Thursday, January 25, 2007 - Posts

Loose ends

The details of Darin Erstad's contract have been hammered out.  It's a one-year, $1 million contract with a club option, featuring the following:

  • 2007 base salary of $750,000
  • $250,000 buyout if Sox reject option
  • Option is worth $3.5 million, but Erstad can boost it to $6 million if incentives are met.

I'm still not excited, but there are some ways to put it into perspective.  Timo Perez received the same deal, and Erstad has greater value.  Ross Gload was set to earn $625,000, so for just a little bit more, they have a guy capable of replacing him, and Andy Sisco as well.  Chris Widger made $650,000 last year, so Erstad's in the cuttable zone if he tanks.

Meanwhile, some follow-up articles:

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Bobby Jenks is heeding Ozzie Guillen's call for better conditioning according to Joe Cowley.  After suspect conditioning last year, he's hired a nutritionist and is eating more vegetables.

Last spring, while preparing for his first full major-league season, he caught the wrath of manager Ozzie Guillen when he showed up to camp at 299 pounds.

[...]

The result is that Jenks is down to 275 pounds and counting.

Thirty pounds does make a difference, as the pictures show.  I think this Cowley article has a bit too much of that Barbara Walters soft focus (it really doesn't touch his second-half struggles), but that's what you get this time of year.

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Major media outlets have joined in the uproar over MLB moving its Extra Innings package to DirecTV.  I'm still certain that MLB will go through with this, but the more noise made against this, the better.  Hats off to SI.com's John Donovan and ESPN.com's Mike Philbrick for their work in this regard.

I'll give Philbrick the edge because he does a better job of expounding on the idea that MLB is going for short-term money with little concept of long-term implications.  Here's where Donovan and Philbrick differ:

Donovan:

The reason MLB is forsaking that many fans shouldn't surprise anyone. DirecTV, according to a report in the New York Times, will fork over $700 million for seven years for the exclusive rights to carry Extra Innings. So MLB is faced with this simple decision: $700 million or a few thousand upset seamheads. It's no contest. It's Rose against Fosse.

Business-wise, short-term, you can see baseball's side in this, if you forget about the fans. A thirtieth of a $700 million deal will pay a good-sized piece of any team's over-inflated payroll. And a lot of the money that baseball sees from the DirecTV deal could go toward seeding the game's next big money-making venture, the MLB Channel, coming to a television near you around the 2009 season.


Philbrick:

Despite the fanaticism for any sport, it's still a business -- and business is fueled by one thing: money.

We know that Bud, so we crunched a few more numbers for you:

• $700 million: Amount over seven years DirecTV will pay MLB for exclusive rights

• $490 million: Amount over seven years InDemand, the previous rights holder, would pay MLB

• $1 million: Difference per team per year over the term of the seven-year contract

• $2.8 million: Average player salary in 2006

So when MLB goes with DirecTV each team will get an extra $1 million a year for its coffers for the next seven years. How much do you think player salaries and operating costs will increase during that period? We're sure Mr. Selig knows because like we said, we would never accuse him of not doing his homework.

… and you still want to make this deal?

Point, Philbrick.  And bonus points for the picture of the Lavatory Orbiter.

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The crew at the blog formerly known as ChiSoxBlog is moving on to greener pastures -- in this case, a non-Blogspot domain.  CSB is now known as Life in the Cell, the Sox blog at SweetHomeSports, a Chicago-sports-centric hub of blog.  Congrats on the new digs, fellas.
posted Thursday, January 25, 2007 10:42 PM by Jim with 1 Comments

Opposite day

One day, we're talking about Darin Erstad, a gutsy gamer so intense he growls while putting on his sliding shorts.

Today, we have Brian Anderson:

"I figured some things out with my swing -- mechanical stuff," Anderson said. "I've always been a good athlete, to the point where athletically, there's nothing I can't do. So, when I struggled last year, I thought it would just be a matter of time before I get out of it.

"But I should have taken it more seriously, showing up and realizing how I have to do whatever it takes to fix this. These players I'm facing are the best of the best, and if you want to be the best, you sort of have to figure out that approach."


If the laissez-faire attitude was the reason Anderson spent a lot of 2006 in Ozzie Guillen's doghouse, it's a good one.  It probably also relates to Anderson's reluctance to play winter ball.  At the same time, it's a fairly ballsy quote, genuinely interesting and likely something Ozzie and Kenny Williams don't already know.

My first reaction was disgust.  My second and ultimately prevailing reaction was, "Hey, he just exposed more about his lack of playing time in two paragraphs than anybody else did in six months!"  Having been in the position of trying to extract more than clichés from ballplayers, it's nice when a guy actually says something. 

Now, whether it actually means something will start to unfold in under a month.  Anderson says he's "pumped up" for it (so pumped he almost kicked his mom in the face?), so it should be an interesting spring.
posted Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:22 AM by Jim with 9 Comments