“You know, like how signing Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi and Randy Johnson guaranteed them all of those championships a few years ago.”

I am guessing you would not be that flippant about it if your Braves were in the AL East.

While it will not insure them a championship it does pretty much guarantee them a spot in the playoffs for the forseeable future.

Here’s how I look at the NL Cy Young race.  Carpenter and Lincecum were similar in terms of quality this year, with Carpenter having a slightly better WHIP and Lincecum striking out a lot more guys per 9.  But, Lincecum logged thirty more innings than Carpenter, which is pretty important.  Timmy is my guy.  I would put Wainright third, as he was a step below both guys in quality, while Lincecum almost matched him in innings.

Oh, and did you catch the episode of the remade FI that had Jennifer Garner as a human sometimes but dolphin other times? That was before Alias I believe ...

Lively thread at CTB for the Boras discussion. There’s a reason he represents about 15% of MLB players, and many of it’s stars: he gets the cash.

And he gets the cash in two ways, by recognizing the underlying economics (the fundamentals the owners and MLB keep obscured from us), and by exaggerating, sometimes to the point of invention (Mr.Hicks, you must sign A-Rod to $25M per becuase that other team has offered $ 22.5M).

It works. There is always a greater fool in Boras’ world. But when he aims his speech at us “Fans need to…”) then I draw the line with my admiration.

Fact is, my favorite seats at the Oakland Mausoleum have gone from $ 22 to $ 48 in 10 years. Parking, concessions, etc have all gone up a similar amount. It’s gone from a $ 60 date for 2 to a $130 date for two.

Meanwhile, the product on the field has deteriorated markedly and those seats are empty more often than not.

Yes, I know the owners pocket some of their revenue sharing money. They are evil. I also know some of the players make $ 8M per year and hit .200.

None of this matters to me, except in the abstract.

What matters is my perceived value of the entertainment worth of that $ 130 for 3 hours versus other options.

With unemployment over 10% in CA, and true unemployment closer to 17%, those seats will stay empty.

Prices must come down. And some of Boras’ clients will have to take less money. So be it.

Adam said “...not sure people are going to flock to Citi to see Nelson Figueroa.” They will if he continues to pitch in 2010 the way he pitched in his eight starts after after taking Santana’s spot in the starting rotation in mid-August: Figueroa allowed 18 earned runs in 50.1 innings (3.22 ERA), going 2-6, averaging 6 1/3 innings and 108 pitches per start. In his 6 losses, the Mets scored a total of 11 runs. He also led the team in strikeouts in September and was the only Mets pitcher to throw a complete game shutout at CitiField in 2009. So before you use Figgy in your future attempts at sarcasm, first check the stats.