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Shyster's Daily Circuit


Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Friday, January 09, 2009

The majors and the minors


Our good friend Pete Toms doesn't just shoot me links and make sharp insights in the comment threads. He writes stuff too, and today he has a piece over at The Biz of Baseball about the relationship between the majors, the minors and the independents. Pete wouldn't stand for me calling him a blogger, but let's just say that he assembles a boatload of links to related articles on the topic of the changing player development landscape and ties them together with a general theme that results in a piece that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I call that blogging, but since it's Pete, let's just say that he's extending the conversation or something.


Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 4:12pm (3) Comments

Okane Ball


The Oakland A's are partnering up with the Tohoku Rakuten Eagles of the Japanese Pacific League:

The Rakuten Eagles announced Friday they have entered into a formal one-year partnership with the Oakland Athletics to strengthen both organizations' baseball operation and management areas.

Under the agreement, Rakuten and the A's will exchange coaching and strength-and-conditioning staff and also share information pertaining to player development and data analysis.

"We are very excited to have a working agreement with the Oakland Athletics," Rakuten owner and president Toru Shimada said in press release. "The Athletics are very famous for using their own measurement to evaluate and develop players to create a winning organization."

So, if you're an Eagles fan, you can expect several decent regular seasons followed up by flameouts in the playoffs, an overhyped book to be written about your club, and then nearly a decade of misunderstandings about what the hell all the fuss was about in the first place. At the end of that process, the Eagles' GM will turn his attentions to sumo and the owner will try to move the whole team out of Miyagi Prefecture to some place the shinkansen doesn't even reach.

Sounds good.

Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:10pm (5) Comments

Depression baseball


There have been several articles in the past few months about what the economic situation might do to baseball, and with them many comparisons to the Great Depression. Most of them have been driven by looks back at attendance figures. A couple of days ago, however, the New York Times ran one that gave more of a flavor to Depression-era baseball. Even if it's not very instructive with respect to what 21st century baseball may face in these bleak times, it was interesting all the same:

Some owners, it seemed, lived in another world. Navin, the owner of the Tigers, bought a racehorse in 1931 even though his players were reportedly having their meal money reduced. Others focused on yachting . . .

. . . The Depression also forced teams to innovate. The Cardinals, for instance, expanded their network of minor league teams. Several teams, including the Cubs, did not charge women for admission, a promotion that East Coast teams soon copied.

A few teams generated income by allowing live radio broadcasts. Taking a cue from the minor leagues, the Cincinnati Reds in 1935 became the first team to host a night game, which proved very popular with fans.

The end of the blue laws in Pennsylvania also helped franchises in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which, until 1934, had not been able to schedule home games on Sundays.


Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:19am (5) Comments

Just stop it


It's bad enough that the Braves have been given the baseball equivalent of an atomic wedgie by anyone they've tried to sign this winter, but now they've got out of town writers eyeing Braves' players like they're the 1958 Kansas City A's or something:

You've heard this story from the Dodgers and Angels in many previous summers, and you'll probably hear it from them again this summer: We'd like to trade for a big bat.

How about Chipper Jones? The idea was floated by none other than Jones himself, in a revealing interview today with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jones, incensed that the Braves did not match the Red Sox offer for franchise icon John Smoltz, said he might be the next one out the Atlanta door.

Oy.

OK look: Jones has 10-5 rights, veterans like him hate being traded in the middle of a season, he's the only big bat the Braves really have, and if they got rid of him at this point in his career -- unlike Smoltz he's still probably got a couple of productive years ahead of him -- the entire city would turn its back on the organization. His comments yesterday were likely 45% genuine frustration at being the last guy around who remembers what it's like to win in Atlanta and 55% lobbying the Braves for a contract extension. Finally, even if the Braves were going to consider trading Jones to the Dodgers, the package they would demand in return would probably start with Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp, but by no means end there. In other words, they'd demand that the Dodgers give up their very future for a half season of a player who, while fabulous when he plays, is very likely to get hurt at some point. Unless the person making the decisions for the Dodgers thinks like I do when I'm mismanaging a fantasy team, they'd hang up the phone within 11 seconds of Frank Wren voicing his demands.

Other than that, sure, great idea.

Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:30am (4) Comments

Today at THT


I didn't watch a single down of Florida-Oklahoma last night and I don't regret it for a second.

  • Craig Brown breaks down the Cubs' signing of Milton Bradley. His prediction: a lot of time on the DL. Brown is too much of a gentleman to make the companion prediction of a Bradley meltdown when some Chicago reporter asks him why he's spending so much time on the DL.


  • In This Annotated Week in Baseball History, Richard Barbieri uses the pretext of Baltimore's failure to sign Aaron Sele in 2000 to review Peter Angelos' tenure as the Orioles' owner. He's the worst thing to happen to Charm City since Callie Thorne, John Seda, and Michael Michele were added to the cast of "Homicide."


  • Over at Fantasy Focus, Derek Carty looks at the fantasy fallout of Trevor Hoffman signing with the Brewers. In addition to the pitching, I think we can expect a lot of Midwesterners to get the vapors when they hear "Hells Bells" playing. Also, Chris Neault warns fantasy owners of the injury risks presented by Brad Penny, Carlo Pavano, and Milton Bradley. Unfortunately, the owners of the Red Sox, Indians, and Cubs were not similarly warned.

    I've got some stuff to do today, so it may be slower around these parts than usual. As such, let's treat class today as a study hall, OK?

    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:47am (4) Comments