Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Chipper to be extended


Chipper Jones is about to get a contract extension:

It appears Chipper Jones may get his wish to remain with the Braves throughout his entire career.

A Major League source has indicated that Jones and the Braves are close to agreeing to terms on a contact extension that could keep the veteran third baseman in Atlanta through the end of the 2013 season. An official announcement could come as soon as Tuesday.

Of course, since this is the Braves, it's just as likely that the announcement will be that, rather than get extended, Jones has broken his current contract to sign with the Dodgers or Mariners or something.

Seriously though, for Braves fans this is one of those things that transcends objective analysis. I really don't care what his injury risk is. I really don't care how much money it's for. At some point and with some players you have to throw that stuff out the window, and Jones is the player you do that for in Atlanta. He's the Braves' Al Kaline, and that's the kind of guy you never want to see in another uniform, no matter how much of a shadow of his former self he becomes by the end of the deal.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:30am (9) Comments

Plain City Slugger


From the "things I did not know" department, there's a guy making bats for big leaguers right here in my backyard:

"The thing I like about bats is, somewhere in the middle, you have the science part and the art part, and they meet there in the middle," said Charley Trudeau, founder of Phoenix Bats, a baseball-bat manufacturer in Plain City, Ohio, with a growing list of big-league clients . . .

. . . As a new season approaches, more players than ever will swing Trudeau's bats. Company general manager Seth Cramer estimated that Phoenix Bats will produce between 13,000 and 15,000 bats this year for players at every level of the game; "a few dozen" big-league players will use them, and "a half-dozen to a dozen" big-league players will use them exclusively.

"Already this year, we're about 40 percent ahead of what we were doing in previous years," Cramer said. A few feet away, a box of bats sat ready for shipment to Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada.

It's sad that Tejada doesn't come up to Plain City personally to get his bats. I think it would be cool to run into him at the Der Dutchman salad bar.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:00am (3) Comments

Today at THT


Lots of content today, so instead of writing a joke, the joke will be just how panicky I get to finish the recaps of it before my son wakes up, demands his Cheerios, and yells at me to "get off the 'puter, Daddy!"

  • Jon Weisman has five questions about the Los Angeles Dodgers. Question number six: Does the 100 Things Dodger Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die include drinking heavily upon realizing that Jeff Weaver made the roster of a team that's supposed to compete for the pennant?


  • Steve Treder continues his look at Branch Rickey's years with the Pirates. Little known fact: in addition to inventing the modern farm system and integrating baseball, Rickey could eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour and once saved the local community center from destruction by organizing a break dancing and hip hop show with his friends.


  • Harry Pavlidis uses Pitch f/x to profile Shairon Martis and Nick Adenhart. Careful Harry: the last guy who did that around here disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Rumors have it that he joined some tropical cult.


  • Evan Brunell has five questions for the Philadelphia Phillies. Question number six: Do the Phillies retain their title if they lose on a disqualification, or must they be beaten by pinfall?


  • Over at Fantasy Focus, Paul Singman updates the THT fantasy player rankings. I used the last version of this as a cheat sheet for my Yahoo! draft. If I crash and burn in that league, I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. And that I do not forgive.


  • Finally, Eriq Gardner helps you figure out when to cut bait on useless dudes on your fantasy roster. No, Jimmy Gobble is not coming around. Yes, you can still call your team the Jimmy Gobble Experience.


    • Whew! Made it. Now to the Cheerios.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:59am (5) Comments

    Monday, March 30, 2009

    To really screw up it takes a . . . .


    Death. Taxes. Bud Selig putting a committee together to solve a sticky problem he doesn't want to deal with:

    After meeting with ownership and management of the Oakland Athletics in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday, Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig announced today that he has appointed a committee to thoroughly analyze all of the ballpark proposals that have been made to date, the current situation in Oakland, and the prospects for obtaining a ballpark in any of the communities located in Oakland's territory . . .

    . . . The committee will be chaired by Bob Starkey, a stadium expert and financial consultant for Major League Baseball. It also will consist of Corey Busch, a former baseball executive, and Irwin Raij, a lawyer with Foley and Lardner who worked extensively on both the Washington and Miami ballpark proposals. They will work with MLB President & Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy and will provide a written report to the Commissioner at the conclusion of their analysis.

    Of course limiting of the analysis to the "communities located in Oakland's territory," by definition leaves out San Jose which, while not really having a plan either, has at least some rumblings of one and an argument for viability. Otherwise there's nothing. If Bud's track record means anything, it means that this committee will come up with a report that forecasts the doom of the Athletics franchise, most likely alluding to their potential contraction if a stadium isn't built. More importnatly, the report will serve as a bludgeon for any pro-ballpark group to weild as they make their case to give Lew Wolff a new home. "It's not Wolff asking for a handout," they'll say. "This is about the very viability of the A's! It's right here in this independent report!" This is what he did with the famous "Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics"

    Which is well and good. It's Bud's league and he can appoint whatever commission he wants to appoint. Everyone should remember, however, that the product of this committee will not be some objective, scientific report. It will be an advocacy document, and it should be treated like one.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 4:37pm (5) Comments

    He is Legend


    If you saw a headline that read "Cubs legend visits devoted fan," who would you think the article referred to? Ernie Banks would be my first guess, though if I were in a good mood I'd probably accept Ron Santo, Billy Williams, or Ryne Sandberg. Heck, if it was a local Chicago paper and the "devoted fan" were a sick kid or something, I'd also grant you Mark Grace, Sammy Sosa or someone like that. Legends? Other than Banks not really, but we'll let it pass if it's for a good cause.

    But no matter how good the cause is, Milt Pappas doesn't seem to qualify:

    Gewerth, now a 91-year-old patient at Manor Care in Palos Heights, had a dream fulfilled yesterday when he met and talked baseball with former Cubs pitcher and Beecher resident Milt Pappas as part of the nursing home's Hearts Desire program, which grants wishes to dying residents.

    "When I told John that Milt Pappas was coming, his eyes just lit up," said Chris Raciti, an assistant administrator at Manor Care who worked with Gewerth's hospice nurse, Barb Briarton, to bring the ballplayer to the nursing home. "He had a big smile on his face. He was speechless. He didn't know what to say."

    Kudos to Pappas for making a dying baseball fan's day and everything, but man, I can't help but think that someone at the Southtown Star needs to recalibrate their adjective use.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:32pm (9) Comments

    MSM writers to put bloggers out of business


    AOL's FanHouse started out as Jamie Mottram's fresh-air response to MSM blather. Since its relaunch back in January, however, there is a lot more MSM there than there used to be:

    FanHouse.com, the recently-launched sports site from AOL’s MediaGlow publishing unit, announced six major additions to its growing roster of professional journalists. Joining FanHouse’s writing staff are Greg Couch, sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times; Matt Steinmetz, Golden State Warriors analyst for Comcast Sports Net and former Contra Costa Times NBA writer; Dan Graziano, former national baseball writer for the Newark Star-Ledger; Ed Price, former baseball and Yankees writer for the Newark Star-Ledger; and Jeff Fletcher, former baseball writer for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Also joining the FanHouse editorial team is Sunny Wu, former senior editor at MSNBC.com and Page 1 editor for ESPN.com . . .

    . . . FanHouse.com launched in January as AOL and MediaGlow’s main sports destination and added nationally acclaimed columnists Jay Mariotti, Lisa Olson and Kevin Blackistone to provide daily commentary and analysis across the spectrum of sports. With today’s additions, FanHouse’s writing staff now includes five Baseball Hall of Fame voters.

    I'm not saying that this means that blather won out -- outside of Mariotti, this is a fairly unobjectionable group of writers -- but the enterprise is certainly a very different one now than it set out to be only a couple of years ago.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:42am (7) Comments

    Something to watch for


    Following up on deMause's note about empty seats in Shea, Bob Raissman wonders how a less-than-capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium is going to look to the viewers at home:

    Ticket talk triggered a memory from long ago - Sept. 22, 1966. The Yankees would finish in 10th place that season and on that day, 413 fans squeezed their way into Yankee Stadium, which at the time had a seating capacity of 65,000. The legendary Red Barber was at the WPIX-TV microphone. He instructed the director of the telecast to have PIX's cameras pan the empty Stadium. "I don't know what the paid attendance is today, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium," Barber reported. "And this crowd is the story, not the game."

    Shortly after the '66 season ended, Barber was fired by the astute suits from CBS who owned the team and were in the process of driving it into the ground.

    All this is not to suggest games in the new Yankee Stadium will ever be that sparsely attended, but it certainly looks like some locations "downstairs" may not be totally occupied.

    What would patches of emptiness mean in terms of how the Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network covers the games? Would the Bombers' inability to sell out their new palace be bad for the organization's image and brand?

    Personally, I hope that YES tries to go all Pravda with this should it come to pass. We're in an age now where that kind of propaganda is impossible to pull off and YES messing with the images or the Yankees messing with the official attendance figures would provide a fabulous opportunity for the elevnty-jillion Yankees' bloggers out there to make them look silly. If there are shenanigans, we'll know about as soon as it happens.

    All of this presupposes, of course, that the Yankees will have trouble filling the house. And while there are signs out there that such is the case, I can't help but think that the tickets will ultimately be sold and used. Now, whether they're sold at the prices for which the Yankees have been offering them is another thing altogether, but I don't foresee tons of empty seats in the joint.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:08am (3) Comments

    Centerfield


    DiMaggio. Mantle. Murcer. Henderson. Williams. Damon. Gardner:

    “We’re going to start with Gardy in center,” Girardi said. “Both of them played great. Melky had a tough year last year, but he came into camp and was ready to go and played well. Gardy finished up strong and had a great camp.”

    Gardner and Cabrera have had equal chances in spring training, with one at-bat separating them. Gardner is 20 for 52 (.385) and Cabrera is 18 for 53 (.340). Each has scored 10 runs and walked six times.

    I see no basis for concluding that Brett Gardner is going to be able to replicate or even come close to this spring training numbers over the course of a full season. Not that Melky would either. What will the Yankees do when they realize that they're getting nothin' from these guys? I know it may not be ideal, but I can't help but think we're going to see a lot of Nick Swisher in center this year.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 8:00am (11) Comments

    The Spring Training Scam


    Every year, lawmakers, chambers of commerce and municipalities in Florida and Arizona go on about just how much of an economic impact spring training has on local economies. On the basis of that impact, they argue for the use of public dollars to construct or improve spring training facilities, and towns practically go to war with one another to lure or secure teams. The basis for this are numbers provided by The Cactus League Association and The Florida Sports Foundation, which claim that spring training brings economic benefits to local economies of $310 million and $450 million, respectively. National Review's Charles Fountain notes, however, that these are dubious claims:

    But are these numbers real?

    “Politicians are making these claims, not economists,” said Phillip Porter, a professor of economics at the University of South Florida and the most oft-quoted critic of the economic-impact claims surrounding spring training. “There’s a group of sports economists, people who teach at universities and do very, very legitimate, frontline, historical, archival research in sports economics — people with no irons in the fire — and among that group of economists you’ll find uniform agreement that spring training and the presence of sports teams in a community have very little impact on jobs, on employment, on income and earning, and very little on spending.”

    It's nice to have numbers to work with. Numbers are useless, however, when those who provide them have stacked the deck in their favor.

    (thanks to Pete Toms for the link)
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:30am (8) Comments

    Panic in Queens


    Neil deMause is pretty much awesome. His Field of Schemes book and blog have served as one of the primary inspirations for my criticism of public subsidies for professional sports, and rarely a day goes by when he doesn't have something worth thinking about. Among the most interesting things from the past few days: based on the spam the Mets ticket office is sending out, there's a decent chance that there will be empty seats in Citi Field on opening day.

    My guess: if there's even a remote chance of that, vans will be standing by to deliver free tickets to elementary and middle schools all over Queens, ensuring that the people will fill the place on opening day, even if the seats don't generate any income. After opening day? All bets are off.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:00am (5) Comments

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