A not crackpot K-Rock Pot notion: the Kingston Senators

The spirit of late, great Kingston sportscasting institution Max Jackson demands sharing the idea that a reader sent word of a Facebook group advocating for the Ottawa Senators' American Hockey League affiliate to play out of the K-Rock Centre.

Feel free to put file that in the Just Crazy Enough To Work desktop folder.

"The timing is right for Kingston to bring in better hockey. Elton John came here, why not the Baby Sens.

"Consider that Kingston is geographically located right in the center of Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. The games featuring these teams would be rather exciting for the city.

" ... The capacity for a hockey game at the K-Rock Centre is 5,700 patrons. There are only 8 AHL teams that averaged higher attendence than that last season. Binghamton averaged 3,629.

"... It's closer to Ottawa so they (the Senators) can move players and personnel much easier. Also, Sens fans could easily make the drive down from Ottawa to see a game. That's much tougher to do with Binghamton."

It would never happen in a billion years. Merely mentioning it verges on, "What, renovating the restaurant you don't own, or pending 200 million dollars you don't have?" territory.

Still, as a connoisseur of blue sky thinking applied to sports, it is not all that as insane. An AHL team moves into Kingston bearing the colours of the Senators, who have built a pretty solid following in the city due to Rogers Sportsnet's regional broadcasts. The Frontenacs franchise then relocates down Highway 401 to Cornwall, where the Royals could be reborn. The Cornwall Civic Centre complex is still up to Ontario Hockey League standard.

It fits in with two broader trends in sports. One is that Major League Baseball and NHL teams have a preference for having their Triple-A farm team close to home. In baseball alone, the Cleveland Indians, New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies have managed to partner up with a Triple-A team in the same state just within the past three seasons. (The trade-off, mind you, might not be all that great for the Senators. A player would not have to clear customs if he is meeting the team in Ottawa, but keep in there are times they call someone up during a U.S. road trip.)

The second is the AHL is probably going to try to grab a share of smaller-sized Canadian markets, especially the longer Canada is underserved by the NHL. It already went into Abbotsford, B.C., whose metro population (159,000) is about the same as that of Kingston (153,000). The arrival of the Abbotsford Heat, who are the Calgary Flames' affiliate, hasn't been a slam dunk. The Heat averaged 3,700 fans, but there are questions about the financial burden taken on by the city.

The rub is Kingston already has assumed the financial burden and needs to find a way to get more revenue out of the building. In any business, one way to do this is offering something new, changing the formula.

The Frontenacs might be past the point where they're part of a normal ebb and flow with attendance and on-ice results. Twelve seasons without a playoff series win, with the same general manager (quoth Mark Potter from late 2008: "If Larry Mavety survives in Kingston, junior hockey won't") has made it look like stagnation.

The move to the K-Rock Pot, which the OHL Arena Guide calls "an easy rival of Oshawa's GM Centre as the best new arena in the league" has not helped grow their fanbase past their 2,300 to 2,800 loyalists. The Fronts had the same percentage decrease in attendance this season, despite a 25-point improvement, as the nearest rival, the Belleville Bulls, did while dropping off by 50 points. Their radio broadcasts have been on three stations in as many seasons.

Some that is poor management. Some of it is pause to wonder if the market for the OHL is ever going to recover in Kingston. The one certainty is the city has hockey fans, as evidenced by the sellouts for the world junior exhibition games in 2008 and the turnout of 5,100 for the Brampton Battalion-Frontenacs Game 7 loss.

The Baby Sens moving in would be a cool change. That team could average 4,000 fans across 41 home dates (seven more than the OHL's 34), if the pricing point was kept realistic.

The AHL is a better calibre than the OHL. The Senators, who have talked about holding their rookie camp in Kingston in September, would continue to solidify one of their satellite centres.

Owner Doug Springer could make more money, but would have little to no say over coaches and player personnel. It's win-win.

Obviously, a handful of people joining a Facebook group asking for a Kingston AHL team is not a news story. Kingston should be getting more from its top level of hockey. The city needs more people attending events at the K-Rock Centre. The Senators could always use a way to keep chipping away at Toronto and Montreal's powerbase.

Last, but not least: Ottawa Senators fans would have a reason to go to an arena which is actually located downtown.

(For anyone wondering: getting into this has nothing to do with a certain critic of the Frontenacs now being on the junior hockey beat. Now, your humble agent is sufficiently addicted to self-Googling to have heard a few variations of, "Now that Neate is covering junior hockey, will he say the same things about the Frontenacs?"

Short answer: no. Longer answer: no, but not for reasons you might think and did you really just refer to yourself in the third person?

The tone probably will change because youth condemns and maturity condones. It is time for an attitude adjustment. The hope is the Frontenacs would allow bygones to be bygones, presuming they ever heard about this site.

Of course, that's a totally self-serving statement after suggesting the current team leave town on the say-so of some Facebook users.)

Brett Lawrie: It's all about the wood

It's probably unwise to bore people with Brett Lawrie updates. The B.C.-born Milwaukee Brewers bonus baby might have indirectly fired a salvo in the never-ending debate about wood vs. metal bats (which will be settled the day after we hash out, "Religion: What Is The One True Faith?").

"One advantage Lawrie has over his American counterparts is he has been using a wooden bat for a few years. Most American players use metal bats until they are drafted, making it difficult as they adjust to faster and better pitching. It's also difficult for scouts who project how metal bat players will transition to the professional game. With Lawrie, that wasn't a problem.

" 'It was big for me - using a wood bat at such a young age,” he said. “You really have to get a feel for the sweet spot. You can miss with a metal bat and still hit well. With a wood bat, you can't miss.' "

Lawrie, as you know, already has enough of an adjustment on his hands with the Brewers converting him to second base (no errors since May 9). His .279/.347/.497 batting line is pretty impressive for a 19-year-old playing in the Single-A Midwest League, where most of the players are 21 and 22 years old.

Basically, the argument for using aluminum bats is that it's cost-effective since they don't break. However, they now run up to $400 and often have to be replaced every year or two, while the wood costs $50-120. Amateur players probably don't break bats at as high as a rate as professionals, since both bat and pitch speed is slower.

The B.C. Premier Baseball League, which turned out Lawrie and several other Canadians who are in the minors, uses wood bats. Presumably, they would appreciate their graduate's endorsement of the policy.

And, of course, Brett Lawrie is not the most publicized member of his family this week, since his sister, Danielle Lawrie, was just named the NCAA player of the year by virtue of pitching the Washington Huskies into college softball World Series. She threw 396 pitches in one day during the regionals (and Dusty Baker isn't even her coach).

(Danielle Lawrie has joked with the media about why she dyed her hair from blond to brown, but it's still weird to see a sports story that refers to an athlete as "raven-haired." You wouldn't see that in a story about a dude.)

Related:
Fast track; Brewers' prospect Lawrie hopes playing 2nd was the right move (Rob Lucas, Beloit Daily News)

Zen Dayley: Minor leagues a major concern

Our friend Pete Toms has provided some good context on baseball's coming labour War of 2012 over at The Biz of Baseball.

The blogetariat has been doing a lot of chin-wagging over what percentage of MLB revenues is paid out to players. They get about 52% if you don't count player development costs, which run about $20 million per team. You can see where this will be a problem — the players, in three years' time, are going to claim they see a smaller piece of the pie than their counterparts in other sports (which see about 58% of the money). Management is going to say, well, that's because we have so much outlay for keeping someone such as John-Ford Griffin and the other Quad-A players (seamhead argot for career minor leaguers) under contract, whereas the NBA and NFL have the NCAA to do their bidding.

Meantime, minor-league baseball teams, not that anyone needs the news alert, have become a gold mine in the United States. The public is willing to pay more for the ballpark experience. Their player costs are also taken care by their major-league parent, and as Pete says, that tab is getting larger all the time.

That's why a lot of teams are trying to have minor-league affiliates in close proximity — they want their cut. Meantime, since no one wanted your Toronto Blue Jays as a dance partner, they ended up with a top farm club located 3,600 km away in Las Vegas. As Pete explains:

"The increased involvement of MLB in the affiliated minors is perhaps an example of necessity being the mother of invention. Annual player development costs have risen to an average of approximately $20 million per club. Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner addressed the subject in March with Sports Business Daily. 'Every major league club spends about $20 million a year on growing their talent,' Werner said. "We have a minor league system and coaches and trainers and all kinds of personnel that just aren't equivalent in football or in basketball, where you have the college system as a way of being their minor league.' "

This probably leads to the MLB clubs trying to get their Triple-A teams to pay something closer to the full freight for the Bernie Castro and Mike Hessman types of the world.

The way it works now is the Jays and the 29 other teams have to furnish their affiliates with players who are not serious prospects. Even someone who is listed among a team's Top 10 prospects by Baseball America is no can't-miss kid. However, they need the "parking lot players" so the upwardly mobile future stars have someone to play games against until they are mature enough for the majors.It could be, hey, you're raking it in, and this player's labour makes more money for you, the Triple-A owner, than it does for us.

There probably is the possibility this will lead to the Triple-A teams becoming more independent, as well they should be. The major-league parent would maybe provide 12-15 players. The Triple-A club would have to fill out the rest of the roster, perhaps with veterans with a tie to the area, not unlike the situation in the AHL, where 41-year-old Mike Keane is a player-assistant coach with his hometown Manitoba Moose, five years after he last played in the NHL. Perhaps those players get more bargaining power and more liveable wage.

It's something else to think about as baseball heads toward their next round of labour talks. Hopefully, this does some justice to Pete's piece.

Related:
A Detailed Look at the Ties Between MLB, MiLB, and Independent Leagues (Pete Toms, The Biz of Baseball)