The Phillies open what the sports-radio gods are saying is their latest bottom-dwelling season this afternoon at The Bank in South Philadelphia against the Boston Red-Sox. Here is some Phillies trivia drawn for the April 13th issue of Forbes that won’t be part of any Larry Anderson or Mike Schmidt color commentary.

• According to Forbes, the Phillies’ current market value of $1.25B is 10th among Major League teams.  The Washington Nationals ($1,28B) and LA Angels ($1.3B) precede the Phillies in market value.  The Yankees ($3.2B) lead MLB in team value followed by the Dodgers ($2.4B), Red Sox ($2.1B) and Giants ($2.0B).

• The Phillies’ $1.25B market value jumped a respectable 133 percent over the last five years, but just a pedestrian 28 percent in 2014.  Only the Los Angeles Dodgers (20%) saw a smaller market value increase.

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  With Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee each earning $25M salaries, the Phillies’s payroll, according to Forbes, supports two of the leagues top-ten earning major leaguers.  Just for the record, no other MLB team has more than two players on Forbes’ Top-Earning MLB Players list.

• While the average time of a nine-inning MLB game was 3 hours and 2 minutes in 2014, up from 2:54 in 1999 and 2:33 in 1981, the Phillies’ 2 hours and 59 minute game length places them in the top half of MLB.

• Of course, it’s one thing to play fast, it’s a entirely other matter to play well.  With their 73-89 (.451) record and last place divisional finish in 2014, the Phillies came in next to last in winning percentage compared to game speed. Only the Arizona Diamondbacks played faster but won fewer games than did the Phillies.

One last piece of Forbes baseball business trivia.  When the business magazine asked 50 billionaires to name their favorite sport*, only 5 (10%) said baseball topped their list. Soccer (28%), tennis (24%) and football (20%) were billionaires’ top three responses followed by basketball (8%), golf (14%) and cricket (12%).

* More than one answer possible.
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Top photo credit: DSC00939 via photopin (license)

Ryan Howard photo credit: Howard via photopin (license)