A total of 3558 voters cast ballots this season.
“I am a Bud Selig man. I consider him a good friend. he’s a master at building people together. But while I’m loyal to Bud Selig, the biggest beneficiary in this whole plan are the Milwaukee Brewers. That doesn’t seem quite right. I don’t know how he sleeps at night sometimes.” –George Steinbrenner, Yankees owner
Baseball ownership groups have for too long resembled Dark Age European royalty–closely related and weak. Hand-picked for convenience and agreeability rather than on any objective basis, they’ve given us undercapitalized owners like Steve Schott, lapdog owners like Jeff Loria, evil owners like Carl Pohlad.
Between the persistence of Pete Rose, the ongoing turf war between Tribune Co. and the Wrigleyville neighborhood, and the deteriorating mental health of John Schuerholz, the most oft-reported story of this winter has been the apparent deflation in the market for free agents.
When we got our new collective bargaining agreement this season, I figured the results would be predictable: dumb teams would remain dumb and squander their new money, smart teams without money would do better, smart teams with lots of money would do a bit worse.
I figured the Yankees might do one of two things. They could tone things down a little. With the free agent winter, they could easily spend much less on the supporting cast and save a lot by not exceeding the salary cap as greatly. It looked like they were headed this way, throwing little fits over hours of elevator operations, making big deals out of little cuts.
Featuring Jonah Keri, Jeff Bower, Chris Kahrl, Derek Zumsteg, Nate Silver, Jeff Hildebrand, Gary Huckabay, Dave Pease
Major League Baseball’s governing documents aren’t intended for public consumption..
“My baseball people tell me we still have a very good team.”
The notion of “freely available talent” is something of a Sabermetric piety. Savvy waiver claims and judicious use of the Rule 5 draft are two sources, but it’s mostly by trawling through the minor-league free agents each year that many organizations fill their holes at the highest level.
I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail this week asking if I’m going to weigh in on the possibility of a Pete Rose reinstatement to baseball. This is in the wind because Rose met with Bud Selig to discuss how this might happen, and Selig, lacking both a backbone and any sense of integrity, didn’t say “You’re not getting back in, thanks for swinging by, I’ll have my assistant call you a cab.”
Cast your vote for this year’s Hall of Fame class.
I’m taking a quick break from writing my chapters for Baseball Prospectus 2003. I want to re-visit something I’ve already hit twice, because I’m a glutton for punishment. I wrote two articles where I took a crack at whether it ever makes sense to walk the 2002 Barry Bonds, first here and then on ESPN.com.
Among the numerous feats Bill James accomplished as an analyst in the 1980s, his greatest achievement was the way in which he legitimized the importance of minor-league batting statistics. Where once the remark “Yeah, but just because he hits in the minors doesn’t mean that he’ll hit in the majors” was an accepted, unchallenged claim, James’ work on the subject proved decidedly otherwise–eventually spawning an industry of minor-league analysis that still flourishes to this day.
Scot Hughes analyzes the rest of Montreal’s roster, which will probably be filled with players who are not yet arbitration-eligible.
The price of loyalty is $22 million and an extra year. The two contracts Jim Thome agonized over between turkey and potatoes were Cleveland’s five-year, $60 million deal, plus a vesting option year, and the contract he took, which started with six years for $82 million plus a vesting option year.
The week in quotes, November 19-December 1.