Wednesday, November 30, 2011 |
Kennedy Deal Worth 1 Year/$800k
Angels To Acquire Chris Ianetta For Tyler Chatwood
Update: A tweet from the Angels confirms the deal. Mark Saxon sounds an optimistic note by observing Ianetta's OBP is no less than .370 in each of the last three seasons. I can live with that.
Mike DiGiovanna of the Times also reminds us this makes it a certainty that Jeff Mathis won't be tendered a contract — another reason to be optimistic.
Update 2, Reasons To Be Pessimistic: Ianetta's career road splits sux0rz, .172/.321/.266 .208/.338/.369. (Update 12/2/11: Corrected, per jjackflash in the comments below.) Contrast that with Jeff Mathis' career line of .194/.257/.301. Let's hope Ianetta doesn't suck as much as all that. At least his .321 OBP provides grounds for hope. Hat tip to Tim Brown on teh Twitter.
Update 3: Bill Plunkett's full report in the Register.
Labels: angels, rockies, trades, transactions
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 |
Dodgers Near Deal For Adam Kennedy
Kennedy hit .234/.277/.355 last season as a mostly-starting infielder at all four positions for Seattle. He's likely to be a bat off the bench for the 2012 Dodgers. An interesting sidebar is that Jackson thinks James Loney will be back, eliminating Kennedy from that position.
Labels: dodgers, ex-angels, transactions
Belated: How McCourt Made A Hero Of Fox
Broxton Signs With The Royals
Labels: ex-dodgers, royals, transactions
Broxton Will Be Elsewheresville, Dodgers Fans Yawn
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 |
New MLB CBA Summary Posted
The Debt Service Rule will be maintained, but the default EBITDA multiplier has been lowered from ten to eight, and from fifteen to twelve for Clubs incurring stadium-related debt in the first ten years of a new or renovated stadium.If I read this correctly, this implies that Frank McCourt's tumultuous ownership has left a lasting impression on the other owners. While they aren't willing to go whole hog and totally end heavily leveraged ownership regimes (recall that Jim Crane and his bid for the Astros is supposed to be one such), they have gotten substantially more conservative in what they consider a good owner.
MSTI has a much longer review of most of the rest of the moving parts of the contract, while Al Yellon at sbnbaseball reviews the changes to video replay, which I see as not yet far enough but a good step in the right direction.
Update: Deadspin explains why the changes designed to increase competitive balance actually work to kill it instead.
At first, you see a firm slotting system in which a player's position in the draft order almost entirely dictates his signing bonus, and you think this is good news for small-market teams: money won't run the draft anymore. But small-market teams, like the Pirates, Rays, Royals, and Indians, were some of the ones exploiting the old loose slotting setup, while the Mets and other lumbering leviathans stuck to the unenforced rules.Matthew Pouliot at NBC Sports observes that the CBA will result in more money for mediocrities and less for amateur talent, further straining the idea that this will help competitive balance. This is a deal that helps the union but not the game....
So MLB offered a gesture out of pity to small-market teams. Per Jeff Passan: "There will be six draft picks immediately after the first round given out via lottery to teams with 10 lowest revenues, 10 smallest markets." But how much can one pick each year in between picks #31-#40 really do? Unlike other years, where teams might find top-ten talents passed over for cash reasons in that window, now they'll find only the 31st through 40th most talented players in the nation. That's not much guarantee of success.
Update 2: Scott Boras has come out squarely against the draft rules changes.
"This will hurt all of baseball," Boras told USA TODAY in a telephone interview. "This was not good for the game at all. There have to be some amendments to it because this dramatically impacts the game. It goes against the revenue sharing concept. This dramatically affects parity. That concept is gone. A teams' chance to dramatically improve has been dramatically reduced.Update 3: SB Nation's Wendy Thurm chimes in. Behind the pay wall at ESPN, Keith Law opines that this is a bad deal for baseball.
Update 4: Jim Callis of Baseball America forwards a scenario wherein a drafting team doesn't sign a first-rounder, spends the money on lower-level draftees, and then gets back the first round pick and additional bonus space in the next year's draft. Sorta sneaky, but it doesn't help that much because it's only good for first-rounders.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 |
Catching Up: Bullet Points On My Way Out The Door
- The Angels have released Anthony Ortega. I was wondering when that was going to happen; he ended the season with a craptastic 9.24 ERA, and his 1.17 K/BB rate didn't promise much in the way of improvement, ditto his 5.0 K/9. A spare part the Angels did not need, who will ply his trade in someone else's minor league system.
- Mike Trout can't take home Rookie of the Year honors in 2012 thanks to a weird fluke of the rules:
When Trout was called up in July, he was added to the Angels’ 40-man roster for the first time. When he was sent down, then, he was what they call optioned. When you’re optioned, you aren’t on the active roster, and you don’t accumulate service time, EXCEPT you must be optioned for at least 20 days in the season for that option to count. (An option lasts all season, no matter how many times you are sent down.) Since Trout wasn’t on the 40-man roster before he was called up, he hadn’t previously been optioned, so his time in Double-A before that didn’t count. He was then called back up after only 17 days, and spent the rest of the year with the Angels, so his option didn’t technically happen. “The service time has to go somewhere,” says the Angels’ Tim Mead, which means it counts as major league service time.
Boo. - Kirk Gibson and Joe Maddon won Manager of the Year awards in the NL and AL respectively. Both were good choices, Gibson especially so. It was Gibson's first, and Maddon's second.
- Justin Verlander unanimously won the AL Cy Young Award, with Jered Weaver taking second place. The NL award will be announced Thursday.
- In an era where most regional papers are doing everything they can to cut back on expenses — including covering the local teams — it might come as a surprise to learn the Register still has its own Dodgers blog. Indeed, I wanted to use this fine post by Howard Cole on the Matt Treanor signing as a jumping off point to discuss that particular dumb deal. It's not a very good signing, but it's also typical for Colletti.
- The Angels hired Hal Morris as their new scouting director.
Labels: angels, awards, diamondbacks, dodgers, rays
Monday, November 14, 2011 |
Dodgers Long-Term Kemp, Sign Ellis
The other deal, unfortunately, looks like a real dud, with Mark Ellis getting badly overpaid to the tune of 2 years/$8.75M. There's really no justification for this level of compensation, especially for an essentially just-over-replacement level player. On the other hand, Fangraphs says his value last year was $6M combined to the A's and Rockies, which says something about teams willing to pony up for mediocre bats up the middle.
Labels: dodgers, stupid ideas, woo hoo
Angels Announce New Scouting Chief Hal Morris
“Hal brings a very special set of skills to our organization," General Manager Jerry Dipoto said in a statement. “His abilities in the areas of player evaluation and qualitative analysis will play a major role in the program we are building here.”
Labels: angels, front office
Thursday, November 10, 2011 |
Angels Fire Baseball Operations Chief Tony Hernandez
Labels: angels, firings, front office
Gammons: Reagins Knew Blue Jays Would Trade Napoli To Texas
Labels: angels, blue jays, rangers, stupid ideas, trades
Tuesday, November 08, 2011 |
Dennis Gilbert Introduces Billionaires Bruce Karsh And Josh Friedman To The Dodgerstakes
Labels: dodgers
Monday, November 07, 2011 |
McCourt Wants To Sell The Dodgers And Future TV Rights — And Retain Parking Lots
Blackstone, the investment bank in charge of the Dodgers' sale, already has started soliciting prospective bidders. The sale price is expected to hit $1 billion or more, with the Dodgers and their stadium included in the deal. Under the agreement, McCourt and the new owner would negotiate whether the parking lots should be leased from McCourt or purchased outright.Go. Away. Now.
Sunday, November 06, 2011 |
Silly Season Starts, Mets Alleged To Want Peter Bourjos For David Wright
Via Rotoworld on Twitter.
Friday, November 04, 2011 |
Angels Acquire Scott Servais From Rangers, To Become New Farm Director Assistant General Manager
Updated to fix his new title, which indeed represents a step up.
Labels: angels, front office, rangers
New Blog: True Blue Auction
A Video From Taiwan, More McCourt Madness, And Thoughts On The O'Malley Bid
In other news, Jamie will get all the homes, and Frank will live ... somewhere. (I hope on the east coast.) Jamie said she will live here forever, but I expect that sentiment will last not very much longer, really.
I'm not sure, but this may be the third time this year T.J. Simers has written something I agree with when he says Peter O'Malley is not the right man to take over the Dodgers. As I mentioned in the comments following that piece, there are several issues with this:
- He is 72 years old. It will take time and energy to rebuild the team, something it is not clear he has.
- The end of his last stint as owner didn't go so well. One of the principle knocks against O'Malley ownership — both fils and père — is that they never entirely grokked this newfangled free agency concept. While I'm not sure that would be as much of an issue now as it was then, it seems emblematic of how they did not change with the times. Marvin Miller, the great MLBPA attorney who gave us the free agency that colors the current game, said of Peter, "His father was unusual. And he is not." Returning to "usual" ownership, even if that means a victory lap for a storied franchise's scion, is not what Dodger fans want or need.
- The estimated sale price will almost certainly demand O'Malley bring in additional investors, or taking on more debt than is prudent. The former case amplifies unknowns, while the latter increases the likelihood of a replay with bankruptcy. This could turn into a good thing if O'Malley brings in a younger man as his money man; but the name most often floated, Eli Broad, is actually 78, six years older than O'Malley. That, I think, is a non-starter.
Thursday, November 03, 2011 |
Bill Dwyre Reminds Us Again Why We Still Hold The LAT's Sports Section In Contempt
But what we are not done with, and probably won't be until the smoking hulk of the Times finally sinks into the Pacific, is that paper's absurdly bad sportswriting. When the guy who is was* running the section pens a thumbsucker that manages to get all the bits wrong about blogging ("this generation of sports critics who have a pair of pajamas, a laptop and a basement to type from"), as though the Times weren't repurposing paid columnists for that very same shopworn locution. Ditto his whitewashing years of Bill Plaschke columns that bag on the commish for exactly the same thing he complains about bloggers complaining about. I suppose this counts as a sort of signal flare to see if anyone is still reading the damned things, and if so, he made his mark; but you can equally see how Dwyre thought TJ Simers, and especially, Plaschke were worth bringing in.
Update: I should add that Mike Petriello of MSTI tweeted me that the LAT has no room to complain about filthy dirty hippies bloggers, as they share space with some of the least credible — okay, I'll say it — worst — in the business, Bleacher Report.
Strange, but on the same day, Times emeritus writer Ross Newhan stumped for a Pulitzer nomination for Bill Shaikin, who truly deserves it. At this point, it is vital to take a light saber and cut the Times' reporting — which is good and, in their coverage of the McCourt case, excellent — and slice it away from the offal that is their sports columnists.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011 |
High Comedy For A Wednesday Night
Hat tip to the ever-valuable Jay Jaffe on teh Twitter.
Mike Antonovich: "Frank's ... Pathetic Legacy"
"Frank McCourt's pathetic legacy from shirking responsibility in the Bryan Stow beating case was further soiled by the inference that Bryan had culpability in his own severe beating," he said."As a Dodger fan and an Angeleno, it has been a very, very tough season," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "I can't describe the anguish we felt with the beating of Bryan Stow."
He called current owner Frank McCourt's decision to sell a "new chapter."
"I'm looking forward to local ownership," Villaraigosa said. "I want the owner to be from Los Angeles. I want someone who loves this town and believes in this city."
Peter O'Malley To Pursue Dodgers
"The health of the organization has deteriorated in the last 12 months," O'Malley said. "The standing of the organization in the community has deteriorated.O'Malley is 73."I am confident I can restore it to respectability quicker, sooner and probably better than — or at least as well as — anyone else."
Labels: dodgers
Dodgers Suitors, The Price, And Other Miscellany
- Steve Dilbeck takes a look at the potential list of suitors for the Dodgers. Just say no to Chinese tongs.
- Maury Brown reckons the Dodgers could fetch up to $1.5 billion. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain how that happens, but argues that the minimum bid for the Dodgers would be at the Forbes valuation of $800M. Of course, that opens a significant question: why is it that the creditors have to be made whole? Presumably, that gets into how trustworthy MLB as an entity is, and they're not going to ever let that happen (especially with the hired help, doubly so with labor negotiations ongoing). Unfortunately, that sets a floor of about a billion dollars on the sale price, making me wonder what kind of ultra-rich guy (or guys) would have the scratch to buy, and what would the add-on effects be of spending so much money up front.
- You may have heard that Tony LaRussa announced his retirement on the day after his Cardinals won the World Series. The hole in St. Louis' coaching situation may well be filled by an ex-Cub, Ryne Sandberg, who was the Phillies' AAA manager this last season. Sandberg was passed over for Quade two years ago.
- the Cubs announced Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Jason McLeod are all coming to the Cubs, in the roles, respectively, of team President, general manager, and scouting director. Compensation to the Red Sox and Padres has yet to be established ...
- The Dodgers named Sue Falsone head athletic trainer, the first woman so named in any major sport.
- Three Dodgers and three Red Sox (and one Angel!) won Gold Gloves; the Dodgers were Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, and the Angel was Erick Aybar.
- The Dodgers made their first signing of the offseason by giving Juan Rivera the starting left field job on a one-year deal with a team option for 2013, dollars unknown.
- Bill Shaikin just tweeted that there will be no minimum price for the Dodgers, but potential buyers will be approved by MLB before bidding starts.
- Update: Peter O'Malley-era GM Fred Claire is active in a group seeking to buy the team.
Labels: angels, awards, cardinals, cubs, dodgers, hot stove
Tuesday, November 01, 2011 |
Frank McCourt Agrees To Sell The Dodgers At Auction
Hallelujah and amen.
Update: Here's the longer-form story in the Times.
Update 2: Not exactly an update, really, but more like a coda: earlier, the Times reported that Mark Cuban wanted to buy the team but was dissuaded when Frank wanted one billion dollars for it.
Labels: dodgers, mccourts, woo hoo
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