2010 Baseball Running Thread, Part 1: Oh.

spn, that will be me, but I'll be drinking much shittier beer.

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/diamondbacks/articles/2010/04/03/20100403arizona-diamondbacks-ken-kendrick.html

The Diamondbacks still owe $40M deferred money to Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Luis Gonzalez and Bernard f-ing Gilkey, among others. (Although I think I'd rather still be paying Bernard Gilkey in 2010 than Alex Cora.)

Cry your eyes out some more for those poor, persecuted, small-market teams. Why, they are victims.

 

NL East: Phillies
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Rockies

AL East: Red Sox
AL Central: Tigers
AL West: Mariners
AL Wild Card: Yankees

 

Of course, some of the overspending that led to their financial troubles helped them win a World Series.

 

They were pretty damn lucky to win that Series, even with their orgy of spending.

The point is they're still paying at least four retired players long after they blew town. That's bad planning.

You are being resolutely ignorant if you don't acknowledge that.

And as far as I am concerned anyway, any title in that era is basically a piece of space junk in baseball history, far disconnected from the rest because of the clouds that hung over the game. So fuck their World Series.

It's important to mark a distinction between the 'small-market' teams that pissed wads of cash down the toilet and cripple themselves in the long-term (even with as good a farm system as Arizona has had), and still cry wolf, and the teams that are truly screwed by their logistics.

 

No argument with your overall point. The Diamondbacks definitely dug their own hole. Revenue is only a factor in the success or failure of major-league franchises. It is not the only factor.

 

It's a high-risk maneuver. The Rockies recently did something similar with Todd Helton, lowering the present-day value of his deal to create payroll flexibility for the next few years. Doing it periodically, and with good reason, seems OK. But doing it for half your roster? Foolish.

Though, if I'm a DBacks fan, I'm OK with it. That team won a title.

 

Wallace Matthews lives!

 

The game hasn't even started yet and I'm already sick of hearing about the fucking Yankees and the fucking Red Sox.

 

The D-Backs made a calculated risk that spending big early could (a) make them an early success and (b) build a fan base that would carry them through the lean years that would follow, when they paid off those contracts. By and large it paid off.

The Rays came into the league the same year. They chose to build slowly and cheaply. Both teams have a lot of young talent now. Which set of fans do you think enjoyed the past decade more?

Not all of the D-Backs' moves worked out, and some of them were really expensive. But I don't think you'll find many people in Arizona or within the organization who regret the contracts for Johnson, Schilling and Gonzo.

 

Where is the effin game. I don't care to see NBA highlights.

 

Boom, there is an endless pregame thing going on here. They introduced the Red Sox videotape guy, and, best of all, the entire Dice-K support staff of translators.

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Cust-angry-after-demotion-Chavez-bewildered-by-?urn=mlb,231977

Jack Cust ripping the Athletics on the way out the door, though he still might take a demotion so he can get paid.

On a side note, the writer uses "deeps" for home runs in this story. WTF?