October 19th, 2006 → 3:46 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Remember that unspecified threat made against NFL stadiums this Sunday? Don’t let it ruin your tailgating plans: it turns out the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by two bloggers who were trying to outdo each other by coming up with the scariest terror threat.
Post Categories: Blogging & Rampaging morons
October 19th, 2006 → 3:36 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Hey Mets fans, remember Armando Benitez? Come on, I know you do: he’s the guy that a) blew Game 1 of the 2000 World Series, b) blew Game 2 of the that year’s NLDS. c) blew Game 3…actually, I’m not a sadist. If you want the gory details, you can read all about them on your own.
Bill Wagner was supposed to finally put an end to the Benitezes (and Braden Loopers) of the world parading through Shea. He’s a flame-throwing stud who has topped 35 saves in six of the last eight years, and he was injured the two other years. But since arriving in New York, Wagner has been anything but the Sandman; if anything, Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out” would be more appropriate entrance music. I know: Wagner had a great second half. I know: he converted 21 straight save opportunities. I also know that in 1999, Benitez saved 42 games and had an ERA under 2.00.
It was only the fact that the Mets had a four-run lead that allowed the team to escape with a win last night, as Wagner did his best to make So Taguchi this year’s Chad Curtis (or Bucky Dent). (It’s never a good sign when a closer’s “diary” entry is headlined “This One Didn’t Get Away From Me.”)
The Mets might very well beat the Cardinals tonight and head to Detroit for Game 1 of the World Series on Saturday. Once there, Wagner likely won’t matter much; the Tigers are gonna smoke whichever one of these teams limps its way to the pennant. But Wagner’s struggles are a perfect example of why I think Omar Minaya is — and I’ll try to put this delicately — not the sharpest GM at the winter meetings. Wagner’s 35, and he’ll collect $11 mil a year until he’s 38. He’s also 5 feet, 10 inches (a full four inches shorter than Mariano)…which means Minaya the miracle worker is on the hook for another $62 million over the next three years for two pitchers (Wagner and Pedro) who are both shorter than I am and both weigh about the same as I do…and I’m not a big guy. If you could short baseball players, I’d put a lot of money on these two not being worth it in 2008.
I know it’s possible (albeit difficult) to spend a buttload of money and still lose a buttload of games without any previous success to show for it (see Knicks, New York); Minaya seems intent on demonstrating how easy it is to spend a boatload of money as a way of crippling your team for years to come. And when they don’t win this year’s World Series, all he’ll have to show for it is the fact that his team played further into October than the Yankees.
Post Categories: 2006 Playoffs & Billy Wagner & Not so oblique references to Billy Joel songs & Omar Minaya
October 18th, 2006 → 3:09 pm @ Seth Mnookin
The Gather.com chat is done and gone, but as far as I can tell, you can access the whole thing even if you’re not a member of the site. So if you’re curious about: how I write, why I write, what I write, if I’ll ever write a novel, if there’s anyone more paranoid than Nomar, if a $20-million-a-year salary affects your perspective on the world, whether or not Dan Shaughnessy and I have had any heart-to-hearts recently, the mood in the clubhouse during the ’04 playoffs, the mood in the clubhouse during the ’05 playoffs, and whether I wanted to deck Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore for making out on the field in St. Louis…well, it’s all in there.
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster reactions
October 18th, 2006 → 8:47 am @ Seth Mnookin
Beginning at 1 pm today, I’ll be doing a two-hour online chat on Gather.com about Feeding the Monster. From what I can tell, you need to be a member of the site — described in their promotional literature as “a place where you can share the things that matter to you with the people that matter to you, too” to actually ask questions, but I could be wrong on that one. In any event, it should be interesting, or amusing, or possibly both.
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster Readings
October 18th, 2006 → 8:42 am @ Seth Mnookin
Ah, yes: the burden of getting back into the swing of doing “work” work. It allows time for that flurry of midnight-on-Sunday posts, but some weekdays are tougher…
Which doesn’t mean there’s not time for some thoughts and updates. (Drumroll, fanfare, etc).
* The Mets loss last night has Jayson Stark claiming that a Cardinals NLCS victory would make history: “When the calendar says it’s October and a team that won 83 games is on the verge of beating a team that won 97 games, that’s more than just an upset. It’s an upset that slips instantly into the realm of myth and legend.” I call bullshit. Wild-card teams have won the World Series three of the last four years. The Mets are missing their ace, their starter, and one of their starting outfielders. The Mets were favored, with most of the ‘experts’ giving them the series in six or seven games, but no one expected a route. Coming back from an 0-3 deficit? That’s history. Beating the Mets in a seven game season? If it happens, it’s a good story for another week or so, or until whichever NL team makes it gets its ass handed to them by the Tigers.
* In his ESPN.com Insider column, Buster Olney discusses what makes a successful manager. (It’s clearly more than simply winning 95 games. See Little, Grady.) Olney puts “Can he lead/does he engender respect” first, with in-game strategizing third (out of four). I’m with Buster on the lack of importance of in-game management, and I generally agree with the “can he lead” thing, although I think the single most important job a manager has is getting a bunch of rich, indulged, jealous, back-biting man-children to stay inspired during the course of an exhausting, numbing, 162-game season.
* For those of you actually interested in how the publishing industry wastes money, Monday’s Journal article (“Dream Scenario: In Era of Blockbuster Books, One Publisher Rolls the Dice”) is well worth reading. Unfortunately, it’s only available to online subscribers. It’s essentially a summary of how Holt managed to put all its eggs in an incredibly leaky basket; the most amazing thing about this article is that the book’s editor, who charitably can be said to have cost his company more than a million bucks, decided to cooperate with the reporter.
* And, of course, there’s good old Murray. The Chass-man has been on a roll this week; such a roll, in fact, that the mere thought of discussing each and every one of his articles makes me feel slightly ill. But here are some quick highlights:
In Monday’s column, Chass writes that while it’s “difficult to imagine a worse performance” than the one Steve Trachsel turned in on the mound for the Mets, the Elias Sports Bureau — Chass’s handy substitute for, you know, reporting — tells him that actually, some pitchers have fared worse in the playoffs.
Then, on Tuesday, Chass acknowledges he was wrong, but naturally he’s not to blame: “Although it said here yesterday that Trachsel’s outing wasn’t the worst start in a postseason game, Elias Sports Bureau determined that by one measurement it was.”
Finally, in today’s Times, Chass helpfully explains that players want higher batting averages: “Going 2 for 17 means Wright is hitting .118. That beats .063 (1 for 16), but it is nevertheless a minuscule average…”
As always, Chass’s columns are free to the reader, unlike the paper’s other sports columnists…
Post Categories: 2006 Playoffs & Book Publishing & Buster Olney & Jayson Stark & Murray Chass
October 16th, 2006 → 10:40 am @ Seth Mnookin
Nate from Connecticut has a question for all you number freaks out there: have the Yankees spent more in player payroll this millenium to not win a World Series than the Red Sox did in 86 years? The Yankees, as has been wildly reported, have spent around a billion dollars on player salaries since 2000. The Sox, according to Nate’s computations, spent around $875,000,000 to not win a Series between 1985 and 2003, leaving them approximately $125 million for the period in between 1918 and 1984. Baseball-reference.com only has a salary database going back to ’85; anyone know where Nate can find the rest of the info he needs?
October 16th, 2006 → 10:25 am @ Seth Mnookin
Back in September, Yale professor Jeb Rubenfeld published his first book, The Interpretation of Murder. It was the most hyped and most publicized first novel in a long time; Henry Holt had a mind-boggling first printing of 185,000 to go along with a 15-city book tour and an almost unprecendented $500,000 marketing campaign.
Rubenfeld’s book has been, to put it gently, a huge, spectacular, awe-inspiring flameout. It never hit the best seller list, and to date, BookScan reports that it’s sold approximately 15,000 copies; BookScan represents somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of book sales, which would put Interpretation somewhere between 21,500 and 25,000 sales. To put that in perspective, if Holt had simply spent its $500,000 on buying the book on Amazon, it could have bought around 28,000 copies and given them out as holiday presents.
EDIT: I haven’t seen it, but apparently there’s a WSJ story in today’s paper about this very subject. And here I thought I was all ahead of the curve.
