Sportsfrog.com

Peter Gammons has this note tucked into the middle of a blog posting about Jon Lester’s contract:

Major League Baseball has warned club businesspeople that attendance is expected to be down 17-20 percent in 2009, and that it could be worse, especially for franchises such as the San Diego Padres, Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros, Colorado Rockies and others that could be seriously impacted by the recession.

IF that is what baseball is projecting internally, well, we can expect there to be trades during this season that are not entirely made for baseball reasons. Glancing at that list of teams, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy (already almost gone), and Miguel Cabrera jump out at first glance as being the kind of contract that would perhaps be nice to be shut of should economic reality set in. IF so, and this is all pure speculation, there is a rich get richer opportunity here for clubs that can still take on payroll at some point in 2009.

Attendance is off 12% at spring training. Some clubs are treating that as a canary in the coal mine moment and are aggressively marketing greatly reduced regular season ticket packages in an effort to get ahead of a bad situation. The best of those deals from a scan of that article? Toronto is offering a “$95.00 pass for 81 games in the upper deck”. Assuming that is accurate, that is a season ticket at a little over a dollar a game.