Wednesday, December 09, 2009 |
Pickoff Moves
Dodger Front Office Maneuvers In The Dark (Of The McCourt Divorce)
- Dennis Mannion will become Ned Colletti's boss. This impresses me as an admission that Frank won't be able to handle day-to-day operations issues in the face of his impending divorce.
I should be very clear right away: this is not how I want my baseball team run. I do not want player payroll to be highly correlated with the previous winter's season ticket sales. Why? Two reasons.
1. Investment in the organization should not be a year-to-year decision. ...
2. That 2010 payroll decisions are based on this winter's revenue forecasts suggests that the Dodgers are indeed running on perilously slim margins. ...
- The Dodgers named Vance Lovelace to be head of professional scouting; Eric Stephen noted Lovelace was the return on a trade that sent Ron Cey in his twilight years to the Cubs.
McCourts Amicably Resolve Spousal Support Issue
I'll believe it when I stop reading about it in TMZ.com.Despite a consistent refrain from Dodgers executives and Frank McCourt's lawyers that the club has been conducting "business as usual" despite the divorce proceedings, McCourt said in the filing that the "distraction is . . . creating a hardship for the Dodgers management."...
Jamie McCourt, who claims she is a co-owner, has asked the court to set a later trial date. Frank McCourt's lawyers called that "gamesmanship" in Tuesday's filing, charging that she is stalling "in order to exact a more favorable settlement."
Joe Torre In 2011?
It could happen.Snakes, Tigers, Yanks Near Big 3-Way Deal
A monster:- The Diamondbacks get Edwin Jackson from Detroit and Ian Kennedy from New York.
- The Tigers get pitching prospects Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth from Arizona, and Phil Coke and OF prospect Austin Jackson from the Yankees.
- The Yankees get Tigers' center fielder Curtis Granderson.
Granderson's performance collapsed against lefties (.183/.245/.239 in 2009) and during the final week his routes to the ball looked awful, but he's basically a plus defensively according to the major systems, and a relatively affordable player ($5.5/$8.25/$10 million in 2010-2012 with a $13 million club option and $2 million buyout for 2013). The Yankees' big-picture desire to decrease payroll from their 2009 level wound up costing them a decent prospect whose upside may be Grandersoneque in Jackson (#7 on Baseball America's list of top International League prospects).It's not a good move for Arizona, who loses their #2 pitching prospect along the way in Schlereth. Very puzzling indeed.
Update: AZ Snakepit has a good roundup of blogosphere and local opinion on this topic; Rob Neyer and his pals are very down on this deal ("All my friends seem to have this one the same: Great for Yanks, good for Tigers, terrible for Diamondbacks. My friends are usually right."); one interesting perspective for the other side is Arizona Republic sportswriter Nick Piecoro, who thinks the Snakes have given up on Scherzer, while liking what they saw in Arizona Fall League of Kennedy, who used the opportunity to fix some problems in his two-seamer (so he claims). Robothal observes that the Snakes turned a pair of relievers into a pair of starters. As the Dodgers' deal for Jae Wong Seo proved, those can blow up if the starter turns out to be pretty bad. Kennedy might have a resurgence in the NL, though.
Brad Penny A Cardinal, 1 Year/$7.5M
The ex-Dodger could make up to $1.5M more in performance incentives. I'm kind of surprised he went to St. Louis, but I suppose he wore out his welcome in San Francisco, too.Peter Gammons Leaving ESPN After Winter Meetings
He'll join MLB Network. There's less and less reason to watch ESPN for baseball, and you have to wonder whether their Sunday Night Baseball series will be worth a damn in a year or two.Labels: cardinals, diamondbacks, dodgers, ex-dodgers, front office, mccourts, tigers, trades, transactions, tv, yankees
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