I've been watching the Braves and the Cubs for a number of years, and I think I've figured out how baseball works as a business. I'll tell you upfront that I don't have insider knowledge. This is based on years of observation.
From what I've seen, most ballclub owners don't care about three things: a)winning and losing, b)the game itself or the c)fans.
a)Winning isn't as important as having a winning record. The team needs to above .500, but that's only for business reasons. Fans pay money on a winner.
b)Timers are starting to creep into the game. The game itself isn't built for that. Think of all the basketball games where the last 2 game minutes take 15 or 20 real minutes to play. That's a flagrant abuse of the rules of the game of basketball. Football has similar rules abuses that drag those games out, too. If timers are put into baseball, clock abuse will come along with it. Timeouts will also come along with it. The games will end up taking longer to play just like basketball and just like football. The timers that have been put in need to be removed and the commissioner fired. The only reason I can see for the timers is so the commissioner can have a place in the history books. There's no game reason for them.
The game is about winning. When owners care more about profit than about winning, they don't care about the game. Allowing timers also tells me they don't care about the game.
c)From watching the Braves, I deduce that owners only care about fans to the extent that they have enough butts in the seats to look good on television. Modern stadiums have fewer seats than older stadium. It's easier to make the crowd look bigger and the stadium fuller that way. Other than that I think the fans are viewed as a commodity.
My observation has been that the players are traded like stocks on the stock market. Owners buy low and sell high to maximize profit regardless of the damage done to the team. I can't count the number of times I've seen the Braves develop a superstar like Andruw Jones and then dump him when the team needs him most for a younger, cheaper player. The excuse is always that's the player is just too expensive. Cue tears of sadness.
The Braves are very good at poor-mouthing. The announcers will talk about how the Braves are a small-market team with limited resources for buying players unlike those big, rich clubs. However, every time a key player gets injured, the owners open the checkbook to the tune of what could be scores of millions of dollars. The money is always there, and it flows freely whenever needed in complete contradiction of all the poor-mouthing. That tells me they have the money to buy the big players. They just don't want to spend it. They want maximum profit.
Fans will hang onto a loser for a long time, if there was a win beforehand. I've seen a pattern among owners. They'll fund a championship team and then sell off the good players to maximize profit. The players are basically stocks. The owners will then ride the afterglow of the post-season as many years as they can to maximize profits.
I could go on, but this is probably too much truth already. The basic strategy seems to be to buy low and sell high while stringing the fans along with big talk about the potential the team has this season.
The people who seem to care the most about the game are the players and the coaches. A great example is Brian Snitker who was named Manager of the Year for 2018. That man spent decades out of the spotlight working past the time when he could have retired. You don't spend that much time at a job unless you care about it. He finally got a chance at the big time and has made the best of it. A lot of players are the same way. Not all of them, of course, but I'll see players who sacrifice and do everything they can to play just a little bit longer that extra season or two. For those guys you know it's not about the money. It's about the game.
What baseball needs are owners who care about the game the way fans do and not owners who care more about money.
Have a great weekend.
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