World Baseball Classic vs injuries

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

I don’t see moral hazard being an issue here. Moral hazard is about poorly aligned incentives. No player has any incentive to behave recklessly just because they are insured.

That is, literally, the definition of moral hazard.

Screenshot 2023-03-17 212500.jpg

Players who face the loss of their income by being injured in activities unrelated to their direct employment are considerably less likely to play outside their contract. I have a hard time understanding how you can think differently

Yup, they’ll still get paid, and the team will be covered, but the player will still suffer significant losses. The injury could affect their abilities and severely dampen their marketability long term. Time lost to injury often turns HOF careers into Hall of Very Good careers. They can also lose endorsement opportunities and a lot of other things. In short, even with insurance, players have strong incentives to avoid injury, and teams also have obvious incentives to keep their players healthy despite insurance.

Those sound like second order effects. I guess I was remiss in not mentioning them?

Fans? Yeah, it sucks if a player on your team gets injured, but cancelling the WBC would also harm fans. Not the same set of fans of course (most fans of specific WBC teams like Puerto Rico aren’t Mets fans, and vice versa) but still, baseball fans.

I never said anything about cancelling the WBC.

Its also not true that fans aren’t indemnified, they are the stakeholder with the least at stake financially and the easiest way of protecting themselves. Fans always have the option of exit. If your team sucks due to injuries, you can just not buy tickets to see games, not buy team merch, etc. Fans have diverse lives and investments, while players and teams have much more specific, non diversified investment in the team.

I can almost guarantee any season ticket holder or corporate sponsor that wants a refund because the season is over before it started is going to be really disappointed with the team's response.

What you are really complaining about is that fans suffer from disappointment that their team will not play as well as they otherwise would, but this feeling isn’t something one would normally expect to be compensated for.

Exactly my point. Any investment made is a sunk cost.