- Poppy thinks the A’s should team up this guy with this guy and this guy
- Harden signing finalized
- FanGraphs assesses the A’s top 10 prospects (boy, every single time we see anything about Green, it just screams BOBBY CROSBY, doesn’t it?)
- The bonus Jew-baiting is (not really) surprising
- Neat!
- Hmmm …
The Treachery of Linkages 67
67 thoughts on “The Treachery of Linkages”
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4. And I thought that was going to be a Gregg Easterbrook link.
5. Doesn’t really seem that useful … I don’t need to know about any flights except the one I’m on, and United texts me status updates already; if you’re a regular flier you already know what’s at the airport; and someone please shoot me in the head if I ever feel a need to use Facebook to let the world know I’m at the airport.
That was my reaction too.
This year the forces of evil won when the opposition vote was split.
Just a little muppet math…
Beane and Wolff have gone on record saying that the A’s 2011 payroll was going up but they never said what the ceiling was. So here are some back-o’-the-napkin calculations.
The A’s are in ~$27.2 million for DeJesus, Ellis, Crisp, Ellis, Suzuki, Wuertz, Devine, Sweeney and Anderson.
They offered a $19 million posting fee for Iwakuma and an AAV of $4.25 million. They offered Beltre at least 5/64, rounding to a $13 million AAV. That’s approximately $36 million the A’s would have had to pay in 2011.
Figure another $6.5 million for the arbitration eligible Braden, Breslow and Jackson. If Beltre had signed before Dec. 5 Kouz would have been traded/non-tendered.
Another $5.1 million covers the remaining 12 spots on the 25 man roster, filled with 1-3 year (non-Super 2) players.
Assuming the numbers reported by Slusser were ballpark accurate, and assuming the A’s weren’t heavily backloading their offer to Beltre, the above numbers total $74.8 million.
So… it looks like the A’s planned on having a $75 million payroll in 2011. They’re currently sitting at ~$61 million. They could still make an offer on Beltre with the concurrent dismissal of Kouzmanoff keeping the final numbers under the $75 million threshold. Or maybe they’re tired of pursuing Beltre and they keep the cash on hand to possibly bring in mid-season trade help. If they can pay the remainder of a high-end contract then they won’t have to part with as much talent.
Did you count Ellis twice?
He’s so awesome I felt the need to type him twice!!!
But I didn’t add his salary twice.
Hm…I’ve been heavily in the “sign Beltre” camp but his latest demands are even giving me pause. It seems like the issue with the Angels is that he wants a 6th year…assuming AAV of 14-15, that can push the total contract value into the 84-90 range.
It might be more prudent to start pursuing Blanton, probably available for pennies on the dollar if we can (and we could) pick up most of his salary. Blanton + a midseason acquisition + Kouz is a likely better use of resources than just Beltre.
Also, the fact that the chances of Beltre signing with an AL West rival are growing slimmer by the day helps expedite the exodus from the sign Beltre bandwagon.
Also, if Beltre’s demands are as reported/insinuated, then I become less and less opposed to letting him longterm-hamstring a proximal opponent.
Yeah, not a fan of the 6th year quest by Beltre and his knight-for-hire.
2 things:
1) Although the posting fee would have been paid up front, for budgeting purposes they may have been counting it as distributed over the length of the contract. I.e., they would think of Iwakuma as costing $9M/year, not $23M this year.
2) I think it’s pretty clear that, for better or worse (and you and mb would probably say “for worse”), Beane/Forst tend to decide what they think a player is worth and refuse to pay more than that even if there is money left in the budget. So if they think Beltre is a $13M/year player, but they find themselves with $15M still in the budget and Beltre unsigned, that money will stay in ownership’s pocket.
For budgeting purposes… yes.
For actual outlay of cash in 2011… it’s the bigger number. Iwakuma would have gotten his $4 million salary and Rakugen (sp?) was going to get $19 million.
So…the A’s showed the fiscal muscle to spend $75 million on salary (including posting fees) in 2011. Better/clearer?
3. I agree with the Green/Crosby comp. And I think that’s a good thing. Crosby’s early career trajectory was great and if Green can mimic that he can be a real asset. The key will be keeping him healthy mid-career so that we can reap the rewards of that talent. Of course, this being the A’s, umm, yeah…
Beltre wants 6y guaranteed
I want a pet unicorn
I want Megan Fox and Christina Hendricks.
Thanks, and go As.
You’ll need to increase the package you’re offering
Give him MF and CH and I’m confident his package will increase.
Beyond the piercing? What if I add a second one? (piercing, not package)
Thanks, and go As.
Lowell Cohn, apparently feeling that sports columns have gotten insufficiently sanctimonious, dramatically raises the bar by now refusing to vote admitted PED users into the Hall of Fame, because in taking this approach “My conscience felt great. I began to walk around conflict-free. It was good to look in the mirror and tell myself I was back to being a sincere, ethical, well-meaning voter as opposed to a moral weakling who would let things slide.”
Because
This is one of the biggest problems of the HOF voting: it’s done by people like Cohn. When is the last time he covered baseball regularly? It seems that every once in a while he feels the need to write something ridiculous to remind readers like me that he hasn’t been dead for 15 or 20 years as I might reasonably have thought.
?!?
He should get back to being a sincere, ethical, well-meaning voter by sending his ballot in via Pony Express. tOotC does maintain a satellite office in St Joe, right?
by fax?
Pyotr! Ilyich! Tchaikovsky!
Some clarification (or lies) on Beltre, per Rosenthal.
The Angels still in the bidding and Boras is asking for 5/85 – 5/90 OR a 6th year for the same total value.
Anaheim’s 5/70 remains the high bid.
I don’t think Robothal is saying what you’re saying there — “OR a 6th year for the same total value.”
I read Robothal as 5/85-90 or even 6/102-108, not 5/85-90 or even 6/85-90.
The reason why I don’t think he’s saying what you think he’s saying is ’cause of the No-Shit rule.
Boras wants 5/90. That’s $16 million AAV.
No-Shit he’d take 6/108 ($16 million AAV) if a team offered it to his 32 year old client!
Iunno. He’s already bidded up near that first request with the A’s and Slegna offers.
I think that “or even a 6-year deal with a comparable salary” most likely means adding an additional year onto whatever WAR starting point / WAR regression / WAR value / WAR value growth rate structure you use to get your 5-year deal.
Boras’s camp seems to be pushing a Beltre value as a 4-WAR player using a 5M/WAR value, -.5 WAR per. year regression and ~ a 7% growth rate. And that seems somewhat reasonable given the other deals that have been signed this off-season (take a look at Tango’s book blog for some of the other breakdowns). If you put that all together you get a 5-year contract for ~$85M. A six year deal with the same assumption set would be ~$95M.
My thoughts: I think Beltre is more of a 3.5 win player (which gives you 5/70 or 6/77 all other numbers being equal). I also think that it’s a bad bet to write any long-term contracts right now that build in a 7% WAR growth rate since I just can’t imagine the overall economy supporting that during what’s more likely to be a very stagnant climate.
In college, I played güiro for the Spanish Radio Brokers
In Guatemala, “güiro” is slang for “niño”.
Patojo/güiro/chiriz = niño
They really should just adopt SBN’s model
Relying on your contributors’ underlying passion to substitute for compensation has proved to be one of the few actually profitable business models for both bloggers and jihadists.
Interesting discussion of the Slegna’s pending stadium/revenue woes at HH.
Care to summarize?
I already visited fuckhead’s place once this month, I’m not interested in giving him more business.
Well, I have no idea as to the accuracy of it, but … basically, Slegna Muidats is old and crappy (not, presumably, as bad as the Mausoleum) and getting older and crappier; the facility is owned by the City of Anaheim; the Slegna don’t have a stake in a cable channel, and only a crappy FOX deal; they’re second banana in their shared market, and ownership has already started chipping away at brand equity/loyalty for their current geographic site to try and coopt the larger metro area …
Sound familiar?
Meh.
Sons o’ bitches will probably get a new stadium before Selig’s Blue Ribbon Committee says jack shit about the A’s situation.
Maybe they could build a dual-purpose stadium to share with the LA Raiders.
Please.
Take my football team. Please.
That raven there is her main confidante.
Drumbeat + [eyeroll] = Drumroll
I think it would be fun as hell to match up the UConn women against some Big East men’s team (not Syracuse; I mean some middle of the pack team). Tell both teams the game will count in their respective conference standings. I have no idea what would happen but I guarantee it would get ESPN some incredible television ratings, much like Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King back in the day.
The men would beat the women badly. At Carolina when I was there, the men’s JV team used to scrimmage vs the varsity women from time to time, and always outplayed them.
Hmmm…I don’t know, I bet Dean Smith had a pretty damned good JV team, and it’s pretty indisputable that women’s basketball is not very good once you get past the elite teams (don’t know where UNC was at that time). We have this team that’s won 89 straight in the women’s game, and I believe plays the other top teams as much as they can, so not much else to prove. Here is the final RPI ranking of the men’s teams for 2009-2010; DePaul is the bottom Big East team at #212. How far down this list do you think we have to go before the UConn women have a reasonable chance of winning against the men? As I said above I don’t have a clue but it would be hella fun to find out.
I agree with “fun to find out” but the answer is going to be all the way to the bottom and then some.
I remember the US women’s soccer team played the US men after their WC victory (when the men sucked) thinking along these lines. If I recall they didn’t even finish the game, since it was a rout.
baseball > football
I’m surprised football had such a huge lead in the 40s
What’s interesting about that is, zooming in on 1935-1955, the war didn’t seem to have any impact on references despite the huge impact on baseball (that I know of) and presumably on football too.
Quality Rant, and something worth remembering this time of year no matter what your religion.
I’ve always found it funny that the two most important Christian holidays – Christmas and Easter – are not celebrated on the actual day they should be, so I particularly liked this:
That’s completely missing the point. In American society, we would not have vacation, holidays, merrymaking, eggnog, etc. if not for the fact that we are celebrating a Christian holiday that (for whatever historical reasons) falls in Dec. Jesus (and, to some much lesser extent, Hannukah/Kwanzaa) *is* the reason we do all this fun stuff, regardless of your religion.
Disagree.
If there was no Christianity we might well have a different holiday around winter solstice. If Christians had decided to celebrate Christ’s birth in one of the months he could possible have been born, those pagan holidays might well have survived.
But this isn’t a world of ifs, this is the world that is, and the reason why I’m drinking eggnog right now is because of Christ, mythology or no.
No one is denying that Christmas successfully took over this time of year. Obviously it has.
I agree with the original rant, though, that the season came before the “reason”
I think it’s completely talking past the other side of the argument, or arguing against a straw man.
I guess we disagree on this one.
The argument is, essentially, it’s bad to say happy holidays because Jesus Christ is the reason for the season. I’m not sure how “no he isn’t” is arguing against a straw man.
Happy Holidays.
And Merry Christmas to you :-)
1. I do?
You’re going out of your way to make me feel stupid, aren’t you? (as opposed to the way it usually just happens naturally)
Ah. Sorry, I have a *HORRIBLE* memory for most things I’ve only read once. :(
Or one to about thirty times, for that matter…
You remember to send that $20 you owe me?
Yes. I addressed it:
Leopold Bloom
someone’s garage
East Bay, CA 9somethingsomethingsomethingsomething
Didn’t you get it?
Um, no. Better send it again. That’s the right address…