Salary Cap or Payroll Zone

The Red Sox have come out in favor of a salary cap of sorts, although the lack of details available - particularly whether or not the program would be a standard salary cap, a payroll zone (where there would be both minimums and maximums on team salary), or something else entirely - makes me wonder about the intention of this announcement.

On the one hand, I can see why the Red Sox would want a cap: they have a reputation for winning and for a devoted fanbase, making them more likely to win the favor of players on the free agent market and giving Boston a better pick of available talent. Coupling that attractiveness with a cap - and the dollars to spend up to that salary limit - eliminates the possibility of losing a player to a higher salary bid, increasing the likelihood that a Mark Teixeira ends up making Fenway his home.

On the other hand, this announcement could just be a ploy: get in a cheap shot at the Yankees, throw in another - with the payroll zone comment - at the Rays, make the ownertship look like it cares for the plight of the common man without having to worry that a cap - which would have to meet the approval of the unsympathetic players union - would become a reality. Sounds like a win for the Red Sox no matter what the intentions.

Will He or Won't He: I Don't Really Care

I have been observing the Texeira dealings with what I can only call abstract interest, as if I were a scientist watching the battles of ants in a jar to confirm or deny a hypothesis. Maybe I'm under the same spell as Allan Wood, but the maneuverings of the Red Sox negotiation machine in their latest battle with Scott Boras no longer hold the drama that they did in the past. The fallout is a little more interesting though; it seems like once again, we're being used to score points.

Despite their necessity - business does seem to win baseball games and baseball championships, and Lord knows we do love the ends if not the means - I've grown a bit weary of the churn process of bringing stars to Boston. Mike Lowell has somehow gone from toast of the town to spare part in one year, rendered obselete because of a hip problem that may very well be old news come the spring? I like winning, but I like Mike Lowell, too - and in many ways, I'd rather have the cast of characters I've come to identify as my team come back next year than the possible latest and greatest.

In addition, while it's possible the tough economic climate and the looming threat of layoffs makes me a bit more sympathetic, I can't help but think of how bad I'd feel if my company were openly negotiating to replace me with someone else. I realize if the situation were reversed, Lowell wouldn't necessarily have any loyalty to the laundry, but I think that - particularly after the Manny fallout from this summer - seeing the front office do its best to once again crap all over a star player is really shortsighted.

On Amateurs and the Agreements of Gentlemen

The Nippon Baseball League is a little upset about Boston's decision to sign Tazawa: they feel that a gentleman's agreement regarding the cherrypicking of talent has been violated by the pursuing and capturing of one of Japan's more high-profile amateurs.

I'll admit to some bias here, but that reaction seems like sour grapes. Like other professional sports, baseball has really become a global concern, bringing with it the sink-or-swim mentality of marketplace economics to the sale of product to consumers. When it comes to producing that product - to the hiring, training, and molding of groups of athletes into competitive baseball teams - the group with the most capable production staff is going to find the best materials. The realities of this situation aren't predisposed to American domination, either: from my understanding, the NBA is starting to find itself on the losing end of this global equation in basketball: the salary cap, which (supposedly) creates a more equitable playing field within the league, is now preventing NBA teams from competiting effectively with other leagues when it comes to signing talent. In other words, the NBA has a competitive disadvantage they may need to address.

The solution for the NLB, as for the NBA, is the same: offer an environment that makes your league more attractive (through whatever methods you think would be best to entice players) to the talent pool. Crying about broken agreements just makes you look lost and out of touch.

Off-Day Thoughts: Pedroia and Ramirez

In the future, when baseball analysts want to gush over a player of small stature who may or may not be worth the spilled ink, they will not discuss his grit or pluck. Instead, they'll call him a caballito and develop a case of the self-satisfied grins, while we all laugh at the possibility that Ortiz actually was screwing with Buck Martinez, punking a whole generation of writers and broadcasters in the process.

Bill Simmons might very well be crazy (although you no doubt knew that): ESPN just published his 9,000 word summation of Manny and the Aftermath in what has to be one of the most exhaustive eulogies ever written by a fan. The first part is a bit cathartic, planting the blame on the ownership and the media for their roles in the debacle, but check out the second half (starting with the "A lesson in revisionist history" section) for Simmons' point: Manny may or may not have manipulated the situation and - no matter how this post-season turns out - he definitely won the war even as he lost the battle, but the real blameworthy individual is Scott Boras, the man who Simmons sees as the evil genius behind the forced trade that broke his heart.

Whether or not Boras nudged Manny into his final confrontation with Boston's management is a matter for conspiracy theorists (although Simmons' premise that Boras could only benefit from signing Manny if he got the slugger a new contract by any means necessary has merit), but Bill has one indisputable conclusion: Manny's departure for LA demonstrates once again that no matter how much we love a player, his first priority will always be to his wallet, not to his fans. Whether or not we can blame anyone for making that choice (especially since we'd all end up doing the exact same thing) is another matter.

Tying the Sellout Streak

If memory serves, I first heard about the possibility of the Sox breaking the major league baseball sellout record in 2004. It was long before the streak fate was even in question, of course, but in the air because of the string of sellouts the Sox had amassed since the previous year. I was excited at the time, because I was full of super-homerism on all things Red Sox (living in a pre-championship world didn't help), but as Boston prepares to break the streak next week, I'm a little less than enthused. Sure, it's great that the Sox have such a committed fan base that they pack the house to see a series against a last place team that only coincidentally included an exciting conclusion, or that new players get juiced by their first experiences with a large home crowd, but now that Fenway's become the domain of scalpers (legal and otherwise), it's a bit of a pain for those of us coming in from out of town to get seats. Should I have to schedule a vacation just to see a game, or am I just getting complacent?

No Sushi For You, Mr. Selig

Edit: Oh good, the idiocy has been resolved. Early drinking is still on!

Through fortuitous circumstances, I have next week off, so I was planning on reliving my college years by drinking my breakfast and watching baseball from Japan at six in the morning in a bar (note that only one of those things actually happened in college) when the Sox start the season against the A's on Tuesday. Except now that might not be happening, because Major League Baseball isn't going to be paying the coaches the $40,000 stipend they'd allegedly promised them for making the trip, and the players are threatening to boycott the trip. Two thoughts about this choice PR fiasco:

1. Major League Baseball is in super awesome profit mode right now, as a quick news search will reveal. Are they really going to screw a fairly small group of people out of a comparatively small amount of money, especially when they're forcing those people to go on a trip that really only benefits Major League Baseball and - hopefully - Japanese fans? I mean, come on now, MLB: the players and staffs of two teams flying thousands of miles to act as ambassadors for major league American baseball - you know, the institution you control with an iron fist covered with hundred dollar bills - going on a trip that will inconvenience many of their fans and quite possibly throw the entire first part of their season out of whack, and you don't have the courtesy to make it worth their while? That's corporate asshattery of the worst kind, and hats off to the players for calling it for what it is.
2. To the numerous douchebags who are calling the coaches selfish for wanting the money and the players idiots for backing them: are you serious? You're really going to tell the people who have the toughest jobs in the sport - and make far less money than everyone else - that they don't deserve the money from a corporate parent who can afford that small monetary drop in the bucket many times over? Yes, these guys still make far more than the average joe, but saying they're being whiny over money is retard logic; adjust the relative pay scales in your head so it fits your position and you'll hopefully get why not paying them to go - especially after you've promised to do so - makes Major League Baseball the selfish ones.
   

In Support of Wrigley

A moment of support for our (former?) spiritual national league brothers and sisters, the fans of the Chicago Cubs. Their team has fallen on hard times of a nature far more serious than "wait until next year": owners Tribune Company (in the form of CEO Sam Zell) has ignited a firestorm of incredulity by stating (and restating) that any deal by the beleaguered newspaper company to sell the team might just include new naming rights to Wrigley Field.

I think corporate naming rights are a little ridiculous, but I recognize they're a necessary evil - for the most part, and depending entirely on situation. The "new" Boston Garden (or whatever it calls itself now) is a modern edifice, devoid of the weight of history that we like to call character. The owners can call it whatever they like, because it's not a landmark. Same thing with the faceless monstrosities of the 1970s; you can sell the naming rights to the Oakland Colosseum and have it sport the logo of whatever antivirus company you'd like, because it's devoid of the history that makes a ballpark a ballpark. Or maybe I just hate the concept of baseball games taking place in football stadiums.

My point: I offer this public, electronic, and (I don't fool myself) ultimately irrelevant bit of support because I can empathize with anyone who bleeds Cubbie blue. I can imagine the tragedy (and the riots) if the owners of the Sox decided to sell the naming rights to Fenway, and when I see the overpriced tickets and food and the ridiculous scalping that goes on (legally, mind you) through sites like StubHub because there aren't enough seats for every fan who wants to go, I know these are the crosses that must be borne to avoid the specter of John Hancock Park or Raytheon Park or - horror of horrors - a new stadium that attempts to replicate the past with 5,000 more seats. I've never been to Wrigley Field, but I hope one day to go - and I hope it's still called Wrigley Field when I do.

Jonathan Papelbon, Ca-drillionaire

Ah, to be young, rich, famous and able to invest in Internet startups, just like Jonathan Papelbon. That's right: Papelbon is looking beyond his playing abilities to expand potential talents in other areas of life, just like his teammates: Coco Crisp has his producing thing, Big Papi makes salsa, Manny does public speaking appearances, etc.

What's the venture, you might ask. Where does he get his hot investing tips? Does he have a specific investing vision in mind? As a matter of fact...

• The venture: ISpottedYou, a social networking site (like MySpace) that uses buttons (the plastic-coated things with the pins on the back you stick to your shirt) like a membership pin so you can spot other adherents in the street. Features investors like Under Armour, "some NFL guys [and] some MLB guys," bilingual capability and the tag line, "where the virtual world meets the real world." And on these lowly beginnings, an online empire is built...
  
• The tip source: his agent. I think this may be the equivalent of asking your plumber for medical advice.
• Pap's investing vision: "to be a ca-drillionaire," where a ca-drillion is an amount of money equal to two metric ass-tons.

Go look at the site just so you can laugh at the idea of a.) people walking around wearing buttons like they're in some sort of cult, b.) those people getting beat up on street corners for wearing those buttons and c.) other people investing their money in this venture. Whatever real-world amount of money a ca-drillion equals, I don't think Paps is going to make it by funding this website.

Dissecting Schilling's Negotiation

Remember how Curt Schilling said he'd be back in baseball in 2008? I'm sure you all remember that he did - I mean do you remember literally how he did so? He called WEEI, breaking the news to his beloved public (and I use beloved in both directions) using the same forum he's used many times since he became a Red Sox. At the time Schilling, who acts as his own agent, said that he'd either go into the season with a contract extension from Boston or declare free agency for the first time in his career after the season ends.

Fast forward to yesterday, when Schilling called the radio station again, this time to announce that Theo Epstein told him that there would be no contract before the season starts. According to Shaughnessy, both radio announcements were made without prior knowledge of the Red Sox brass, a move he correctly called "Schilling's bluff." When the media interviewed Epstein about the matter, he said that age (Schilling will be 41 this year) was the primary motivation for not granting the extension.

Robin called me earlier this afternoon distraught by the idea of Curt Schilling even thinking of pitching somewhere else, but he admitted to being overly emotional; I think it's clear this situation is a straightforward example of the art of winning a negotiation.

Curt Schilling is a man who knows how to use the media to strengthen his position in the eyes of the public (just like a politician, right?). His calls to WEEI were tactical in nature: they were surprise statements that attempted to move the negotiations into the public sphere, where he has more power (or thinks he does, at least) because of his success in Boston. Whether or not you think Schilling is a blowhard, the calls were a good idea on his part - if he was negotiating with a weaker management team, they might have gotten him the extension now.

However, the Sox had two advantages of their own in this negotiation. First, Theo knows full well that it's stupid to grant extensions to any player who's 40+ without seeing what sort of numbers they're going to put up during the year. If (God forbid) Curt's arm falls off mid-season, the Sox will look pretty stupid having promised him money in 2008. Second, all Theo needed to move the negotiations back into Sox control was to stick to his guns, both with Schilling (by telling him no extension until before the start of the season) and in public, by stating the obvious reasons why Boston can't afford to make an emotional decision in this matter. Even though the Sox aren't guaranteed Curt's services for 2008, they made the smart response to Schilling's move by calling him out and telling him he needs to prove his ability before they'll give him more money. Well played, guys, well played.