Former MLB slugger Jose Canseco is writing a book, and early reviews indicate that he is implicating former home run champ Mark McGwire in the use of steroids and President Bush in the knowledge of their use during the time that he was CEO and part owner of the Texas Rangers.

In this earlier post about the Stros failed effort to re-sign Carlos Beltran, I observed that sometimes the best deals for a ballclub turn out to be the ones that the club doesn’t make.
Despite the overpriced contracts that the Stros’ gave Bags and Richard Hidalgo, and the lesser mistakes that the club continues to make by unnecessarily signing such awful players as Brad Ausmus and merely mediocre ones such as Jose Vizcaino, the Stros by and large have done a reasonably good job over the past decade of allocating their limited payroll resources. The result has been a very good run over that span in which the club has won the National League Central Division four times (1997-1999; 2001), made the League Championship Series once (2004), and finished below second place in its division only once (2000).
To make you appreciate the Stros even more, consider the case of the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers have been to the playoffs exactly once (1987) since winning the World Series 20 years ago in 1984. Over the past 12 seasons, the club’s best finish has been third in their division, and the club has only accomplished that feat three times. During that span, the Tigers have finished dead last in their division exactly half (6) of the time. To give you an idea of how bad it has gotten in Detroit, the club improved its record last season by 29 games from the previous season and the Tigers still finished with a 72-90 record! Consequently, just as the Stros have been one of the most successful clubs in Major League Baseball over the past decade, it is fair to say that the Tigers have been among the most dreadful.
To give you an idea of why the Tigers are so chronically bad, take a look at the contract that the club just gave Magglio Ordonez:

The Detroit Tigers snared the last remaining premier free agent of the offseason, agreeing to a $75 million, five-year contract with outfielder Magglio Ordonez, . . . Ordonez’s deal could be worth up to $105 million over seven seasons, . . .

Probably to avoid a malpractice lawsuit from their fans over this contract negotiation, the Tigers at least hedged their risk on this absurd deal somewhat by negotiating an effective $12 million option to terminate the deal after one season if Ordonez is unable to play in a specified number of games during the upcoming season. The reason for that hedge is that Ordonez is coming off of knee surgery last season that led to the rare complication of bone marrow edema. A second surgery that was performed in Austria has reportedly cleared up that problem, but no one has even seen whether Ordonez can run at full speed at this point. Nevertheless, if Ordonez can limp through one season with the Tigers as a full-time player, the Tigers are on the hook to him for at least $75 million over the next five seasons.
Now, I like Ordonez as a player. I even thought it would be worth it for the Stros to take a flyer on him if they could have locked him up with a one year contract for say, $5-6 million with an option for $7 million. But what the Tigers have just committed to is, in a word, ludicrous.
Look, Ordonez had a very good five year run with the the White Sox (1999-2003) in which he developed power and the ability to draw a walk. His eight year career numbers (.307BA/.364OBA/.525SLG) are quite a bit better than Beltran’s seven year career numbers over the same period (.284/.353/.490).
However, the big difference between Ordonez and Beltran is that Ordonez did not become a starter until he was 26, so there is a high probability that his five year with the Sox was his peak performance period. Ordonez is now 31 and coming off of knee surgery, and even if he is able to return to playing everyday, the risk is huge that this contract will turn into a Bagwell-type albatross for the Tigers.
What on earth are the Tigers going to do if Ordonez fulfills his first year playing requirements and then becomes a .266/.377/.465 hitter like Bags was last season? In short, the Tigers would simply be using Ordonez’s contract to replace the absurdly overpriced contract that they gave to the then 30 year old Bobby Higginson in 2000, who proceeded to go downhill to the point where he provided the Tigers a pitiful .246/.353/.388 performance this past season. The Tigers are currently attempting to unload the $8.85 million that they currently owe Higginson under that contract.
Thus, as we ponder what could have been had the Stros been able to sign Beltran and elected to exercise their $9 million option on Jeff Kent, remember the Tigers. Sometimes the expensive deals that a club doesn’t make turn out to the ones that give young players such as Jason Lane and Chris Burke an opportunity to shine. As the past decade has shown us, it is far more likely that the Stros will be a better ballclub over the long haul by relying on development of such good talent within the organization than the Tigers will be throwing money at high risk contracts as those they gave Higginson and Ordonez.

Drayton McLane has done a pretty darn good job of running the Stros. During his tenure, the club has been in the top tier of performance among Major League teams and a consistent playoff participant or contender. Under his tutelage, the club developed a fine minor league system that has produced a number of solid Major League players. Drayton also did a good job of coordinating the approval and construction of a downtown ballpark that has generated attendance records. Although Drayton has made his share of mistakes, he is unquestionably the best owner that the Stros have had in their 40 year existence.
However, as I noted in previous posts here and here, I have suspected for awhile that Drayton is preparing to sell the Stros. Given that Drayton is the best owner in Stros’ history, I have not heretofore considered rumors of him thinking about selling the club to be particularly good news. But based on developments over this past off-season, I am beginning to think that it may be time for Drayton to sell the club.
As noted in this earlier post, this off-season began with the resignation of Stros’ general manager Gerry Hunsicker. Although I was more measured than some others about Drayton’s failure to retain Hunsicker, it’s certainly not a feather in one’s cap that the best general manager in the club’s history decided to move on after the best decade in the club’s history.
Then came the ill-fated negotiations with free agent Carlos Beltran. With Hunsicker gone and new GM Tim Purpura just gaining his bearings, Drayton allowed Beltran agent Scott Boras to play him like a fiddle during the negotiations rather than making his best offer up front and then placing a relatively short deadline on Boras to consummate a rich deal or risk losing it. Consequently, when Drayton’s initial low-ball offers for Beltran quickly went by the wayside, negotiations dragged on, preventing the Stros from taking care of other business, such as signing cornerstone stars Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt to long term deals. When Boras gave Drayton only a couple of hours to respond to the Mets’ final offer, Drayton was unprepared to play by Boras’ rules and Beltran was gone. As noted here and here, the Stros are probably better off without Beltran at the price they would have had to pay for him, but that does not excuse Drayton from mishandling the negotiations in a manner that was detrimental to the club overall.
The first fallout from the mishandling of the Beltran negotiations was felt this week as Berkman and the Stros agreed to a one-year deal to settle Berkman’s arbitration case. The failure to lock him up to a long term contract now places the Stros at risk of losing Berkman, who will be a free agent at the end of the upcoming season absent the signing of a new deal. Losing Berkman — who has been one of the best hitters in the Major League Baseball over the past four seasons — would be devastating to the Stros, who now will probably have to pay Berkman far more than they would have had to pay him had they not neglected to sign him to a long term deal earlier.
Just to give you an idea of the market for a player of Berkman’s caliber, take a look at J.D. Drew, who is a player of roughly Berkman’s age and experience, but who is not as durable as Berkman and is not quite as good a hitter as Berkman. Drew recently signed with the Dodgers for $11 million a year over five years. Given that, there is little reason for Berkman to settle for less than $60-$65 million over the same period because, if the Stros aren’t willing to pay it, the Rangers almost certainly will. Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice speculates that the Stros could have locked Berkman up for $30 million over three years as late as last season.
Meanwhile, the Stros remain at impasse with their best pitcher (Oswalt), whose arbitration demand of $7.8 million appears to be a clear winner over the Stros’ $6 million offer. Absent the signing of a long term deal with the Stros, Oswalt can become a free agent at the end of the 2006 season.
So, after the best season in the club’s history, the Stros now find themselves in turbulent waters. The club’s best two players in history — Bidg and Bags — are closing in on retirement. The club lost out on its attempt to retain Beltran, who would have been one of the building blocks for the future. Meanwhile, the club’s best two young players — Berkman and Oswalt — are at risk of being lost in the near future to the free agent market. Although potentially formidable, the club’s pitching rotation for this upcoming season will nevertheless rely heavily on a 43 year old superstar (the Rocket), another veteran (Andy Pettitte) who is coming off of elbow surgery, and a converted outfielder (Brandon Backe) who has not yet proved that he can pitch effectively over the course of an entire season.
Thus, Drayton has his work cut out for him in steering the Stros through these turbulent waters. Given his handling of the Hunsicker, Beltran, Berkman and Oswalt situations, my sense is that he may be losing his enthusiasm for doing so. If that is the case, then here’s hoping that Drayton sells the club before it is too late for a new owner to solve these quickly accumulating, and increasingly serious, problems.

Now that the Stros’ dance with Carlos Beltran is over, new Stros General Manager Tim Purpura can finally get on with showing us what he can do in the job.
The Stros did not handle the Beltran negotiations particularly well, but my sense is that the course the Stros charted in those talks was owner Drayton McLane‘s call, not Purpura’s. At any rate, as noted in earlier posts here and here, the Stros are probably better off without Beltran at the price they would have had to pay for him, so McLane allowing Scott Boras to play him like a fiddle didn’t really hurt the Stros other than from a public relations standpoint.
But now Purpura has a chance to prove his mettle and it’s not going to be easy. Yesterday, Roger Clemens and his long-time agent, Randy Hendricks, handed Purpura a record $22 million record arbitration demand. Clemens had a magical 2004 season pitching for his hometown team and won the NL Cy Young Award to boot, so he has a reasonable case that he should be the highest-paid pitcher in baseball. Inasmuch as Randy Johnson is currently the highest paid pitcher for the 2005 season at $17 million, that’s just a bit below the midpoint between Clemens’ bid price and the Stros’ $13.5 million offer. Thus, if a settlement is to be reached, expect it to be a tad above Johnson’s salary.
However, the bigger problem for the Stros than funding Clemens’ salary is that Clemens has not decided whether he wants to play at any price. That complicates the Stros’ arbitration negotiations with Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt, who are more important players than Clemens for the long term health of the club. Berkman’s arbitration demand was $11 million, which is only a million more than the Stros’ $10 million offer, so expect that case to be settled before the arbitration hearing. Oswalt requested $7.8 million and the Stros offered $6 million, so that split is a bit bigger, but still not large enough to risk an acrimonious hearing with the club’s best pitcher. So, expect that case to be settled, too.
Purpura’s problem is that the $8.5 million salary range in the Clemens case is about 10% of the Stros’ projected 2005 payroll. Thus, the Stros are about a month away from Spring Training and they still don’t know whether they will have three top players locked up for a bit more than $30 million or closer to $40 million. Moreover, until the Clemens salary is finalized, Purpura does not have as much flexibility in finalizing settlements with Berkman and Oswalt.
So, Purpura is facing his first big challenge as the Stros’ GM. How well he handles it will not only have an impact on whether Houston enjoys another season from one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball history, but also whether the club’s two under-30-year-old All-Star quality players will continue to be the club’s foundation over the next 5-7 years.
Welcome to the big leagues, Mr. Purpura.

Professor Sauer over at the Sports Economist blog has brought in some additional blogging mates. From their initial posts, the new bloggers are going to be making some nice contributions to this already smart blog.
In this first post, new blogger Brian Goff analyzes the “no-trade” clause demand that has been widely reported as one of the reasons why the Stros’ negotiations with Scott Boras over Carlos Beltran reached impasse shortly before the deadline to consummate a deal.
Professor Goff insightfully points out that the no-trade demand was in the nature of an option in which Boras was demanding that the Stros’ take on additional risk with regard to the Beltran contract. The reason that this may have been a sticking point in the negotiations is that such options are notoriously difficult to price in baseball contracts, and the valuation is different between the player and the ballclub. This is undoubtedly correct, although the pricing on this particular no trade clause probably was made a bit easier by the fact that Boras only needed to protect Beltran for the time until 2009, at which point Beltran could have vetoed any trade as a 10 and five player under the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement.
So, regardless of whether the no trade demand was a dealbreaker, the Stros have lost out on a player who sure would have looked good next to Berkman and Oswalt in a Stros’ uniform for years to come. But as noted in this earlier post, a good case can be made that the Stros are better off over the long haul in failing to make the deal.
Beltran’s career numbers are .284BA/.353OBA/.490SLG over seven MLB seasons. Those are excellent numbers, but its hard to make that performance justify a $17 mil a year contract over the next the next seven years. In comparison, Vladimir Gurrerero‘s statistics through seven seasons — and just a year before he signed a $70 million, five-year deal with Anaheim — were .322/.386/.588. Guerrero is not as good a fielder as Beltran, and questions about his back certainly held down his value a bit. But the Angels still got a player with noticeably better career hitting stats for $3 million a year less than the Mets will be paying Beltran.
So, while Beltran’s career stat line might take off, my bet is that the Mets will be paying a boatload of money for Beltran by the end of the decade while not getting anywhere close to the hitting production that they had hoped for. In other words, sort of like the Stros’ current situation with Bags.
The Stros are clearly in a rebuilding mode after a very good run over the past decade. Had the club been able to sign Beltran at the Mets’ price for just a couple of years, then the Stros should have pulled the trigger and done the deal. That would have meant that Beltran’s deal would have been coming off the Stros’ payroll at about the same time as Bags and Bidg retire, leaving the Stros with the payroll flexibility to make some moves to transition into the post Bidg-Bags era.
On the other hand, if the Stros had signed Beltran, they could have found themselves in a similar financial straightjacket in 2010 that they presently face with Bags. Although the Stros will not be as good a hitting club in 2005 without Beltran (and, frankly, they were not all that good a hitting team until the last 45 games of the 2004 season), the $100 million they saved on not signing him gives the club the liquidity it needs to make several constructive personnel moves over the next couple of seasons. If the Stros make those moves prudently, then they will likely rebound just fine from the disappointment of not signing Beltran.
As many a savvy businessman has confirmed to me over the years, sometimes the best deal for the company is the one that gets away.

Carlos Beltran elected to reject the Stros’ offer and sign elsewhere, probably with the Mets for $17 mil annually over seven years ($119 million).
As noted in this earlier post, this is really not a surprising result. Although it is a bit discouraging that the Stros put all their eggs in one basket in their pursuit of Beltran and came up with an empty basket, losing him is far from the disaster that many local media types will hype it to be.
As good as he is, Beltran is simply not worth $6 million more per season than J.D. Drew, another free agent outfielder on the market this off-season who signed with the Dodgers for $11 million per year over five years, even though Drew is more of an injury risk than Beltran. By focusing on Beltran and not considering other options, the Stros now find themselves in a position of having no centerfielder and really no good alternatives on the market. You will hear the mainstream media talk about Rice grad Jose Cruz, Jr. and the Mariners’ Randy Winn as centerfielders who could be acquired in a trade, but neither of them is a long term answer. Although both are only three years or so older than Beltran, neither of them was able to post a runs created against average (“RCAA,” explained here) statistic last season that was better than the 39 year old Bidg‘s.
You will also hear local media types talk about Jeremy Burnitz, but he is only marginally attractive. He is a 36 year old corner outfielder coming off a Coors Field-inflated season in which he generated an RCAA that was the same as Jeff Kent or Mike Lamb. Although that’s above-average, the Stros already have such a player in the younger Jason Lane, who can also play centerfield. Finally, speedy Stros farmhand Willy Tavares has not yet proven in the minors that he can generate a good enough on base percentage or hit with enough power to play effectively at the Major League level, so don’t expect him to be the answer.
An intriguing free agent possibility that remains on the market is Magglio Ordonez, a slugging 30 year old former White Sox corner outfielder who is a better hitter than Beltran. Unfortunately, the reason that Ordonez is still on the market is that he is an injury risk, as he is coming off knee surgery last season that led to the rare complication of bone marrow edema. A second surgery, performed in Austria, has reportedly cleared up the problem, but Ordonez was unable to return last season. So, he is a high injury risk and that has held down his value on the free agent market. The White Sox, Cubs and Orioles are reportedly the current bidders for his services. And oh, by the way, Ordonez is also represented by Beltran’s uber-agent, Scott Boras.
If the Stros could get reasonably comfortable with Ordonez’s rehabiliation from his surgery, then they could stick him in a corner outfield spot opposite of Berkman and place Lane in center as a adequate alternative until a purer centerfielder becomes available. Ordonez and Berkman whacking away at Minute Maid Park would not be a bad alternative to losing Beltran.
Finally, although I would not have objected to the Stros overpaying to keep Beltran, I think its fair to point out that it is rarely a good idea to overpay a player, even of Beltran’s stature. And make no mistake about it, Beltran will be overvalued when he finalizes his deal with the Mets or whoever. While this past season was the best of Beltran’s career and his batting line of .267(BA)/.367(OBA)/.548(SLG) was excellent, Beltran’s RCAA of 46 was considerably less than Berkman’s team-best 69 or J.D. Drew’s 66. Similarly, Beltran’s OPS (on base average + slugging percentage) of .915 tied him for 15th best in the National League, also well below Berkman’s sixth best of 1.016 and not even as good as the more pedestrian Burnitz’s OPS. Similarly, Beltran is one of the most gifted base stealers of all-time, but that’s generally an overvalued skill and not all that important for the Stros as they incorporate speedsters Adam Everett, Chris Burke, and Lane into the lineup. Beltran did walk 92 times last season, but 10 of those were intentional, so there is still a question about his strike zone patience.
Thus, Beltran will likely be a great player for which ever team signs him, but he’s still not Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds. The market has overvalued him and the Stros simply are not a rich enough team to overpay in the free agent market. With patience and wise use of their resources, the Stros can bounce back nicely from this disappointment. Signing Berkman and Roy Oswalt to long term deals, and persuading the Rocket to return, would be a nice start.

The Chicago Cubs Baseball Club has always been considered somewhat of a lovable laughingstock around Chicago. Consequently, although the club’s swoon in this past baseball season’s National League Wild Card playoff race did not sit particularly well with Cubs fans, it was at least expected.
But according to this scathing Jay Mariotti Chicago Sun-Times article, the legendary incompetence of Cubs management may have risen to heretofore unforseen levels. Consider this snippet:

We understand the Cubs have a feeble, hapless Charlie Brown existence. We know they’re battling farm animals, perpetual paranoia and turtleneck-choked fans. But if they’re also so internally incompetent that they employ an unlicensed head trainer, who was ratted out by the assistant trainer just months after they fired the previous head trainer, then riddle me this, Ronnie Woo-Woo:
How are they supposed to win a World Series in our lifetime? When management is appointing alleged quacks to heal injuries on a team that lost Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and too many other players to the most mysterious disabled list I’ve seen in sports — remember the sneeze that toppled Sammy Sosa? — isn’t it time to dismiss the cause as hopeless and move on to junk bonds as a hobby?

Read on.

The NY Times’ Murray Chase in this article provides some humbling analysis of the economic disparity between the New York Yankees and everyone else in Major League Baseball:

If the Yankees’ rotation is [Randy] Johnson, Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright, the combined 2005 salaries of the starters will be $67 million. That total is more than the 2004 payrolls of 18 of the other 29 teams.

And if the Yanks outbid the Stros for Carlos Beltran?:

If Beltran’s agent gets what he wants, $20 million a year, make the Yankees payroll $230 million, nearly 30 percent higher than this year’s.

By way of comparison, the Stros’ 2004 salary budget was just a tad under $75 million.