December 30th, 2006 → 11:57 am @ Seth Mnookin
Ah, yes: Hall of Fame voting. For folks not living in New England, this year that means a debate about Mark McGwire. I don’t think McGwire deserves to get in, for reasons I’ve explained before. (CliffsNotes version: if I had a vote (I don’t and never will) I’d settle the whole steroids issue thusly: players I think would be HoF players without ‘roids — Barry Bonds, et al — would get a check mark next to their name; players who wouldn’t — McGwire, Sosa — would not.) I also have a philisophical problem with voting for anyone who makes Jose Canseco look honest in comparison.
For anyone about to go on about how good McGwire was regardless, I call major shenanigans. I’m not the first person to point out that, sans juice, McGwire resembled Dave Kingman more than he did Willie Mays. McGwire is, after all, a guy who hit .220 over what should have been the prime three-year period of his career: his 25 to 27 years. And Kingman, a one-dimensional slugger, to be sure, was pretty good in that one dimension. When he retired in ’86 with 442 long balls, he was 19th on the all-time list.
Some other fun ‘roid-related stuff: in going through my archives, I found, among other humorous posts, likely the only one that marries Jason Giambi and the First Amendment. It also wins the award for one of my favorite headlines: Jason Giambi is a Gutless, Steroid-Using Punk. I’m also glad to see I was correct in calling bullshit on Jayson Stark’s mildly hysterical piece in the wake of the Rogersgate (or whatever you want to call it), when Stark wrote that “It wasn’t just his pitching hand that Rogers soiled on Sunday night. It was, regrettably, his whole sport. And that’s a stain that will take a lot longer to wash off.” Out damned spot, indeed.
Finally, in yet another air kiss to one of my favorite baseball writers in the country, make sure you check out Joe Posnanski’s column in tomorrow’s KC Star.
Post Categories: Hall of Fame & Joe Posnanski & Kenny Rogers & Mark McGwire
December 29th, 2006 → 1:10 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Barry Zito!
It’s not all that surprising: when Gil Meche and Ted Lilly are getting enough money to ensure their grandchildren’s grandchildren will be set for life, it was a no-brainer that Zito was going to get enough money to paper his yoga room in $100,000 bills. (If only there were such things as $100,000 bills. Sigh.) What is surprising is that Zito’s contract is, arguably, as dumb (from a management standpoint) as either Meche’s or Lilly’s.
Zito’s contract — $126 million for a seven-year deal* — is the richest ever given to a pitcher. (Zito is tied for the sixth-biggest contract in the history of the game…and three of those have been signed in the last two months.) He’s the third pitcher to get a $100 million deal. And he’s likely to work out about as well as the two that came before him: Mike Hampton ($121 million/8 years in ’01) and Kevin Brown ($105 million/7 years in ’99). I’m pretty sure those three guys are the only pitchers in the history of the game to get contracts for seven or more years, which should tell you something about throwing around that much money for hurlers. (The fourth and fifth richest pitcher contracts belong to Mike Mussina ($88.5 mil/6 years, ’01) and Pedro ($75 mil/6 years, ’99) — arguably the only two six-year pitcher deals that have ever worked out.) You know a deal is a shitty one for the club when it makes the Rangers (who maked out at 6 yrs/$84 mil) and the Mets (5 yrs, $75 mil) look economical in comparison.
A cursory glance at Zito’s CV does give the impression that he’s one of the game’s elite pitchers: a Cy Young award (2002), a .618 career winning percentage, (102-63), and a career 3.55 ERA. But that Cy Young award was a stone-cold theft from Pedro, who was so much better than Zito that year it was a joke, and Zito might very well have the softest .618 winning percentage in the game. As the always on-the-mark Keith Law points out, Zito has been “the beneficiary of a favorable ballpark with lots of foul territory, a favorable schedule, great bullpen support and outstanding outfield defense — and he’s not going to receive either the defense or the relief help in San Francisco. … committing long-term to a guy who at best is a No. 3 starter on a contender is madness.”
Indeed.
Anyway, hats off to Scott Boras, who got San Francisco to pay somewhere north of $25 million more than any other bidders.
Obligatory Boston-New York content: I’m with Law in considering Zito nothing more than a 3rd starter on a playoff team, but the Yankees had to be at least considering Zito as a potential left-handed replacement for Randy Johnson should the previously dominating Unit head west in a trade. I thought all the Zito to the AL East talk was a bit overblown, and I couldn’t see Cashman and Co. getting into a bidding war for a pitcher they must know isn’t all that. But it does alter the playing field a bit…
(Addendum: Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but it seems to me at least some of these guys must end up feeling a little guilty when it turns out they’ve fleeced the crap out of a club. Back at the end of Teddy Ballgame’s career, he insisted on returning some salary when he had a crappy year. Granted, he was dealing with tens of thousands and not tens of millions of dollars…but don’t you think some of the Mike Hamptons of the world wake up in cold sweats?
Just kidding! Of course they don’t! One can never have enough manicured Arizona lawns, can one?)
* The deal is being reported as being worth six-years and $126 million, but from my reading of the press reports, it’s actually worth a minimum of $133 million: Zito has an $18-million team option for 2014 that can be bought out for $7 million. The option becomes guaranteed if Zito reaches some innings milestones, which would make this worth $144 million.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Barry Zito & Scott Boras
December 26th, 2006 → 7:10 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Yup: three full days without a post. I’m pretty sure that’s a record. For that, I’m sorry. I know people need to get a break from their families. (Believe me, I know.) And there’s been precious little baseball news out there to serve as a distraction. (No matter how you try to spin it — the impact on the Zito sweepstakes, the NLCS MVP leaving the Cards, whatever — Jeff Suppan signing with the Brewers does not count as news.)
There is, however, one development that shook me out of my holiday stupor, and, I’m sorry to say, it was a distressing one: the confirmation that the Yankees and the Diamondbacks are discussing a deal that would send Randy Johnson back to Arizona. New York’s signing of Johnson was exactly the sort of boneheaded, reactionary move that has defined the Yankees of the modern era (read: since 2000). The Johnson acquisition came about immediately after Schilling had helped lift the Sox to their Series win, a fact which reputedly caused the Boss tell his minions he wanted a “warrior” of his own. He got one — an over-the-hill, overpaid warrior with a crappy attitude and a bad back — when he could have had someone like, say, Carlos Beltran…and that would have made the Yankees frightening.
Those days appear to be over. Suddenly, the Yankees are shedding payroll like they’re the Marlins, and Brian Cashman looks determined to pick up young prospects and jettison the senior citizens collecting outrageous paychecks.
This doesn’t mean the Red Sox and the Yankees will have anywhere near equal payrolls, but it does seem to indicate that Steinbrenner (and his Tampa-based suckups) are no longer making baseball-related decisions. If that’s true, it’s bad news for Boston (and everyone else). A senior member of the team’s baseball ops staff told me last year that the only reason the Sox had a fighting chance against a team with $80 million more in payroll was because New York made such stupefyingly idiotic moves. If that’s not going to be the case anymore, it means the Yankees and the Sox are going to be operating more and more on the same plane…not because, as some would have you believe, the Red Sox have become the Evil Empire II but because the Yankees are starting to act (and yes, it hurts to say this) intelligently.
Gulp. Two thousand and seven, here we come…
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Brian Cashman & George Steinbrenner & Randy Johnson & Yankees
December 22nd, 2006 → 12:33 pm @ Seth Mnookin
And the prize for lazy story of the day goes to…ESPN’s Jim Caple’s “Empirically Speaking,” the latest in an onslaught of stories about how the Red Sox’s profligate ways have, in essence, made them the newest member of the Evil Empire Club.
If you want to throw stones at the Sox for the manner in which they’ve opened their wallets this offseason, you have plenty of good-sized rocks to choose from. The most obvious, of course, is the way Theo cried poverty at the trade deadline, only to offer J.D. Drew a 5-year, $70-million deal at the season’s end. (At the very least, that seems to have been a misreading of the market.)
That, of course, would involve some analysis. Instead, Caple makes fun of the Red Sox’s $51,111,111.11 posting bid for Matsuzaka (“when you have the luxury of slapping $1,111,111.11 on a bid for the pure look of it, you definitely are not living in the same neighborhood as the Kansas City Royals or Pittsburgh Pirates (or even the Chicago White Sox, for that matter)”) and compares John Henry to the Boss (“It’s to the point that if John Henry gained 40 pounds and started acting like an ass, you would think George Steinbrenner owned the Red Sox”).
Huh? The Sox’s bid of $51 million was arrived at because they thought it possible another team would bid $50 million; that’s a common tactic in blind bids (just ask Bob Barker+). Adding on $100,000 more was done for the same reason. The extra .002 percent represented by the final $11,111.11 was done because of the number 11’s significance to Henry (which I explain in Feeding the Monster). That relatively puny amount is something the White Sox (or even the Royals) could afford.
As for comparing JWH to Steinbrenner, I’m not sure where to start. Those people that consider big, blustering George offensive think so, at least in part, because of the way he blindly throws around money, overruling Brian Cashman, his beleaguered GM, in the process. Signing the 41-year-old Randy Johnson to a multi-year deal when Cashman was advocating picking up Carlos Beltran is a case in point: there was no rationale for throwing away that kind of dough on an arthritic giant except for the fact that the Sox had Schilling and George wanted a “warrior” of his own. Regardless of what you think about the Red Sox’s posting fee, there is a clear rationale for spending resources on a pitcher like Matsuzaka, a phenomenal talent whose best years are in front of him, not behind him.
Caple sets up plenty of other equally silly straw men:
* “No team has ever paid more money for a world championship than did the 2004 Red Sox.” And no National League team has paid more money to lose a world championship than did the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals. And no team’s payroll has topped $100 million in three of the past four years without even making it to the World Series expect the New York Mets. And no team has spent over $100 million in payroll and put up a losing record except the 2002 Rangers. Since they don’t win, I guess they’re not Evil Empires but just…stupid? What’s more, because of the unbalanced schedule, comparing the payrolls of teams in different divisions doesn’t really make sense. The Yankees’ 2006 payroll was 60 percent higher than the Red Sox’s, a greater percentage than that between any division winner and either of the two teams that finished behind it.
* “Further, when those Red Sox recorded the final out of that World Series, not a single player on the field was homegrown.” True, but that has absolutely nothing to do with what the Red Sox under the new ownership group has/had done, because it hadn’t been in place long enough to have a significant impact on minor league players who’d worked their way through the system to the point where they’d be in the bigs. (What’s more, Trot Nixon and Kevin Youkilis were both on the WS roster; Tim Wakefield, Derek Lowe, and Jason Varitek had been acquired early in their careers (Tek’s never played a major league game for another team) and David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, and Bill Mueller were all on-the-cheap pick ups and not Evil Empire-like acquisitions).
* “When the Sox open the 2007 season, they may have just two homegrown players in the lineup, first baseman Kevin Youkilis and second baseman Dustin Pedroia.” And if you add pitchers, you have Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Craig Hansen, and Manny Delcarmen. I guess they don’t count. Because who needs pitching?
I know, I know: no sooner will I post this than the homer accusations will start to fly. Fine; I’m used to it. It’s not that I’m blindly defending the Red Sox, or even that I’m really defending them at all. Take a shot at the disorganized way they went about things last offseason. Unpack all the reasons the Arroyo-Wily Mo trade was a bad idea. Ridicule the panic move of reacquiring Mirabelli for Cla Meredith and Josh Bard. But whatever you do, put some thought into it.
+ I know that’s not how “The Price is Right” works. But you know what I mean. So lay off.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Jim Caple & Sports Reporters
December 21st, 2006 → 2:47 pm @ Seth Mnookin
It looks like it’ll be a slow week or so in the world of Boston baseball. (Of course, that prediction is all it’ll take for the Sox to orchestrate a trade that brings Barry Bonds to Fenway while simultaneously coaxing Roger Clemens out of his 9th retirement. Speaking of Clemens, in the new SI, Tom Verducci predicts he’ll be pitching for the Sox come July…) Both the Globe and the Herald have the mandatory non-update updates on the J.D. Drew situation (the Globe‘s is actually just an AP report); the news of the day is that Scott Boras says — surprise! — that Drew is as healthy as Cal Ripken Jr. was in the prime of his career. To give you a sense of just how sluggish things are, both papers essentially reprinted a Sox press release announcing the team had signed eight minor league free agents and invited them to camp as non-roster players, with the Globe running the piece on its site and the Herald burying it at the bottom of its Drew story. What else? Oh yeah: don’t forget about the Boston Baseball Writers Dinner.
So: gird yourself for a family weekend, remember to smile politely at the in-laws,* and don’t get so drunk you puke. Nobody likes vomit under the tree.
* Speaking of in-laws — and everyone else — I’d bet they’d love a signed, personalized copy of Feeding the Monster. Or have I already mentioned that?
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & J.D. Drew
December 21st, 2006 → 2:46 pm @ Seth Mnookin
The Phoenix has published its top ten list of the year’s best books…and Feeding the Monster is on it. Since the list is compiled alphabetically by author, there’s a good chance (about ten percent, actually), that FTM is No. 1. Take that, Looming Tower!
I know: you’re probably thinking to yourself there’s no way you’ll be able to get your hands on such a popular book less than a week before Christmas. But you’re wrong! In fact, the following stores sprinkled throughout the greater Boston area should have signed copies in stock. (Other fine booksellers will have the book, but sans my illegible signature. And, of course, there’s always Amazon.) Regardless of where you buy it, I’m still sending out signed, personalized bookplates within hours of receiving requests…
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster signed copies & Self-love
December 21st, 2006 → 2:36 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Maybe it’s because I mainly work from home, but I was saddened by the news that a bunch of old-timey rockers were suing Wolfgang’s Vault, a website that traffics in old Bill Graham (promoter/proprietor of places like the Fillmore, Winterland, etc) memorabilia. The suit — Led Zeppelin, the Dead, and Santana are among the plaintiffs — alleges that the site is exploiting the artists’ intellectual property and artisitc success. I’m no lawyer, but they’re probably right: just because Black Sabbath played in your concert hall doesn’t mean you can sell Sabbath baby tees.
Since I’m a little old to be wearing concert shirts, that doesn’t bother me. What does bum me out is the threatened shuttering of a part of the site that streams hundreds of strikingly high-quality concert recordings from Graham’s old venues. I’m listening to Dickey Betts at Winterland in ’74 right now; the site has everything from Muddy Waters to Sly & Family Stone to the Clash to the Band to (I shit you not) A Flock of Seagulls. (I ran so far away indeed.) If you’re into that kind of things, check it out. And seriously: the Sabbath shows rock. Long live Tony Iommi!
Post Categories: Good old American Music: It's in the air! & Wolfgang's Vault
