Marlins reportedly close to stadium deal, Tuesday’s minor transactions
Crede gets a deal
Endy Chavez gets a raise
Dontrelle Willis gets some money
M’s agree to a one-year deal with Broussard to avoid arbitration
Greg Dobbs claimed off waivers by the Phillies
Most interesting to me are reports that the Marlins may be able to get a new stadium. They want a ridiculous $500m retractable-roof monstrosity, which… whatever. It appears the new governor’s bought into spending money, on the economic benefit canard, and they’re going to get more from city and local sources.
First, the Marlins really do have a horrible lease, and a bad stadium, and they’ve been one of the few teams that could complain about how badly their home hurt them. Sure, their ownership group sucked, but no rational businessman’s going to spend a ton of money when your potential returns are capped extremely low. Of course, no rational businessman would voluntarily get into that situation, especially if the previous guys spent the off-season going around burning bridges. But anyway.
Getting the Marlins into a nice stadium is good for the team and it’s good for baseball’s larger economic healthy. Having crippled franchises in a world where such a heavy amount of revenue is shared helps no one.
The second thing, though, is that MLB won another stadium using exactly the same tactics they used to get the rest of the last wave. They kicked and screamed and threatened, and finally someone caved. That’s not news, right? It is. MLB has, in their not-secret but not-generally-talked-about fund, a colossal sum of money. Selig could have written a check for a new Marlins stadium. Or they could have loaned the money to the Marlins, or financed it themselves.
Now, I understand why they might not have wanted to do those things, especially when they could threaten local governments. But they didn’t have to do that. The reason the Marlins are in such a financial bind is, to simplify too much, all their stadium money goes right to their former owner.
MLB let that go on for years. They didn’t threaten to build a new stadium, or buy the Marlins out of their lease, in order to help renegotiate the lease. They let the team gush money to him for years because it helped make the Marlins more pathetic, and that helped them get public money.
It worked.
Mid-week news-o-rama
More details on the John Thomson contract: it’s 500k guaranteed, but he gets $1.5m if he makes the Opening Day roster and it could go as high as $4m. Also, he slagged Paul Lo Duca as being one of the reasons he didn’t want to go to New York.
Mark Mulder re-signed with the Cardinals, getting $13m over 2 years.
They also signed RYAN FRANKLIN to a one year, $1m deal. If you remember, when Franklin signed with the Phillies, we laughed it up – it was a spectacularly bad fit for them and for Franklin, who to be decent needs a spacious park and a good outfield defense. It was a clear case where he took a big one-time payout over a more modest contract somewhere that might have made him look better and allowed him to collect more money for longer… and look! It happened! Even Joel Pineiro got $4m from the Red Sox, and he pitched all season with a giant fork sticking out of his back.
Random news of the Tuesday
We thought he was coming here, but it turned out he was just a backup plan they never called back. Now John Thomson’s signed with the Blue Jays.
Javy Lopez agrees to a 1yr deal with the Rockies
Edmonds went in for surgery
The Yankees, who it appears did not learn their lesson the first time, agreed to a 1yr deal with Miguel Cairo.
Gwynn, Ripken win on Hall of Fame ballot
McGwire gets a shockingly low 128 votes, 23.5 of the total, probably assisted in no small part by the “people won’t vote for McGwire” publicity drive. I’ll link to some McGwire is and isn’t a Hall of Famer pieces I read the last couple of weeks. We had a good discussion around here last time this came up (which, essentially, was dw asking me if I’d gone mad over and over), back when I was most sympathetic to the “maybe he isn’t even without considering the steroids allegations” and the more arguments I’ve read, I came back around to “he is unless you leave him off because you believe he was on steroids and you believe that’s a valid reason not to vote for someone” side.
Bert Blyleven took a step back this time, dropping from 53.3% of ballots (277/520) to 47.7% (260/277)
Jay Buhner gets one vote.
Cheater’s Guide Cover
Since I have a copy of the cover, I thought I’d share.
As always, you can pre-order The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
That is, if you’re curious, a DZ logo on that hat. I’ve asked if they can have a real one made up for me, and they’re looking into it.
Advance praise for Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
“It’s all right here, from Vaseline to superballs to licorice, from Arnold Rothstein to Gaylord Perry to Sammy Sosa — a book sure to find its place in the pantheon of underground manuals. Wielding his sardonic humor like a freshly corked bat—lightly yet forcefully — Derek Zumsteg knocks it out of the park. The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball is funny, true and entirely original.” — Jeremy Schaap, ESPN correspondent and author of CINDERELLA MAN and TRIUMPH
Pre-order now, folks. Your purchase supports me writing for USSM.
Randy Johnson heads back to Arizona…
D’oh.
ESPN link. There may be an extension involved.
Randy Johnson and some slice of salary for
RHP Luis Vizcaino
P Ross Ohlendorf
SS Alberto Gonzalez
??
Chanpuru (potpourri)
When I was still stateside and wanted to do a post with a variety of different topics, I’d call it potpourri. I’m in Okinawa, where there is no potpourri. I don’t miss it. Here, there is chanpuru. A mix. So it is.
ESPN’s uber-columnist Bill Simmons’ latest is about how cheating in baseball affects the Hall of Fame. If only someone had written a book including this subject. A guide of sorts, one might say. A “cheater’s guide,” if you will, to baseball.
Derek should also know, of course, that I would never say that reader-author interaction is asymmetrical and authoritarian. No, I believe that rhizomatic conversations occur in blog-discourse, actualizing resistant space and opening up discursive lines of flight.
Nah, I’m just messin’ with ya.
Know who is huge over here? Tsuyoshi Shinjo. You can’t get away from that guy. If he isn’t showing up at games dressed as Darth Vader, he’s driving onto the field on a Harley. Now retired, he’s thinking about politics.
All I know is, I went for a hike at a waterfall yesterday. I drove two hours to get to said waterfall. At the base of the trail was a vending machine (I know, I know, that’s a whole other issue). Shinjo was staring at me, urging me to buy coffee. I’m allergic to coffee. Bite me, Shinjo.
Only a month to spring training. Japanese spring training, that is.
Also, Rick Rizzs evidently grew a goatee. How are we supposed to tell him apart from Evil Rick Rizzs now? This development heralds a triumphant return; I can smell it. Or maybe that’s just natto.
Pineiro to the Red Sox for 1y, $4m
Free-agent pitcher Joel Pineiro is closing in on a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox, two baseball sources told ESPN.com. The deal is believed to be worth a guaranteed $4 million plus incentives, and is conditional on Pineiro passing a physical exam.
Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwow. And they’re a pretty smart organization. I have no idea what they’re thinking.
USSM Year-end Best-of: December 2006
I hope you’ve enjoyed these year-end posts. I know the off-season tends to drag, and it means sometimes we’re talking about music and doing USSM Endorsements or whatever, so I thought this might be cool. After all, we wrote 785 articles this year, not including this one, and there were 75,286 comments. It’s easy to forget the highlights, and I wanted to give some recognition of how many totally amazing articles Dave wrote. He was on fire, folks.
The Vidro Debacle: Initial reaction to the report. I tilt at windmills and pledge continuing Doyle support in “I will not hang up my High Epopt hat” It’s Official
12-15: Dave summarizes the M’s management in “After the storm“:
Incompetent.
We endorse Chris Antonetti as the next GM. We offer Antonetti for GM stickers and buttons for angry fans.
Other than that, what happened?
12-1: The M’s almost sign John Thomson, which we liked as a move.
This is how you assemble the back-end of a rotation. Sign John Thomson and Justin Lehr to give competition to the young pitchers, and use the money saved by not paying for experience to spend on position players.
John Thomson can help the Mariners, and for the price, it’s a good buy. Kudos to Bill Bavasi for finding one of the better deals in a crazy free agent market.
Later it turns out they agreed to terms if the team’s pursuit of other options failed, after which they… well, they managed to get other guys. I can’t help but think Thomson would make a better option than at least one, but anyway.
12-2: I look at where the M’s stood, and what they needed to do heading into the meetings. Dave made Winter Meetings predictions. If only it had gone like this.
12-11: Miguel Batista signs.
12-12: Future Hall of Fame denials, in the vein of McGwire’s troubles.
11-22: Sean Burroughs provides me the chance to get overly-detailed about a minor signing. Hee hee hee.
12-26: Free agent market and the boom and bust cycle
12-27: Why trading for Randy Johnson would help the rotation
12-28: Dave reviews the 2006 Free Agent Signings (pre-Zito)