Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Miami Marlins will never actually pay Giancarlo Stanton $325 million

Notice the typical Marlins Park crowd in the background.
The Miami Marlins are a cheap small-market baseball team.  Twice they won the World Series (as the Florida Marlins in 1997 and 2003), and each time they disassembled the team immediately afterwards with an enormous payroll-cutting fire sale.

After hoodwinking the city of Miami into building them a new publicly-funded $600 million stadium, the Marlins made a sneaky PR move to justify it--they signed big-name free agents Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle before the park's opening in 2012.

The club appeared to be spending serious money in an attempt to build a contender.  Reyes' contract was for six years/$106 million, while Buehrle's contract totaled 4 years/$58 million.  However, the yearly breakdowns were as follows:

Reyes: $10 mil in 2012 and 2013, $16 mil in 2014, and $22 mil per year for 2015-2017 with a club option for another $22 mil in 2018 (or a $4 mil buyout instead).

Buehrle: $4 mil signing bonus followed by $6 mil in 2012, $11 mil in 2013, $18 mil in 2014 and $19 mil in 2015.

The Marlins traded away both Reyes and Buehrle after just one season in the franchise's third major dismantling of the team in 15 years.  Miami ended up paying only $20 million of the $164 million owed to Reyes and Buehrle.

Well guess what, the 13-year, $325-million richest-in-MLB-history contract that Giancarlo Stanton just inked with the Marlins breaks down like this:

2015: $6.5 mil
2016: $9 mil
2017: $14.5 mil
2018-2027: Between $25 mil and $32 mil per season

Stanton may be traded after one year, or possibly after two.  But there's a 100 percent chance he'll be out of Miami after three seasons before this deal actually gets expensive for the Marlins.

The contract is a joke and MLB should have voided it before it happened.


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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Drones are a Christmas gift?

Last night I read a terrifying article on Mashable.com called "Drones 'flying off the shelves' ahead of UK's festive season."  Granted it's talking about England, but still...

Here are a few quotes from it:

"But what happens on Dec. 25 when there's a mass switch on of new devices, do people know what to do with them? Do they understand the law around drones and will your neighbour now be nosing into your business with their new flying contraption?" 
"Last week, the Information Commissioner's Office released new guidance for people operating UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicle]. ... It advises that people flying drones should let others know before they start recording, that both the drone pilot and the device remain visible at all times and that people plan the flight and be mindful of the battery life." 
"Liverpool-based Michael McDaid founded the very first drone users group in Britain a year ago. ... He advises people getting drones to get insurance and to take things one step at a time, starting off with a small drone, even something that can be flown indoors, and work up from there. 'You have to be proactive, look on the internet and find out what you can and cannot do,' McDaid tells Mashable."

Halfway through the article I had to go back and check to make sure it was real and not a fake story from The Onion.

Just to clarify, in England a hugely popular Christmas gift this season is the same thing that Carrie Mathison uses unsuccessfully to kill the world's No. 1 terrorist on Homeland.

Also, this makes me think I should start a weekly blog feature entitled "Real or Onion?"

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Monday, November 17, 2014

Worse performance yesterday: Colts rushing or Rockets shooting?

In their 42-20 loss to the Patriots last night, the Indianapolis Colts used two running backs.  Ahmad Bradshaw carried the ball seven times for fours yards.  Trent Richardson also had seven rushes, for a total of zero yards.  Combined they averaged 0.29 yards on each of their 14 carries.

The Patriots also used two running backs.  Shane Vereen had one rush for 18 yards, while Jonas Gray carried the ball 38 times for 199 yards. Oh yeah, and four touchdowns.  Gray became the first New England player to ever rush for four TDs in a game, and just the second Patriot to ever score four TDs in one contest (along with Randy Moss).


Now to the Houston Rockets.  Last night the Rockets shot 23-for-80 (28.8%) from the field and 16-for-30 (53.3%) at the free throw line, while only scoring 69 total points--and they won.  Their opponent, the Thunder, made just 20 of 68 (29.4%) field goal attempts and finished with 65 points.

The last time an NBA team won with fewer than 70 points was more than eight years ago.  And in the past 30 seasons (and possibly forever, but basketball-reference.com only goes back to 1985 on this), no team had ever won a game while shooting less than 30 percent from the field and below 54 percent at the line.


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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Awesome Old Song/TV Clip of the Week: The "Party of Five" Theme ("Closer to Free" by the BoDeans)

Party of Five debuted on TV in September of 1994.  The intro song, Closer to Free by the BoDeans, came out in 1993 as the first track on the album Go Slow Down.  The song was re-released as a single in 1996, with the fame it gained from the show propelling it as high as No. 16 on the Billboard charts.

The thing that always bugged me about Party of Five was that Mathew Fox's character Charlie was eight years older than Scott Wolf's character Bailey, but in reality Fox is two years younger than Wolf.  Also it just juts occurred to me for the first time that it's pretty funny their names are "Fox" and "Wolf."

I chose this song because for some reason NBC randomly played it while cutting to a commercial on Sunday Night Football last week.



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Saturday, November 15, 2014

So I ran into LeBron James on the street last night...

I left work yesterday a little before five p.m. and starting walking in the direction of home.  Along the way I passed the Four Seasons Hotel on Boylston Street.  There was a bus parked out front and several people with basketballs in their hands standing behind some police barricades.  Here's my thought process:

"Hmm that's weird... wait, the Cavs are in town.  LeBron is here.  They're probably staying at this hotel and heading over to the Garden momentarily."

I figured I'd give it a few minutes and see what happened.  First Cleveland's center Anderson Varejao came out.  After that a bunch of people nobody recognized got on the bus, including former Celtics assistant coach Tyron Lue.  I felt like saying "Hey Tyron, good to see you back in Boston!"  But, that's not really my style.  Then LeBron emerged, and the people went nuts--one women in particular:




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Friday, November 14, 2014

Checking in on the Sixers quest to be the worst team in NBA history


ESPN.com has an article on it's front page this morning entitled "Could these 76ers be worst ever?"  This is something I've been saying all season.  I think I first mentioned it on The Bob Sullivan Show two weeks ago (at the 104-minute mark), then I sent out this tweet a few days later:


I also brought it up in a post on who would win first, the 76ers or Lakers (LA won one immediately after).

Last night the 0-8 Sixers lost in Dallas by 53 points.  At halftime the score was 73-29 (reminiscent of a game last year against the Clippers in which they trailed 89-33 at one point).  ESPN's article says that the 44-point halftime deficit is the second largest in NBA history.  It also mentions that Philly has been outscored by 143 points so far (17.9 per night), the third worst margin after eight games in league history.  And, dating back to last February the 76ers have lost 40 of their last 44.


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Thursday, November 13, 2014

All the best stats I've seen lately

I witnessed a disappointing performance by the Celtics last night at the TD Garden, made worse by the fact that Rajon Rondo couldn't grab the 10th rebound he needed for his second triple-double of the season.  This was due in large part to the fact that the Thunder didn't really miss any shots down the stretch.


Morrow went 8-for-8 in the 4th quarter.


That was likely because two of it's prominent members were out with injuries.


Searching hard for a silver lining, I found these two nuggets:


Although two of those threes were in garbage time.

Shifting to the Red Sox, there have been lots of reports suggesting they may soon sign Pablo Sandoval.  I'm not sure it's a good idea to spend $100 million on a guy who hits under .300 with fewer than 20 homers and 80 RBI per season.  I elaborated on this for Bleacher Report.

In another B/R article entitled 3 Free Agents the Red Sox Need to Avoid at All Costs I wrote about why Boston shouldn't spend $200 million on Max Scherzer.  Both Jon Lester and James Shields would be cheaper (Shields significantly), and the three pitchers have very similar numbers over the past six seasons:


Switching back to the NBA, Kobe Bryant just set the all-time record for most missed shots in a career, passing John Havlicek.  At the pace he's on so far this year, Kobe may set set new standards for misses in a single season as well.  If you only read one other thing today, it should be Stat Central: Kobe Bryant Missing Shots At Historic Rate In 2014-15 on HoopsHabit.com.


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