Author Topic: Lerners are Cheap - 2017  (Read 26587 times)

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Offline PowerBoater69

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Re: Lerners are Cheap - 2017
« Reply #50: January 21, 2017, 10:04:56 PM »
A simple Google of "sunk costs" would have been a help to him, but he thought he was an expert.  And his example couldn't have been more muddled.
I did a simple Google search on "sunk costs" but I added "MLB contracts", and found pages of references to future contracts as sunk costs. I even found this comment someone who did the exact same search to counter the same point:

Quote
Even though you are factually correct, if a number of people use a word in an incorrect way it becomes correct by the volume of usage.  A simple search for "sunk cost contract mlb" in Google returns almost 33,000 results.  It is widely accepted in discussion of large contract for under-performing players..."Fixed Cost" does not adequately distinguish between costs of contracts for people that are performing (ex. Dozier) vs those that are not performing (ex. Nolasco, Mauer, ect...).  Right or wrong, "sunk cost" has been accepted as shorthand for that.
http://twinsdaily.com/topic/19858-the-definition-of-sunk-cost-vs-stunk-cost/page-2

So I'll agree with this guy that guaranteed money is a sunk cost based on popular usage of the term. However, I will disagree with deMause's use of "sunk cost" in the context of Bowden's tweet, the Nats could cut corners on completing the ballpark and the Nats could decide to stand pat on payroll, so neither cost is fixed much less sunk.

The question arising from Bowden's tweet is whether the Lerners are mixing the ballpark budget with team payroll. deMause says that would be "incredibly stupid", and he is undoubtedly correct, although he doesn't follow the Nats as closely as I do.