Thanking the Baseball Gods

November 22, 2007 by Benjamin Kabak 28 Comments

With Thanksgiving upon us, blogging — and readership — will be light today. Go spend time with your family and forget about the Yanks for a few hours. We’ll be here when you get back.

But for those of you jonesin’ for some baseball, let me present five things for which I’m thankful right now. It all relates to baseball or sports. I’m thankful because…

…The Angels — and not the Yankees — are going to be paying Torii Hunter $80 million over five years to play centerfield. And, yes, the Angels now have $120 million tied up in centerfielders over the next five seasons. That’s just unnecessary.

…The Steinbrenners — and not the Dolans — own the Yankees. The Knicks lost against last night, and since Isiah Thomas was undeserved awarded a contract extension last season, New York’s hapless basketball club has gone 6-24. That is a fireable offense.

…Alex Rodriguez will be manning third base coming April. The Yankees are better with A-Rod at third base. That’s not an opinion.

…Spring Traning is just 2 months and 20 days away.

…so many people read this blog every day. Thanks to all of you for stopping by, reading and contributing to the discussion. Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Adrian-Retire21

Well said.Go Yankees.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and being a great site for Yankees info.
E-ROC

That Melky package for Jenks could actually happen.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=56352514 Jamal G

This site is damn good and I give thanks for all the great info. Hell other than MySpace this is my most frequently visited site, lol.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=56352514 Jamal G

Just a piece of going away info to chew on with your turkey…reports from the NY Post say that the Yanks have signed CJ Henry, their 2005 #1 pick who was dealt in the Bobby Abreu deal. Henry asked and was granted his release from Philly. The report also says that when Henry was fitted with contacts he hit .300 from then on. I know nothing about Henry so I cant really give an opinion on whether this signing is actually worth cracking a smile over so Ill leave that to you guys.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11222007/sports/yankees/oh__henry__yanks_sign_outfielder_336018.htm
- barry
  
  Touching story, maybe he’ll turn into something.
- http://riveraveblues.com Mike A.
  
  Wow, last I heard was that Henry was going back to Kansas to play basketball. He’ll definitely be one of the more interesting guys to watch next year.
  
  risk = zero
  potential upside = ginormous
- Pettitte’s stare
  
  Got to say that I love having CJ Henry back. I know he really hasn’t shown anything at all recently but I liked the kid when we drafted him. Remember the battle over whether the Yankees should have drafted Henry or Hanson. As of right now the decision looks like they shouldn’t have drafted either.
jon

And Scott Linebrink signed with the White Sox. Thank god!
- E-ROC
  
  Thank you White Sox!!!
barry

I think we would all like to pretend the Knicks don’t exist right now. Thanks for feeding my Yankees addiction. Hope all you fellas(and ladies) have a great thanksgiving.
PZ
brxbmrs

That should tell you all, (that the Angels would spend 125 mil on two flawed players) that Melk for Jenks is not a great deal for the Yanks.

Melk is worth more, lets stop trying to unload him ASAP until we have a better option for CF AND we get a good YOUNG player in return.
- http://www.riveraveblues.com Joseph P.
  
  If the White Sox would take Melk for Jenks straight up, you do it every time. Unfortunately, it will take a bit more, probably Melk and a B pitching prospect. But you’re getting a quality setup guy who is only what, 26, 27 years old.
  - waswhining
    
    if melky goes I want to someone huge, like a Santana a Harden or a Bedard on the other end of the deal. melky had three bum months: april may september. The first couple of months I recall him as not having taken over the cf spot completely. why he tanked in sept I don’t know, an injury perhaps. but jun jul aug were some solid numbers. i know some have compared his early years to bernie’s but have never followed up on that myself. and i loved having a cf who when a runner was rounding third you could chuckle and say, dumb bastard.
    
    happy thanksgiving to all.
  - brxbmrs
    
    Jenks has some pretty nice stats (although his K’s were down last year, but so was everything else) – gotta admit that’s probably the best Melky trade proposal so far.
    
    The reality though is an everyday cfer isn’t an easy hole to fill.
    
    I’m not sure I trade Melk for a guy who only pitches 70 innings – although Jenks is tempting – the real problem is Brett Gardner is not going to satisfy the Yanks need in CF – I’d like to see it only for no other reason how you guys would complain about his lack of offense and his arm compared to Melk.
    
    I’d rather trade Tabata – there’s no guarantee that he ever makes the majors and his value (along with Jackson and Horne) is very high right now.
    
    Yanks can always fill a corner of spot in the fa market – but I’m not convinced that we trade for a setup guy, I think the move is for a young 1st baseman and hope that the Yanks have enough internal pitching to make them a better team.
    
    Personally, I think we can stand pat till the all-star break with what we have – even if it means sacrificing the 08 season – I’d like to give all the young guys a chance to see what they can do under Girardi.
LiveFromNewYork

I am thankful that the Yankees are not the Knicks. The franchise of Reed, Barnett, Frazier, DeBusschere, Ewing and these clowns. Egad. What have we turned into? I used to be a Knicks fanatic and now they are just an embarassment. You could not pay me to go to a Knicks game now and I used to hold season tickets.

My family will sit down to dinner and the Yankees will be a huge topic and we’ll all give thanks.

It’s good to be a Yankee fan.
Count Zero

Thanks for all the work you guys do to make this such a terrific site all through the year!!!

And yes, thank the lord for the fact that the Dolans don’t own the Yanks. What a disaster that is…
http://scottproctorsarm.blogspot.com Andrew

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
stepheneliot

RAB is one of my favorite websites, which I read several or more times a day to get the latest news about the Yankees from those good souls who love the team as much as I do. So thanks to Ben K et al. and a Happy Thanksgiving to all of us and and our RAB team as well!
Relaunch

What a dumb contract by the Angels. This is very bad for baseball. Hunter is not an $18mill a year/player even in his prime, now he will be paid this ridiculous amount at age 36 and 37. This again will escalate salaries for shitty players who now will make $10mill a year for being an average player. This is the last time any owner should cry over salaries when a dumb one like this is given out.
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com NC Saint

I think it’s great for baseball. Anaheim deserves to lose, and this will help them do it. And it saves us the worry of a Steinbrenner power move. And, even though he’s not such a great baseball player, he certainly has a lot of hustle. It’s nice to see him get paid well, and not by us.
- Relaunch
  
  Are you kidding me? This contract is a joke for a player like Hunter. His career OBP is 324. The year he had is not normal for him. Bad for baseball, just like the Zito contract was bad for baseball.
  - http://www.overheardinnewyork.com NC Saint
    
    Of course the contract is a joke, but the idea that stupid contracts are ‘bad for baseball’ is a myth that the owners and comissioner would love you to believe. Obviously a big contract creates some upward pressure on salaries overall. But as a fan, I don’t really care what percentage of revenue goes to the players versus the owners.
    
    As a fan, you want your team to be smarter than other teams. The Yankees have more money to spend than anyone else, but that advantage is much more significant if they spend it more intelligently than other teams. The Zito contract wasn’t bad for baseball, it was bad for the Giants. By the time Zito signed, the mainstream sports media had finally started admitting what everyone with a lick of sense already knew: Zito wasn’t all that special, and didn’t deserve the sort of contract he was looking for. No one else was willing to give it to him. So while it created some upward pressure, the only real loser is San Fransisco. And the fact that Santana would even consider settling for “Zito money” shows that even players and agents know that one stupid contract doesn’t redefine the market. If other teams really took Zito’s contract seriously, they’d be lining up to pay Santana $30 million a year for as many years as he wanted. But they aren’t.
    
    There is enough brain power working in front offices in every organization to make these worries absurd. When someone of Zito’s caliber asks to get that kind of money, all the smart teams wait him out. If someone pays up, they suffer, unable to throw money at other players. If no one does, he settles for less, and the market adjusts, becoming more efficient. I don’t see how either outcome is ‘bad for baseball’.
    - Relaunch
      
      “Bad” for baseball comes from ruining the market. When a player like this makes $18mill a year, it raises the prices for shittier players. The Zito contract raised the price for every average pitcher in baseball. Adam Eaton received a 3yr 24 mill contract last year. If you don’t recognize that these kind of moves are bad for baseball, you aren’t looking at the bigger picture. This contract is a joke, just as much as giving Mo 15mill a year for a reliever that pitches 70innings a year.
      - http://www.overheardinnewyork.com NC Saint
        
        You still haven’t explained why you think driving up the market is ‘bad for baseball’. Do you own a team? I don’t.
        
        Also, the overall level of the market is something it’s strange to have an opinion about. The thing to pay attention to is when teams value players poorly in relation to other players. That creates inefficiencies that smarter teams can exploit. And this isn’t bad for baseball. Smarter teams are rewarded for being smart. There is pressure for other teams to become smarter. And as dumb as the Hunter and Zito contracts are, it’s very hard to argue that teams as a whole haven’t gotten smarter over the last decade.
        
        But even if they weren’t, even if every team was making psychotic decisions based on Tarot card readings, where does this ‘bad for baseball’ stuff come from. Whatever the market is, the best players end up playing somewhere, for some amount of money, and we get to watch them. And if you root for a team that’s smarter than the average, so much the better.
        
        Relaunch
        
        It is bad for baseball because people like me who attend more than 60 games a year will have their parking and sets raised again. Its bad for baseball that it will widen the gap again for teams that can compete financially and ones that cannot. Apparently you enjoy yearly increases in ticket prices and a huge difference in what one team can afford and what others can’t. Because of the Zito contract, there is no way Twins can keep Santana. Yes, I know Pholand is a cheap owner who does not use his personal resources. But a team should be able allowed to keep their stars and teams, but with these dumb contracts, many teams can’t. That is why it is bad for baseball.
- kris
  
  I hope the Angels choke on this turkey for years to come.
Count Zero

I can’t believe someone would pay 5x$18MM for a 31 year-old guy with a career OPS+ of 104.
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com NC Saint

Thank God George isn’t running things. Torii has all the markings (shitty, famous, not about to get any better) of someone he would love to write a blank check for.