Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Margalus: Jose Bautista demonstrates a lesson in lineup construction for Hawk Harrelson
(www.southsidesox.com)
Joey Bats: Show-up time.
Read More...As Jose Bautista came to the plate as the second hitter of the game, Steve Stone noted that Bautista was the rare slugger in the No. 2 hole. He couldn’t really explain it, but that didn’t stop him and Hawk Harrelson from attempting to discredit it.
Stone: One of the reasons why Bautista’s hitting second—and we wondered about that—was that Alex Anthopoulos, their general manager, feels that the best hitter in your lineup should hit second. And this is a guy that ...
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1 2 >The Yankees. Twice.
he's playing the role bud asks him to play.
jerry is comfortable in this role. he enjoys it
jerry is comfortable in this role. he enjoys it
So you're saying he can't be a bigger a$$hole, then. I'm pretty sure happily agreeing to be Bud Selig's henchman is the ceiling for a$$holitude.
jerry can get worse, especially if you are negotiating with him.
A plague that knocks out between 30 and 100 million people?
Don't give Reinsdorf any ideas.
They gone!
What did he do yesterday?
bulls fans went beserk on the internets
Wouldn't the White Sox be pretty high up the list of candidates after that? The rest of the teams all have pretty new stadiums or are very successful financially.
I was at the event. Reinsdorf was asked about a previous comment he apparently made about being willing to trade his Bulls titles for his White Sox title. His response was that he made the statement prior to winning the title so it should be taken with a grain of salt. He then paused for a moment and went on to explain that when the Bulls won the titles and had their celebrations there were thousands of people at the parade and everyone was happy. He said when the WS won the title there were more people and there was nowhere in Chicago you could go where people weren't talking/happy about it (I assume this excludes Cubs-land). He made some quip about seeing White Sox banners strewn on gravesites. He then paused again and tried to sum up all of his comments thusly, "Basketball is a great, great sport. Baseball is a religion."
Assuming, of course, that Reinsdorf has an independent conciousness.
the bulls fans i hear from fume about reinsdorf willingness to spend on the white sox and his alleged parsimonious ways with the bulls
i don't follow the nba well enough to know if this characterization is remotely accurate
jerry always makes money on a transaction. even if the short-term transaction looks bad there is a longer-term reinsdorf goal where the return is much, much bigger
he's in a place now where everything in chicago that has a chance of being real money is run past jerry. if he says its garbage folks scatter. he can kill a deal by mere facial expressions
and by the accounts i have heard he doesn't say something is garbage and then swoop in for himself. he just says crap is crap and lets folks do what they will.
I thought this was the most interesting part of the article...perhaps it has been reported before but it was news to me.
The problem is that it is usually hard to find two teams to contract. Contracting the Expos in 2001 was obvious, but the second team could have been the Angels (up for sale), the Twins (exceptionally greedy owner) or the Marlins (nobody went to the games). Each of those three had problems that made it difficult to carry through on the threat. The real reason contraction was avoided was because there was a good alternative market (Washington DC) to try out.
At the moment, the front-runners for contraction have to be the Rays (nobody goes to the games) and the Athletics (currently being held to ballpark ransom). There is nowhere else for these teams to go that looks as if it might be a good alternative. On the other hand, neither of them has been quite run into the ground by ownership the way the Expos were.
Although I'm not expecting contraction to be put on the agenda again, it wouldn't surprise me if it did reappear during the reign of the next commissioner. Especially if the next commissioner is as close to Reinsdorf as the current one.
I could genuinely threaten Stephen Strasburg that I'm going to hit a home run off him, but he won't care, because I can't actually do it.
On the bright side, given the number of times Bud has extended his term, maybe Reinsdorf will be dead by then.
That's laying it on a little thick. He's no Pritzker, that's for sure.
I dunno. Are you reasonably athletic?
I really don't know what the issue is. I guess it would still be fewer starting, and therefore higher paying, jobs. I'm also not arguing FOR expansion. I'm just asking if there is someway the owners could make it palatable to the players.
My suggestion, if contraction comes to pass (and I hope it doesn't): Dissolve the Diamondbacks and Rays, then have the D'backs' owners buy the A's and move them to Phoenix.
The Twins were also seriously considered as well.
Trading starting spots for spots at the end of the bench is not an even trade from the players' perspective.
But those are mostly near minimum wage jobs, but you're losing 16-18 starting position player jobs, plus 10 starting pitching jobs.
As someone noted recently in another discussion, some team always has to be at the bottom in revenue and spending. Owners who are complaining about paying revenue sharing aren't thinking about how much more they are making than they used to, or how much they will eventually clear when selling their franchise. Even success can be expensive, it turns out.
The Royals, Angels and Dodgers also play in parks not built during the cycle. And the Rays' dump is actually only a year older than the first of the new parks.
You'd have to bump the minimum a lot. It just seems to me that if the problem is two franchises seriously failing and everyone else making money that there should be a way to do it.
I don't think that is the case and would hate to see it happen. If anything, I'd like to see expansion to 32.
If you're doing this, I think you should probably dissolve the Marlins and move the Rays to Miami too.
Not in any way that would remain a positive for the owners, so it isn't going to happen. The math just doesn't work.
Per this article, the Rays lease to play in the Trop is pretty ironclad until 2027. I don't know if that would necessarily rule out contraction*, but it does basically kill any chance of dissolving one team and moving the Rays franchise into that spot.
*Though it sounds like St. Pete would fight that as hard, if not harder, than the MLBPA
I seriously doubt they were ever seriously considered. Contraction was a tactic used against cities and the union.
Compromise - move to Orlando...I'd rather see Mickey Mouse shooting off fireworks in centerfield than that monstrosity the Marlins put up to celebrate homeruns.
IS a tactic. IS a tactic, even if no one takes it seriously anymore. You don't sell franchises for billions of dollars and then cry about the economics of your business.
No, the Twins were the basic impetus behind the whole deal. An aged Carl Pohlad supposedly offered to sell the Twins to MLB for $150 million with the intention of killing them off. Here's Jim Caple of ESPN:
In a shameless 1997 attempt to frighten Minnesota into a deal, he threatened to sell the Twins to a North Carolina businessman who said he would move the team to what is essentially Mayberry. When that ludicrous deal fell through and Pohlad still was unable to receive public funding, he volunteered the Twins for contraction after the 2001 season in return for what is believed to be a $150 million payoff.
Exactly. MLB attendance year-to-date is up well over 2 millions from 2011, despite the effects of what is still a very weak economy. TV revenue keeps going ever higher, with more teams cashing in on their own cable networks or getting much increased fees from rights holders to prevent them from going that way. Extra Innings and the Internet have opened up revenue streams that were non-existent when the owners last resorted to the contraction ruse as a bargaining ploy. MLB is in its best financial shape ever.
MLB should allow the Rays and Marlins to relocate since their fan bases are pathetic.
H. Future Contraction
"The Office of the Commissioner and/or the Clubs shall not undertake
any centralized effort to reduce the number of Major League Clubs
effective for a season covered by this Agreement; provided, however,
that nothing in this Article XV(H) shall preclude the owner or owners
of an individual Club from taking action (e.g., bankruptcy) that would
result in the elimination of such Club. (See Attachment 8.)"
The key paragraph of Attachment 8 states that:
"The Parties agree, by this letter, that their agreement on this topic and the bargaining that preceded it shall not be used by either party as evidence that the topic is or is not a mandatory subject of bargaining in any subsequent litigation, including any grievance or NLRB proeeding."
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