Author Topic: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!  (Read 45612 times)

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Offline EasyAce

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BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« on: January 01, 2019, 07:40:21 pm »
It's 42 days before pitchers and catchers report.

It's 51 days before the first spring training exhibition game.

It's 86 days until Opening Day.

The World Series occurs four times as frequently as the Iowa caucuses. What a wonderful country America is.---George F. Will.

If it isn't him, I'll keep him anyway.---Casey Stengel.

Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.---Yogi Berra.


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Online DCPatriot

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2019, 06:17:48 am »
Yankees bringing back Zach Britton on three-year, $39 million deal
Jeff Passan

Reliever Zach Britton agreed to a three-year, $39 million deal to return to the New York Yankees on Saturday, league sources told ESPN, fortifying one of the game's best bullpens after it lost reliever David Robertson in free agency earlier in the week.

Britton's deal includes both a club option and a potential player opt-out, according to sources. The Yankees can exercise a fourth-year option after the 2020 season worth $14 million, making the total value of the deal up to $53 million, sources said.

If the team chooses not to trigger the option, Britton can opt out of his deal, at which point he'll have made $26 million, according to sources.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25693480/zach-britton-new-york-yankees-agree-three-year-deal

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Oh Shit!!
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2019, 06:51:00 am »
Yankees bringing back Zach Britton on three-year, $39 million deal
Jeff Passan

Reliever Zach Britton agreed to a three-year, $39 million deal to return to the New York Yankees on Saturday, league sources told ESPN, fortifying one of the game's best bullpens after it lost reliever David Robertson in free agency earlier in the week.

Britton's deal includes both a club option and a potential player opt-out, according to sources. The Yankees can exercise a fourth-year option after the 2020 season worth $14 million, making the total value of the deal up to $53 million, sources said.

If the team chooses not to trigger the option, Britton can opt out of his deal, at which point he'll have made $26 million, according to sources.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25693480/zach-britton-new-york-yankees-agree-three-year-deal

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh Shit!!
@DCPatriot
If he stays healthy, the Yankees get deadly in the late innings.

Next up: will Cardiac Kimbrel end up returning to the Red Sox? (And will they trust him with the ninth inning too readily?)


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Online DCPatriot

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2019, 06:58:33 am »
@DCPatriot
If he stays healthy, the Yankees get deadly in the late innings.

Next up: will Cardiac Kimbrel end up returning to the Red Sox? (And will they trust him with the ninth inning too readily?)

It will be a reminder of days of old.  Except, IMO, Britton has much better stuff than Rivera.

Who in the hell can hit that 12 to 6?  We haven't met him yet.

Their games are shortened by at least 4 outs.
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2019, 07:25:32 am »
It will be a reminder of days of old.  Except, IMO, Britton has much better stuff than Rivera.
Better stuff (and it's debatable whether Britton's stuff is or was ever better than Rivera's cutter) doesn't make a better pitcher. If it did, Steve Dalkowski---who had arguably the fastest fastball of the 1960s---would have been a Hall of Famer and not an inconsistent wild man who drank himself out of baseball and, as it turned out sadly, life.

Who in the hell can hit that 12 to 6?  We haven't met him yet.
Somebody's hitting that and his other pitches---his lifetime batting average against is .239, and the hitters seemed to do a lot better against him lifetime when they swung at his first pitch. (Intriguingly, that's also the BA against him whether at home or on the road.) And his lifetime strikeout-to-walk ratio is 2.25. That ain't The Mariano. (Lifetime BA against: .211; lifetime strikeout-to-walk rate: 4.10. Britton's lifetime OPS against: .646; Rivera's: .555.) As a matter of fact, the only manner in which Britton is a near-equal to Rivera is that they're both just about impossible to hit one out against: Britton has a lifetime 0.6 home runs per nine innings rate; Rivera's was 0.5.

Their games are shortened by at least 4 outs.
I say again, it depends on Britton's health allowing him to pitch at least the way he did in September for the Yankees. It wasn't exactly vintage (read: the Britton of 2014-2016), but it was solid work. If he gives them three seasons of just that, the Yankees still get a little better than they're bargaining for.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 07:37:19 am by EasyAce »


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2019, 06:48:58 pm »
It's 42 days before pitchers and catchers report.

It's 51 days before the first spring training exhibition game.

It's 86 days until Opening Day.

The World Series occurs four times as frequently as the Iowa caucuses. What a wonderful country America is.---George F. Will.

If it isn't him, I'll keep him anyway.---Casey Stengel.

Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.---Yogi Berra.


   

(By the way, I quite like that last quote on your post.   happy77)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 06:49:56 pm by Polly Ticks »
Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too. -Yogi Berra

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2019, 11:31:02 pm »
Should Bryce Harper, Manny Machado suitors spread wealth instead?

Bradford Doolittle

College football season is over, and the NFL already has trimmed its field of championship hopefuls from 32 to eight. The NBA has only 11 days left in its All-Star balloting process. On Sunday, will we be one month away from the initial spring training reporting date for pitchers and catchers. Yet we do not know where this year's top free agents -- Manny Machado and Bryce Harper -- will be playing this season.

Is this unusual? You bet it is. I maintain a database of various free-agent-related data, which ranks each class according to a simple 10-year projection, even if that length of projection is likely to extend well past the end of a player's career. The error bar on any one of these projections is enormous, but it's meant more to look at group dynamics than to pin down a decade of any individual's future production.

Anyway, including this hot stove season, there have been 86 players ranked first or second in a free-agent class by this system. Only 15 of those elite targets were unsigned as of the month and day on which you are reading this -- Jan. 11. That includes the system's top two last winter (Lorenzo Cain and Jake Arrieta) and this winter (Machado and Harper).

http://insider.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/25730404/mlb-bryce-harper-manny-machado-suitors-better-spreading-wealth

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It's my personal feeling that from observing both of these players up close over the years (Baltimore and DC) are both less than 30 minutes away, that the contention of owners everywhere has changed.

IMO, Bryce Harper's career numbers 'SCREAM' quicksand/tarpit.  The guy couldn't even get himself mentally ready for his contract season...instead still trying to jack the outside 80mph breaking pitch to right field.

I've seen enough.   And apparently, so have the Lerners and Rizzo.

I don't even want him in a Nationals' uniform next year.  Give Robles, Eaton, Soto and Michael A a chance to compete for a spot.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Manny is second to none defensively.  But, is the wear easier on him as a hot corner man with Tuto playing SS?  You bet.

That said, his knees are made of Alien Skull Crystal, and he comes with a log on his shoulder.   

Is he worth tying up $300 Million over a decade?  Hell no!!

Didn't A-Rod teach them anything??

@EasyAce
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2019, 05:28:51 am »
Is he worth tying up $300 Million over a decade?  Hell no!!
If I've learned nothing else in a lifetime of watching baseball, its games on the field and off alike, it's that the owners---whether pre- or post-free agency era---are the Republican Party of sports. They will preach the gospel of economic sensibility . . . until it gets in the way of what they think a) their team needs and b) the other guys need to be kept away from.

The impeccably classic case in point: Jerry Reinsdorf (White Sox) and Albert Belle.

Reinsdorf was il supremo among the owners who pushed for and got the 1994 strike. He preached the loudest and the longest about fiscal sanity and salary escalation and all that. Now, guess what happened the moment (just about) that strike got settled in 1995.

You guessed it. I'll let Whitey Herzog (from You're Missin' a Great Game), who was in a position to know how these things worked having been a GM as well as a manager, take it from here:

Here's the biggest antilabor hawk of all time. The guy who spent years lecturing [then-Angels owner] Jackie Autry and the other owners on financial restraint. He wanted to force a strike and he wanted to cancel a World Series, if only just to break the players' backs. He got his way in '94 and put the game on a respirator. Yet the second the thing was settled who was there backing the Brinks truck up to Albert Belle's house? Reinsdorf gave him so much money it bent the whole salary structure out of whack. He needed a big name draw. He didn't want his division rivals, the Indians, to [re-sign] Belle. He wanted what he wanted and screw the rest of it.

As a matter of fact, Ebenezer Reinsdorf got so damned excited he forgot to count. The top [annual] salary at the time was $8 million. Reinsdorf skipped right past nine and ten and went straight to $11 million a year! That was the biggest fast-forward in the history of the salary spiral . . . [W]e know it screwed the game. Was it even good for Jerry Reinsdorf? Does a slugger with personal problems and holes in his game merit that kind of money? You have to get twenty-seven outs a game to win. How's his defense? How's his arm, his running? Off the field, will his PR kick you in the ass? For $55 million over five years, you need to be getting a guy who'll transform your organisation . . . did Jerry take all those factors into account? Does any owner?


And that, ladies and gentlemen, was several years after the contract that really started the wrong ball rolling---the Bud Black deal of 1990-91. Where then-Giants GM Al Rosen, against just about all logic, handed a pitcher who was at best the third or fourth man in a starting rotation a four-year, $10 million deal that made him, on a ledger anyway, the equal of baseball's best pitchers at the time. If Bud Freaking Black was worth that kind of money, just wait until the Orel Hershisers and Frank Violas and Roger Clemenses and their ilk hit free agency again or for the first time, never mind the Danny Jacksons and the Mike Boddickers and the Tom Brownings. They could also have called the winter of 1990-91 the Darren Daulton market, since the Phillies concurrently handed a catcher who'd spent about half his career to that point on the disabled list three years at $6.75 million. Suddenly it wasn't going to be that easy to keep the dollars down on position players, and watch when the best ones hit the market.

Someone's going to show Bryce Harper and Manny Machado the money. I still think Jim Bouton was right: As much as I don't think the players deserve all that money, I don't think the owners deserve it more.



"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Online DCPatriot

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2019, 07:57:01 pm »
If I've learned nothing else in a lifetime of watching baseball, its games on the field and off alike, it's that the owners---whether pre- or post-free agency era---are the Republican Party of sports. They will preach the gospel of economic sensibility . . . until it gets in the way of what they think a) their team needs and b) the other guys need to be kept away from.

The impeccably classic case in point: Jerry Reinsdorf (White Sox) and Albert Belle.

Reinsdorf was il supremo among the owners who pushed for and got the 1994 strike. He preached the loudest and the longest about fiscal sanity and salary escalation and all that. Now, guess what happened the moment (just about) that strike got settled in 1995.

You guessed it. I'll let Whitey Herzog (from You're Missin' a Great Game), who was in a position to know how these things worked having been a GM as well as a manager, take it from here:

Here's the biggest antilabor hawk of all time. The guy who spent years lecturing [then-Angels owner] Jackie Autry and the other owners on financial restraint. He wanted to force a strike and he wanted to cancel a World Series, if only just to break the players' backs. He got his way in '94 and put the game on a respirator. Yet the second the thing was settled who was there backing the Brinks truck up to Albert Belle's house? Reinsdorf gave him so much money it bent the whole salary structure out of whack. He needed a big name draw. He didn't want his division rivals, the Indians, to [re-sign] Belle. He wanted what he wanted and screw the rest of it.

As a matter of fact, Ebenezer Reinsdorf got so damned excited he forgot to count. The top [annual] salary at the time was $8 million. Reinsdorf skipped right past nine and ten and went straight to $11 million a year! That was the biggest fast-forward in the history of the salary spiral . . . [W]e know it screwed the game. Was it even good for Jerry Reinsdorf? Does a slugger with personal problems and holes in his game merit that kind of money? You have to get twenty-seven outs a game to win. How's his defense? How's his arm, his running? Off the field, will his PR kick you in the ass? For $55 million over five years, you need to be getting a guy who'll transform your organisation . . . did Jerry take all those factors into account? Does any owner?


And that, ladies and gentlemen, was several years after the contract that really started the wrong ball rolling---the Bud Black deal of 1990-91. Where then-Giants GM Al Rosen, against just about all logic, handed a pitcher who was at best the third or fourth man in a starting rotation a four-year, $10 million deal that made him, on a ledger anyway, the equal of baseball's best pitchers at the time. If Bud Freaking Black was worth that kind of money, just wait until the Orel Hershisers and Frank Violas and Roger Clemenses and their ilk hit free agency again or for the first time, never mind the Danny Jacksons and the Mike Boddickers and the Tom Brownings. They could also have called the winter of 1990-91 the Darren Daulton market, since the Phillies concurrently handed a catcher who'd spent about half his career to that point on the disabled list three years at $6.75 million. Suddenly it wasn't going to be that easy to keep the dollars down on position players, and watch when the best ones hit the market.

Someone's going to show Bryce Harper and Manny Machado the money. I still think Jim Bouton was right: As much as I don't think the players deserve all that money, I don't think the owners deserve it more.

Don't forget, @EasyAce

... Max Scherzer's seven year deal included delayed payment stretched out until something like 2028.   An annuity of sorts.

Before long, they'll accept stock certificates in the organization in lieu of $$$.
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2019, 08:34:27 pm »
Before long, they'll accept stock certificates in the organization in lieu of $$$.
@DCPatriot
You laugh, but that actually might not be a half cracked idea at that! Depending, of course, on whether a team is a publicly-traded organisation by itself or part of a publicly-traded company. Imagine the Cubs, for example, working, say, a contract extension for someone like Anthony Rizzo or Kris Bryant, and between the team and the players' agents they come up with a package in which the players get X million dollars a year in base salary plus enough Tribune Company stock options. The Cubs wouldn't have to lay out as much money immediately in salary, they'd have enough remaining in the till to work elsewhere on building/rebuilding/fortifying the team, and the players still stand to be very wealthy men for long years to follow.

Ballplayers aren't exactly ignorant of such things---in fact, in the final years of the reserve era, Joe Torre worked as a stock broker in the offseason, and Jim Bunning worked in both the insurance and the stock businesses in the offseasons (long before Bunning thought of entering politics). Dave Kingman worked for United Airlines in the pre-free agency offseasons (his father was a United lifer) and who's to say he didn't collect a few stock options there himself? George Altman, a Cubs/Mets/Cardinals outfielder of the 1960s, was a stock and commodities trader in the offseason and stayed there after his baseball career ended. And when Yogi Berra was first approached to endorse Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink in his Yankee playing days, Berra was canny enough to turn his genuine liking for the stuff into introducing other investors to the company and gaining himself both a company vice presidency and a small boatload of stock options enough to help make him a millionaire in due course. (Berra was also fabled for sharing the wealth---he brought many a Yankee teammate over to the Yoo-Hoo company to get them endorsement deals and maybe a little stock in the bargain.)

I think of something else that might have gone huge in alleviating the future pressures of free agency if only baseball's owners of the time had actually heeded the idea:

In 1928, Hall of Famer Earl Averill was in the thick of a Pacific Coast League pennant stretch drive with the San Francisco Seals when the Indians decided they had to have him and bought him from the Seals for $50,000. Averill learned of the sale when he picked up a newspaper that included a story about the deal. When he asked the Seals how much of that price he was going to get, the Seals practically told him to seek psychiatric attention. Averill said he was going home, then.

Enter Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's then and autocratic commissioner, to whose attention the Averill flap had come. Now, get this: Landis actually took Averill's side in the scrap. He not only told the Seals that Averill's demand wasn't unreasonable, he actually suggested baseball should decide that whenever a player was sold, rather than traded, the player should get a cut of the sale price.

You may remember that, decades later, Bowie Kuhn unilaterally ruled that players couldn't just be sold. He did it just to stick it to Charlie Finley, who was trying to sell his stars off as free agency was about to hit after the Messersmith ruling (you remember Finley trying to fire-sale Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue, no?), and who'd gotten under Kuhn's skin a few too many times as it was. Kuhn's only reason for the ruling was to stuff Finley and try to drive him out of baseball. The problem was, Kuhn wounded the whole game just to spank one owner. If Kuhn really wanted to help the whole game, he might have harked back to the Landis suggestion. Let teams continue selling players, but let about 20 to 30 percent of the money go to the sold players. If he'd done that, two things could have been possible: 1) The richer teams could still strengthen themselves without overweight salary structure inflation; and, 2) the not-so-rich teams could still remain competitive financially by way of profiting from the players they developed until they could be competitive teams again.

By the way, the Averill controversy got settled when the Indians agreed to give him a $5,000 bonus and a salary well above whatever the major league rookie salary was at the time, and Averill went on with his Hall of Fame career; when his back went out in a 1937 game, his swing was ruined. After he retired, the Earl of Snohomish turned one of his off-field passions into his livelihood: Averill liked to visit botanical gardens and zoos when the Indians were on the road, and after he retired from baseball he opened a greenhouse business with his brother.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 08:38:41 pm by EasyAce »


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2019, 08:59:44 pm »
Don't forget, @EasyAce

... Max Scherzer's seven year deal included delayed payment stretched out until something like 2028.   An annuity of sorts.
@DCPatriot
Hark back to when Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter was made a free agent, pre-Messersmith, after Charlie Finley reneged on a contracted-for insurance payment to the pitcher. The teams came a-calling en masse and turned Hunter's North Carolina hamlet into the hottest spot in the state. And the offers were yummy. But there was one thread running through the entire process: Hunter wanted a package that would include annuities to guarantee his children's education. Working through that, the offers he fielded included:

* $2 million for four years from the Mets.
* $3 million for four years from the Red Sox.
* A reported $4 million plus a lucrative McDonald's franchise from the Padres, and the Padres were the first of the bidders to agree to the education annuities.
* A package offer from the Pirates that would have included $750,000 in salary for five years, $1 million in annuities, $400,000 deferred money, and partnerships in a small group of Wal-Marts.
* A package from the Phillies that included $2 million for five years and unlimited hunting rights on owner Bob Carpenter's family estate. (Hunter's passions included the one suggested by his surname.)

Nobody saw the Yankees in the picture, but the Yankees turned out to have something nobody else did: a representative Hunter trusted---Clyde Kluttz, the former catcher turned scout who'd first discovered Hunter for the A's and remained a friend. Now working for the Yankees as their scouting director, Kluttz high tailed it to Hunter's neck of the woods and convinced him that no pressure in New York could have been worse than the pressure of Charlie Finley from whom he'd been liberated. And as it was getting close to Christmas, Hunter was getting antsy to get a deal done---deer season had only another week to go and he was itching to get out there at last after all the negotiating.

Kluttz got to Hunter quickly enough. He invited Hunter out to breakfast and put it right to him: what would it take to make him a Yankee?

Hunter laid it out:

* A signing bonus.
* Life insurance.
* Salary over five years.
* Deferred money.
* Legal expense money if they came up.
* His children's education.

Hunter's only question was, could the Yankees do all of it, and what were the dollars? Kluttz wrote the terms down on a napkin like this: $1 million for the bonus and for the life insurance; $750,000 salary over five years; $500,000 deferred money; $200,000 for legal expenses; $50,000 per child for the education annuities. As long as the Yankees were willing to do all six (other teams were willing on some but not all of it), Hunter was all in.

The total was $3.5 million. Even though the Padres and other teams were willing to go even higher. The Yankees hurried to get the deal done to keep things along their 1974 tax picture. The Yankees probably also got an advantage after the Padres tried to strong-arm Hunter into agreeing to something he'd never have done---commercials for McDonald's. (Hunter was a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-fast-food-eating type and McDonald's mortified him.) And Hunter high-tailed it back to North Carolina after his introductory press conference in New York to get that last couple of days of deer season in.

The deal that showed baseball players what was really out there for them if they were allowed to negotiate on an open market (Ken Harrelson in August 1967 was just a drop in the bucket, though it did show the same thing on a smaller level) turned out to be the third-highest dollar amount of all the deals Hunter was offered.

And all things considered---including Hunter's eventual sad death from an ALS-related injury---the Hall of Famer and the Yankees turned out to be pretty prescient.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 09:04:15 pm by EasyAce »


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Online DCPatriot

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2019, 09:04:50 pm »
@DCPatriot
Hark back to when Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter was made a free agent, pre-Messersmith, after Charlie Finley reneged on a contracted-for insurance payment to the pitcher. The teams came a-calling en masse and turned Hunter's North Carolina hamlet into the hottest spot in the state. And the offers were yummy. But there was one thread running through the entire process: Hunter wanted a package that would include annuities to guarantee his children's education. Working through that, the offers he fielded included:

* $2 million for four years from the Mets.
* $3 million for four years from the Red Sox.
* A reported $4 million plus a lucrative McDonald's franchise from the Padres, and the Padres were the first of the bidders to agree to the education annuities.
* A package offer from the Pirates that would have included $750,000 in salary for five years, $1 million in annuities, $400,000 deferred money, and partnerships in a small group of Wal-Marts.
* A package from the Phillies that included $2 million for five years and unlimited hunting rights on owner Bob Carpenter's family estate. (Hunter's passions included the one suggested by his surname.)

Nobody saw the Yankees in the picture, but the Yankees turned out to have something nobody else did: a representative Hunter trusted---Clyde Kluttz, the former catcher turned scout who'd first discovered Hunter for the A's and remained a friend. Now working for the Yankees as their scouting director, Kluttz high tailed it to Hunter's neck of the woods and convinced him that no pressure in New York could have been worse than the pressure of Charlie Finley from whom he'd been liberated. And as it was getting close to Christmas, Hunter was getting antsy to get a deal done---deer season had only another week to go and he was itching to get out there at last after all the negotiating.

Kluttz got to Hunter quickly enough. He invited Hunter out to breakfast and put it right to him: what would it take to make him a Yankee?

Hunter laid it out:

* A signing bonus.
* Life insurance.
* Salary over five years.
* Deferred money.
* Legal expense money if they came up.
* His children's education.

Hunter's only question was, could the Yankees do all of it, and what were the dollars? Kluttz wrote the terms down on a napkin like this: $1 million for the bonus and for the life insurance; $750,000 salary over five years; $500,000 deferred money; $200,000 for legal expenses; $50,000 per child for the education annuities. As long as the Yankees were willing to do all six (other teams were willing on some but not all of it), Hunter was all in.

The total was $3.5 million. Even though the Padres and other teams were willing to go even higher. The Yankees hurried to get the deal done to keep things along their 1974 tax picture. The Yankees probably also got an advantage after the Padres tried to strong-arm Hunter into agreeing to something he'd never have done---commercials for McDonald's. (Hunter was a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-fast-food-eating type and McDonald's mortified him.) And Hunter high-tailed it back to North Carolina after his introductory press conference in New York to get that last couple of days of deer season in.

The deal that showed baseball players what was really out there for them if they were allowed to negotiate on an open market (Ken Harrelson in August 1967 was just a drop in the bucket, though it did show the same thing on a smaller level) turned out to be the third-highest dollar amount of all the deals Hunter was offered.

And all things considered---including Hunter's eventual sad death from an ALS-related injury---the Hall of Famer and the Yankees turned out to be pretty prescient.

Wow!   I had no idea, @EasyAce     :laugh:
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Offline Restored

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2019, 09:28:41 pm »
Hertford, NC. Schools in that part of the world are terrible and people send their kids to private schools if they can afford it.
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Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #13 on: January 13, 2019, 09:38:18 pm »
Wow!   I had no idea, @EasyAce     :laugh:
Curt Flood stood up for us. Jim Hunter showed what was out there. Andy Messersmith showed us the way.---Ted Simmons.


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Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #14 on: January 13, 2019, 09:39:22 pm »
Hertford, NC. Schools in that part of the world are terrible and people send their kids to private schools if they can afford it.
@Restored
I think at the time of his unexpected free agency Hunter was considering his children's college educations.


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Offline Restored

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #15 on: January 13, 2019, 10:19:14 pm »
That cost about $3,000  a year in those days.
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Offline TomSea

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2019, 07:19:56 pm »
Quote
We remember Sandy Valdespino
January 14, 2019 by Silvio Canto Jr.   

https://babalublog.com/2019/01/14/we-remember-sandy-valdespino/

Previously, unknown to me, an interesting article. Yes, he is still alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Valdespino

Looks like he became a bit of a journeyman.

Valdespino, Rojas, and so on... though, Spanish names, the Cuban and Dominican and maybe Puerto Rican names often seem different than say the ones we generally hear from Latin America or at least, Mexico.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2019, 07:25:15 pm by TomSea »

Offline catfish1957

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2019, 11:11:54 pm »
@EasyAce

My apologies if this already known, but I found this jewel last night .......

Game 7 of the 1952 World Series (televised) is available in its entirety on You Tube.  Amazing how much has changed in the game since.

Enjoy....


Sorry...
« Last Edit: January 29, 2019, 11:12:29 pm by catfish1957 »
I display the Confederate Battle Flag in honor of my great great great grandfathers who spilled blood at Wilson's Creek and Shiloh.  5 others served in the WBTS with honor too.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #18 on: January 30, 2019, 12:40:45 am »
@EasyAce

My apologies if this already known, but I found this jewel last night .......

Game 7 of the 1952 World Series (televised) is available in its entirety on You Tube.  Amazing how much has changed in the game since.

Enjoy....


Sorry...
And a good find! I saw that one the other day.



"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2019, 07:23:09 pm »
Some of the new batting practise/spring training lids for baseball teams . . .

Washington Nationals (tell me this cap logo wouldn't have been great for the ancient Senators, as in "Washington---First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League"):


Oakland Athletics (they really threw back . . . to the white elephant logo of the team in the earlier 20th Century) . . .


Milwaukee Brewers (all hail the glove logo!) . . .


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Offline GrouchoTex

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2019, 07:28:04 pm »
I'm looking forward to baseball.
After the Super Bowl last night, I told my wife, she has the rest of February and March to get me to do the honey-do list.
I wonder how that's going to work out for me?
« Last Edit: February 04, 2019, 07:28:46 pm by GrouchoTex »

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #21 on: February 04, 2019, 07:41:35 pm »
I'm looking forward to baseball.
After the Super Bowl last night, I told my wife, she has the rest of February and March to get me to do the honey-do list.
I wonder how that's going to work out for me?
@GrouchoTex
She'd better make it a short honey-do list---pitchers and catchers report in seven days!


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2019, 08:40:22 pm »
@GrouchoTex
She'd better make it a short honey-do list---pitchers and catchers report in seven days!

Yes!!!  The SuperBowl is over, so it is officially baseball season!

 :0012: :cheerlead:
Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too. -Yogi Berra

Offline EasyAce

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #23 on: February 04, 2019, 09:59:59 pm »
Yes!!!  The SuperBowl is over, so it is officially baseball season!

 :0012: :cheerlead:
@Polly Ticks

Evvin' . . .



sistah!  wink777


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

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Re: BASEBALL 2019---LET'S DO IT!
« Reply #24 on: February 04, 2019, 10:49:45 pm »
@Polly Ticks

Evvin' . . .



sistah!  wink777

Hmmmm. Good point there ... I should probably Photoshop a Spring Training hat onto my avatar. Oh, well, close enough!

Play ball!!!

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Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too. -Yogi Berra