December 5th, 2006 → 6:49 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Every now and then, I start to wonder why I write about baseball on my blog when I could get paid (at least a little) by writing about it for one of those legitimate-type publications. Then I write for one of those legitimate type publications and remember that they’re interested in things like “facts” and “lucid arguments” and “coherent sentences.”
Which is to say, I wrote a piece for one of those legitmate-type publications (Slate, actually)…so if you’re curious about what I sound like when I’m forced to be lucid and coherent, here’s a piece about why I think GMs are making so many stupid deals this offseason.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Slate
December 5th, 2006 → 9:43 am @ Seth Mnookin
Lots of news today…about how there’s not lots of news. Theo says he’ll be focusing on other things and only listening to teams’ offers for Manny, a player for whom the Sox — surprise! — say they want fair value for, preferably in the form of a closer. Shaughnessy talks about how much more fun life was in the good old days; he also reminds people he used to walk eight miles to school in the raging snow. And it was uphill both ways. Teams are still going to spend outrageous sums of money for mid-level players. And Daisuke Matsuzaka remains unsigned. Meanwhile, I’ll be gone for much of the day, which inevitably means all of the big news to come out of the winter meetings will happen in the next six hours. Such is life…
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & 2006 Winter Meetings & Plus ca change
December 3rd, 2006 → 11:31 am @ Seth Mnookin
Huge offseason news: Kevin Millar is going back to Baltimore, ending months of speculation that he’d be coming back to Boston. I mean, you all thought he was going to reprise his role as a Red Sox cheerleader, right?
I didn’t think so.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Kevin Millar & Sports Reporters
December 2nd, 2006 → 12:41 pm @ Seth Mnookin
After all that huffing and puffing, it turns out the Sox didn’t offer Trot Nixon arbitration.
This annoys me. Not the fact that the Sox didn’t extend the offer (which would have tied the team to paying Nixon whatever an arbitrator decided he was worth), but because Nixon almost certainly would have gotten in the range of last year’s $7 million salary…which is far more than he’s been worth of late. (Would you pay Gabe Kapler $7 million bucks a year?) Offering arbitration to Keith Foulke, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense: Foulke wouldn’t get much more (if any more) than the $3.75 mil he already turned down…and he only get a one-year deal. So the Sox are basically guaranteed of another draft pick.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Trot Nixon
December 2nd, 2006 → 12:33 pm @ Seth Mnookin
“In choosing between re-signing with the Mets and pursuing a potential return to Atlanta, where his family lives, Glavine used every second of the six weeks he allotted himself to make a decision. With his family’s blessing, Glavine will finish off his probable Hall of Fame career as a Met.”
“Two Homes, One Team: Glavine Picks the Mets”
The New York Times
December 2, 2006
If you only read the headline and the first three grafs of Saturday’s story, you’d likely think that Tom Glavine actually did sit down, wrestle with his options, look into his heart, talk with his family, and then decide to take the Mets’ $10.5 million offer in spite of the fact that the Braves are his hometown team. Except, as the Times eventually bothers to acknowledge, “The Braves did not offer Glavine a contract.”
At least the tabs got the story right:
“December 2, 2006 — The Braves never truly advanced on Tom Glavine, and the time for his decision basically elapsed. In a sense, the Braves and Glavine eliminated each other.”
“IT’S ABOUT TOM! GLAVINE FINALLY RETURNS TO METS; ONE YEAR, $10.5M”
New York Post
“In the end, Atlanta GM John Schuerholz never bid for the 290-game winner. And rather than wait to see if he would, Glavine honored a commitment to Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon to have the matter resolved before the winter meetings, which open Monday.”
“Glavine Stays for $10.5 million”
New York Daily News
The next time I’m trying to decide between one offer I hope I have the nation’s most revered news source running my self-promoting p.r. efforts.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & New York Times & Sports Reporters & Tom Glavine
November 30th, 2006 → 12:12 pm @ Seth Mnookin
It’s three weeks into the free agency season…and when all’s said and done, here’s what we know about the 2007 roster:
Curt Schilling will be a starting pitcher
Jason Varitek will be the catcher
David Ortiz will be the DH
Jonathan Papelbon will be on the roster
And that’s it. No joke: there are no other untouchables. Youk? Pedroia? Hansen? For the right deal, they could all go. Wily Mo and Coco? Make an offer. Mike Lowell? His $9 mil price tag might seem cheap in comparison to Juan Pierre’s deal, but he could be packing his bags, too.
There are some intriguing possibilities out there, though, at least one of which hasn’t been much discussed, and that’s the possibility that Trot Nixon ends up back in Boston on a one-year deal. Said possibility was raised by Peter Gammons — an unabashed Nixon fan and someone with more than his share of confidantes in the Red Sox front office — when Gammo said Nixon could still accept arbitration from the Sox and end up back in Boston on something akin to a one-year, $7 million deal. In a frenzied free agent market, it’s somewhat shocking how little interest there’s been in the original Dirt Dog: this is, after all, a guy who’s only 33 and had a .974 OPS in 2003. Of course, since then his power has pretty much gone out the window, and he seems more fragile than J.D. Drew…but shit, he still looks like he’d be a decent option for some team out there.
If Trot does end up back in Boston and if Manny does end up somewhere else and if the Sox do end up signing Julio Lugo and J.D. Drew and Matsuzaka — a whole mess of ifs, I know — we could be looking at something like this:
Tek – C
Youk – 1st
Pedroia – 2nd
Lowell – 3rd
Lugo – SS
WMP – left
J.D. Drew – right/center
Coco – right/center
Ortiz – DH
Trot – right/left supersub
Schilling — SP
Matsuzaka — SP
Beckett — SP
Papelbon — SP
Wakefield — SP
Of course, that’s not taking into account who’d come to Boston in return for #24. And that’s sure to be something spicy.
All pure speculation. But a lot better than some of the speculation out there. Like that of Steve Phillips, whose entire career on ESPN has been devoted to showing the world why he no longer has a job as a major league GM. He said — in public! — that Barry Bonds might end up patroling left field.
This makes perfect sense. Except that:
* Bonds has said the whole city of Boston is full of racist jerks and he’d never play here
* The Sox would be getting someone who’s arguably the only person in baseball who could be more of a distraction that Manny
* His barcalounger wouldn’t fit in the Sox’s clubhouse
* He’s a near-cripple
* He’d bring a circus at a time when Theo Epstein has shown a consistent interest in reducing the circus-like atmosphere at Fenway.
Tune in tomorrow, when Phillips explains why Nomar might be included in the Dodgers’ proposed deal for Manny.
There’s more smoke and mirrors in this Globe piece from Gordo, although it’s not Edes’s fault: he’s just reporting the disinformation coming from various MLB execs. But the explanations offered up for why Manny wouldn’t want to go to San Diego — he’s not familiar with NL pitchers, the big dimensions of Petco would be bad for his power numbers, the Padres wouldn’t want a $20 mil a year guy — seem pretty silly. It’s hard to conceive of Manny being afraid of any pitcher, anywhere. And anyone who’s seen him plant a ball on the pike knows he’s not too concerned with the dimensions of whatever field he ends up playing on.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Daisuke Matsuzaka & Manny Ramirez & Peter Gammons & Steve Phillips & Trot Nixon
November 29th, 2006 → 1:46 pm @ Seth Mnookin
One of the many mistakes I made in high school was taking French — which has come in handy exactly never — instead of Spanish. So I can’t be sure that I’m reading this right, but I’m pretty sure that “eso no es problema” can be translated as, “It won’t be a problem.” That is, David Ortiz told El Diario that it wouldn’t be a problem is Manny Ramirez weren’t on the Red Sox next year.
(I’m actually more confident in my translation than in Babelfish‘s. Here are some selections from their attempt at deciphering the piece:
“‘Manny is a key card in the equipment, but… I have been developed all my single life and single it is necessary to battle, which is is that to throw p√°lante’, it indicated.
Ortiz and the Ramirez form one of the more frightful offensive pairs of the baseball of the Great Leagues and the year last with the Red Averages they added towed quadrangular 89 and 239. …
‘that is Already problems between Manny and the equipment of Boston, but we will see in what it finishes. They finish almost always with Manny in the equipment, we hoped that she happens thus ‘, added.”
Indeed. Who doesn’t hope it finish with Manny in the equipment? But I digress…)
Ortiz’s statements seem to offer even more evidence that Manny is likely on his way out; I can’t imagine Papi hasn’t been in touch with both the team and with his partner in the most frightful offensive pair of the Great Leagues. Lots of press reports seem to indicate this as well: ESPN’s Buster Olney reports the chances of the Sox dealing Ramirez are a 9 out of 10 (it was Olney who tipped me off to the El Diario piece); the Globe‘s Gordon Edes has some specifics, mentioning San Diego’s Scott Linebrick, Jack Peavy, and Adrian Gonzalez and the Mariners’ Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson as possible bounty; while the Herald’s Michael Silverman raises the possibility that the Sox are responding to Manny’s latest trade requests by doing some reverse-psychology jujitsu, fermenting all this “activity on the Ramirez trade front” as a “good-faith gesture to keep Manny happy.” (Believe me, it’s not the craziest notion in the world.)
I’ve had some more thoughts since yesterday, when I said I was stumped as to why the Sox would consider trading Ramirez and signing J.D. Drew (with whom the Sox are apparently on the verge of finalizing a 4- to 5-year deal for $14 million per), and, in my usual flip-floppy way, I think I’ve come around to why some sort of trade does make sense, or at least is, at this point, unavoidable. (My inability to take a position and stick to it is one reason I’ll never be a successful politician, although arguably not as a big of one as my sordid past). But that’ll have to wait for later…
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & David Ortiz & Making flippy floppy & Manny Ramirez
