http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/printarticle/d-fence/

While Dunn would certainly help our offense, he’s a big liability in the field and I’m more of an advocate for bringing in a guy with more of an equal average/power balance.

http://ducksnorts.com/blog/glossary/

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4721

Three True Outcomes, 2005 … I’m not finding such a summary for last year … but if you look at this, you’ll see why many of us like Adam Dunn …

It also does not surprise me that TW does not have any factual argument directly on point, and while I do agree with him that generally MLB has a lot to answer for financially in terms of how they and particular teams account for things, such generality has limited specific relevance to a Padres team that has real interest expenses on a real stadium debt, that does not own its local media, and that does not have as many accounting tricks at hand as some other teams.

About the only thing that general criticisms of MLB and specifically justified criticism about teams like the Yankees mean in regards to considering the Padres’ finances is that we should be wary of general claims that the team is actually losing a lot of real money on a yearly basis at Petco, and we should be wary of such claims at least as long as the general revenue sources keep coming in strong and local attendance remains high. In the case of hypothetical inflated loss claims absent a downturn, we could reasonably suspect that the team is making use of accounting gimmicks like accelerated depreciation or amortization or recharacterization of owner contributions, so as to turn a real small loss/break even/ small profit into a substantial “paper” loss. So far, there have been no such claims at Petco, but this is something that my accountant friends have told me to be on the lookout for.

There were such claims at Qualcomm, but even the Forbes numbers substantiate most of those claims, because most of the runup years to Petco show operating losses, which would be amplified greatly if the stadium debt loan interest was included.

However, since no team makes their financial records public, we can either (a) rely as best we can upon independent sources like Forbes or (b) blindly either accept the numbers the Padres give us or reject them out of some sort of bias one way or the other. I choose (a) for now.

2) If it’s not in there already, add TTO while you’re adding Batt Mush, because, while I know it has something to do with striking out, walking or homering every time, it would be nice to remember what it actually stands for….