the_nub.html
“Politics
and
baseball. Interesting blog…called ‘The
Nub’ on perfectpitcher.org.”
-
Boston Globe
“I’ve
been reading The
Nub with much delight, and
learning from it.”
-
Bill Moyers
(Posted: 11/18/08)
Bloomberg,
Yanks Set to Spend to Win
The city’s political and baseball powers – Team
Bloomberg
and the Yankees – know victory in 2009 depends on the source of their
strength:
m-o-n-e-y. Mayor Mike will have to hit
the airwaves hard to overcome his running for re-election as the
anti-democratic
candidate. The Yankees can only hope to
match the Rays and Red Sox in their division by spending to add two top
starters and a couple of top-tier position players.
A rough estimate of what the add-on annual
cost will be in each case: $80-$100 million.
The reported $140 million for six years
the Yanks are
offering CC Sabathia breaks down to a single-year pricetag of $23-plus
million
alone. That seems to have blown away all
of CC’s other suitors. Bloomberg’s
projected outlay for ’09 - most of it seeking to justify via sustained
TV blitz
his stance on extending term limits - is expected at least to match the
$84
million he spent in winning the office in ’01.
Bloomberg’s Democratic opponents -
Queens/Brooklyn
Congressman Anthony Weiner, Comptroller Billy Thompson and Queens
Councilmember
Tony Avella are three of the most likely candidates; none of them will
come
close to raising the kind of money conventional wisdom says will be
needed to
stay competitive with the mayor. But
whoever survives the primary to go one-on-one with Mike will be able to
run as
the “people’s” champion. Here’s a
campaign
pitch to throw at the mayor, offered free of charge:
“HE’S RUNNING AGAINST ALL OF US.”
-
- -
What are we to make of the Yankees’ deal for Nick Swisher as
a likely replacement for Jason Giambi? Swisher
is only 28 (Giambi will be 37 next season), so it’s fair still to see
some
potential in him, his record up to now inconclusive.
Let’s check to see what Oakland GM Billy
Beane, who signed him out of Ohio State,
saw in
Swisher. Here is how Michael Lewis
describes Beane’s take in his baseball classic “Moneyball”: “(Swisher) has…raw
athletic ability…(and) the stats Billy…ha(s)
decided matter more than anything; he’s proven he can hit, and hit with
power;
he drew more than his share of walks.”
Swisher
drew a walk every seven at bats last season, but he
struck out once every four-plus AB’s.
Giambi’s equivalent stats were similar, but Jason hit eight more
HR’s -
32 - in 40 fewer AB’s than did Swisher. But Nick costs less,
has the better glove and no drugs-use baggage.
The clincher as to why the switch may be seen as helpful to the undemonstrative Yanks comes from this
“Moneyball” excerpt:
“’Swisher is
noticeable, isn’t he?’
says Billy, hoping to hear more about…how Swisher really is.
“‘Oh,
he’s noticeable,’ says an
old scout. ‘From the moment he gets off
the bus he doesn’t shut up’.”
- -
-
An off-season skim of “other” ballplaying: New coach Mike
D’Antoni, with his upbeat style and downsizing of Stephon Marbury, has
made the
Knicks watchable again.
As for the Nets, the deal president Rod Thorn had
to make -
sending unhappy Jason Kidd to Dallas
for Devin Harris - makes the NJN’s surprisingly competitive. Harris, with three-straight 30-point games,
could be a budding super-star.
Even Brooklynites, born to be haters of
all manner of “Giants”
teams - are joining the football Giants bandwagon.
The defending NFL champions are seductively
well-balanced, a sinuously methodical playoffs-bound machine. The Jets have Brett and the fabled Favre
tradition to inspire and try to stabilize them, but they are more
wobbly than
solid. The shaky truth may surface
Sunday when they face the 10-0 Tennessee Titans.
- o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by clicking below.)
(Posted: 11/15/08)
Bloomberg Hitting a Stadium-Related Slump
The last time Mike Bloomberg’s popularity slumped
– in ’05 -
he was on the wrong side of a doomed West Side
stadium project. The mayor has hit a
slump again, over the undemocratic extension of term limits. His chances of battling out of that bind have
come up against another stadium debacle, this one in the Bronx. The new
Yankee Stadium is a big-ticket, state-of-the-art
ballpark designed to be a profit center for the Steinbrenner family
and,
secondarily, a magnet for fans.
Bloomberg’s problem as the economy
worsens, is that the
arena he helped make happen has become a public relations nightmare. Fans who, whether they knew it or not, forked
over hundreds of millions of public dollars to help build the
extravaganza,
will be priced out of attending “premium” – that is, the most
attractive –
games. Even the corporate elite is
bailing out as the financial crisis gets ever more critical: $4.2
million worth
of luxury suites are so far going begging for the ’09 season.
Meanwhile, Congress is investigating
Team Bloomberg’s
inflating the value of the Stadium land to allow the Yankees to float
high-return bonds to help cover costs.
Although an unfavorable result wouldn’t send anyone to jail, it
would be
another brush-back to Bloomberg. Amid the
financial giveaways, the mayor’s cardinal sin concerns the surrender of
public
parkland: he and his political teammates allowed 22 acres of green and
open
recreational space to be lost to the Stadium project.
NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer lined up a
bat-rack full or
reasons why Bloomberg won’t have an easy time extricating himself from
the
Stadium connection. The latest promotion
of the new ballpark, notes Dwyer, comes at a time when the mayor “says
he has
to close health clinics, shut libraries one day a week, not hire a new
class of
cops and raise property taxes.”
And, looking ahead:
“The new
Yankee Stadium, with all its architectural dazzle, will open
in the spring; less certain is when the public parkland that Bloomberg
gave to
the team will be replaced.
“The full
reckoning on Mr.
Bloomberg’s judgment…will most likely not come for a few years, long
after he
has run for a third term as mayor by arguing that he has been the
wisest and
steadiest of stewards – just the man of the city during hard financial
times.”
- -
-
In hard financial times, what could be better for ballclubs
than “cheap pub.” It’s the season when
all 30 MLB teams get puffy ink by letting their fans know they’re in
the
bidding for CC, Manny, Teixeira, Burnett, etc.
The everyday phrases everywhere: “We have an interest in…”
“We’re
serious about signing…” ”We’re not out of the picture…”, etc.
The Yanks, with their deepest of
pockets, are odds-on
favorites to sign Sabathia. That the
Mets are allegedly competing for CC is a laugh.
But hey, it doesn’t hurt to get free favorable mention, no
matter how
empty of substance. It will be no surprise
here if the Yankees wind up adding Oliver Perez to their rotation. Joe Girardi liked what he saw in Perez when he
was a Yanks broadcaster. “He has a
chance to be good,” Joe said. He may well
still think so.
The Boston Globe’s Tony Massarotti
presents this persuasive
argument for teams proceeding with caution as they seek starting
pitching on the open market:
“In
2006, multiyear deals were given to a
cast of starters that included (in alphabetical order):
Miguel
Batista (three years, $25
million)
Adam Eaton (three years, $24.5m)
Orlando Hernandez (two years, $12m)
Kei Igawa (five years, $20m)
Ted Lilly (four years, $40m)
Jason Marquis (three years, $21m)
Daisuke Matsuzaka (six years, $52m)
Gil Meche (five years, $55m)
Mark Mulder (two years, $13m)
Mike Mussina (two years, $23m)
Vicente Padilla (three years, $33.75m)
Jason Schmidt (three years, $47m)
Jeff Suppan (four years, $42m)
Woody Williams (two years, $12.5m)
Barry Zito (seven years, $126m)
“Of the pitchers on that
list, only Lilly (32-17 for the Cubs), Matsuzaka
(33-15 for the Red Sox) and Meche (23-24 with a 3.82 ERA for the
Royals) have
pitched consistently well, while the remaining pitchers on the list
have
suffered from varying degrees of injury, inconsistency,
ineffectiveness, and
ineptitude.”
- o -
(The Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by clicking below.)
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