Sabathia, Tribe put off extension talks
Scoop wrote in Waiting for the Puff of White Smoke:
And as an Indians fan, am I sorry Johan was scooped away from the Twins? Er….that would be a no. Ha ha.
As for this explanation of white vs. black Pope-smoke: KOIE, were you around when the new Pope was being chosen and Countdown featured a demonstration of how white smoke vs. black smoke is actually made? It was the #1 story one night. Of course, the demonstration was not done in studio but on a field somewhere.
I will never forget Keith’s signoff to the correspondent at the demo, either: he told him he was “en fuego.”
I didn’t see that Countdown demo, dang it. When the heck will KO reunite with DP on the radio? The Yankees play the Red Sox in Grapefruit League action on 17 March. Maybe KO will take a break from saving the democracy and be down at spring training to report on it.
Cleveland was 5-0 with one no-decision against Johan last season. He lost each of those games 1-0. Wow.
Johan moving to the Mets upped the ante for pitching salaries and that’s going to hurt the Indians. The Tribe offered Sabathia $17-18 million for four years and he turned them down. The Twins offered Johan $20 million a year for four years and he turned them down. Salaries for starting pitchers started to go nuts last year when the Giants gave Barry Zito $126 million for seven years. Count on the Yankees to offer up a ton of dough for Sabathia after this season, especially if they don’t make the playoffs. They’ve already chosen to not give an extension to Chien-Ming Wang, a solid righty who has won 38 games the past two season.
Johan’s a great pitcher and he seems like a nice guy (which, as an old-fashioned kind of person, is important to me) and I’m glad the Mets got him. But I know it’s not good for baseball when the rich keep getting richer.
Hawaii wrote in Sorry, Minnesota:
As a fan of one small/medium market team it is frustrating. The only way to get a Tony Gwynn is if the player himself wants to stay. The team can never raise that type of money and have other decent players on a team at the same time.
I love the Mets too, but I do sometimes wish baseball was more like a salary cap fantasy league. I know that big payrolls are no assurance of a World Series win, but there does seem to to a strong correlation between payroll and a playoff berth.
I also object to the East Coast heaviness of star players because it reinforces the “east coast bias” of ESPN sports coverage. I never really bought into that theory until two summers ago when I was at a hotel in Las Vegas and desperately trying to see in the Padres won their game (the NL West was very tight) and ESPN was on in the lobby. I stood staring at the TV screen and waited and waited and waited while the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox dominated the Baseball Tonight segment, and the Padre eventually became a 6 second mention near the end of the program with video that didn’t even match with what the host was saying. I was dumbfounded. Apparently nobody cared at all about the NL West.
I also see a bit of this about Jake Peavy. He was the NL CY Young winner yet ESPN barely picked him up on either TV or radio coverage. Why, because he is on the Padres (and he signed an extension with them when his free agency begins). Had he signed with the Yankees he would have had huge coverage. Johan Santana size coverage (btw, I think they are very similar type pitchers. It will be great to see them go head to head from a pitching duel perspective, though it drives me batty when my teams play each other).
Okay, I am done ranting on your blog. :)
Rant away. I like it when people can discuss sports in a thoughtful and civil way.
And I was hoping that Peavy wouldn’t sign that extension so that the Mets could get a crack at him ….
Mets-Padres will be great this season with your Peavy, Young, and Maddux up against Johan, Pedro, and whoever our #3 will be.
I glanced at an article somewhere about how a salary cap would not help baseball; I will post the link if I can find it. Baseball already has revenue sharing. I’m not really crazy about parity in sports. The concept reminds me of all the participation ribbons and trophies that are handed out these days in kids’ event: Nice for the Self-Esteem Industry. What is so wrong with rewarding success? Still, it’s not healthy for a sport to be financially lopsided like MLB. The Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Indians were all nice stories in last season’s playoffs, but the real question is if teams like these can sustain a run when teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets have bottomless pockets.
The one thing I will say for the Mets is that the present owners have stated they want to stay under the luxury tax threshold. (This drives some Mets fans crazy — the ones who wanted us to get A-Rod and Johan.) It’s not good business to choose to throw money away like that. Of course, the Mets have also always wanted to stay away from offering long-term contracts to pitchers, which took us out of the Zito race last year. But this year we were desperate, so Johan got six years with a club option on the seventh.
East coast teams — at least the Yanks, Sawx, and Mets — are willing to spend money because of their owners (the Sawx were more frugal before the current ownership group took over) and because of the fan base. I think the fans back east are demanding, with some to a nearly unrealistic extent. If George Steinbrenner had bought the Dodgers I’d bet they’d have an extremely high payroll.
