Bowden takes DC job, Gillick.. ?
AP is reporting that Jim Bowden, former GM of the Reds, will be the new GM of the to-be-renamed-Expos. I once named Bowden the most disappointing GM to me, but that’s not really important.
What it means is that Gillick, who weirdly hasn’t left yet, doesn’t get the job. Presumably he’ll continue to cash pay paychecks until one of his old proteges gives him a gig, like Bavasi did for Evans. At some point this off-season, though, I totally agree with Dave in that I expect Gillick to leave the team.
Guardado
The Mariners declined their 2005 option on Eddie Guardado today. I’ve already gotten a couple of emails wondering why the team doesn’t want him back; relax, he’ll be a Mariner next year. We’ve been telling you the team would do this for two months. There’s no way Guardado gets $4.5 million on the open market. I’d be surprised if it took him more than a couple of days to pick up his player option.
Off-season to-do list
I’ve been asked “So what are you going to do in the off-season?”
A brief summary:
– spend time with the Mrs.
– write my chapters for Baseball Prospectus 2005
– research, writing for Secret Project 1, details forthcoming
– research, writing for Secret Project 2, details not forthcoming
– improve the site some more
– possibly launch bizarre, ill-fated site features
– research stocks
– read books
– play video games
I also may watch some football.
The off-season doesn’t do a lot to lighten my workload. Anyway, back to the keyboard.
Site work update
It’s close to nine now, and I’ve completed all the stuff I felt I had to get done. Comment protection is now… well, it’s pretty brutal, though until it can actually reach out and beat the stuffing out of people it’s not as brutal as I’d like.
I have not yet relaxed the controls I put in the first time, so the caveats about AOL issues still apply. All told, today’s site upgrades probably took 2 hours of actual futzing with stuff beyond time spent figuring out how to get them to work and integrated without there being anything obvious that you, the reader, would notice. Which now that I write, that, seems kind of dumb. I should have put blinking “Derek pwnz!!” tags everywhere or something. Anyway–
Let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary, particularly with comments. I did not get to some of the more wonkier stuff I’d hoped to get to, but that’s life. Anyone who wants to talk to me about MySQL, WordPress, and the stranger corners of performance optimization can drop me a line. I’m off to worry about the election but I’ll be back soon enough.
More M’s accounting in the media
From MLB.com
How much money do the Mariners have available to work with for free-agent signings this offseason? Also, who are the M’s players that are currently scheduled to be returning to the 25-man team (and their salary commitments)? — David Smirnow
Howard Lincoln, the team’s CEO, has said that the payroll budget would not be cut this season, which suggests that the organization will spend about $93 million next season. As of Nov. 1, the team has 11 players under contract next season for $53.68 million. They also owe Jeff Cirillo $4.78 million, and will pay $500,000 to buy out pitcher Kevin Jarvis. Starting pitcher Gil Meche is eligible for free agency and figures to get at least $1 million. With the remainder of the 40-man roster expected to make at least $7 million to $8 million, it is believed that general manager Bill Bavasi will have between $13-15 million to lure free agents to Seattle.
Okay, so factual error #1 is that Meche isn’t eligible for free agency.
#2 is that the Mariners spread a $92m number last year, but that was fictional and they never spent the “Sasaki money”. Actual payroll was much lower.
Assuming you grant him everything else, though, as our readers point out, the numbers still don’t add up.
53.68m + 4.78m to Cirillo + .5m for Jarvis + Meche at 1m + “remainder of roster” at 8m = ~70m, which would mean the team would have, by the logic at the start of the article, $23m to spend on luring free agents to Seattle.
That’s a 8-10m math error *even if you agree with all of the assumptions there*.
I want to point this out to make two points, though:
First, errors like this occur all over the place if you pay attention. That the editors couldn’t be troubled to add the numbers up and see there was a huge error should tell you a lot about the standards of MLB. This wasn’t even a subjective judgement call, either.
Second, when Finnigan runs an article with random numbers in it to justify a weird conclusion, well, he’s not alone.
Update 11/3: they pulled the Q and the A from the page.
Around the Majors
Two hirings on the major league front today with very different overtones. A quick look:
1. The Arizona Diamondbacks hired Wally Backman to be their next manager. Think Larry Bowa; than take away logic, sanity, and strategical knowledge. Wally Backman is instantly the worst manager in MLB. Well done boys.
2. Gerry Hunsicker resigned as GM of the Houston Astros, announcing assistant GM Tim Purpura will immediately become his successor. We talked about Purpura a bit last year during the Mariners GM search, and he’s a pretty bright guy. Hunsicker never got the recognition he deserved for building quality teams in Houston, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up taking a more high profile job in a few years.
Also, there’s some rumblings coming out of Atlanta that the Braves and Yankees are working on a deal that would send Kevin Brown, Kenny Lofton, and a truckload of cash to Atlanta for Andruw Jones. This would likely signal the end of any interest the Yankees have in Carlos Beltran.
Amazing Race! Wooot!!
Just when I thought I would be mostly bored with patches of uninterested through this off-season!, it’s the return of the Emmy-winning Amazing Race on November 16th! Best show on television*! I’m totally psyched, and dearly hope that they move back from the Fear Factor-style eating contests etc they got into last time. I also hope they recruited people who actually want to be on the show and do well, rather than (say) advertise their taco stand for a couple episodes and then quit when it gets rough.
For your convenience, here’s your short guide to this year’s teams and where they fit on the Amazing Team Slotting, TAR6 team (TAR5 equivalent)
—
Married couple: Jonathan/Victoria (Chip/Kim)
Beautiful people dating 1: Freddy/Kendra (Colin/Christie)
Beautiful people dating 2: Hayden/Aaron (Brandon/Nicole)
Best friends: Avi/Joe aaand Meridth/Maria (Linda/Karen)
Siblings, women: Lena/Kristy(Kami/Karli)
Siblings, men: n/a (Lance/Marshall)
One non-standard contestant: Lori/Bolo (Mirna/Charla)
Older couple: Don/Mary Jean (Bob/Joyce)
Father/Daughter: Gus/Hera (Jim/Marsha)
Dating with twist: Kris/Jon (Alison/Donny, Alison sort of cuckolded Donny on a Big Brother)
Dating with broken relationship: Adam/Rebecca (Dennis/Erika)
Also, I know you have to look good on television, but I’d much rather have some normal dudes who are funny and smart than all these models/beauty pageant contestants every year.
ESPN’s potential free agent list
Comment attacks
We’ve been coping with one for a couple days now. At least Party Poker only went after us for a day. Seriously, what’s the scoop, a guy can’t run a site in peace? This is like having door-to-door salespeople break into my house and try to sell me vacuums or cosmetics.
Oh! My point — at some point tonight or tomorrow, I’m going to be building some new anti-comment-spam stuff into the site. Should be transparent to you, but you might notice some weird behavior in the comments if you happen by at the wrong moment.
I’d apologize for the inconvenience, but why? It’s not my fault I have to spend time on this BS.