Frayed Knot

Ceetar wrote: Edgy DC wrote: The players are bargaining with the rights of the now-amateurs that will come after them. Not cool. NFL did this too right? and NBA talking about it? Both the NFL & the NBA players associations long ago agreed to restrictions on incoming rookies - both in the amount of money they're limited to and also the timing of when they can even enter the process. Occasionally some amateur tries to sue their way around those seemingly illegal restrictions but the ruling have said that because the limits were agreed to as part of a collective bargaining process they can be legally enforced.

So the answer to the Reyes question is: 11th 1, and 31 Surprising that Kemp didn't get it, but I guess it shows that the notion of keeping to players from winning teams is alive and well. So much for that other 'truism' about teammates splitting votes though as it didn't seem to hurt either Braun or Prince. PlayerTEAM1st2nd3rd4th5th# of VotesPointsRyan BraunBrewers201200032388Matt KempDodgers101660032332Prince FielderBrewers14119132229Justin UptonDBacks10811632214Albert PujolsCardinals00161130166Koey VottoReds0043228135Lance BerkmanCardinals0012628118Troy TulowitskiRockies000002469Roy HalladayPhillies001011452Ryan HowardPhillies000131027Jose ReyesMets000011231 Also: Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers -- 11 ballots -- 29 points Shane Victorino, Phillies -- 9 -- 18 Ian Kennedy, DBacks -- 4 -- 16 Cliff Lee, Phillies -- 4 -- 12 Hunter Pence, Astros/Phillies -- 3 -- 10 Pablo Sandoval, Giants -- 2 -- 7 John Axford, Brewers -- 3 -- 7 Michael Morse, Nationals -- 2 -- 5 Catlos Beltran, Mets/Giants -- 1 -- 3 Miguel Montero, DBacks -- 1 -- 2 Yadier Molino, Cardinals -- 2 -- 2 Starlin Castro, Cubs -- 1 -- 1 Craig Kimbrel, Braves -- 1 -- 1 Carlos Ruiz, Phillies -- 1 -- 1 Mike Stanton, Marlins -- 1 -- 1

The big news there is that the Rangers make the move to Joe Nathan with the idea of moving Neftali Feliz to the starting rotation. Also, IF Clint Barmes to the Pirates for two years.

Anyone want to hazard a guess at Reyes's showing? (cuz no other NYM is getting anywhere near the list) If so then, prior to today's 2PM announcement, take a stab at: 1) Placement 2) Top 5 votes 3) Total number of points Winner, as always, receives absolutely nothing. I'll go with 8th, none, and 75

Edgy DC wrote: I'm going to say boo on the luxury tax thingie. Yeah, but if it helps to scuttle the current system where Bud and his henchmen claim the last right of approval for each contract that's a penny over the "suggested" figure and hold up the announcement of every deal until an hour before the deadline because they don't want the handful of 'over-slot' deals to leak out early lest the remaining deals use those as a comparison it'll be an improvement. There was also talk of moving up the signing deadline to mid-July (currently mid-August) so as to get these guys signed while there's still some season left. The extra month just goes to waste anyway.

My comments ... * 5 years -- decent length. I think the NFL players were nuts to lock themselves into a decade long deal * raise in min salary, eventually up to a half-mil -- fine, whatever * Blood test for HGH, possibly as soon as spring 2012 with similar penalties to steroid use -- not that I'm against this, but it does surprise me that it was agreed to and count me as one who's skeptical both of the accuracy of such tests and on whether HGH is even performance enhancing. Hell, even the NFL players are slow-tracking their agreement to this and they're reluctant to rock the boat on anything. * a Luxury Tax for the 1st year player draft -- Not specific hard-slotting for each pick, but some sort of overall limit on the cumulative money spent on one year's haul. Go over it and there's a penalty tax, although it seems to me there'll have to be some kind of complex sliding scale based on where your picks fall in any given year rather than some one-size-fits-all number. * changes in draft compensation -- details not out yet, but it's most likely going to start with next year's FAs (affecting the 2013 draft) and will involve altering the formula used to determine type A & B FAs (relievers, for example, are far over-valued under the current formulas used), shrinking the pct of players who can reach those thresholds, and lessening the compensation due to a team losing a FA

The MVP votes go up to 10th place - top 5 are listed here along with the total number of votes received (out of 28 possible). PlayerTEAM1st2nd3rd4th5th# of VotesPointsJustin VerlanderTigers13334127280Jacoby EllsburyRed Sox41341428242Jose BautistaBlue Jays5744428231Curtis GrandersonYanx3448628215Miguel CarbreraTigers2095528193Robinson CanoYanx0022324112Adrian GonzalezRed Sox0011225105Michael YoungRangers111112396Dustin PedroiaRed Sox000001548Evan LongoriaRays00020827 Also on the ballot: Ian Kinsler - Rangers - (6 votes) - 25 points Alex Avila - Tigers - (6) - 13 Paul Kornerko - White Sox - (6) - 11 CC Sabathia - Yanx - (2) - 10 Adrian Beltre - Rangers - (4) - 9 Ben Zobrist - Rays - (2) - 7 Victor Martinez - Tigers -(4) - 7 James Shields - Rays - (6) - 7 Mark Teixeira - Yanx - (2) - 5 Asdrubal Cabrera - Indians - (3) - 4 Alex Gordon - Royals - (3) - 3 Josh Hamilton - Rangers - (1) - 1 David Robertson - Yanx - (1) - 1

MFS62 wrote: IIRC, there used to be a rule that said you couldn't re-sign your own free agents until well into the New Year. Is that still the rule? Nope, they did away with that rule a bunch of year ago. Reyes can now sign with any team at any time.

I think the idea is that the Braves see Nunez as a starting SS, one with similar pop to the soon-to-be-departed Alex Gonzalez but a decade younger and hopefully with the ability to top AG's sub-.300 OBA I'd want something better than that back for Jurrgens too but these are just rumors and, even if accurate, he'd most likely be a piece of the deal rather than the whole thing. Atlanta needs offense.

Harper in the NYDN had the Braves talking trade with the Yanx - dangling the likes of IF Eduardo Nunez and maybe Swisher for the very talented but oft-injured and now arb-eligible Jair Jurrgens. Nunez can hit a bit and is only 24 but was an error machine at both SS & 3B filling in for the two old men in the Bronx this past summer. Braves seem to think he'll get more consistent with steady playing time but if I'm Cashen none of those types being mentioned keeps me from pulling the trigger on that deal. Jurrgens is still just 25 (26 by opening day).

Sawx have also interviewed White Sox coach Gene Lamont, Phils' bench coach Pete Mackanin, Toronto coach Torey Lovullo, and Cleveland bench coach Sandy Alomar Jr. - as well as the recently hired Dale Sveum. They apparently turned towards BV only after Sveum inked with the Cubs which is what leads to the speculation that they're not all that impressed with the other candidates. Amazing to me how anti-BV the reaction has been. You always expect some of that whenever Bobby's name is brought up, but the stray comments I've read here and there seem not only particularly down on him but also with virtually no positive spins among them. The other common thread in the comments is the belief that Joe Maddon is headed for Red Sox nation just as soon as his contract runs out w/Tampa after 2012. That would partially explain the 'Just say no to V' sentiment (as there's no way you get him only for one year) but also helps to cement the idea that the attitude of RSN is rapidly becoming like that in the Bronx that they detested for so long with their assumptions that successful guys elsewhere are simply going to flock to their city at the first possible opportunity.

Indians said to be "closing in" on a new one-year deal for Grady Sizemore.

metsmarathon wrote: if those stupid fucking rivaly series are retained, then this whole realignment would be a sorry sorry mess. Count on it. Attendance matters and w/o a tilt towards intra-city games the idea that IL games are more popular simply because they're IL would be greatly diminished if not disappear entirely. i'm hoping that with all of the lip service about evening up the schedules, that they realize that the rivalry series undo all of that. It's not going to be even no matter which way they do it. Adding the rivalry series just makes things a little more uneven. i'm also really hoping that they do away with that thought of having a super fantastic interleague block where everybody gets to play an interleague game at the same time. fold the damned things into the schedule all random-like, treat them as any other game, and the issue will disappear. They virtually have to kill this in order to fill the minimum one-IL series all the time thing that two 15-team leagues requires. I don't think this will make the issue "disappear" since Bud's goal seems to be to set aside more games where your team plays against teams who are not fighting for the same prize as you and fewer against teams who are ... but perhaps that's another argument. make a big deal about this being the one time the mets get to go to seattle for the next four years or so. fine. that shit's cool. but don't try to sell me on the rivalry week, or the interleague week. because then i can't watch any other rivalry games, or any other interesting interleague matchups. plus if you have one or two interleague games going on a t a given time, then you can always highlight those. Again, see above. Also, there have to be an odd number of IL series going on at any one time except for those occasional days where numerous teams have the day off. But on your typical full-slate days, two IL series would mean 13 teams in each league to play each other leaving one team w/o a dance partner or four IL series would leave 11 each, etc., so those are not options. So with a minimum of one and an average somewhere between that and three (depending on how many total IL games they decide to go with) most days would have either 1 or 3 of the 15 match-ups as IL plus either 6 each or 7 each of AL/NL

The first guy I remember with batting gloves was Rusty - but since this was prior to Franklin's invention they were essentially golf gloves which weren't really tough enough for the job so a pair never lasted very long. But ol' Rusty had a whole collection of them which he'd mix and match according to uniform, weather, mood, and, perhaps most consistently, hitting streaks (or the lack thereof). He would deny sticking with a particular pair if he was hot but athletes are almost as famous for denying being superstitious as they are for being so in the first place so it always seemed like he did

metirish wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: The SoSH people are beside themselves with horror and disgust at this news. It will be nice to see if/how they come around. I guess they want another docile manager, not someone who will want to do things his way. I suspect it's more anti-BV than simply wanting a docile manager. Bobby is nothing if not controversial and I find a lot of fans tend to hate him from afar. That a sizable section of fans of the particular team thinking of hiring him are wary at best and horrified at worst isn't too surprising.

Gwreck wrote: My problem is your attribution of motive and your analysis of Selig's thoughts. Like that he is operating under a "misconception" about interleague play or is waging an ongoing campaign to blur the boundaries of the leagues. Yes, I believe that Selig IS laboring under a misconception. Specifically, I believe that HE believes that IL games are good and that fans want more of them - something I'm basing on numerous statements made by him over the years. First there are the ones where he likes to imply that IL games are somehow in addition to other scheduled games rather than instead of them, and then particularly the ones where he cites IL attendance figures as proof of their popularity even though such figures are skewed by time of year and a heavy reliance on intra-city matchups. Nor do I have a lot of faith in the ability of his leadership to do things properly especially since virtually every "fix" in these realignment/scheduling/post-season proposals are measures that are designed to fix the things that were broken the last time his administration fixed things. I get what's your opinion, and can do the math too -- ie. going from 18 to 30 interleague games per team means that only an additional 7.5% of a teams' games per year will now be interleague. (See what I did there?). Yeah, bad math. The number of IL games under the 72-60-15-15 proposal will increase from 250 to 450. That is not a 7.5% increase (at least it wasn't when I went to school although admittedly that was a while ago).

Framing the issue to note that upping the number of IL games to 30 per/team is close to double what exists now, is about 18 or so more than what will be required by this new set-up, and is no closer to "balanced" than would others with fewer IL games could be is simply stating fact. The part of this that's my opinion is that this seems to me to be coupled with Bud's ongoing campaign to blur the lines between the leagues and that the percentage of fans who prefer more IL play to less is countable on one hand and quite possibly one finger.

Ceetar wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: And I fail to see how putting those "extra" ten games into cross-league play is any more balanced then distributing those games within the league. All divisional teams play the same schedule of teams. They could do that if you made them in-league games too. Bud seems to be laboring under the misconception that a game that involves teams from two different leagues is somehow automatically more interesting than an intra-league one.

Arizona, at the time of the expansion, demanded that it enter as an NL club. And while it was never clear what kind of leverage they had to make such a stipulation prior to even being admitted to the league, MLB went about that first realignment as if slotting the DBacks in the AL-West wasn't even an option. And I fail to see how putting those "extra" ten games into cross-league play is any more balanced then distributing those games within the league.

PitcherTEAM1st2nd3rd4th5thPOINTSClayton KershawDodgers273200207Roy HalladayPhillies421700133Cliff LeePhillies05179190Ian KennedyDBacks13618376Cold HamelsPhillies00021317Tim LincecumGiants000157Yovani GallardoBrewers000135Matt CainGiants000113John AxfordBrewers000022Madison BumgarnerGiants000011Ryan VogelsongGiants000011

The choice of 'Please double the number of IL games' is currently running 6 points behind 'Rick Santorum' in the latest national polls.

Actually, Jayson Stark of ESPN recently wrote that the new schedule may well eliminate those extra "rivalry" games. Apparently, the schedule under consideration is: 18 games against each of the other 4 teams in your division (72) 6 games against each of the other 10 teams in your league (60) 3 games against each of the other 5 teams in the corresponding division in the other league (15) 3 games against each of the other 5 teams in another division from the other league (15) Total: 162 Does anyone here suppose that fans walking around saying; 'Gee, wouldn't it be great if MLB were to virtually double the number of inter-league games to the point where those IL games accounted for nearly 1/5 of the total sked', represent even one percent of the total fan base? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Which doesn't necessarily require more interleague games... there could actually be fewer (if they choose to go that route) but they'd be spread throughout the season. Right. There are currently ~250 IL games each year - or between 15 & 18 per team. Usually teams play 15 OR 18 games in order to keep things in multiples of 3. The new (starting in 2013) set-up will require that there be at least one IL series going on all the time which, with the occasional off-day, adds up to around 170-180 dates to be filled by an IL game. If they stuck with that it would mean closer to 12 per team per year. MLB could keep the total number of IL where it is now by having some weeks where three IL series are going on at once (two is not possible as it has to be an uneven number with the exception of an occasional overlap) but they could not do fewer than that 170-ish number. IOW, this realignment means IL is definitely here to stay. One of the reasons they purposely went to the 16/14 set-up (by moving Milwaukee) was because, in the beginning, IL was considered experimental and was being approved on a year by year basis and there's no way to have 15/15 without it. I hope they use this re-jiggering thing to cut back. I've long proposed a compromise of 10 IL games consisting of a 4-game home-and-home vs your "natural rival" plus two other series at random. The only reason it started at 15 games/year was that they first set it up as strictly an East-v-East, Central-v-Central, and West-v-West idea and 3 x 5 worked out to 15. Expanding the natural rival idea to two series/yr (once they figured out that one made the most money) made it 18. Now that the same division thing has pretty much fallen apart (it was never perfect to begin with) there's no reason to be married to that 18 game/yr target.

metirish wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'd rather it was a best of three rather than a best of one. I also don't like the possibility that a 90-win team might have to play a sudden death game against a 83-win team. I'm not sure that that would happen all that frequently, and as long as the Mets are never the losing team in such a game, it really won't affect me at all. I agree with this. If you don't want your team in a one-game do-or die situation then they'll have to win the division. It's a great incentive, as opposed to now where there's essentially no difference between a division winner and a WC. Apparently TV networks nixed a 3-game WC playoff. They want sudden death. Not surprising. There's already a potential for as many as 41 post-season games (there were 38 this year) with only a handful of them potential elimination games (and fewer still which are a game 5/7 double elimination) so the last thing the networks want is as many as six more games where several are just lead-ups to the lose-and-go-home contests. And MLB shouldn't want them either. Between the length of the post-season, the possibility of going into November, and forcing the actual winners to sit around for the better part of a week* before re-starting there are enough reasons to want the one-gamer. * Day after the season ends break + potential tie-breakers + the three games necessary to play + plus a travel day? = at least 5 maybe 6 days off for the division winners and that's if it don't rain and the creek don't rise.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: O's are going back to cartoon bird on their hats. So I guess the days of Michael Kay describing the Baltimore uniform as having "an ornithologically correct" bird on their caps are over. Such was part of his schtick back when, in his radio days, he would always take a moment during each game to detail that day's uni for the two participating teams; 'no names ... of course'