Daily Archives: November 15, 2006

It’s all Flutie’s fault?

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Longhorn.jpgGeez, and I thought Texas Aggie fans were taking their team’s losses hard. But Aggie angst is nothing compared to what boiled over in Longhorn land after Texas’ upset loss to Kansas State last Saturday night that doomed the Horns’ BCS championship hopes:

An unhinged Texas Longhorn fan who blames Doug Flutieís televised analysis for the teamís upset Saturday threatened the former football star and his family in an electronic mail message, police said.
The threat, which was not detailed by police, was sent to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism early Sunday, police Lt. Paul Shastany said.
ìWe have intentions of finding this person and speaking to this person,î said Shastany. ìAs threats go, itís a pretty serious incident.î

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A Sonic boom fizzles in Seattle

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SeattleSonics2.jpgI read this NY Times article over the weekend and found it rather refreshing:

Empowered by a wave of venture capital, a hiring boom and pride in its homegrown billionaires, this city has decided it no longer needs a mediocre professional basketball team to feel good about itself.
On Election Day, residents rebuffed their once-beloved Seattle SuperSonics, voting overwhelmingly for a ballot measure ending public subsidies for professional sports teams. [. . .]
The vote last week guarantees that the Sonics will leave their current home, KeyArena, in 2010, he said. The team may move to the Seattle suburbs and plans to talk to the State Legislature about that in coming weeks, but most people here think [the Sonics’ owners] will move the team to Oklahoma City.

In short, the cost of subsidizing an NBA team has finally exceeded the benefits that most Seattle residents believe they derive from having an NBA team. The same thing has already occurred in Los Angeles with regard to the NFL. As professional sports franchises test the upper limit of what consumers are willing to pay for their product, several other cities will likely follow LA and Seattle’s lead. That’s not a bad development. Warren Meyer agrees.

The super-heated free agent market

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drew.jpgDodgers rightfielder J.D. Drew opted out of the final three years of his $11 million per year contract last week, passing up the remaining three years and $33 million on his deal to test what he could draw on the free agent market. The conventional wisdom is that Drew made a mistake.
However, based on the first week or so of free agent transactions this off-season, not only did Drew not make a mistake, it looks to me as if his decision to opt-out was a no-brainer. Drew (28 RCAA/.393 OBA/.498 SLG/.891 OPS for 2006; 146/.393/.512/.904 career) is probably the best outfielder in this year’s free agent pool and maybe even the position player overall. With the upper end of of this year’s market looking like 5 years and $80 million or so for a player of his caliber, the 31 year-old Drew will probably earn an additional $20-30 million of guaranteed money and almost certainly do much better than $33 million over 3 years. Yeah, he’s not the most popular guy in the clubhouse and he has had injury problems, but he’s coming off a solid season in which he played a career-high 146 games. Some team needing solid production from the left side of the plate (which team doesn’t) will probably pay him the premium over his prior contract that prompted the opt-out.
Drew’s opt-out reflects the reason why the Stros probably won’t be much of a factor on the free agent market this off-season. Drew is good, but he’s not as good as the Stros’ Lance Berkman, who is entering the third season of his six year deal that pays him about $14 million a year. There is no way the Stros are going to pay someone like Drew more than Berkman, even though Drew probably will end up making more than Berkman from some other team.
That’s why retooling a Major League Baseball club on the free agent market is really not a practical approach except for a few big-market clubs — it’s prohibitively expensive. Better to maintain the farm (and fiscal sanity) with good prospects and then tap the free agent market only when it is likely to produce a player who will propel the club into playoff contention.