November 21st, 2006 → 10:11 am @ Seth Mnookin
It’s been a six years since the New York Times‘s Pultizer-winning, multi- multi-part series “How Race Is Lived in America” and a little over a year since the equally multi-part) “Class Matters.” What’s next on the didactic horizen? Apparently the plight of those who only break the top one percent of American wage earners.
“This year’s special contribution to the canon may be the argument that the moment has arrived for a battle that looks to most of the population like a battle among peers, which in a sense it is: the rich versus the rich, the meritocrats versus the meritocrats, the ambitious versus the ambitious. But it also pits two highly distinct groups, the merely rich and the superrich.”
“A New Class War: The Haves vs. The Haves More”
By Eric Konisberg
The New York Times
November 19, 2006
“Envy may be a sin in some books, but it is a powerful driving force in Silicon Valley, where technical achievements are admired but financial payoffs are the ultimate form of recognition. And now that the YouTube purchase has amplified talk of a second dot-com boom, many high-tech entrepreneurs — successful and not so successful — are examining their lives as measured against upstarts who have made it bigger.”
“In Web World, Rich Now Envy Superrich”
By Katie Hafner
The New York Times
November 21, 2006
Coming tomorrow: “In today’s NBA, the guards with $10 million contracts envy the centers with $40 million deals.”
Post Categories: New York Times
November 20th, 2006 → 7:48 pm @ Seth Mnookin
The $8 billion to Cubs paid out to Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano make a couple of things clear:
* Despite all the talk about a new, smarter generation of GMs, there are still folks who are more than willing to shell out crazy amounts of money regardless of the long-term consequences.
* Coco Crisp’s three-year, $15.5 million contract extension (with an $8 million team option for 2010) is looking a lot more attractive. How attractive? Well, as Buster Olney points out, Carlos Lee, one of the remaining big-time free agents on the market, must be salivating at the prospect of an obscene payday (Lee is already said to have a five-year, $60 million deal on the table). From ages 24-26, Lee averaged (and I’m eyeballing this), a .275 average, a .345 OBP, and a .475 slugging percentage. If you take at face-value the notion that Coco was injured last year, his 24 and 25 year old seasons average out to somewhere around .298, .345, .450. That’s $7 million more a year for 25 points of slugging percentage. Let’s say Coco does end up being a bust; it still puts the Sox’s decision in much better perspective.
* Speaking of perspective, the WMP deal — while still, considering the dearth of good pitching (to say nothing of good two-tone mullets), an occasionally painful one — makes even more sense. Here’s a guy who has the potential to be an absolute monster who’s under the Sox’s control for two more years.
* All of which offers one more illustration of why it made sense to offer up that $51.1 million posting figure for Matsuzaka. The Sox have the revenue to spend a lot on payroll, but don’t want to shell out obscene amounts for free agents who want to be signing until they’re 52 years old. They do, however, want to spend that money on 26-year old studs.
* Finally, if the Sox were really thinking about J.D. Drew as a Trot replacement, that option just got a helluva lot more expensive. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here; overpaying on dollars and years for someone like Drew would seem to go against everything the Sox have been working towards as of late; on the other hand, maybe they can get Drew at a relative bargain because of his injury history.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Alfonso Soriano & Coco Crisp & Daisuke Matsuzaka & J.D. Drew & Red Sox front office & Wily Mo Pena
November 20th, 2006 → 6:03 pm @ Seth Mnookin
When a friend emailed me a little while ago telling me there was video of a bizarre, racist Michael “Kramer” Richards rant from a comedy show over the weekend, I assumed I’d either be train-wreck fascinated or Borat-style anti-Semitism amused. But the actual video — Richards has some kind of freaky meltdown after being very gently heckled and starts calling black audience members “niggers” — is really upsetting, not least of all when Richards lamely tries to pass the whole thing off as some kind of social commentary (“You see, there’s still those words, those words, those words”) before walking pathetically off the stage.
Defamer (for you sports aficionados, that’s Deadspin for Hollywood) reports that Jerry himself is the first Seinfeld castmember to express regret about the whole incident. Whatever; the video is going to make it hard for Richards to pass this off as some kind of joke. (That video should also make Mel Gibson damn thankful that the cops don’t have — or haven’t released — footage of his anti-Jew rant; if that was out there for public consumption a lot more folks than just Ari “I’m Rahm’s brother” Emmanuel would be calling for a boycott.) It’s a good thing he didn’t have any kind of career after Seinfeld; if he did, it’d be over now.
Post Categories: Michael Richards & Rampaging morons & Seinfeld
November 20th, 2006 → 11:59 am @ Seth Mnookin
In other news, the Soriano signing may mean, as Gammons says, that the Cubs are turning themselves into instant contenders; it also highlights just what a good deal Manny Ramirez is for the remaining two years (and $36 mil or so) of his contract. In order to land Soriano, the Cubs shelled out $136 million over eight years. For those of you keeping track at home, that means Soriano will be earning $17 million a year through 2014, when he’ll be 38 years old. Seriously, think about that: Congressmen will need to run four times before Soriano needs to think about his next job. There’ll be two presidential elections. Even Senators will need to make their case to the public. But not Alfonso…who has never been as consistent an offensive force as Manny (and is arguably as much of an adventure in the field).
The Soriano deal shows the extent to which the market has gone crazy; it’s the biggest deal since the $141 million contract extension Todd Helton landed before the 2001 season, and pretty much marks an official return to the 2000-2001 insanity. (If history holds, only a couple of this year’s mega-signings will pan out; Manny and Mike Mussina are the only guys from the 2000 class who can be said to have paid off.)
This year’s funny money contracts also point to why the Sox’s mega-offer for the negotiating rights to Matsuzaka arguably makes sense. As the always eloquent David Leonhardt points out in yesterday’s Times, “Matsuzaka is unlike any other free agent on the market this year — or almost any other year. He is 26, an age when a typical pitcher is in his prime and yet usually too young to be a free agent. Players who come up through the minor leagues generally don’t have the chance to test the market and choose their own team until after they have spent six seasons in Major League Baseball, according to free agency rules. By then, they are typically in their late 20s, or even their early 30s, and their performance is already starting to slide. This, more than anything else, explains why so many free-agent signings turn out to be busts.” (Why is it that it takes a business writer to explain the economics of baseball? Why couldn’t, say, the Times‘s baseball columnist have attempted to understand (and explain) this?) This is also the framework through which it makes sense to look at a bunch of the Sox’s recent moves: the Arroyo for Wily Mo (D.O.B. 1/23/82) deal; the Crisp (D.O.B. 11/1/79) acquisition; even the Beckett (D.O.B. 5/15/80) deal.
It’s not even Thanksgiving (you remember Thanksgiving, right?) and the Hot Stove has already boiled over. (I’m sorry. Really: I’ll avoid the stupid stove puns for the rest of the offseason.) It’s going to be an interesting couple of months.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Alfonso Soriano & Daisuke Matsuzaka & David Leonhardt & New York Times & Red Sox front office
November 20th, 2006 → 11:45 am @ Seth Mnookin
Out of all the Hot Stove departures that have or are likely to happen, there’s something uniquely sad (albeit understandable) about that of Alex Gonzalez, a.k.a. the human vacuum cleaner. Gonzalez was the best Olde Towne Team shortstop I’ve ever seen, and the fluidity and grace with which he fielded his position was a marked and delightful contrast to those look-at-me-I’m-trying-really-hard shortstops that, say, win Gold Gloves. In years past, the crippling, seemingly crippled play of Edgar Renteria would have been par for the course at Fenway. It’s remarkable that Pokey and A-Gon have made Renteria seem like an abberation rather than the norm. (Speaking of Reds acquisitions: Mike Stanton? What the fuck is that?)
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Alex Gonzalez
November 19th, 2006 → 9:54 am @ Seth Mnookin
Seriously, the man is just taunting me.
“The Chicago Cubs must live in a fantasy world. They keep fantasizing that Kerry Wood and Mark Prior will stay healthy some season and pitch them to a pennant.
The Cubs re-signed Wood as a free agent last week despite his injury history. He has been on the disabled list 10 times in eight seasons for a total of 397 days, or 27 percent of his major league career. Last season, when he started only four games, the fewest in his career, he was on the disabled list twice for a total of 162 days out of 182.”
— Murray Chass
“On Baseball”
The New York Times
November 19, 2006
This, in response to a one-year, $1.75 million deal, incentive-laden deal for Wood, whom the Cubs intend to transform into a closer. (In August 2005, when Wood was used as a reliever, he averaged 1.4 K/9 and posted a .75 WHIP.) And this, during an offseason in which pitching is at a premium and career journeyman Jamie Walker landed a 3-year, $11.5 million contract from the Orioles.
OK, that’s it about Murray. (For today, anyway.)
Post Categories: Murray Chass
November 17th, 2006 → 3:45 pm @ Seth Mnookin
“There are other free-agent candidates for the job, including Shea Hillenbrand, Phil Nevin and Kevin Millar, who was instrumental in Boston’s success in 2004. None of the three is strictly a first baseman, but they all played the position well last season.
While Giambi made 7 errors in 477 chances for a .985 fielding percentage, Nevin made no errors in 303 chances (1.000), Hillenbrand 3 errors in 609 chances (.995) and Millar 4 errors in 830 chances (.995).”
“Slashing Payroll May Be No Bargain”
By Murray Chass
The New York Times
November 17, 2006
At this point, you need to at least entertain the notion that Chass is conducting some sort of grand, sadistic experiment in which he writes increasingly preposterous things in an effort to figure out when someone will finally be forced to make him stop.
* Alright, alright: the collective wisdom of the commenters has won out. No more on Murray.** Zoowah: I’m done. And PatsFanDK: No run ins; I’ve never even met the guy.
** But I reserve the right for very tempered comments if he writes something that really can’t be ignored.
Post Categories: Murray Chass & New York Times & Sports Reporters
