Why is Luis Castillo a Bad Fielder?
Because he’s made of wood!
02/10: The Market’s Reaction to the Bank Rescue Plan (Quick version)
Stock Market: “So, Mr. Geithner. What exactly is your plan, why does it make sense and how will you execute it?”
: “Blah blah blah uhhhh we have to do something. Definitely. ”
Stock Market: “I see.”
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”
Why signing Manny Ramirez would be a good business decision for the Mets.
Since there has been a ton of discussion on whether the Mets should sign Manny Ramirez in the last few weeks, I figured I should break it down quick.
As a pure stupid idiot, bleeding blue and orange, complete moron Mets fan I think the Mets HAVE to sign Manny. He is one of the best right-handed hitters in the history of the game and one of the few players who has the ability to change an entire lineup. Some people criticize him on his personality, and he can sure be an asshole, but honestly that’s something the Mets could use.
For better or worse, most of the Mets’ star players are not too outgoing when it comes to the press – they’ll answer a few questions, but not a single person in the dugout wants to be the center of attention, let alone take some heat after a bad loss. Whatever behind the scenes shit happened in Boston was probably a two-way street, and the risk it could totally blow up exists, but it’s a risk the Mets HAVE to take.
If they leave the lineup the way it is going into the regular season, it’s going to be lefty-heavy and weak in general. AKA the same fucking lineup as last year AKA another 88 win team AKA your New York Mets, who will string you along till the very last weekend of the year just to break your heart like every other fucking year. Or you open the checkbook, sign Manny and get in the playoffs and who knows who else. From a purely baseball perspective, the decision seems clear as night and day. However, good ol’ Jeff Wilpon had to say this the other day to Bloomberg:
I’m guessing that he is trying to be a SHREWD negotiator, as the idea that your GM hasn’t even brought the idea of the best available free agent to you as on option probably means you need a new GM. There’s a good chance they are just trying to play it down to drive down the price, but it looks more and more like he is sincere. If that’s the case, Mr.. Wilpon is your classic SHRODE.
That’s mostly emotion talking, but that’s what being a fan is all about and unfortunately for Mets fans, it’s usually disgust. However, baseball is a business and the Wilpons are businessmen. They received a lot of bad publicity when it turns out their investment firm, Sterling Equities, possibly lost hundreds of millions in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The key words to me though, are “investment firm.” It takes money to make money, and Manny Ramirez is a good investment for the Mets. Here’s why:
Long story short, staaaaaaaats have been compiled that determines a player’s value added over your ‘replacement level player’ or your average shlub. On the site Fangraphs, they have added them for every player so you don’t have to try to compile them yourself, it’s all there (and downloadable to Excel), and honestly that is fucking awesome. There is a multi part series that explains all about “win values,” and Part Six correlates a dollar amount to each win over replacement level for a player. With the economy the way it is, lets be conservative and assume we last year’s $4.5m/win doesn’t rise, although it probably will. So now that we know how much a win is worth, we just have to figure out how many wins Manny will produce next year:
Over the last three years, Manny had a great year in 2008, a horrible season in 2007 and a decent one in 2006. Normalizing for the $4.5/m a win we’re using, he was worth $17.1m(3.8 wins) in 2006, $5.4m(1.2 wins) in 2007 and $28.4m(6.3 wins) in 2008. Assuming he will sign for $20m/year, if he can play either as good as last year or as bad as the year before it, its a pretty easy decision whether or not to sign him.
You could argue all day about how he’ll play, but if you average the three years together you get 3.75 wins per year. As mentioned before, Manny adds value to a lineup, so we’ll round that up to an even 4 wins/year, which makes him worth $20m/year, exactly what the Mets could sign him for. I assume if we signed him, we’d trade Murphy/Church and players received in return would make up for the value they would have provided otherwise. But with the variety of risks(bullshit) that the Wilpons are worried about in regards to “Manny being Manny,” I guess you could see how they would justify not taking the risk in that it is a break-even investment, in theory. But here’s the catch – this is no breakeven investment.
From this article on Portfolio.com, the Mets’ collapse in 2007 cost the team $3-5 million dollars, even if they only had two home games. If the Mets were to advance beyond the first round, having more home playoff games would earn the team “double-digit” millions. Of course anything can happen, but its’ pretty clear to everyone that the Mets will be a high 80 wins team and probably just miss the playoffs again as they currently stand. It’s also pretty clear that if the Mets do sign Manny, they get in.
Of course these are the Mets, so there’s always the possibility that everything will completely blow up. However, when there’s a more than likely chance of earning potential “double-digit” millions on what is normally a breakeven investment, you go for it. Simple as that. So stop pissing off your fans and try to win a World Series already – cut the bullshit and sign the dude, maybe you’ll make back some of that Madoff Money, who knows.
Some of those weekend links
Why Does Gas Cost $4 or More a Gallon? Hopefully we don’t see $4 again for a few more years at least but still good to know the deal.
What if Uncle Sam Takes Over Your Bank? (WSJ) I’m sure there will be a lot more talk of nationalizing Citi and BoA, if not others, in the next few weeks so here’s what that means. Everyone’s a crook so no big deal.
20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches Easy.
The Evolution of Pabst Blue Ribbon’s Beer Advertising
Wake n’ Bacon. Words don’t do this one justice.
Willie Nelson ft. Snoop Dogg – Superman
Taxpayer Field!
Long story short, eventually Citibank is going to be nationalized, which means in theory we will all own 1/300,000,000th of Citibank! Pretty cool huh? Well along with billions of dollars of “toxic assets” we will also get the naming rights to Citi Field for the next 20 years. Considering the Wilpons may or may not have lost a ton of money in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, maybe the government can bail out the Mets too. Anyone who stops fucking around and just signs Manny already would have my vote for sure. It’s been like four years since that’s been a rumor so let’s just get it over with and try to win a World Series here.
Anyway, yes it’s pretty clear that the patch commemorating the inaugural season is a fucking joke, but it’s the Mets what did you honestly expect. The good thing is that the stadium is basically done and actually looks real nice based on a tour in December via NJ.com. I also put a video of how the stadium will look like based on a preview of the PS3 game but MTV thought it was a cool idea to have a 30 second commercial before a minute long video so they can suck a dick.
| Citi Field is almost done |
So what I’m thinking is that if us taxpayers are at least going to get the naming rights for Shea, lets name it something good. Using a low estimate of 100 million tax-eligible workers, that means that if you pay taxes, you are contributing an average of $0.20 a day towards these naming rights, depending on how much you make. So I’ve got a novel idea – fuck corporate sponsorship of the stadium, they get enough money from $7 beers so it’ll pay for itself eventually. Let’s continue to honor the man who helped make the Mets happen and change the name to “Shea Stadium” before the season starts. Novel idea I know, but it actually wouldn’t be the first time that it’s happened.
Spare Change We Can Believe In
Quick shout-out to President Barack Obama, hope you are enjoying the your new home and everything else that comes along with being the President so far. I have a lot of faith in the guy and I think he is fully capable of doing a great job and leading our economy out of this recession. I do think people are going a little overboard though in terms of expectations, its tough out there. I’ve seen an absolute ton of bullshit over the last couple of days about how awesome Obama is and how pretty much now everything is cool but ignorance is bliss I guess, oh well.
So considering the unemployment rate is going up, the Dow Jones is headed towards the 6,300-6,600 range for a little while in April or so* and the housing problem isn’t going anywhere he’s going to have to do a little more than have a saxophone duet with Bill C. to make America happy. I think when it is said and done President Obama, Congress, and State governments will sort things out and put our country back on the path of growth, it’s just going to take a minute. So in the meantime, I’m buying an umbrella and waiting for that change.
*Not based on anything in particular, but no one is paying any attention to the fundamentals so who cares. It’ll be back by ‘10 don’t worry.
Whaddya, got some Links?
Here’s some things worth checking out:
CES: Back to the Future With LG’s Watch Phone (WSJ) Fuck the Iphone, I’m getting one of these.
Citi Field: Where Homeruns Go To Die. (Amazin’ Avenue) Discussion about how Citi Field may yield considerably less home runs than Shea. Since Aaron Heilman and Billy Wagner are off the team, this may not matter so much.
Strictly Fitteds Apparently there’s a blog about fitteds. Nice. This one is real sick.
Jaydiohead: Jay-Z x Radiohead – Minty Fresh Beats: Mix of Jay-Z verses over beats made from Radiohead songs.
The Fall of GM – A Visual Guide (WallStats.com)
The End of the Financial World as We Know It and How to Repair a Broken Financial World (Michael Lewis and David Einhorn, New York Times). Long article but worth reading, breaks down a lot of the ol’ “financial crisis.”
Rap music originated in medieval Scottish pubs, claims American professor. The best part:
The most famous surviving example of flyting comes from a 16th-century piece in which two rival poets hurl increasingly obscene rhyming insults at one another before the Court of King James IV. Titled the Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, it has been described by academics as “just over 500 lines of filth”.
And of course -
2k9
2009 is going to be an interesting year.
Being a Jets Fan for Three Hours
On December 28, 2008 I was given a late Christmas present – the opportunity to watch the New York Jets play the Dolphins, at home, with my team locking up a playoff berth with a Jets win. Unfortunately for me, I’m a Patriots fan and these are the Jets.
I pretty much knew the Patriots had the game wrapped up all week, but with 50 MPH winds in Buffalo, you never could tell. The score was only 3-0 New England at half time, with assist to this random dude who held the goal post for Gostkowski.
Quarterbacks were a combined 20-33, 206 yards, 0 TDs – it was a quick, low scoring game. Once LaMont Jordan scored a TD in the 3rd quarter to make it 10-0, I knew the game was effectively over, and that only meant one thing. It was time to be a Jets fan.
I immediately got ready as I knew that the GUNSLINGER the VETERAN the MVP the SHOW STOPPER Shawn Michaels Brett Favre was ready for some football. Every Jets fan knows that #4 is set on a Super Bowl ring, and as long as the Jags won BRO we’d be OK. No way Chaaad Pennington and his limp dick arm comes into the Meadowlands and beats us, son!
Long story short, Favre sucked dick to the tune of 20-40, 233 yards 1 TD 3 INT. Ironically, for all the talk of how much of a great cold weather quarterback Favre is, he has actually been one of the worst in the league in December over the last 4 seasons, with 30 interceptions to just 12 touchdowns. The Dolphins were a hungry team, and you know Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad wanted some revenge on the dickhead Jets fans who booed him out of New Jersey. Either way, I was still a Jets fan and I knew that after we had pulled ahead 17-14 early in the 3rd that we were pulling away for an easy win. Nah, that’s bullshit. As a real Jets fan, I knew that this was exactly when the Jets became the Jets and knew they were fucked. Once the Dolphins scored a touchdown like two seconds later I decided to go back to being a Patriots fan and thinking the Jets were scumbags. I don’t think I had to change my opinion much from when I was a Jets fan.
Without going crazy with stats, the 11-5 Patriots are by far the best team to miss the playoffs in NFL history, but shit happens. We’ll franchise Caaaaaaaasel and trade him to the Lions for the #1 pick and win another Super Bowl. I may be a Patriots fan, but I’m not stupid; I’m friends with many Jets fans and I have seen many Jets games. Once I knew that getting to the playoffs was dependent on a Jets win, at home at that, I knew one thing for damn sure –
BASEBALL SEASON HAS BEGUN!
