I think Mr. Perez is overestimating the trade market for good but unspectacular pain-in-the-ass arb-eligible relievers with gaudy save numbers.

The saves will get him a nice payday in arbitration, but I don't think anyone's going to give up anything super-useful for him, and the Indians aren't in a position to give away decent ballplayers because they're grumpy. I wouldn't be shocked to see the Tribe keep him around, if only because they can't get anything better in trade.

But maybe I'm overestimating opposing GMs.

If they do trade him, though, I'd love for him to end up with the Astros. (Sorry, Lisa.)

He has weird numbers this year. 3.51 ERA for an ERA+ of 112, but good peripherals: K/9 10.4 BB/9 2.0 HR/9 0.7. His bases empty/runners on splits aren't terrible (well, 100 pts of OPS...is that terrible?), and actually is better with RISP than with the bases empty.

#1 Does it matter if Perez has something approaching a valid point? Probably not to ownership or management.

"I think he'll fit right in with our team concept."

"That reminds me, I was going to ask you. What exactly *is* our team concept? "

#4, Probably doesn't matter to management.

I agree with much of what Perez said, but it seems pretty clear that he's intentionally saying stuff that he knows will make them mad. I think the intent is the problem, not necessarily that he expressed disagreement with the direction of the ballclub. Barry Larkin freaked out back in the day when the Reds traded Lenny Harris, but nobody really cared because he wasn't trying to provoke a reaction, he was just genuinely pissed off.

Mike Ilitch is richer than Croesus and wants to win a World Series before he kicks it, hence the Tigers' payroll. How rich is Larry Dolan? Charles Dolan is richer than Croesus, but I don't know about Larry. Is he ridiculously rich, or merely the sort of rich guy who can own a ballclub?

I thought this post was interesting.

"Herodotus tells us that Croesus was so rich that he had every guest take as much gold as he could carry, upon leaving."

According to this definition, how rich you would need to be in order to be as rich as Croesus would depend on how strong Croesus' guests were, and how strong your guests were.

We will assume for the sake of argument that your average guest, motivated by the intensity of human greed, would be able to leave carrying 75 pounds.

The price of gold currently stands at $887.00 per ounce

Therefore, in order to be as rich as Croesus, you would have to allow every guest to leave with $1,064,400.00.

We will assume that your average extremely rich person has 10 guests per week (being a low level misanthrope rather than an extremely rich person, this is an uninformed guess, since I rarely have guests and never let them leave with money).

At this rate of guests, in order to be as rich as Croesus you would need to part with $10,644,000 per week, or $553,488,000.00 per year.

In 2007, Ron Paulson made 3.7 billion dollars. Based on the above figures, allowing a paltry 700 million for living expenses, Ron Paulson is approximately 6 times richer than Croesus.

Unless he has a large number of very strong friends. Adjust figures accordingly.

I thought this post was interesting.

It's clever but wrong. Two problems:

1. Croesus wasn't giving away all of his money.
2. This wasn't a dinner party, this was just a present to one guy, Alcmaeon.

I think I have a better estimate, once I do some math.

I should mention that Herodotus' Histories is one of my favorite books. OK, this is Croesus preparing a sacrifice for the Oracle at Delphi. He's planning to ask what to do about Cyrus of Persia, and he wants a good answer from the Oracle (he gets one, but then completely blows the interpretation):

After this with great sacrifices he endeavoured to win the favour of the god at Delphi: for of all the animals that are fit for sacrifice he offered three thousand of each kind, and he heaped up couches overlaid with gold and overlaid with silver, and cups of gold, and robes of purple, and tunics, making of them a great pyre, and this he burnt up, hoping by these means the more to win over the god to the side of the Lydians: and he proclaimed to all the Lydians that every one of them should make sacrifice with that which each man had. And when he had finished the sacrifice, he melted down a vast quantity of gold, and of it he wrought half-plinths making them six palms in length and three in breadth, and in height one palm; and their number was one hundred and seventeen. Of these four were of pure gold weighing two talents and a half each, and others of gold alloyed with silver weighing two talents. And he caused to be made also an image of a lion of pure gold weighing ten talents; which lion, when the temple of Delphi was being burnt down, fell from off the half-plinths, for upon these it was set, and is placed now in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing six talents and a half, for three talents and a half were melted away from it.

We're not going to work out the value of 3000 animals of each kind and of the stuff piled on the couches. The half-plinths: 4 pure gold half-plinths of 2.5 talents plus 113 half-plinths that are 20% gold, so 32.6 talents of gold. OK, a Greek talent is 26 kg, so this is 847.6 kg of gold. One site says that gold is currently $54.62/gram, so $54,620/kg. So that's $46,295,912 of gold. Add to that 226 talents (5876 kg) of silver. Silver is currently about $1048/kg, so that's $6,158,048 of silver. Make it about $52 million for the gold plinths. Add in the 10-talent gold lion and you're at something like $66 million in bullion. Make it $75 million when you pay for all of the other stuff.

Now, this is Croesus' liquid wealth. First of all, we have to assume that he's not sending away all of his liquid wealth. For one thing he's planning on attacking Persia, and wars are expensive, especially ones as huge as this is going to be. Also, baby needs a new pair of shoes (edit: Croesus' kid died tragically, so this is in bad taste) and etc. So we can guess that this is, what, 10% or his liquid wealth? So we'll say $750 million in liquid wealth. As for illiquid wealth, Croesus tells us:

As time went on, when nearly all those dwelling on this side the river Halys had been subdued, (for except the Kilikians and Lykians Croesus subdued and kept under his rule all the nations, that is to say Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynoi, Chalybians, Paphlagonians, Thracians both Thynian and Bithynian, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aiolians, and Pamphylians)

IOW, Croesus owned the western half of Anatolia. This is approximately one metric #### ton of illiquid wealth. We should consider that the ancient economy converted production into cash at a much slower rate than the modern economy, so Croesus, Inc. will have a wild price/sales ratio. Google's ratio currently sits at around 5. If we take that as an absolute minimum for Croesus then we should start looking at him with about $3.8 billion in illiquid wealth to go along with his $1 billion in cash. So a minimum estimate of $4.8 billion in total wealth would put Croesus at 61st on the Forbes list of wealthy Americans. Sam Zell, I have just learned, is not richer than Croesus, and neither are Mike Ilitch or Charles Dolan.

Barry Larkin freaked out back in the day when the Reds traded Lenny Harris, but nobody really cared because he wasn't trying to provoke a reaction, he was just genuinely pissed off.

Maybe Perez is just annoyed, too, and not just trying to provoke a reaction. That Larkin article notes that Larkin had already asked to be traded when that incident happened (although he also noted that his action wasn't a protest); I don't recall Perez asking to be traded.

I feel like the only way to get out of this that Perez is trying to be traded is to take Calcaterra's word for it.

How does Perez think Dolan can match the free spending ways of the Lewis Wolfs of the league?

#10 is the greatest post I have seen on this site in an Olympiad!

It's clever but wrong. Two problems:

1. Croesus wasn't giving away all of his money.
2. This wasn't a dinner party, this was just a present to one guy, Alcmaeon.

3. Gold prices are based on the Troy ounce and there are not 16 of them in a pound.

How does using the current value of gold make any sense?

How does using the current value of gold make any sense?

You need a stable unit of measure somewhere in order to make the (inherently impossible) comparison between the relative wealth of an ancient hereditary despot who conquered the Asiatic Greeks and a modern pizza baron who pays Miguel Cabrera. If we were trying to do this reasonably then we could convert the cost of gold into the price of bread or something like that, but then you get caught up in the changing nature of an individual's expenses (i.e., thanks to mass production food is cheaper now than in antiquity).

Realistically, there's not going to be a good way to make a comparison, except to that Croesus was the richest man in the world, like an ancient Bill Gates (or Carlos Slim Helú or Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller or whoever).

BTF is awesome sometimes.

Where else can you get this insight on ancient history? Nowhere.

Odd analysis from Perez after management essentially doubled his salary in the off season.

1. This outburst and his earlier rant about fans not showing up are in opposition to one another. A huge reason fans don't show up are that they see the same things Perez is talking about here (Tigers sign Prince Fielder, Indians sign...?), and when the team ends up being mediocre they feel validated.

2. Why don't the Indians get more criticism? Is it because management is seen as "progressive"? Is it because everyone in the industry likes Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti? Could you imagine if one of the old-school guys with a target on his back in the sabermetric community (Sabean?) had this kind of track record?

Dear Croesus,

Please buy the Indians.

-- the baseball fans of Cleveland

I think the Indians front office doesn't get much criticism because no one thinks they're good anymore. They took a bunch in 2008/09.

Dear Croesus,

Please buy the Indians.

"If you sign Grady Sizemore to a ten-year, $350 million contract, you will destroy a great baseball franchise."

"I'll destroy the Yankees? Great! Hey Antonetti, we're giving Sizemore $35 million a year! Get it done!"

Why don't the Indians get more criticism? Is it because management is seen as "progressive"? Is it because everyone in the industry likes Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti? Could you imagine if one of the old-school guys with a target on his back in the sabermetric community (Sabean?) had this kind of track record?

I've never quite understood the love for Shapiro, but I'm open to the fact that I'm missing something (like the fact that they were one game away from the World Series in 07, which is a fair counter). They seem to be one of the handful of completely irrelevant teams most years.

I've never quite understood the love for Shapiro, but I'm open to the fact that I'm missing something (like the fact that they were one game away from the World Series in 07, which is a fair counter). They seem to be one of the handful of completely irrelevant teams most years.

Shapiro had one of the least consistent trade records around. He was basically given the team's three best players for nothing, but when trading away stars he got horrible returns.