Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Moores to sell the Padres


It's the divorce that keeps on taking:

San Diego Padres owner John Moores told MLB.com this weekend that he has hired Goldman Sachs to identify potential buyers for the ballclub.
Moores, who bought the team in 1995 for approximately $80 million, said the international banking firm has been hired as a financial advisor to study selling the team either in its entirety, in part or not at all.

"My strong desire is to stay involved, because the last decade and a half has been a terrific experience," Moores said in a telephone interview. "But I have no idea how long this is going to take or how it's going to turn out. I don't know at this point what the combination will be and whether I'll be involved in it."

By virtue of the community property laws, Moores' soon-to-be-ex-wife Becky has to approve of any sale. If life was a sitcom, the part of Becky would be played by Delta Burke or someone sassy like that and this fact would lead to all kinds of wonderful zaniness.

Life is not a sitcom, however, so what's going to happen to the Padres over the next couple of years is going to be crushingly ugly, bringing amusement to only those fans who live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Phoenix.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:41pm (7) Comments

This is news?


Since when does ESPN run descriptions of short TMZ.com video clips as news stories? And if you're an ESPN reporter who breaks his or her butt calling sources and landing interviews, don't you feel a bit silly for not having thought about changing your beat to the valet line outside of fancy restaurants? Much easier gig, I'm guessing.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:32pm (3) Comments

If anything, the ballplayers are underpaid


Chew on this the next time your local columnist spouts off about how baseball salaries are out of step with reality or out of touch or insensitive or whatever the hell else mere economic transactions are incapable of being:

Major League Baseball players received about 52 percent of leaguewide revenue last season, said MLB’s Rob Manfred, which would appear to leave baseball players with the lowest percentage of revenue among the Big Four team sports.

Under their respective collective-bargaining agreements, NHL players received 56.7 percent last season, NBA players about 57 percent and NFL players about 59 percent.

It is impossible to make an apples-to-apples comparison among the sports. Manfred, MLB executive vice president in charge of labor, and other industry experts have said one reason it is not fair to compare the percentage of MLB revenue paid to players to other leagues is that MLB clubs collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on player development for players in the minor leagues.

Still, MLB players in the early part of this decade received a much higher percentage of league revenue, in the high 50s to low 60s. In recent history, the number peaked in 2003 at 63 percent.

Still, Manfred's point is a good one: how much less would football players make as a percentage of the whole if the NFL had to underwrite college football or its equivalent? Of course, if the NFL did control college football it, being a rational economic actor desirous of making its fans happy, would have instituted a college football playoff system that would go a long way towards recouping the enterprise's expenses. That, however, is a topic for another blog.

(thanks to Pete Toms for the heads up)
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:06pm (9) Comments

Park to Philly


Reason number 137 why, even a couple of months later, it doesn't feel like the Phillies are the World Champions:

South Korean pitcher Park Chan Ho has signed a Major League Baseball contract with the World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies, the club announced Monday on its website.

The one-year deal, reportedly worth 2.5 million dollars with up to that much again available in performance bonuses, helps secure the Phillies' rotation by adding the 35-year-old right-hander who has spent 15 years in US baseball.

Park pitched moderately well in middle relief for the Dodgers last year, but did he do anything that would suggest to you that he could (or should) be counted on as a member of the starting rotation for the defending World Series champs?

Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:55pm (6) Comments

Josh Wilker Interview


For a while I was convinced that I had bored poor old Scott Simkus to death a couple of weeks ago when he interviewed me, but he's back with another interview, and this time the subject is far more interesting: Josh Wilker of Cardboard Gods. In it, you can learn about Buster Olney hanging on Josh's shoulders and Uma Thurman screaming "Hwaaa!" in Josh's presence.

Wait, that may have been the other way around. You'll have to click through to find out.





Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:35pm (0) Comments

Trouble at 18th and Vine


It's been a long two years for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Buck O'Neil died in October 2006, and since then there has been haggling over (a) an education and research center that O'Neil hoped would be his legacy; and (b) a new Executive Director of the Museum itself. As of late Friday, (b) is solved, and it may very well mean the death of (a):

After a months-long selection process and a sharply divided board vote, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has a new executive director.

Greg Baker’s hiring Friday closes a trying two-year span for the museum since Buck O’Neil’s death, a time that has seen O’Neil’s dream of a $15 million education and research center lose almost all its momentum. Baker’s hiring also caused at least two board members to resign in protest and is seen by some as the education project’s death sentence.

Baker, a former assistant city manager who won the split vote on the strength of his managing and planning experience, thinks he can help the museum reach greater heights.

That whiff of controversy comes from Mellinger's straight report on the Baker selection. Jason Whitlock, however, bypasses the whiff and gets right down to the stinky:

When Pellom McDaniels and Greg Baker met privately with a Kansas City Star reporter Friday, they explained their bizarre, irresponsible and borderline unethical decision by playing up Baker’s “strategic” expertise.

I can’t wait to watch Baker strategically fix the mess created by his appointment as Negro Leagues Baseball Museum executive director.

And when Baker executes the marching order (halt the campaign to build the Buck O’Neil education and research facility) given to him by museum board member Kevin Gray, I can’t wait to watch Baker strategically refund the money (including mine) already raised in support of the campaign.

Oh, yeah, the museum is going to have to tap into the strategic expertise that got Baker booted from a plush downtown job assisting city manager Wayne Cauthen to a job at the airport, the Siberia for city employees.

And there's plenty more where that came from. It's probably worth noting at this point that I love Jason Whitlock's stuff, even when I think he's 100% wrong.

Not that I think he's wrong here. Indeed, though I am not acquainted with the specific politics of the Negro Leagues Museum, the dynamic here is a familiar one: a Chamber of Commerce-style politico with many career stops along the way, lauded for his alleged "entrepreneurial" and "strategic planning" credentials is given a high profile job over a lifer from within the organization. Here, the passed-over lifer is a guy by the name of Bob Kendrick, who, according to Whitlock, was O'Neil's right hand man and the guy who has truly run the place for years.

In my experience, the guy in Baker's position usually crashes and burns within two years, mostly because "entrepreneurial credentials" aren't all that applicable to a non-profit organization, and because no one really knows what the hell "strategic planning experience" really is. When the guy is eventually fired, the board then tries to get a do-over by hiring the guy in Kendrick's position. Except that guy, having been passed-over for a lightweight, has since moved on and is no longer interested, leaving the whole organization in the lerch for about five years. In other words, it's the organizational equivalent of signing Barry Zito.

I hope Whitlock is wrong, and that this Baker fellow is the right guy for the job, because the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is too wonderful and too vital an outfit to be dragged down by this common brand of political drama.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:50am (3) Comments

For your journey on the River Styx


I'm sure I've linked to a story like this at some point over the past year, but I'll be damned if I can find it. Even if I have, it's worth linking to again, because silliness never goes out of style:

Leaving no merchandising stone unturned, Major League Baseball has authorized the use of team logos on a line of funeral caskets for people who want to carry their fandom unto eternity. Models for the Yankees (replete with interior pinstripes) and the Mets (with handles of mixed Dodger blue and Giant orange) went on sale at the Branch Funeral Home in Smithtown, Long Island.

These things cost five grand and feature team logos and everything. When I think about this stuff, I can't help but imagine some archaeologist finding one in 6,000 years and surmising that the interlocking N and Y formed some sort of religious symbol. Maybe he'd find one with a Boston logo and extrapolate some holy crusade between factions or something.

I'm a fan of cremation, so I think all caskets are kind of a waste, but these are particularly unreasonable. Still, I suppose there are worse ways for Yankee fans to spend their money. A.J. Burnett jerseys come to mind.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:27am (3) Comments

Today at THT


I'm going to intrude on Barbieri's turf for a moment and note that, on this day in 1974, arbitrator Peter Seitz rules that the Oakland Athletics breached the contract of pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter by failing to buy a required insurance policy. As a result, Hunter was released from his contract, allowing him to become a free agent and subsequently to sign the then-largest contract in baseball history: $3.75 million from the New York Yankees over five years.

Also on this date, this time in 2003, at the exact moment this post went live, I was in a hospital delivery room watching Mrs. Shyster squeeze a seven pound, one ounce human being out of her body. Me and the missus have gotten a way better deal out of our daughter Anna than Steinbrenner got out of Hunter, as Anna Calcaterra's CKQ+ -- that's Cool Kid Quotient, adjusted for context -- is way better than Catfish's ERA+ ever was.

In other news:

  • Chris Jaffe looks at last week's less-than-jake vote by the Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame and at the admittance of Neyer, Law, Kahrl, and Carroll to the BBWAA. It will take a while, but the latter development will eventually help cure the former.


  • Evan Brunell's Lost in Transactions reviews the last busy week in the hot stove league. Little known fact: GMs have an absolute right to call "do over" on any deal up until the moment Evan hits the "submit" button on his weekly column. I was just was surprised as you are when I found that out.


  • Over at Fantasy Focus, Victor Wang runs down a list of guys who didn't live up to expectations in 2008 and assesses the likelihood of a bounceback season in 2009. Look Victor, I know you know this stuff way better than I do, but I think your inclusion of Steve Howe is an exercise in unwarranted optimism.


  • Finally, if you missed it on Friday, Derek Carty looked at the fantasy fallout of the A.J. Burnett signing. I don't know fantasy baseball too much, but if you draft Burnett this year do you too have to wildly overpay and commit to him for two years longer than anyone in their right mind would?


    • Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:01am (1) Comments

    Misallocated resources


    I'm not sure which represents a more needless and troubling waste of effort that could ultimately serve to hurt the ballclub: Hideki Okajima running in a marathon, or Jay Bruce openly lobbying for the return of Jerry Hairston.

    At least Okajima will recover eventually. There is no cure for 500 at-bats from Jerry Hairston.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:45am (5) Comments

    Reflexes


    If you're looking for a fan of soon-to-be-former President Bush's, you've come to the wrong place. That said, I give credit where credit is due, and I have to laud President Bush for:

    1. Throwing the best "first pitch" of any chief executive in my lifetime at Game 3 of the 2001 World Series; and

    2. Showing some nifty reflexes when a fireballin' righty tried to brush him back yesterday.

    Sure, President Biggio would have leaned into that pitch, but those are still some pretty good reflexes.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:32am (6) Comments