complained that he only “hit doubles” and he wanted “home runs.”  First of all, any baseball player who hit only doubles when he batted would be in the Hall of Fame after his first year.  Second, this again reinforces the idea that taking bigger risks always produces bigger rewards.  Riskier investments will, more often than not, fail; that is what it means to be risky.

To cite another lovable TV character, Tom on Parks and Recreation was devastated when his business (which produced absolutely no marketable product) went bankrupt.  He was puzzled because, as he put it, “They say you have to spend money to make money.  Well, we spent money like crazy!”

I have to admit there is not a lot about the food delivery business I understand.  I read that delivery sites can force restaurants to use them without their knowledge.  Delivery services have been accused of charging restaurants for phone calls.    There are a whole host of actions by delivery services that restaurants don't appreciate.  My response would be, if the apps are so bad, don’t use them, but apparently that isn't an option.

This is obviously a breakdown of free-market economics of the highest order.  One of the principles of capitalism is that both parties agree (in theory) to the exchange that takes place, but news articles seem to imply (actually, they assert boldly) that restaurants have no choice but to do business with delivery services that eliminate their profit margin.  How can any disciple of Adam Smith condone one party to a transaction imposing a 13.5% to 40% surcharge on the other party without the other party’s consent?

I was skeptical of food delivery services’ profitability when I thought the fee was being paid entirely by the end consumer; why would anyone pay someone $10 to deliver a $5 chalupa box from Taco Bell?  But after looking at all the short cuts, ethically dubious actions, misrepresentations, and business models dependent on underpaying workers, I am even more convinced that this business cannot legally make a profit.  If it could, it wouldn’t resort to setting up fake websites and stealing its employee's tips.

A major test will come in November, when California voters will decide if gig workers are employees or independent contractors.  If the proposition fails, and the gig companies have to treat their employees with dignity and pay them minimum wage and carry workers’ compensation insurance, there should be a significant market correction.  My guess?  The vast majority of Californians who don’t use Uber, or Lyft, or DoorDash will shrug their shoulders, vote no, and let the chips fall where they may.

In the meantime, do your favorite restaurant a favor and order delivery from them directly, or order take out and pick it up yourself.

Nuance

There are some quotes that are great because they are all-purpose.  They can be trotted out under almost any circumstances and found to be applicable.  Jerry Brown once supposedly said, “What we need is a flexible plan for an ever-changing world.”  That applies to everything from the coronavirus to the upcoming NBA playoffs.  FDR famously said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”  This is not as all-purpose as some people think it is.  Tom Brady recently said this in response to a question about practicing while COVID-19 cases were spiking; Tom Brady may have six Super Bowl rings, millions of dollars, and a supermodel wife, but if he thinks people shouldn’t be afraid of the coronavirus he is an idiot.

Another all-purpose quote comes from the season 1 opening credits of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, when the lead character insists, “The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.”  Things are rarely as black and white (pardon the expression) as people proclaim.  People often look for an easy solution to problems for which there is no easy answer.  To fall back on another all-purpose quote, as H. L. Mencken said, “For every complicated problem there is an answer that is simple, easy, and wrong.”

Let’s take the example of shows like 30 Rock pulling episodes because of the use of blackface. The idea that a Caucasian actor or singer can put on makeup that makes them look like an African American so they can impersonate an African-American is, well, inappropriate. 

The most recent show to have an episode pulled for use of blackface is the Community episode Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  The problem with this episode is that a regular character who is Asian, participating in the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, made himself up as a dark elf, which included dark facial and body make-up.  If he had chosen to be a regular elf and just put on some pointy ears, I guess it would have been okay, but clearly people were offended by an Asian actor playing a dark elf.

Do you see the problem here?  We’re talking about ELVES!  People are offended by an Asian actor playing an elf.  He could have been a green elf or a blue elf (Smurf?), but because the script chose “dark elf” (which I understand is a thing in fantasy games and are known as drows) he’s suddenly impersonating an African-American (an African-American elf?).  Should they have hired an African American actor?  No, this was a regular character played by an Asian actor.  Could they have chosen not to make him dark?  I guess no one complains about Orlando Bloom playing an elf, so maybe, although the character of Chang is sort of evil and would opt to play a dark elf (which, again, I understand to be a real thing in fantasy games).  Since Chang was playing a dark elf, he was not engaged in “blackface.”

So far, I have heard no word on whether the Man Men episode where Roger Sterling sang a song wearing actual blackface will be pulled.  There was a previous instance where the BBC pulled an episode of Fawlty Towers because a character made stupid racist statements; as John Cleese pointed out, the character was, in fact, a stupid racist and the episode has been restored.

Society has seen a major, almost unprecedented shift in perspective since the George Floyd death, and we are now entering the French Revolution stage where the easy targets have all been attacked and people are looking for more aristocrats to behead.  This month some BLM protesters in Boston vandalized a memorial to an all-Black regiment that fought in the Civil War (had none of these people seen the Denzel Washington film Glory?). 

This country has a sordid history on race, and a long way to go before we arrive at a harmonious society.  But in our haste to be virtuous, let’s not throw the dark elves out with the bath water.  The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.

Owners are killing the minor leagues

Bill Veeck once said that baseball was the only sport played by normal sized people; to play basketball you had to be 7-feet tall, to play football you had to be 7-feet wide.  Obviously, Bill Veeck had never seen Mark McGuire.

Athletes have more options these days in choosing what sport to pursue, and baseball seems intent on driving high-quality athletes to consider basketball or football as a higher priority.  In 2018 the Save America’s Past-time Act was signed into law as part of the federal spending bill, which should have been named the Save Billionaire Owners A Few Bucks Act.  The language, which was a footnote in the 2,200 page document, exempted the minor leagues from federal minimum wage and worker safety laws.  This for an industry where most workers make less than $7,500 per year. 

Minor league players make so little that when the Washington Nationals announced they were releasing all their minor league players, the players on the Nationals offered to pay their lost wages.  The Nationals were embarrassed enough to reinstate the weekly stipend of $300-400.  Individual players like David Price have also pledged financial support for minor leaguers.

It has been pointed out (I can’t find a citation) that the diets of minor league players are usually unhealthy because they can’t afford to eat nutritious food, so they often binge on fast food or try to survive on ramen.  For a modest expenditure a major league team could feed their AAA and AA players a healthy diet and protect their investment, but this isn’t done.

Baseball is now providing even less incentive for athletes to choose baseball over another sport by reducing the draft from 40 rounds to just five rounds.  Any player not drafted in those five rounds couldn’t sign for more than $20,000.   Incredibly, minor league salaries are so paltry even this wholesale slashing of salaries will only save a couple of million dollars per team.

So, baseball will be paying its minor league workforce below minimum wage salaries, making bonuses smaller, and giving contracts to fewer players, expecting many of the players to spend a few years in college before making another go at earning a spot in The Show.

What is happening in other sports?  In basketball, the NBA is now letting top high school prospects turn pro by going to the G League.  Players don’t even have to pretend to go to college for one year to get to the NBA.  Other high schoolers are opting to play overseas.  No working for below minimum wage for several years before cashing in.

Football players still have to endure three years of college before going pro, but the NCAA is slowly caving to the pressure to allow collegiate athletes to make money on their "name, likeness, and image." They are being dragged kicking and screaming, but it is happening.  Of course, this will be most valuable to quarterbacks and running backs and less so for interior linemen, but it is just the start.   The movement to pay college players a small part of the billions of dollars of revenue they generate appears to be unstoppable.

So while high school athletes in basketball and (eventually) football will be able to cash in right out of school, baseball decided to take their grossly underpaid minor league work force and pay them even less. 

Mike Piazza was drafted in the 62^nd round of the draft, and he is now in Cooperstown.  Would he have stuck with baseball if he was undrafted and had to fight for a position that would pay him a maximum of $20,000?  As one of the previously cited articles pointed out, baseball drafting is an inexact science and many baseball stars and Hall of famers were drafted outside the 5^th round.  Whither these players in a five-round draft?

The all-consuming greed of baseball owners is well documented in books like Lords of the Realm by John Helyar and The Game by Jeff Passan.  In The Game, Passan describes how in the 1990’s the owners were concerned about the competitive balance and small market teams, but instead of redistributing their revenue they expected ball players to enable small market teams to compete by taking a pay cut (and were stunned when the players refused).  Recently, many African-American players and former players have detailed what t was like to be assigned to a minor league team in the South.

But the owners are now cutting expenditures on a minor league system that has always exploited young men’s desire to play baseball by paying them slave wages for several years and putting up with substandard travel and third-rate motels.  They have a cheap source of labor and yet they want to make it cheaper. 

Cutting off your nose to spite your face seems like an inadequate metaphor.