Frayed Knot

I never had a personal opinion on him one way or the other, but I did think he would have had a better career than what turned out; at least that of an above-average platoon player. He had a nice swing when he first came up.

The lack of games & IPs is probably what got Selma overlooked originally.I could make an argument for both him & Ribant over - not Bethke neccesarily - but Napoleon & Miller.How 'bout:5 - Ribant4 - Bethke3 - Selma2 - Taylor1 - Kolb

I didn't expect this one to get a whole lot of attention, but it was re-opened to discussion when some discrepancies jumped up about the original order due to lost data.Based on the info we did save, the list looks like:30 - Lewis29 - Swoboda28 - Smith27 - Fisher26 - Kranepool25 - Hickman24 - McMillan23 - Christopher22 - Jackson21 - McGraw20 - Hiller19 - Hunt18 - Klaus17 - Spahn16 - Cisco15 - Sutherland14 - Richardson13 - Cannizzaro12 - Kroll11 - Stephenson10 - Gonder9 - Bearnarth8 - Cowen7 - Lary6 - Parsons5 - Hawk Taylor4 - Bethke3 - Kolb2 - Napolean 1 - Larry MillerSo, unless someone has some objections or comments, I'll consider this a done deal.

This needed to be rescued before it fell off into archive-land. I'd like to make this the last call for opinions - seeing as how the season is 3 months gone now - and finalize this list. So anyone who wants to add an opinion or argue a point on the existing list-to-date (see below) do so now or forever hold your peace. The composite so far, built from 9 submitted lists plus our PotY project: 30 - Beltran 29 - Reyes 28 - Wright 27 - Delgado 26 - Glavine 25 - LoDuca 24 - Wagner 23 - Valentin 21.5 - Chavez 21.5 - Martinez 20 - Heilman 19 - Maine 18 - O. Hernandez 17 - Sanchez 16 - Bradford 15 - Feliciano 14 - Oliver 13 - Nady 12 - Floyd 11 - Trachsel 10 - Green 9 - Franco 8 - Perez 7 - Mota 6 - Milledge 5 - Bannister 4 - Woodward 3 - Soler 2 - Castro 1 - R Hernandez

"Jones is a very good fielder, or at least was last time I checked" He's certainly not a klutz but doesn't really have the arm for RF. Problem with that OF is that, ideally at least, all 3 guys are LFers.

Kingsport & the GCL Mets will return for 2007 6 teams has been typical for a while with most teams having 4 full-seasons teams (AAA, AA, High-A & low-A) plus 2 short-season/rookie teams. They do distinguish between 'Short-Season' & 'Rookie' but I guess they could really just be considered High-Rookie and Lower-Rookie. Sometimes, due to affiliate shuffles, a club will find themselves with 2 teams on one level and none on another but those are usually just temporary until they can strike a new deal somewhere. Adding the GCL team gave the Mets one extra Rookie league team and made them the only team w/7 affiliates. Toronto just this winter dropped their Appalachian League team and are going with just 5 teams in their stable. As there's been talk recently of junking some of those lower leagues (on the theory that no one except scouts are watching anyway so why not just turn them into instructional type leagues w/intersquad games) perhaps smaller is going to be the wave of the future.

So it looks like all that wailing from the columnists was much ado about nothing in the long run. Well, either that or they'll claim that it was their columns the spurred the team to make the deal. Yeah, that's the ticket. Here is the entire list of manager salaries according to Bill Madden's Sunday column: Joe Torre, NYY $7.5 million Lou Piniella, CHC $3.5 million Bobby Cox, ATL $3 million Tony La Russa, STL $2.8 million Mike Scioscia, LAA $2 million Jim Leyland, DET $2 million Bruce Bochy, SF $1.75 million Terry Francona, BOS $1.65 million Phil Garner, HOU $1.5 million Mike Hargrove, SEA $1.3 million Ron Gardenhire, MIN $1.25 million Ozzie Guillen, CHW $1.1 million Eric Wedge, CLE $1.025 million Jim Tracy, PIT $1 million Bob Melvin, ARI $875,000 Buddy Bell, KC $825,000 Ned Yost, MIL $825,000 Clint Hurdle, COL $800,000 Charlie Manuel, PHI $800,000 Willie Randolph, NYM $700,000 Jerry Narron, CIN $600,000 Grady Little, LAD $600,000 Sammy Perlozzo, BAL $600,000 Ron Washington, TEX $600,000 Joe Maddon, TAM $550,000 John Gibbons, TOR $500,000 Manny Acta, WAS $500,000 Bob Geren, OAK $500,000 Seeing as how this new deal replaces the old one for 2007 it stands to reason that he got a salary bump for this year in addition to the expected bump for the next two seasons. And seeing as how he tops out at $2mil I'd guess he's averaging in the $1.3-$1.5 range over the next three years. Sounds about right to me.

Cliff in LF, Soriano in CF, & Jacque Jones in RF has all the makings of one really, really bad defensive OF.

Well, no contract is going to guarantee someone's spot on the roster --- what you may have heard is that he has a deal which allows him to refuse assignment to the minors if he doesn't make the 25 out of ST or if they try to send him down later on. IOW, he' may have pledged marriage to the Mets for better but not for worse.

The current GC-Mets of the (entry level) Gulf Coast League are heading into only their 3rd year of existance and are not a continuation or relocation of any earlier line. They were concocted strictly as an extra (7th) affiliate.

This has been a topic all week: Bill Madden on Sunday; Kalpisch & Matthews here; M&MD yesterday, and I think it's mainly because ... well because there's just not that much else to talk about until the substanative articles on the Super Bowl (to the extent that any of them are substanative) start up next Tuesday. And none of these articles seem to be all that close to knowing any particulars as none are even guessing as to what's being offered by the team or asked for by Willie. It's easy to just say 'Pay the Man' but it's pretty much meaningless if you don't know the details. Maybe it's Willie who's mucking things up by figuring he can cash in for LaRussa/Cox/Piniella type of money off his first two years and is willing to make himself a managerial FA a year from now if he doesn't get his price.

So here's the plan; One of us has to go down to Fla towards the end of spring training and find the, by that point, very pregnant Ms Delgado. Then, after pausing a few moments to snap a some pictures for use in 'Wifey Watch', sneak up behind her and yell BOOOOO!!!!! at the top of your lungs. Might induce an early labor, yaneverknow..

The exclusive deal with DirecTV would start with the '07 season. It's the MLB channel which is sked for '09

Oh sure, change the subject title and make my joke look lame!

What are you driinking?

Some question about Drew health (shoulder, I believe) cropped up and so there's still talk about the wording of the deal and installing certain "outs" for the Sox if this thing proves chronic. I suspect the Drew deal will still get done as the alternate choices - particularly for Drew/Boras - are much more limited now than they were back when he first scored that offer. The inevitability of Bonds deal I'm not so sure about. They're feuding over how much "freedom" Barry will get in the clubhouse; freedom meaning how many personal trainers and other hangers-on will get carte blanche. And, with the tide of public opinion in SF reportedly starting to turn against him (esp with the recent positive test for anphetamines), I could see the Giants finally deciding it's all not worth it and backing out.

="metsmarathon"]i would tend to think that they make less money by making the deal exclusive to one provider, as compared to all the money they could make by allowing anybody to pay for it irrespective of their cable or satellite system. From Baseball Prospectus: DirecTV is paying a whopping $100 million a year over seven years for these rights. Based on the information in the Sports Business Journal, that represents a five-fold increase over what inDemand was paying for the rights to EI. This is a considerable boost to MLB’s bottom line, although the marginal gain isn’t necessarily over the $20 million or so they were making under the previous deal, but over the reported $70 million a year SBJ claims inDemand offered. ]and it would be better for building and maintaining a strong fan base. Yeah, but what's that compared to a $1mil/team/yr increase in revenue?

"Eddie Murphy was fabulous in Dreamgirls ... He's the favorite to win Best Supporting Actor" Nah, Alan Arkin is. Always bet on the old guy to beat the young guy, particularly in Supporting awards. "I was also surprised that Borat was in the "adapted" category. I guess it's because it's based on a character he played on Da Ali G Show." Yup. It's considered adapted even if you adapt it from yourself. Billy Bob Thorton had this a few years back with 'Slingblade' which he extrapolated from a stand-up piece he had been doing. "Jackie Earle Fuckin' Haley! Wow!" He plays a child molester.

Is that homeowner really being paid for the board advertisements?

I suspect that it's partly - if not largely - a way to gain a foothold for their MLB channel as an agreement to carry the new channel whenever it launches is most likely linked as part of the deal. It'll save them any possible embarrasment if they were to lauch a channel only to either have everyone yawn, or, worse yet, not get their price. Again, it's the same route the NFL took. Most of the big cable providers are ignoring the NFL channel both because they won't take it unless they can get the more attractive 'Sunday Ticket' package as well, and that the channel itself - with 24/7 minutae in addition to a handful of out of town games - just isn't all that interesting as a stand-alone.

I think I heard that they're not doing a formal 'caravan' this year. Not sure why the change. These next few weeks are really the nadir of the off-season. Most of the moves already completed; not even the usual general purpose baseball article in Sunday's Newsday; and talk-radio along with the rest of the media will spend the next 14 days interviewing the likes of the backup tackle's 3rd grade teacher in an attempt to gain new "insights" into "the big game". We may be more than halfway to Opening Day but that's like saying that you're more than halfway through winter in the middle of February while you're sitting in the calendar's worst weather.

This all reminds me of the time (early '90s?) when MLB sold their entire network package ('Game of the Week' plus ASG & all post-season) to CBS, breaking the long-running streak of 'GotW' on NBC and a split ABC/NBC post-season. The change in the network wasn't a bad thing neccesarily except that CBS wasn't really interested in baseball - esp reg season baseball. They just bought the entire deal in order to gain exclusivity in the post-season which they used to plug the hell out of their new fall prime-time schedule. Meanwhile, the GotW sked got severely cut back and erratic as CBS put on a Saturday game seemingly whenever they felt like it, skipping weeks at a time during certain stretches. The joke at the time was that it went from 'Game of the Week' to 'Game of the Once-in-a-While' IOW, what MLB did back then - just like now - was to opt for the bigger pile of money that an exclusivity deal brings while bringing fewer games to the public. Those intent on writing letters might want to remind Bud & co of how THAT deal worked out for them.

Yes it was Redford/Sundance

As mentioned there, this is what the NFL has done for years now - withhold their 'Sunday Ticket' service from Cable operators in exchange for the big bucks they get from Direct TV's exclusivity agreement. In an interview on WFAN a few weeks back, Cablevision honcho Jim Dolan was asked why they're not carrying the NFL channel (something which had Rutgers fans PO'd about the possibility of missing their Bowl game until a temp deal was struck). Dolan answer was, that while the NFL is running around telling the public that it's Cable TV's fault that the channel isn't available in their area, they'd agree to carry it in a minute if the much more valuable 'Sunday Ticket' package were also made available to them. The NFL neglects to mention that part. It's not often I side with 'Cablevision' is these sorts of fights but they're right in this case. And now MLB decides that bringing more games [u:6a611545f7]to fewer people[/u:6a611545f7] is a good way to launch their own channel. Whether they turn out to be correct or not remains to be seen, but these sports leagues are betting that the future of their televised product lies in controlling it all through their own distribution system rather than the networks. A number of golf tournaments - long a staple of winter weekends - have been taken off the air this year and placed entirely on 'The Golf Channel', thus reducing the audience immensely.

="iramets"]No one gets the cinematic reference? It's from Butch & the Kid of course - one of my all-time fave flicks, which, coincidently, is on AMC right NOW!!!! as that channel is apparently doing some sort of Robert Redford fest this weekend. Butch - All right Harvey, let's get the rules straight first Harvey - What? There's no rules in a knife fight!' Butch - OK then, someone say 1-2-3 go! Someone in crowd - 1-2-3 Go! (Butch kicks Harvey in groin) Who are those guys?