Sure I do. The CBA’s freely available. I got mine from the much missed Doug Pappas, who posted it for anyone to download here.
Wait just a minute here… Derek, you have the CBA?
So who drops off the 40-man then?
Obvious candidates:
Guardado leaves in trade
Myers leaves in trade
Villone leaves in trade
Possible:
Ramon Santiago moved off (this is unlikely — they want him around)
Dobbs or Strong moved off 40 man
Rafael Soriano moves from the 15-day to the 60-day DL
Rett Johnson assigned or moved quietly to 60-day DL
Aaron Looper assigned
Like Aurilia, veteran presence designated for assignment
I’m curious to see where this goes.
We should also point out that the Mariners haven’t lost a game in almost a week now. They’ve got to be happy about that at least.
I can’t find anything in the CBA that says Olerud can refuse a waiver claim. That said, I didn’t give it the twice-over, so take that with your standard salt dosage.
From Tede:
Great stuff about the phoniness about the M’s use of language,
timelines, and Finnigan to grab extra cash out the door.
One part where you’re a bit wrong was about your expectations for the
Seattle Times (or P-I for that matter) on the issues of budgets.
Remember the Times/Blethen is using the same funny money accounting
practices to break the JOA with the P-I with 3 years of consecutive
(phony) losses. MAYBE…somebody on the P-I (Bruscas?) will go after
the M’s corrupt use of two timelines, but I wouldn’t count on it. Just
don’t be surprised that the Times won’t do a thing to expose the M’s.
For all the good newspapers do, remember that no newspaper will ever win
a Pulitzer for a series of stories on used car dealers. No newspaper
is that dumb to take on such a group of major advertisers to do a series
on used car dealers in the first place. (Hence, that’s why even with
the New York Times there was the need for a Consumer Reports to be
created. That’s also why the fan sites, Grand Salami mag, etc. are so
necessary in regards to covering the M’s. In comparison, all the
posturing over newspapers not allowing their reporters to be official
scorekeepers is just a false display of ethics.)
—
From a realistic perspective.. yeah, I guess understand. But I don’t like it.
I’m not sure that a DFA’d player has no refusal rights w/r/t a waiver claim if they have a no trade clause in their contract. I’ll look into that and see what I can find tonight.
So, here’s the deal on the Olerud DFA, as it was related to me. They had a deal for him that he shot down (to SF for J.T. Snow), as was his contractual right. The market for Olerud exists, but is very soft. Three teams have expressed interest in picking him up if the M’s pay a portion of his contract (or, in Snow’s case, take back another expiring contract to offset some of the difference). The M’s have been unable to find a fit with a team that Olerud is comfortable waiving his no-trade for. He would prefer that the team wait a bit longer and see if a new contender for his services arises that would be preferable to the current suitors. The M’s would rather make the move now, seeing as they’ll eat an extra $700,000 of his salary between now and the trade deadline if they keep him on the roster.
The team believes Olerud will be claimed on waivers, and they’ll save $3.4 million that they would owe him the rest of the season. No-trade rights do not apply to waiver claims, and any team, including the ones he has declined a trade to, will be able to take him on. It is possible that if he makes it to San Francisco, the M’s will agree to take J.T. Snow for a non-prospect in an effort to convince the Giants to claim Olerud.
Baseball wise, on the surface, this move doesn’t make sense. Olerud has, beleive it or not, been one of the Mariners best performers this year. His defense and on base percentage are still valuable, and replacing him with Bucky Jacobsen is going to make the team worse. With Dave Hansen likely to be gone within the next week, a roster spot was going to be open very shortly. However, the M’s see an opportunity to clear several million in cash off the roster, and they’re taking it.
Now, here’s the annoying part; that cash isn’t going to help the club. The team’s budget for next year, which will determine all offseason transactions, will not be affected one bit by what the M’s do during the season. The team will simply turn a larger profit for 2004 than they would have before, but don’t believe that saving money on Olerud’s contract is going to make it more likely that Carlos Beltran or Adrian Beltre will be coming to Seattle next year. Every team treats their budget this way, so this isn’t a unique way of the Mariners screwing their fans, but rather the organization continuing with a baseball tradition that has been going on for years.
I can’t say this is a bad move for the M’s. Rightfully, they decided to give Bucky some playing time, and they decided they’d rather not pay John Olerud $3 million the rest of the year to be a backup first baseman. In their shoes, with a chance to save that much money, this is probably the right call. But, unfortunately, all this really is doing is putting the team even further in the black for this year while making it even more likely that we lose 100 games. The on-field product is being degraded with the sole intent of increasing margins. That is what is behind this move, and as a fan, that’s a tough pill to swallow, even if it is a defendable transaction.
The M’s need some good P.R. in a big way. Most of their fans are angry or apathetic, and they have lost almost all of the goodwill garnered by their tremendous run of the last five years. The M’s have an opportunity here to win fans back; announce that every dime saved in cost cutting this season is going directly into 2005 payroll. Tell the fans that the $3 million saved on John Olerud is going to be spent acquiring talent for next year. Invest that savings in your on-field product. Show the fans that these transactions benefit them, and they have a hope of something to look forward to. Give us hope. Don’t give yourself a better bottom line.
And in the interest of balancing Jason’s positivity, I want to point that the organization’s pocketing cash and lying about it. Again. Their go-to man for distributing this bunk? Bob Finnigan, Boy Reporter.
Contained in this latest piece:
– Early-season moves like Cabrera meant that Sasaki’s savings went from $7 million to $5 million
– The $5m that was left went to pay off Kevin Jarvis’ 2005 deal
– The Garcia/Davis trade saves the team about $4m combined, leaving $4m in the budget
– Whatever money they have left over from the budget this year goes away (Can that savings be added to next year’s payroll budget? Apparently not, according to Lincoln. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You close the books on one year and turn the page.”)
All lies. Before the season, the team made a big deal about having a mid-season acquisition fund of about $5m. This budget included Kevin Jarvis, Garcia, everything. Sasaki leaves, the team now has ~$13m of wiggle room. Jarvis’ buyout doesn’t suddenly jump on this year’s budget: they always knew they were going to have to eat his contract or at least a huge chunk of it… it was the price they paid to dump Cirillo. If you buy their argument that years run separate books (bunk) then his buyout for next year counts next year, right?
Anyway. They trade Garcia/Davis, including cash, and come out with $17m in cash. Now, when they call up the AAA guys, they’re going to make the major league minimum instead of the ridiculously low money they were making in the minors… but three slots for a whole year gets you up just past $1m in payroll, plus the $5m they admit’s in the budget — there’s no way that somehow the team left the other $11m lying around in a duffel bag and someone stole it. That much money is heavy, and difficult to move (unless you do it electronically, of course).
And let’s take the larger issue of year-to-year books. This is such a crazy thing to say, I don’t even have a funny analogy about how stupid it is.
When Sasaki left, and the M’s made a big deal about how they didn’t have the money yet, Dave mocked them by saying it was like having a budget, and knowing that you weren’t going to have to buy one of the items later. You have the money, and you know in the future you won’t be spending it. You don’t have to sit on it, scratching yourself, until that day comes and you really didn’t have to spend it after all.
This is the same thing with the team. Let’s say I have a business that runs makes small David Cameron desktop bobbleheads. You press the base and Dave says something insightful about a prospect he’s seen… they’re USB-enabled, hook up to your computer and download new stuff… whatever. I start the company in 2003 with $100 and make one doll, which I sell for $150. Then people everywhere realize Dave’s predictions on minor leaguers are insanely accurate and they want this doll. I make a million of them at $125 a piece. My company’s now worth a ton of money, and I have enough money in the bank to do all kinds of crazy stuff. But wait–
The New Year comes! Poof, all of the money I had in the bank disappears. I’m broke! I can’t afford to make another doll! What happened to all that money? Who knows! Once you close the books on a year and turn the page, all that went before is closed to you. Someone’s got my money… I just don’t know who. Damn those accountants!
The Mariners make more money than 27 teams in baseball. They take their profits out of the franchise using standard book keeping tricks teams have used for ages, by applying it to hypothetical past losses the ownership group ran up, and a small portion of it they take openly as the declared net. If they saved $10m they had budgeted for payroll and revenues remain constant, that $10m goes somewhere.
It will not go into the team or fulfilling the promises the franchise has made to fans and the region. When the team said they were budgeting for x number of fans and they’d be able to spend more if more turned out, fans turned out and the team did nothing. When they spend, they overstate spending. When they save money, they make the savings go away. And people wonder why I get wound up when I pay extra sales tax on my beer within the Facilities District.
Doesn’t Finnigan, and the paper that prints him, have some obligation to the truth? If he needs to be a mouthpiece to get access to write stories that sell papers, that’s one thing. But to unquestioningly print lies? Why is no one with a press badge, from the guy who covers the sports team to the people who cover the White House, willing to call a lie a lie? And why is it okay for Lincoln to lie like this, continously and openly, just because it advances his business interests? This stuff drives me crazy. The Seattle Times is a newspaper. Newspapers aren’t what they used to be, but this year the Seattle Times was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the Public Service category for an amazing series by Christine Willmsen and Maureen O’Hagan on sexual misconduct by male coaches in prep sports who went undisciplined and unpunished (seriously, it was great work, and I’d link to it here if the Times didn’t require registration). In 2003 they were finalists in two categories for work I didn’t like as much… back in 1997 they won two, for Investigative Reporting and Beat Reporting. Even in the sports section, even in the same sport, the Times runs Larry Stone, who writes long and thoughtful pieces on baseball, well written and loaded with insight and intelligence.
Off the same rollers, in the same newsprint, comes whatever lie-of-the-day Howard Lincoln wants to gently wrap that day’s rotten fish with. The Times should be ashamed. I used to deliver the Times, and read every newspaper I came across for years. Now I don’t care. I know that the simplifications and errors in the sports section have their parallels in the business and news sections, and I’m better off getting my information elsewhere.
Nearly a month ago, I went off on a little rant about the M’s and their refusal to give up on the season. Since that time, they’ve traded Garcia, dumped Aurilia, given Travis Blackley a shot, and now appear to be giving the same chance to Bucky Jacobsen and George Sherrill.
We here at the USSM get accused of being too negative, so I just wanted to point out that I’m glad the M’s are finally doing something with an eye towards improving for next season.
How about this instead, Derek?
The PI is reporting that — gasp — John Olerud will be moved off the roster. “Barring a last-minute deal, Olerud will be released or designated for assignment with the Mariners owing him the remainder of the $7.7 million on his contract.”
I’m not saying this is the wrong move, but man, I’m shocked they’d do such a thing to a guy like Olerud.