Why Washington can’t afford Hudson

Hudson. Hudson. Hudson. From recently resigned Adam Dunn to GM Rizzo, they’re all saying they want Hudson.

And Supposedly Hudson wants to play for the Nats too, but so far there’s no deal. Rumors says it’s because Hudson wants 9 million, but Washington can only give him 3.

This wouldn’t sound like an obscene amount of money for New York or Los Angeles, and I find it difficult to understand that Washington doesn’t have this money, from an outside of baseball view. New York is the most expensive city in the country as far as cost of living goes, and as a correlation the Yankees and even the Mets have a decent amount of cash to through around. The same goes for other fairly expensive cities with big DMAs like L.A. or Boston. So why isn’t the market size giving the Nationals a few more bucks?

In 2008 Forbes named the nation’s capital as the tenth most expensive city to live in, and it is the ninth biggest TV market in the county meaning those commercials you see watching a game costs a lot more than the same ad played in Tampa or Cincinnati, or a good portion of other teams in the MLB for that matter.

Obviously the team has not reached its full potential for viewers and attendance , and it’s easy to blame the team’s poor showing.

A good example of this is the New York Islanders. For years they’ve had, if not the worst, one of the worst attendance ratings in the whole NHL, but they are in the nation’s biggest market. They’re also not a very good team.

This isn’t any major breakthrough, it’s just a reality that everyone knows as the Nats placed 24th last year in attendance ratings.

Some how the team needs to pull in more cash because there’s no excuse for them not to.  From there they can get players like Hudson, and once they do it will be a cycle of winning and being able to afford more players that can help them win.