UBlink

25 people watching the Transaction forum waiting for confirmation that Geovany Soto has been promoted. Talk about a slow news day...

From Bruce Miles's article today:

Craig, both Hill and Bowen are switch hitters. FWIW this year Soto's splits show he hits much better against RHP - OPS 1.066 against RHP, .871 against LHP.

Zero chance cubs give Arod $30 mil a year. I hate boras. Uh, don't shoot the messenger. In today's market and with ARod's abilities I think you or I could get him $30 million per. I agree some team will probably give him that much. I just said that the cubs won't be that team. I was responding to the "I hate Boras" part.

Zero chance cubs give Arod $30 mil a year. I hate boras. Uh, don't shoot the messenger. In today's market and with ARod's abilities I think you or I could get him $30 million per.

You might be correct if life was exactly like an economics text book but it's not. However, at least sone economists contend that rising ticket prices are the cause of rising salaries. Exactly - as increasing demand for the product drives up ticket prices the teams have more money to compete for the limited supply of talented players. In baseball, increasing the demand for the product generally increases the returns to the producers - the players.

It's no more insane than $10+ million for .500 pitchers and $8-!2 million for mediocre hitters. It's all pretty insane right now. I bet ARod is licking his chops. Somebody is going to give him $30 million/year for 5 years. And then that team will raise ticket prices to "stay competitiive". It's a micorcosm of the economy, the rich get richer (owners and players) and the middle class pays the bills (fans). If any team could increase their bottom line by raising ticket prices and they aren't doing it they are idiots. Ticket prices are determined primarily by demand and competition from entertainment alternatives. Most sports tickets are already priced at the revenue maximizing level so raising ticket prices would actually reduce the team's revenue.

Colvin got a walkoff double, Smokies win 3-2.

Well, he's probably going somewhere. Admittedly it's more likely he goes to an AL team, but now we're looking for an inexpensive RF that hits lefties well for both OBP and power playing for a non-contender who also is not in Hendry's doghouse.

Since we're lacking in offense from a couple different positions, I'd like a RF who is good at both. There is RH RF making the league minimum playing for a team out of contention with an OPS over 1.000 against LHP if anyone would be interested. And there's the problem. Teams don't like to trade productive players who are making league minimum (well-run teams anyway). But he's only under contract through this year so it would be a rental. And I cheated a little on the league minimum because it's minimum for someone with his experience. Link

Since we're lacking in offense from a couple different positions, I'd like a RF who is good at both. There is RH RF making the league minimum playing for a team out of contention with an OPS over 1.000 against LHP if anyone would be interested.

What's really hilarious is that you don't have a basic understanding of the bottom-line nature of business and the importance of unique assets. i understand that the dude makes money. i'm just trying to say that there is no direct correlation between his making money for the team and the team spending more money on the team. for other examples, see: every team that has extorted a new stadium out of the taxpayers' pockets Apples and oranges - Ichiro is a combination package - to get the marketing benefits you have to have the player. It makes perfect sense to look at the net cost. The level of subsidy a team gets from the local taxpayers has no direct connection to who plays for the team. Since the subsidy generally isn't connected to the performance of the team - either on the field or at the box office - it makes perfect sense to ignore it when making payroll decisions.

It doesn't matter where the supplemental income goes, it still affects the team's bottom line. And the team needs to look at Ichiro's net impact on their bottom line. If they don't I think that's hilarious.

I don't have the sabremetric tools to prove it, but I would guess that from a statistical point of view deliberately taking a 2nd strike so Soriano can try to take 2B is a ridiculous decision. Somebody can point me in the right direction, but I think a player's odds of getting on base with 2 strikes are significantly lower than getting on with 1, and that increased probablility of an out more than offsets the expected value of an attempted stolen base.

The true cost of a player is his salary less any incremental revenue directly attributable to that player. If you pay Ichiro $20MM and you forecast additional incremental revenue of $10MM he costs you the same as a $12MM dollar player without the marketing power that only generates $2MM incremental revenue. Marketing makes a huge difference. His greatest value to the team was in his first few years. He's going to get worse and worse in the field, and he is going to sell less and less. Teams hold onto guys later in their life for PR reasons more than marketing revenue reasons. Somebody on the verge of huge records might continue to bring in the money, but with attendance plummeting since Iricho-mania has cooled considerably and the team has struggled, his value has dropped considerably. Teams worry much more about the PR backlash of letting a guy go than the revenue opportunity of keeping him around. They make most of their money off the player in his early years. The Yankees will be paying Jeter way more than he's worth long after his value was great for the team. Whether the incremental revenue comes from the positive addition or from avoiding negative consequences is irrelevant to the argument. Teams still need to look at the net impact on the bottom line, and in this case ignoring the impact keeping or releasing Ichiro would have on total revenue would be foolish.

While I normally don't enter the discussion in the game threads on this subject I have always been more impressed with the argument TT is making. When a pitcher has been wild and needs to avoid a walk and the batter is a competent batter, have him look for his pitch on pitch 1 (and pitch 2 and pitch 3 etc.). In that situation there's no reason to swing at a pitcher's pitch because he's unlikely to be able to get that over the plate. If the pitcher knows you're not going to swing at pitch 1 it just puts you down in the count automatically.

The true cost of a player is his salary less any incremental revenue directly attributable to that player. If you pay Ichiro $20MM and you forecast additional incremental revenue of $10MM he costs you the same as a $12MM dollar player without the marketing power that only generates $2MM incremental revenue. Marketing makes a huge difference.

Maybe it was what they were "corked" with? Maybe he had 40 bats with little secret compartments for storing performance enhancing drugs. Or maybe he had some some with secret radios that allowed a spotter in center field to send him the catcher's signs. I'm not calling BS, I'm calling Maxwell Smart.

Why in the world would you move him to first? So you can keep Theriot's bat at SS.

I guessed it after I clicked but before the topic came up... :oops:

Both players lose 5 days' pay. Young still has to go through his ususal off-days work to be ready for his next start, while Lee gets a 5 day vacation. I think Young ought to demand additional days off if he's not going to get paid for them.

According to Lee,

I thought I would throw this in again - who besides Murton would they be looking at? While Soto is RH, his splits are significantly better against RHP. The Cubs have enough RH bats that can't hit lefties.

Link

I was watching it on MiLB.TV and it looked like it was really coming down. The broadcast was pretty funny as they kept the feed going during commercial breaks and some of the comments were "interesting" to say the least. When the rain came they were saying just swing at everything to get the game over. But when the batter finally hit an easy grounder to third base, the third baseman threw it into the stands because the ball was so wet.