Sal's Take

Nicky Two Fingers Cafardo’s Sunday Mass

We found a few interesting points in Nicky’s Sunday Mass article. For the most part if this was the paper version of the Boston Globe publication you could use it to start your wood stove fire.
First Nick ranks all the teams and their winter moves, after the GTE was anointed the GTE last year does anybody take this stuff serious? If you want to brush up on what moves teams made it’s not a bad read

For me the most interesting point made was the over under on what John Henry and Larry Lucchino’s pal Bud Selig will decide is proper compensation for Boy Wonder Theo Epstein bolting to the North side of Chicago. The old cliche “a GM close to the situation” but not really that close mentions Buds will give the GTE a favorable player in exchange.

Buddy just doesn’t want to set a precedent for other GM’s to  flat out leave for a greener pasture in the future. What now we’re back in the USSR?

Is he fuggin kidding me? Two consecutive dark stages in October for a team with close to $180M payroll was sufficient ammo to run Epstein out of town. The fact that Epstein and Lucky Lucchino have been at each others throats for years also plays into Epstein’s move, not to mention Eppy was bored on the job, remember his shelf life for any gig is only 10 years, they friggin packed his bags and drove him to the airport, now they’re gonna get  a top prospect??? My pal on the Boston Herald  blogs Mr Ed is right, MLB is fixed.

Last year Selig must have been out of the country when Hoyer and Epstein  pulled that Gonzalez for a bag of balls heist, not to mention they allowed God’s Only Son Gonzalez to play for $6.5M on the books, when in fact as soon as the season started they inked him to  a $154M deal that didn’t go against their 2011 AAV. And they threw John Gotti and Bernie Madoff in jail!

The second most interesting point Nicky Two Fingers made was Boston moved their home team clubhouse guy to the visiting club house and the visiting club house guy to the home team side. WTF!

I guess you can expect the visiting teams to be drunk on beer and over stuffed on Popeye’s fried chicken now,  that’s if the electricity and the hot water are working in that dump they call Fenway Park

The Rockets Red Glare

Estranged MLB pitcher Roger Clemens is quoted saying  if he makes the Hall of Fame he’d prefer to wear a Texas Longhorn not a NY Yankee or Red Sox cap. Hate to bust Clem’s bubble but both teams are now breathing a healthy sigh of relief. Let’s face it the Don Butch will get in the Hall before the Rocket so all three Institutions are free and clear

 Boob Tube Money

Found this article off a Ball Buster Olney link Re: TV networks that pay a hefty freight  for the rights to televise regional MLB games. Wondering why Artie from Anaheim all of a sudden slapped down $240M on Pujols, or why  Texas was able to take a  hammer to their piggy bank in order to shell out  $111M for unproven Japanese star Yu Darvish? Well you can stop holding your breath, the suspense is over..

 Bill Lubinger writer for The Cleveland Plain Dealer has done the heavy liftying laying out what type of revenues some of these poor ownership groups have to work with in MLB thanks to humongous billion dollar TV deals.

 TV revenue is also money that gets spread around to every team in baseball, so no doubt the YES network and NESN too have been a life preserver for their little brothers for a while now, but things are slowly changing across the board. The once huge advantage the Yankees had over most of baseball thanks of their extremly deep pockets in part due to their YES network is quickly diminishing.

‘‘We think this is the way to generate more revenue, and we will put it back in the payroll in order to support the team,” Indians Chairman and Chief Executive Paul Dolan said at the time.

It was billed a must read by Olney but I wouldn’t go that far, that said hopefully very soon we’ll hear less whining from these  billionaire white collar nitwits thanks to these TV deals

NY’s Organizational Depth Segment from LoHud

Out Field Corners

 Center Field

A good read on the “Competitive Balance Tax”

The article is about the Phillies and how they’re up against the Luxury Tax. One point that’s made is a team’s AAV is what dictates the Lux Tax not the payroll. So back loading a players contract will not help lower the team’s AAV. So if as fan goes to Cot’s Contracts and adds up the 2012 payroll using what the contract for that year is they’ll compile the wrong information

The complication lies in two factors: Major League Baseball recognizes contracts by their annual average value (AAV) — not by the dollar amount the team is actually paying that player. So, for example, Cliff Lee earned $11 million in salary last season because the Phillies back loaded the contract. But under the guise of ML

 Spring Training Schedules

Pitchers and catchers for the Bombers is Feb 19th

Oswalt A Geography Major

Heyman has the rumor Oswalt turned down $10M to pitch for Detroit. This before the Prince signing of course. We knew he was looking for location, and it must matter more to him then the money. Texas and St Louis are his targets, neither team has room for him. Our concern is the Red Sox but not only are they a Northern team but I seriously doubt they would pay him $10M or above, and even if they made that offer it appears he’d pass.

Kuroda Leaves Money On  the Table

I was a bit shocked to read the OsWalt turning down $10M rumor and that Kuroda choose the Yanks because his chances of winning were greater. He had higher then $10M offers but declined and took the NY contract. Sounds like a 2:30 AM Lifetime Movie if you buy in, or maybe we got us a real gamer

Yanks and Ibanez Sweet music?

Raul Ibanez in blue pinstripes? LH DH