Search THT:

Or you can search by:

January 12, 2012

On Ryan Madson: Parsing Boras’ comments

Philadelphia general manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. and super-agent Scott Boras are having a skirmish of words regarding the Phillies' non-signing of closer Ryan Madson. Boras seems to be saying the Phillies reneged on their offer of $44 million over four years, while Amaro says, "there never was an agreement."

Obviously, since Madson is now a Cincinnati Red, Amaro is correct that there never was an agreement—at least not one so formal that it led to a signed contract. However, there may have been a verbal agreement, a handshake deal, a nod-and-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more pact that simply needed to be put to paper and submitted to Major League Baseball's offices for confirmation.

Or there may not have been. If we read exactly what Boras said, it becomes clear that he did not say that he and the Phillies had agreed to a four-year, $44 million contract.

Boras first stated, "We never rejected any offer from Philadelphia at four years and $44 million. We advised Philadelphia that we would agree to such a proposal." He followed that comment up with, "We agreed to a four-year, $44 million offer, and Philadelphia decided to sign someone else."

Let's take a look at the first sentence. While he and Madson never rejected the contract in dispute, Boras didn't say the Phillies made such an offer. You can't reject an offer that isn't made, so Boras may not be lying. Also, "never rejected" is not the same as "accepted."

His second sentence says they would have taken such a deal. Hey, so would I, but no one made me such an offer and, again, maybe the Phillies didn't make one to Boras for Madson's services.

The last sentence uses "we" vaguely. Which "we" agreed to the four-year, $44 million contract he mentions? It could be that "we" is Boras and Madson. Perhaps those two men decided between themselves that such an offer would be acceptable. Good for them, but if the Phillies never tendered such a deal, there was nothing for Boras to accept.

Scott Boras obviously is a phenomenally successful agent. He has made his clients billions of dollars and himself a nice cut of those salaries. He produces gold-lettered, platinum-laced, diamond-encrusted binders to demonstrate how clients such as Alex Rodriguez and Prince Fielder are the greatest athletes in the history of the universe and should be paid like minor deities. Boras does his job extraordinarily well.

But his success does not come from blunt directness. It comes from deception, obfuscation and borderline flat-out lying. Boras knows where that borderline is, and he has no fear of going up to it and nudging his toes right up against that line. It's what he gets paid so well to do.
Posted by: Greg Simons

December 29, 2011

2011 A’s vs. 1997 Marlins

In 1997, the Florida (now Miami) Marlins won the World Series, bringing joy and enthusiasm to the team and its fan base. Days later, the destruction of the team began as management shipped off nearly every high-priced veteran it could to save money.

The excuse was that the team couldn't afford such a large payroll without a larger fan base, and more fans would come only if the team got a new stadium. Well, it took nearly 15 years, but that new stadium is finally a reality, and it looks to be a stunning ballpark, though the structural integrity and financing of the facility have been called into question.

In 2011, the Oakland A's went 74-88. There were no victory parades, but the team's teardown has been as thorough as the Marlins' was 14 years ago.

Starting pitchers Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez have been shipped off to the Diamondbacks and Nationals, respectively, in return for a gaggle of hot prospects. Middle reliever Craig Breslow joined Cahill in the move to Arizona, while closer Andrew Bailey and outfielder Ryan Sweeney were just sent to Boston for three more promising youngsters.

Josh Willingham, David DeJesus, Coco Crisp and Hideki Matsui—all solid, if unispiring, offensive contributors—will not be returning to Oakland. The roster has been stripped so bare that at one point Sweeney was listed on the A's official Web site depth chart as the starting outfielder at all three positions.

Like the Marlins, the A's say they need a new ballpark to compete. And with the Angels signing Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, and the Rangers coming off back-to-back World Series appearances and acquiring the rights to Yu Darvish, they certainly need something to keep pace.

Rumors abound that the team soon will be allowed to move to San Jose, though Bud Selig's Blue Ribbon Committee that has been studying the issue for a few years now has not made any formal proposals. Given how long the Marlins waited for a new facility, A's fans shouldn't hold their breath.

When the Marlins tore things down, they shaved massive financial commitments from their books, but at least they had a title to show for their investment. The A's are dealing away young, cheap, cost-controlled talent for even younger, even cheaper, cost-controlled potential. And they have nothing to show for their efforts other than the possibility of being the cheapest, most anonymous ball team since the 1998 Marlins.

Things were awful in South Florida in '98, as the team fell from 92 victories the season before to a mere 54 wins. The A's starting point is 74 wins. An equal 38-game dropoff would yield a 36-126 record that would make the 1962 Mets look like world beaters.

Oakland is unlikely to be quite that bad in 2012 and beyond, but it's going to be horrendously ugly for the next few years. It may even be so bad that this monstrosity will look good by comparison.
Posted by: Greg Simons

July 22, 2011

A bargain worth considering

All right, in the interest of full disclosure: yours truly is the furthest thing from an objective source regarding this book. The author, Bill Gould, befriended me and I read his manuscript and offered him my editing advice. And more than that, I noticed a couple of questionable baseball facts in the manuscript, so Bill hired me to serve as his baseball fact-checker.

So, if you find any misstatements of baseball fact in this book, I'm the party to blame!

But with all those caveats noted, Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil is a must-read book for anyone seriously interested in the labor history of baseball.
Click for more...

Posted by: Steve Treder

April 09, 2011

Lucky Eddie

Perhaps it isn't the singular event the baseball world has been waiting for, but nonetheless it's good news for those with an interest in the history of the sport: Eddie Robinson has published his autobiography. Lucky Me: My Sixty-Five Years in Baseball is a good read.

Robinson wasn't a Hall of Fame-quality player, nor was his long post-playing career in the front offices of various organizations one of the greatest, but in both phases Robinson was quite good. And he was extremely well-traveled, playing for the Indians, Senators, White Sox, Athletics, Yankees, Athletics (again), Tigers, Indians (again), and Orioles, and then working in coaching and multiple executive capacities for the Orioles, Colt .45s, Athletics, Braves, Rangers, and Yankees, including stints as the General Manager in Atlanta and Texas. If one is inclined to think that on such a long and winding road Robinson met a lot of interesting people and has a lot of interesting stories to tell, this book amply proves one correct.

Click for more...

Posted by: Steve Treder

September 21, 2009

What do hockey pucks from 1996 have to do with baseball in 2009?

While doing some background reading for my 2010 Hardball Times Annual article, I ran across an interesting article about the development of the FoxTrax hockey puck in 1995 and 1996. The system was developed by Fox Sports to allow their TV broadcast to superimpose a blue glow around the hockey puck and add a comet trail to slap shots to help new American hockey viewers follow the action.

What does this have to do with baseball, you ask? [Dora the Explorer-like pause for you to ask.] I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you.

The development of the FoxTrax puck is part of the history that gave us PITCHf/x. The people involved in the FoxTrax development were expert engineers in fields like navigation electronics from Etak, radar systems from defense think-tank SRI International, and video effects from Silicon Graphics. Many of these people went on to found Sportvision, including current Chief Technical Officer Marv White, Sr. VP of Engineering Ken Milnes, and Chief Scientist Rick Cavallaro.

One of the chief treats associated with my attendance at the 2008 PITCHf/x Summit was an hour sitting in Ken Milnes' office with Alan Nathan talking sports engineering. Among other things, Ken showed us a FoxTrax hockey puck and talked about its development. So I had some idea of the technical ancestry of PITCHf/x and the engineering challenges that Sportvision and its FoxTrax predecessor had tackled. But the interesting thing about this article by Rick Cavallaro was the detail with which he described the engineering challenges involved and how the FoxTrax team took on and solved each one. If you're interested in engineering and how it applies to sports, I highly recommend you read the whole article.

I'll give just a few highlights here as they relate to PITCHf/x, HITf/x, and the upcoming FIELDf/x. The FoxTrax team had to learn about cameras--tracking the pan, tilt, and zoom of broadcast cameras and correcting for lens distortion. These lessons have direct applicability to tracking the orientation of the PITCHf/x cameras and reversing the effects of their lens distortion.

They developed an x-y-z coordinate system for the ice rink and method for registering the location of objects detected by the cameras in this coordinate system. This registration system has been adapted for the calibration of PITCHf/x cameras to an x-y-z coordinate system for the baseball diamond. They also learned about the on-the-ground tricks required for wiring up systems at hockey arenas and connecting them up to their broadcast truck, lessons later applied during the PITCHf/x installations during 2007 and the ongoing maintenance of those systems.

If this topic interests you, check out another telling of the same story and of Sportvision's history.
Posted by: Mike Fast


Click here for more THT Notes.