Frayed Knot

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Presuction? Well you don't just want to go into lipo surgery unprepared do you?

Cora's vesting option was due to kick in if/when he appeared in 80 games. Instead, he was released on Aug 7 (season 68% complete) having appeared in 62 of the 80 games needed (77%). So while he looked to be on his way to reaching that number (though certainly not assured of it) that's hardly the same thing as claiming he was dumped on "11:00 on the night before". Plus, I'd maintain that releasing a back of the roster player for essentially a younger version of the same thing is a lot less out of the ordinary than would be taking a nine year closer who has finished nearly 90% of the games he's appeared in over the last six seasons and suddenly "deciding" you don't want him to close anymore just as it becomes virtually certain that such an option is about to kick in.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: The Parnell and batting order examples you keep throwing in here as analogies are totally unconnected because none of them involve pre-existing and mutually agreed-upon conditions. No way. The number of plate appearances a player accumulates correlates both highly and positively to where he bats in the batting order. There is no question but that, all other things being equal, a player who bats fifth will have less plate appearances than a player who bats third or fourth. If you're saying that a player with a plate appearances based bonus wasn't promised a certain number of plate appearances by his team, then couldn't you say, just the same, that the Mets didn't promise K-Rod that he'd finish enough games for his bonus to vest? Besides, if this is all supposed to be a preordained entitlement inuring to K-Rod, than why is the bonus money conditional in the first place? The Mets agreed to pay K-Rod's bonuses only if he met certain conditions. They didn't guarantee to enable K-Rod to meet those conditions. If a starting and healthy and effective everyday player has a plate appearance clause and the team suddenly benches him right as he's on the verge of meeting the threshold THEN THIS is an equivalent argument because that would (fifth or six time now for this one) BE SEEN AS SOMETHING DONE FOR NO OTHER REASON BUT TO KEEP THE PLAYER FROM REACHING THE CONTRACT TRIGGER. That is VERY DIFFERENT THAN requiring a judge to micro-analyze managerial strategy. A mere lineup change of a couple of spots which may result in a year-long difference of a few dozen PAs is something which an arbiter would be very unlikely to see as strictly a means to slip out of a contract clause and therefore not nearly as likely to be the basis of a grievance. See the difference? We're starting to go in circles here, a little bit. I argue that the player should assume the whole risk of making his performance based bonuses and you say that the team bears some of that risk by exposing itself to the possibility of damages if the player fails to make those bonuses. And the reason we're going around in circles is because, instead of reading what I'm actually saying, you're making up vastly different scenarios and calling them equal. Just because lawsuits can and are used for frivolous purposes isn't a reason to outlaw lawsuits. I'm done here.

K-Rod was a free agent. If he didn't like the guaranteed portion of whatever the Mets were offering, he had the option of negotiating elsewhere. If the law was the way you'd like it to be and I owned a team, I'd never offer any player performance based bonuses. And the Mets were just as free to walk away from the talks too. Except that they didn't, they offered him a 4th year option as a way to compromise between 3 and 4 and, having done that, implied that the player had a reasonable expectation that he'd have a shot to earn that 4th year -- not a guarantee, not veto power over how he's used, but a reasonable shot (lawyers make their rent arguing about terms like "reasonable" "good faith", etc.). And (four about the 4th time now) if the use of KRod suddenly goes from being used to finish games almost every time to never finishing games just as a clause based on finishing games is about to kick in then he has a definite claim to say that the deck was stacked against him even though he continued to do the job just as well as always. The Parnell and batting order examples you keep throwing in here as analogies are totally unconnected because none of them involve pre-existing and mutually agreed-upon conditions.

Jerry-my Burnitz (he has his alternative spellings and I have mine)

batmagadanleadoff wrote: The other question you raise though, is whether a player with a performance based bonus clause suddenly inherits the right to question --in a courtroom-- how his team used him. Sure he does - at least when the club "decision" is not one that looks to be dictated by on-field results. Contract clauses like these don't just suddenly rise up out of nowhere, they're the result of negotiations and compromises which, in this case, could have gone something like this: - player wants four years guaranteed, team is reluctant to give that. So they offer a deal where they effectively say that if said player is still healthy and closing games (which is the role for which they got him) a fourth year will kick in and do so at a price that will effectively raise the per/year value of the deal to something more in line with what the player was asking for in the first place -- $11+mil/yr becomes closer to $13/per is/when the option kicks in. But if a club suddenly changes his role with no performance decline to indicate it's warranted then it makes it look like the club agreed to the option in bad faith which is exactly what the grievance process is there to address. And, again, this all different from saying that the arbiter is there to pass judgement on everyday managerial policy. If you want to argue that teams should more often break away from the policy and use the nominal closer in non-closing but still important situations then I'm already ahead of you on that line.

Cora was an aging player and the 25th man (or close to it) on the roster; guys like that get released all the time. And while he certainly could have taken his case to a grievance I suspect he was quite possibly advised that the odds on that one were long. What does NOT happen all the time is when a pitcher in his prime (29) and pitching well (assuming, for the purposes of this argument, that he is) who's been a closer for virtually all of his ten years in the majors suddenly gets demoted from full-time closing to middle-inning mop-up or set-up for no obvious reason other than that he's coming up on the verge of a contract trigger. Comparing this scenario to one where an arbitrator "should never question" team decisions, or one where he reaches conclusions by micro-analyzing individual managerial decisions, or one where a player might retroactively claim that a different spot in the lineup may have allowed him to reach his incentive, is a jump of Beamon-esque proportions. And keep in mind here that I'm not claiming that I want this option to kick in, I just don't think that the simplistic remedy that's being tossed about here: well if he gets too close then the team should just stop letting him finish games, is as fool-proof as some are making it out to be. I believe that if the Mets try that the player would take a complaint to the grievance process and that he'd win.

I think it will be very difficult for anyone to think that a sudden shift after nearly a decade of All-Star caliber performance in essentially the only role he's ever filled and clearly the one he was signed for wasn't done for any reason other than to intentionally make him fall short of his contract trigger. When confronted by such a move the remedy at the union's disposal is an arbitration process that exists for the purpose of deciding whether such moves violate the spirit of the contract even if not the actual wording. Absent injury or extended ineffectiveness, if the club suddenly "decides" as he nears the threshold that KRod is no longer the closer, I can't see them winning that argument.

Moving Beltran to RF, or Ollie to the pen, or most other moves aren't ones designed specifically and solely to get out from triggering a contract clause the way this one clearly would be. And I'd hate to be on the side trotting out the argument in front of an arbitration judge that, even though for three-plus seasons they believed the best way to use Frankie was as a closer, this move is NOW being done because they suddenly decided it's in the best interest of the team on the field and the fact that it's occurring as a contract-vesting clause is drawing near is merely a coincidence.

Ceetar wrote: Given that the usage of a player is not in the contract, I have yet to hear anything about how the players association would have a leg to stand on, were the Mets to decide to use him abnormally. They can bitch and moan, sure, but they don't have any legal ground. Given the way he's been used for both his entire career and to-date in his time with the NYM, to suddenly use him in a manner which looks solely designed so as to avoid a contract clause reached in good faith I'd say they would have a leg on which to stand. I'd also say that given the track record of the owners vs players in legal matters that they'd have more than a good chance at winning that argument.

So they either made money, lost some, or lost a ton depending on what day of the week it is. I can't get too involved in this stuff until we're within a Prince Fielder HR of what the facts are supposed to be.

MS? Point being that the trustee is partially basing his suits on the idea that the ones who made out on the Madoff deals "should have known" that the return rates and success rates were too good to be true. But the same could be said for the folks who ultimately lost on the deal; after all, they were most likely seeing paper "profits" in the same range and presumably also not blowing a lot of whistles about it. Not that that makes the whole suit unworthy or anything. It's just a bit ironic to claim money from one set of folks on the basis that they should have known better in favor of clients who (assuming the first bunch weren't in cahoots) were pretty much in the same boat.

Of course, most of the people the trustee is collecting [u:1xxu8kh8]for[/u:1xxu8kh8] should have known too.

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Lastings Milledge: minor league deal w/ST invite from ChiSox

MLB.com: Andy Pettitte reportedly has informed the Yankees of his intention to retire and will announce that decision on Friday. Pettitte's decision was initially reported by Michael Kay [citing] an unidentified source [might I suggest that source as "pillow talk"]. The Associated Press said a news conference will be held Friday at Yankee Stadium. Neither the Yankees nor Pettitte has confirmed or commented on the reports.

He might. The point is that it makes a deal harder and more complicated.

I would hope Muffy's slugging numbers are more than a bit better than those numbers being thrown around (IsoP = .064 - .091) especially since his however brief career to-date figure is .162

That means less than ... oh say 50 starts there this season.

Edgy DC wrote: Not to make too much of it, but Beltran enters the season with 5&10 protection, doesn't he? Yes, plus his contract gave him full no-trade protection even before he reached the 10/5 threshold a year ago.

I expect him to NOT be the regular starting 2Bman

The movie reminds me a bit of 'Easy Rider', very symbolic of its era but hasn't aged well.

Valadius wrote: Who else besides Bonilla and Frank Cashen had their deferred payments invested with Madoff? Probably everyone who had a deferred structure. The Times article kind of implies that deferring money so you can invest the remainder during the interim was unique to the Mets or something but that's what everyone does with deferred payments, essentially it's the purpose of structuring a contract with deferred payments. The problem comes up in that not all investments are made with a swindler.

Gwreck wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Anytime anyone slips out of the icy grip of the four-letter network I consider it a good thing. This also (and not coincidentally) moves him out of the realm of "insider" pay interweb. Rob Neyer has been free (and out from behind the ESPN "Insider" paywall) for something like the past 2 years. That's the problem with putting stuff behind pay walls, people who decide not to pay not only don't see it but also stop looking. ESPN made such a big deal out of locking up exclusive deals with the likes of Olney & Kurkjian & Stark & Gammons, but when most of their stuff became pay-only their baseball page went, for me, from a regular look to one that I ignored. Neyer himself was none too shy about saying that the idea of his column behind a pay wall was neither his idea nor his desire.

I had a baseball card of Gates Brown back in the day. He was such a scary looking character that my sister was afraid of it.