Frayed Knot

And I think we should probably consider Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer to be in the "Leaning No' category for now, at least until further clarification. "No idea who made this new playoff format proposal, but Rob is responsible for releasing it, so I'll direct this to you, (commissioner) Rob Manfred, ... Your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball. You're a joke.”

=bmfc1 post_id=31454 time=1581414705 user_id=73] It lowers the bar for teams to strive for excellence and cheapens the importance of the long season.

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=31400 time=1581361151 user_id=68] So then why haven't past foreign movies competed in the main best movie category, for the most part? New trend?

Maybe the rumors about Cohen not getting approved were true. Except it never even got to that point. The last article by those NY Post guys who were doing most of the reporting on this story merely speculated about whether this incidence of "bad faith" bargaining might mark Cohen as a guy not to be approved for any future deals he might want to make, Mets or elsewhere, especially considering how his past financial dealings may have already had him on the fence for approval on this deal. I suspect MLB would have approved him -- He specifically wasn't blamed for his company's irregularities but others under him were -- but we'll likely never know now. Not sure what the Cohen/Wilpon(x2) relationship was going into all this - minority partners can likely go years communicating with other minority or chief owners by text or by phone or through lawyers rather than face to face -- but I suspect the negotiations might have started to turn personal over the whole control thing. Eff & Jeff want the five year farewell tour. Cohen agrees to the clause but thinks of it as a more informal 'seat at the table' kind of thing rather than as an official stamp of final-say power. They get into over that during the dotting-i's/crossing-t's phase of the deal and suddenly a bunch of 'Fuck You!!' and 'Eat Shit!!' are flying back and forth across the table (at least that's how I like to think it went). The 'Pons figure that there are other fish in the sea and if they're going to be forced to sell it doesn't have to be to this guy just because he happened to be closest, especially not after he just insulted your intelligence over the Madoff deals which put them in the position to sell in the first place and also called Jeff nothing more than a member of the lucky sperm club.

=G-Fafif post_id=31358 time=1581302825 user_id=55] One scoreless inning in Pittsburgh. Wore No. 68. Threw with his left hand.

https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/steve-cohen-could-be-blocked-from-buying-another-mlb-team-after-mets-mess/Cohen could be barred from future team ownership So sez NY Post reporters Kosman (sadly, only one 'O' in that name) McErney who seem to have been doing most of the basic digging in this story. The article talks about MLB's need for a 'Control Person' on every team, the guy who is ultimately responsible for the club's actions. That person is not necessarily the majority owner (think Marlins/Jeter or the designated person when Steinbrenner was suspended, etc.). Apparently Cohen had the idea that he could be the power behind the throne, so to speak, and gradually assume greater control despite initially agreeing to this five-year window thing. So according to these two reporters, when Cohen realized that he really couldn't run things during the five years, he began trying to change the terms of the deal and that's where things started to break down. Cohen apparently tried to either lessen the total price and/or pay less up front during those transition years. This, in the eyes of MLB, broke the terms of the non-binding offer sheet he signed months ago to buy the team so his actions are considered to be in bad faith. The upshot of all this is that this could torpedo any chance he might have of passing MLB's approval process if he should attempt to buy a team in the future, whether the NYM or some other club, even as it wasn't assured that he'd pass muster in the first place. oe: cross-posted w/CF. Same link as above, just with my yapping added.

Did they take her off SNB? I assumed this was the concession to keep that. There's been talk all winter about her being dropped from the SNB crew so I assumed that Wednesdays meant instead of Sunday rather than in addition to. But maybe that script got flipped and they/she/Mets decided that the extra on-air work would preclude the NYM job. oe: nope, she's out at SNB -- https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/jessica-mendoza-loses-mets-job-espn-role/https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/jessica-mendoza-loses-mets-job-espn-role/ -- apparently trading a reduced role for a longer contract.

=Steve Cohen]As an 8% holder I'm looking forward to a higher bid"

The whole arrangement was stupid. Either you work for ESPN, or work for the Mets. How could anyone think it's ok to work for a ballclub, and a member of the media intended to cover that ballclub. 'cover that ballclub' is pretty generous for what ESPN does, particularly the SNB. This stuff is pretty common these days. Sounds like someone might have balked based on her comments about Beltran/Astros though. Yeah, pretty much this. I mean it IS a conflict of interest in the real world of sports and journalism. But it's not like Mendoza is an actual reporter -- she's pretty much a show pony who does color for the SNB game and appears occasionally on other shows mainly to promote where that coming week's SNB is going to be -- or that the four-letter hadn't long ago erased the line between covering a sport and promoting it. Plus it was never really clear what she was doing for the Mets anyway so this is mostly just a big fat nothing-burger rather than a gain or a loss. The oddest part here is the line about her "expanding role" for ESPN just as they take her off SNB (the one game that Bristol cares about) and stick her on one of their mid-week time-slot fillers w/o SNB's exclusivity window. Maybe there's some other perk she's getting instead although I can't fathom what that might be. BB2N essentially doesn't exist anymore which means, aside from SNB, ESPN cares more about the LL WS (cuz they essentially own it) than they do about MLB and she was already working that.

It's tough to see how this kind of insistence on dictating terms and setting conditions for after they are no longer majority owners is a sustainable plan for the 'Pons. While they most likely don't have to sell the team NOW!!!!, it's pretty apparent that they're going to sell at some point in the not-distant future so there are only so many bridges they can burn as they continue to search for this ideal notion of a perfect buyer who'll not only agree to their price but also to their after-sale terms.

Edgy MD wrote: A master poker player? He played tournament poker starting in High School and credits the game with his initial teaching about risks. I assume Vaccaro is playing off of that with the implication that maybe Freddie thinks he'll get better offers while Cohen is betting otherwise.

It depends, I suppose, on what each side said and/or what each was assuming about the other. Vaccaro chimes in saying that the 5-year period was always going to be trouble so maybe each thought the other would blink. From Day 1, it [the waiting period] was going to be trouble. It was going to be a cudgel for both sides: Cohen was wildly overpaying for 80 percent of the team, and the sale price didn't even include SNY. That was his idea of a concession. And for $2.6 billion, in his mind, that wasn't just a fair deal, but a generous one. Wilpon could get a cash infusion and still run the team. If it allowed Mets fans an opportunity to stop slandering the family name for a little while, all the better. ... In retrospect, and with hindsight, the Nic Cage-Lisa Marie Presley marriage had a better shot at a happily ever after. But $2.6 billion is $2.6 billion, and it is hard to believe the other members of the Mets' ownership group — specifically Wilpon's other children, and Saul Katz and his family — will be delighted to see that simply evaporate, unless there's someone else on deck. ... From the cheap seats, at least, it's hard to imagine Fred Wilpon didn't overplay his hand here, sitting across the table from a master poker player who doesn't take prisoners.

NYP reports that the snag WAS over the supposed five-year window (shocking, I know) and that the deal to sell to Cohen is, at least for now, off the table. https://nypost.com/2020/02/05/battle-over-mets-control-at-heart-of-steve-cohen-wilpons-struggle/https://nypost.com/2020/02/05/battle-over-mets-control-at-heart-of-steve-cohen-wilpons-struggle/ Steve Cohen thought his $2.6 billion deal to buy the Mets in installments over five years would give him some control that would grow over that time to help make team decisions during the transition. The Mets owners disagreed and a deal, for now, is off, sources said. ... From discussions with those familiar with the talks, it is unclear if the confusion over whether Cohen would be making team decisions during the five-year window was merely a miscommunication or a last-minute surprise from the Wilpons, as some sources allege.

Meanwhile, down the freeway from the Dodgers, the middle of the Angels' lineup this year will feature (in some order or another) Trout - Rendon - Pujols - Ohtani - Pederson, plus some guy named David Fletcher who is 25 y/o, played 3B (plus 4 other positions) in his first full season last year and was second only to Trout in WAR (3.8) for the team in 2019. So maybe that crew can even get them to finish over .500 this season [72-90 in 2019 and no winning season since 2015].

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Yeah, I think he's from the state of Washington. Well, that's practically Canada.

My top-ten involves nine: JOJO RABBIT ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD 1917 ROCKETMAN AD ASTRA YESTERDAY FORD VS FERRARI -------------- BLINDED BY THE LIGHT COLD PURSUIT I even saw the majority of them in an actual theatre (Astra, Blinded, and Cold Pursuit were via DVD) and would recommend all but the final two. COLD PURSUIT, which I watched last week on a whim on a night when I really, really felt like doing nothing at all, is a really, really bad movie. Has Liam Neeson made a non-revenge flick in, like, the last ten years?

=Centerfield post_id=31050 time=1580851255 user_id=65] ... But unless everyone was dead wrong, it seems the Wilpons have no choice but to sell, either to Cohen or someone else. I wonder if this is Steve Cohen flexing his muscle to get more control over the team. It's not likely someone would outbid him.

In the meantime, both the Dodgers & Padres are in deep talks w/Boston over Mookie Betts Not sure which way things are going to go but it's starting to sound like something is going to happen soon. And speaking of (not) soon, how crazy is it that the Sawx still haven't named a manager? It's been 2-1/2 weeks since Cora "resigned" and not even that long until P's & C's report. I think some here were calling it a sign of NYM front office disfunction when a replacement for Beltran hadn't been named in like the first 48 hours.

Yeah, it's tough to equate passing on Pedro Strop with 'not trying'. And you figure if there were demand for Strop he wouldn't have wound up on a one-year deal in Cincy. Familia, Diaz, Lugo, Wilson, Bettances, Gsellman, plus maybe Wacha and whatever cast of characters will fill things out.

Only tangentially about Arenado, but a few days ago Kris Bryant lost his hearing about trying to get his service time increased. The Cubs, you might remember, decided that Bryant wasn't quite ready back in 2015 -- this despite being the consensus #1 prospect in baseball that winter and coming off a full season of upper minors (AA & AAA) where slashed north of 300/400/600 across 600+ PA -- so they kept him down in the minors exactly one day longer than was necessary to deny him a full year of ML service time. Bryant complained but the ruling said that rules are rules. This is likely to get altered during the upcoming CBA negotiations but the ship has sailed on those who signed under the current guidelines. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Bryant still has two more seasons before he can become a FA ... ANNNND that there's been talk that the Cubs & Rox have discussed a straight-up Bryant for Arenado swap. The Rox would get out from under Arenado's contract (although if they wanted to do that they shouldn't have signed it just one year ago) and the Cubs would get a player for the longer term and at a known cost. There is a 2021 opt-out in Arenado's deal which means that this could just wind up as a swap of two 28 y/o guys (Bryant is 8 months younger) who play the same position and are under contract for the next two seasons, so there is a lot of symmetry there. And you'd have to figure that the odds of Bryant re-upping w/the Cubs are pretty low right about now. Don't know that there is anything more than 'What If' speculation here, but talk about your challenge trades!!

=ashie62 post_id=30745 time=1580339948 user_id=90] Forever conflated him with Miguel Tejada

btw, the reason I blamed this all on the Yanquis was that I don't think it was a coincidence that the AL turned to this rule in desperation following the decade when the Yanx attained also-ran status. After dominating the AL from the early/mid '20s thru the early/mid '60s, the AL found itself much more single-team dependent as compared to the NL. So when the yanx went into a tailspin starting in 1965, that league lost their main drawing card. Attendance plummeted (much more so than NL) as the AL found itself with the weaker franchises in all three of the biggest markets: Mets out-drew MFY from '64 on; Cubs over White Sox (though neither drew real well at that point); Dodgers way over Angels, plus were sputtering in cities like Baltimore and Washington (would leave D.C. in '61 and again in '72), KC/Oakland (at least while they were acting as a de facto farm system for the Yanx, and Cleveland (there's a reason they were chosen for that movie). Add to that that the NL was simply the better league at that point talent wise, just look at the pitching especially [Koufax, Seaver, Carlton, Gibson, Jenkins, Marichal compared to the likes of Palmer, Tiant, Kaat, ???]. But the AL was also the lower scoring league despite not having to face those arms and it was the combination of the low attendance and low scoring which prompted the change. It was a temporary "solution" to a temporary problem (the AL hadn't always been worse and scoring had already picked up due to rule changes in '69) that never should have been allowed to happen. As Red Smith once wrote about some decision Bowie Kuhn made (or failed to make, I forget which): 'If Bowie Kuhn were alive today this never would have happened'. In fairness I'm not sure Bowie could have stopped it if he wanted to as the leagues had much more independent autonomy at that time but I seem to recall he at least passively backed it, possibly because he was afraid of losing AL owner support for a possible future term extension. So while the other AL teams first just basically rolled over for four decades and allowed the MFY to beat the shit out of them -- often thanks to the players they sold/gave away/dealt to them for not much in return -- they then realized that they couldn't live without a money-making bully to push them around and so advocated for this "experimental" rule to fix a problem of their own making. And now nearly half a century later the rule still exists and is now about to be foisted on the rest of us as a bargaining chip in labor negotiations even as none of the reasons for it doing so remain. Would be nice if at least SOME of the NL clubs raise their voice against it but, instead, the worst rule change in the history of the sport is going to pass without vocal opposition because it's going to be as part of a larger package making it inseparable from the whole. So Fuck you AL! And (as always) Fuck You Yanquis!!

Edgy MD wrote: Can you think of any manager with as little professional playing experience as Luis Rojas? A season as a punchless corner infielder/corner outfielder for the Expos. That background almost qualifies him as an honorary Wilpon. There was that skinny accountant-looking John Boles who had two full seasons and parts of two others with the Marlins ['96, '99-2001; approx 450 games in total] who was often said to be either the first guy, or at least the first in a very long time, to have never played at any level anywhere. But, other than that, it'll be tough to find someone who can slip under Rojas's 143 PAs at the Rookie Lg level plus maybe some pieces of two Dominican Lg stints On the coaching thing, I doubt a rookie manager, especially one named so late in the off-season, is going to get to name his own coaches ... and that's before we even get into the whole idea of picking the coaching staff based on past popularity.

I watching this movie thinking that it's a nice story just not well executed ... and then I remember that it's a nice "story" because it's a true story (or 'based on' at least) at which it becomes just not a good movie. Less 'Yesterday', it's more like a poorly done 'Bend it Like Beckham' rip-off. Other than that, pretty much what Edgy said; just too many things that didn't ring true. - In the street scene where folks spontaneously break into Bruce song it's unclear whether this was merely stuff happening inside the kid's head or if the movie was about to become musical theatre - the kid's schoolmates, who think he must only be listening to 'Asian' music while they're all deep into their 1987 new wave sounds & clothes, seem to have either barely heard of Springsteen and/or dismiss him as some relic from their parents' generation - the only real plot 'twist' is where the stern-looking neighbor, whose constant expression seems to epitomize the town's disapproval of having to live amongst a growing number of "Packys", turns out instead to be the local anti-xenophobe who then for good measure encourages the kid to continue working on his art after stumbling upon some of his writing (when some blew out of the garbage and onto the neighbor's lawn of course) oe: the fact that the kid grew up in the 'Bury Park' section of his town makes the book title of GREETING FROM BURY PARK very clever. So of course the movie decides that that need to be changed to ... something with essentially no meaning. Don't think that particular song was even used in the soundtrack.

The long-time 'Pro' DH argument has always been: 'Well who would you rather see hit, [inept pitcher] or ['Name' slugger]? But that argument carried out to its logical conclusion can be fitted to just about any situation. -- 'Who would you rather see play SS?' ... and use that to have a rule where your glove man fields but another hits for him. Rey Ordonez: Designated Fielder. He coulda had a 20 year career!! -- 'You wanna see Wilson Ramos run or Sam Haggerty?' ... and have a situation where SH never bats but trots out to replace the Buffalo each time he reaches base. The fault with the DH, as it does with many things, lies with the Yanquis.