Wander Franco is now a rich man. The alt-right suffers a courtroom loss but the mission lives on. Also: Dylan, Will Smith, cancel culture, and even MORE Vonnegut
As a Nats fan, I'm happy to see that Matz is staying in the NL. For whatever reason, Nats bats do well against him. He's like the anti-Freddie Freeman.
The question is, which Matz will show up? He's always shown potential to be more than a back end starter, but at least in his days in Queens, he kept regressing.
He's got the peripherals of a league average starter when healthy (his biggest question mark), and there shouldn't be the expectation that he gets better than that at age 30. League-average starters don't exactly grow on trees, but you need more than that if you expect your team to pitch, well, better than average.
I know we've discussed this before, but Flaherty at least looks the part when healthy (big if after last season). But yes, the top of the rotation needs shoring when you're looking up at the Brewers.
I actually think of Billy as being pretty average. Yes, he lived through the Hell of Dresden, but there wasn't anything particularly special about him other than coming unstuck in time. In fact, I find Billy to be pretty dull (which, while not a flaw in the book, isn't a selling point either).
If anything in the book has aged badly, it's Montana. Pairing Billy off with her smacks of wish fulfillment on Vonnegut's part more than anything useful. (Worth adding that in the recent graphic novel adaptation, she's called a sex worker, so at least we can update things now and then without changing things much.)
I assume that memoir was from the Dodgers’ Will Smith and not the Braves’ Will Smith, since that cheating girlfriend experience left him with all sorts of mental problems when pitching
I think you have it backwards. The Dodgers Will Smith is catching and the excerpt clearly is saying that the Will Smith who authored it is having problems with pitching not catching therefore it was from the Atlanta tosser.
I work for a gambling affiliate media company. What we point out in our content about those “risk-free first bet” promos is that sportsbooks aren’t handling our free money. What they’re essentially offering is a “mulligan.” You still have to risk your own real money. If you lose your first qualifying bet, they’ll give you site credit equal to the value of that bet or in this particular case $600, whichever is lesser. That’s just site credit, not actual money, though. You do get a “second chance” to place a wager of that value, but none of that value becomes real cash unless you use it to place successful bet(s). Barring that situation, the book wins. All that information is in the conditions and terms of the offer but in my experience few people click/tap through to read those, so, hence the content I make.
So it sounds like if you want to try and game this promo and get back out with some extra cash, the odds are in your favor but you could still lose your initial investment.
Say you invest $600, make a bet that has a 50/50 chance of winning, and if you lose that, use the promo to make another 50/50 bet, then withdraw your winnings and walk away if you win. That would leave you with a 75% chance of ending up with $1200*, and a 25% chance of losing your $600. Which sounds somewhat tempting, but then you're still running the risk of getting hooked on this gambling thing as the promo intends.
(*You'd only get $1200 in the fantasy world where the sportsbook gave a 100% return on a 50/50 bet, which isn't going to happen in reality because the house is of course always going to take a cut. So it would be less than $1200.)
That’s the thing about eligibility, though. Only markets with odds of -200 or greater are eligible for these promos. So, the best-case scenario for your qualifying wager is a win probability of 33.4%.
(Sorry, deleted the original because I found a typo)
Deposit $600 on the promo site "Gambling Site A" and make a standard spread bet at -110 odds. If you win, you're golden.
If you lose, then make a cash deposit of $600 into a second site "Gambling Site B".
Use your promo credit on Site A to bet on the home team spread.
Use your cash balance on Site B to bet on the away team spread.
If you win your initial promo-eligible bet, you're up $545. If you lose and have to use your promo in conjunction with Site B, then you're down $55.
But of course, the reason this is even possible is that all of the sites make their money on problem gamblers who by definition will NOT do this. They'll either win their first bet and proceed to lose their winnings, or they'll lose their first bet and then try to chase that loss.
On Wander Franco, consider the upside and downside of refusing this long term contract offer. The downside would be he is a flash in the pan and never gets a big payday. The upside is he might get ~$400M instead of ~$200M. While the upside is far more likely, it seems to me it's also of limited benefit. Once you have $200M, does an extra $200M even help you that much?
There's time value of money at play too--a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. He's looking at ~$600K pre-arb (league minimum) for another 1-2 years, and then large error bars for arbitration depending on performance (out of my arse, $10M - $60+M). Presuming he's getting at least $10M per year on the front end, and he can now buy a house (or 3) and set himself up for life with investments. And you're right about diminishing returns--the 1st $200M is life changing and second $200M just isn't.
I read an article at one point that evaluated basically if money could buy happiness - and TO A POINT yes. If someone was so strapped that financial stress was a constant part of life, yes. But once they could meet their needs and several wants - they could pay monthly rent or mortgage payments easily, could replace clothes when they wore out, could easily afford enough food to eat, routine bills were no problem and they could afford normal emergency expenses like repairing a car after it hit a deer or the refrigerator keeled over and they needed a new one without stress - they weren't more happy with more money. This was average people and not hoarders and the specific amount depended on family situation and where they lived, but most people didn't need as much money as the authors thought they would to feel happy financially.
Yeah, this is why I think signing early, if the deal is remotely fair, makes a ton of sense. Plus the mentality that players must always squeeze every last cent out of their earnings even when they are more then set up for generational wealth is a little too close to the ownership mentality that no profit is ever big enough.
To be sure, when the question is binary nine-figure player vs owner I will still always side with the player. But I’m not going to cry about somebody “only” getting $200M rather than $300M when there are players who earn a tiny fraction of that. Like, it’s weird to me that so much ink gets spilled on handwriting over whether player X is earning ENOUGH hundreds of millions when you’ve got guys in the minors not even making a living wage.
While I can't too loudly criticize Franco for taking the money, I sort of feel like the union has a responsibility to the players to make sure they understand that they're helping the owners more than they realize, and that every player who signs one of these deals puts more pressure on other players not to aim for free agency. Certainly this does little for player empowerment in baseball, but that doesn't seem to be a thing of late outside the NBA.
And that aside, I look at deals like this and wonder why every team isn't doing this with its top level and even second level rookies. Which is to say, I don't get why the Mets never lock up any of their young players, and why Aaron Judge had continued to not be offered any sort of contract by the Yankees. From the side of management, these days seem like a no-brainer, and yet...
And sure enough, Herman Melville WAS born in NYC. The things we learn from the bard of Hibbing.
Wishing everyone a happy Turkey Day weekend, which this year leads into Hanukkah. As such, my wife and I are skipping the family get-together tomorrow in favor of a get-together with the same exact people on Sunday, and hosting a "friendsgiving" shabbos dinner Friday night. No turkey, since my wife does not like turkey, but stuffing and cornmeal pudding and potatoes and string beans, and more importantly good company.
Aaron Judge is turning 30 in April and has a body type that does not project to age well. Hardly an apt comparison to Franco who is almost exactly 9 years younger.
And while this might be a team-friendly contract in years 6-10, it is most definitely not team-friendly in years 1-5. Franco would’ve made about 600k each of the next two years. Now he’s getting more than 20x that. I think it’s a pretty fair deal all around. And if he truly is a transcendent player, whatever NY/LA team he’s on by then will try to renegotiate the last couple years to lock him up into his mid-30s.
Compare the contract to Acuna (signed before 1 full year, 8 years, $100M) and Tatis (signed after two years of service, 14 years, $330M) and it seems that Franco is around what we'd expect. Fair to both sides.
The player who took generational wealth, eliminated risk, but sold well under what he could have is Ozzie Albies. Albies signed for 7 years at $35M after 2+ years of service. I think but am not sure that Albies was NOT a SuperTwo.
I can't recall specifically who, but I can remember a writer speaking to an agent about the Albies contract, and the agent basically said, "I would drop Albies as a client before I allowed him to sign that deal. Having my name attached to a contact that player-unfriendly would make me look like a terrible agent."
But Judge wasn't 30 when he was rookie of the year. And even if he shouldn't be getting the same money, he's been forced to schlep through arbitration and not make the money he's due as the Yankees' best everyday player (when healthy). So even though I don't root for him, I don't like that he has not been appreciated by his team, and think that it would have made sense to tie him up for a long time just as the face of the team. Though since he doesn't seem to be put out by not getting a contract, he's not really doing himself any favors.
I think I just hate that a player becomes a star in NYC and isn't paid right away. He and Alonso both. Even if he craters quickly. Which in fact makes me want to see him paid even faster since his opportunity to get a huge contract is limited.
Also, I hate the whole arbitration thing. Free agency now!
Fair enough. I took your comment to be about why Judge wasn’t getting that contract offer now.
That said, the Yankees would never lock up young players with a contract like this when their entire model is signing other teams’ best players and/or trading for contracts like Tatis/Franco.
Except that it seems like they aren't entirely sticking to that model. If they really go through free agency without grabbing one of the big name shortstops, I would even say that model is in suspended animation. Either way, I wonder what will happen to Judge in a year.
Judge was 25 as a rookie though, so not comparable to a 20-yo who plays a premium defensive position. Judge is also huge and doesn't have many good comps, but the industry consensus is that he's a risk to lose effectiveness at an earlier age than other players.
Yeah, not only are the Rays already the team most likely to trade that contract with a year left, they're also the team most likely to have their financial model explode. They are a poor drawing team with a good RSN contract with Sinclair. No way Sinclair gets their package of regional networks with extremely high leverage through the length of that contract. Their only hope to even keep the status quo is to get the Lightning and Magic to pool their rights with them and create a NESN/MASN type team owned network they could sell through the Fubos and Rokus.
Perhaps the strongest argument to take the money now is that it might not be there later from any team as the RSNs collapse. Though then Franco and any other player who got paid faces the headache of being traded somewhere they don't want to be instead of having the choice of a free agent. (Really, I am more put out by "they sacrifice the right to play where they want" than "they lose out on more money.")
I don't think the MLBPA should discourage a player from taking a contract that will guarantee generational wealth even if, had all broken right for Franco, he could have earned 2-3x more. As long as they understand the risks and rewards, that should be their individual choice, not the choice of anyone else. And Franco isn't exactly unrepresented nor is he unfamiliar with MLB business practices - two of his uncles played in the Majors.
There's a running joke by a sports yakker in Minneapolis that Dylan is from Bemidji - sort of like whenever he's mentioned the yakker says "he's one of us, from Bemidji." Then there's the predictable followup of callers mansplaining that's he's really from Hibbing or even Duluth-born/Hibbing-raised. The yakker pushes back with "no, it's Bemidji" and the locals, who are as tribal as anyone in America, explode. Lather, rinse, repeat; every 6 months or so.
I agree that players should fully understand what they sign, but I disagree that players should feel beholden to their fellow players more than their own families (which is essentially the gist of the argument that they should feel obligated to go through years of being underpaid, taking in all of the risk for poor performance/injury/illness, in order to earn the highest possible FA contract years from now).
This particular contract does not feel absurdly favorable to either side. Yes, if Franco becomes an MVP he will be underpaid in the back half of that contract. But if he gets hurt or just regresses, he’ll be wildly overpaid. I’m certainly not crying for the team if that happens - they’ll be fine - but they are definitely taking on some risk here.
I'm too young to remember Bill Virdon as a player. As a manager, I kept hearing stories that when he played he was the only one - or one of very few - who wore glasses on the field. But with Reggie Jackson, Greg Luzinski, and others, that didn't seem at all odd to the 10 year old dlf.
I did see Bill Virdon, called “the Quail” by KDKA play-by-play announcer Bob Prince, play the outfield at Forbes Field. He was never out of place, and covered a vast park that included the batting cage, (in play). The apex was 457’ from the plate. Craig mentions a “fun fact”, that Virdon was pressed into service while a coach in 1968. Those games were down the stretch to the pennant.
For many years, after his “retirement” in 2002, he would be found instructing outfielders; playing balls off the wall his specialty. His fitness, loyalty to the Pittsburgh Baseball Club, and coaching endeared him to generations of Pirate fans. He was a gentleman.
Apples and oranges, but every time I see a young player get criticized for an extension I think of Ian Desmond, who bet on himself by turning down a (team-friendly) extension from the Nats ... and lost the bet. He was older, but I don't think he came out ahead on that.
It used to be that young players had to subsidize the vets' contract extensions - and it feels like that is about to come back around the other way.
I don't know the details of the one year team friendly Nats extension offer, but while Desmond lost in the short term, signing a 1 year $8M deal with Texas, the next year he got 5 years/$70M from the Rockies. I'm guessing that was better than the Nats offer.
7/107 but that included a two-year deal to buy out his arb eligibility; new money was like 5/90. [Full disclosure: some of it was deferred, because Nats.]
Well then you are correct, and I am incorrect. I was just going off the Rox giving Desmond what seemed like way too much money, even at the time. Then it turned out even worse than we expected.
Yeah - and by that time he wasn't a major-league SS anymore. It's hard to say if impending FA undid him or not but he clearly ended up leaving money on the table.
Obviously his situation is different but as a younger player I think you have to consider his experience when deciding on a massive pile of money now versus an even bigger potential payday down the line.
Worth noting that I like and admire Desmond greatly - and he certainly didn't go broke - but in this case he bet on himself (with support from the PA) and lost.
You also have to consider the time value of money for Wander. Invested intelligently, he could end up with way more in the bank than if he waited for the free agency payoff. At worst he should about break even. If you assume he could make double in free agency, his early year earnings should double in 8 or 9 years if he does nothing but throw big chucks of it into a Vanguard whole market index fund.
I haven't seen any details on the contract, but it may be back loaded such that the money he has to invest in the early years is limited. I still don't blame him for taking it no matter how the money is structured.
Honestly, I think we are underselling the risk to Wander Franco to not get the big money. He still has six years of team control. That's a lot of time in ACL, UCL and rotator cuff years. All those things can be repaired but you lose a year and a half in what is basically a (1+x%)^n equation. Throw in the possibility of a lockout taking away part of another year of service time and he's looking at the possibility of having only 2 years of compound earnings growth through arbitration instead of 4, if arbitration even still exists at that point because again, new CBA.
We talk about how much money do people need to live and why people in the stratosphere should be taxed more heavily; but we question whether a kid from an impoverished country like the DR is making a mistake taking a guaranteed $200 million when, if he waited a few years and rolled the dice on his health (because career ending injuries are so unusual) and the risk that he'd wind up back in the DR scrimping to make a living and support a family, maybe he could make more money.
I'm all for the players making as much as they can, but screw that if the idea is that Franco is hurting other players by taking less now. In this particular situation, Franco should do what's best for Franco and his family.
I think the view that the "first bet free" stuff is casinos looking to rope people in and get them addicted to sports betting is largely nonsense. The "first bet free" stuff is ordinary marketing, looking to get potential customers in something new to use website A over website B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. These websites aren't looking for addicts. Addicts are a headache. Sometimes they sue, claiming that the casino enticed them to keep betting knowing they were addicted, for example, as I'm sure you know. These websites are looking for the casual bettor who likes to throw disposable income on games without any of the mathematics that allows the very few to determine those infrequent instances where a bet is favorable, risking $110 or more to win $100. That's it.
Sure, getting new people to bet may result in a minority of these new customers becoming addicted. Does that mean that overwhelming majority of people who aren't addicted to gambling should be barred from this kind of entertainment?
Craig, is your argument that sports gambling should remain illegal (or like how it was pre-2018), or just that the incessant advertising and the influx of gambling talk into sports media is the real problem?
The latter. Prohibition is not a viable approach to a popular vice. I am very disturbed by the intense level of promotion and leagues and the media tying their financial fortunes to gambling.
With regards to the Dollar Tree price increase - has anyone bothered to comment on the proliferation of these "dollar stores" in the past decade or so, and WHY they've become so common? I doubt it's because people actually *prefer* buying cheap knockoffs of household items....
At this rate, we'll be lucky if the rotation isn't Charlie Brown and the guys Bugs Bunny replaced in that cartoon. And even Charlie Brown might not want to deal with this crap.
Around 1980, International Paper commissioned a series of essays by people of note to appear in two-page ads. Called "The Power of the Printed Word", they covered things like enjoying Classic literature (by Steve Allen), writing a business letter (Malcom Forbes), and improving your vocabulary (Tony Randall).
Kurt Vonnegut contributed "How to Write with Style":
They gave us that whole series of essays in school. I am pretty sure International Paper was distributing them as stand-alones. And I think this was my first exposure to Vonnegut.
As a Nats fan, I'm happy to see that Matz is staying in the NL. For whatever reason, Nats bats do well against him. He's like the anti-Freddie Freeman.
The question is, which Matz will show up? He's always shown potential to be more than a back end starter, but at least in his days in Queens, he kept regressing.
Why? He didn't sign with the Mets.
He's got the peripherals of a league average starter when healthy (his biggest question mark), and there shouldn't be the expectation that he gets better than that at age 30. League-average starters don't exactly grow on trees, but you need more than that if you expect your team to pitch, well, better than average.
I know we've discussed this before, but Flaherty at least looks the part when healthy (big if after last season). But yes, the top of the rotation needs shoring when you're looking up at the Brewers.
I actually think of Billy as being pretty average. Yes, he lived through the Hell of Dresden, but there wasn't anything particularly special about him other than coming unstuck in time. In fact, I find Billy to be pretty dull (which, while not a flaw in the book, isn't a selling point either).
If anything in the book has aged badly, it's Montana. Pairing Billy off with her smacks of wish fulfillment on Vonnegut's part more than anything useful. (Worth adding that in the recent graphic novel adaptation, she's called a sex worker, so at least we can update things now and then without changing things much.)
But don't all sensible Canadians stay in Canada rather than move to Florida?
I assume that memoir was from the Dodgers’ Will Smith and not the Braves’ Will Smith, since that cheating girlfriend experience left him with all sorts of mental problems when pitching
I think you have it backwards. The Dodgers Will Smith is catching and the excerpt clearly is saying that the Will Smith who authored it is having problems with pitching not catching therefore it was from the Atlanta tosser.
Since the problems happened as a teenager he clearly turned to catching because pitching made him ill
Well the Dodgers’ Will Smith probably lives in Bel Air.
I work for a gambling affiliate media company. What we point out in our content about those “risk-free first bet” promos is that sportsbooks aren’t handling our free money. What they’re essentially offering is a “mulligan.” You still have to risk your own real money. If you lose your first qualifying bet, they’ll give you site credit equal to the value of that bet or in this particular case $600, whichever is lesser. That’s just site credit, not actual money, though. You do get a “second chance” to place a wager of that value, but none of that value becomes real cash unless you use it to place successful bet(s). Barring that situation, the book wins. All that information is in the conditions and terms of the offer but in my experience few people click/tap through to read those, so, hence the content I make.
handing OUT* free money
So it sounds like if you want to try and game this promo and get back out with some extra cash, the odds are in your favor but you could still lose your initial investment.
Say you invest $600, make a bet that has a 50/50 chance of winning, and if you lose that, use the promo to make another 50/50 bet, then withdraw your winnings and walk away if you win. That would leave you with a 75% chance of ending up with $1200*, and a 25% chance of losing your $600. Which sounds somewhat tempting, but then you're still running the risk of getting hooked on this gambling thing as the promo intends.
(*You'd only get $1200 in the fantasy world where the sportsbook gave a 100% return on a 50/50 bet, which isn't going to happen in reality because the house is of course always going to take a cut. So it would be less than $1200.)
That’s the thing about eligibility, though. Only markets with odds of -200 or greater are eligible for these promos. So, the best-case scenario for your qualifying wager is a win probability of 33.4%.
(Sorry, deleted the original because I found a typo)
Deposit $600 on the promo site "Gambling Site A" and make a standard spread bet at -110 odds. If you win, you're golden.
If you lose, then make a cash deposit of $600 into a second site "Gambling Site B".
Use your promo credit on Site A to bet on the home team spread.
Use your cash balance on Site B to bet on the away team spread.
If you win your initial promo-eligible bet, you're up $545. If you lose and have to use your promo in conjunction with Site B, then you're down $55.
But of course, the reason this is even possible is that all of the sites make their money on problem gamblers who by definition will NOT do this. They'll either win their first bet and proceed to lose their winnings, or they'll lose their first bet and then try to chase that loss.
On Wander Franco, consider the upside and downside of refusing this long term contract offer. The downside would be he is a flash in the pan and never gets a big payday. The upside is he might get ~$400M instead of ~$200M. While the upside is far more likely, it seems to me it's also of limited benefit. Once you have $200M, does an extra $200M even help you that much?
You also have to consider that he’ll need to purchase a home in both Florida and Quebec
Especially if he's smart and gets a good financial advisor. Better $200M well managed than $400M pissed away like cheap beer.
I drink expensive beer and it gets pissed away just like the cheap stuff.
You cannot buy a beer. Leases only.
There's time value of money at play too--a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. He's looking at ~$600K pre-arb (league minimum) for another 1-2 years, and then large error bars for arbitration depending on performance (out of my arse, $10M - $60+M). Presuming he's getting at least $10M per year on the front end, and he can now buy a house (or 3) and set himself up for life with investments. And you're right about diminishing returns--the 1st $200M is life changing and second $200M just isn't.
I read an article at one point that evaluated basically if money could buy happiness - and TO A POINT yes. If someone was so strapped that financial stress was a constant part of life, yes. But once they could meet their needs and several wants - they could pay monthly rent or mortgage payments easily, could replace clothes when they wore out, could easily afford enough food to eat, routine bills were no problem and they could afford normal emergency expenses like repairing a car after it hit a deer or the refrigerator keeled over and they needed a new one without stress - they weren't more happy with more money. This was average people and not hoarders and the specific amount depended on family situation and where they lived, but most people didn't need as much money as the authors thought they would to feel happy financially.
I've read similar articles. I think of it as " poverty buys unhappiness." There's a reason that financial stress is a relationship killer.
That's a really good way of thinking of it.
Yeah, this is why I think signing early, if the deal is remotely fair, makes a ton of sense. Plus the mentality that players must always squeeze every last cent out of their earnings even when they are more then set up for generational wealth is a little too close to the ownership mentality that no profit is ever big enough.
To be sure, when the question is binary nine-figure player vs owner I will still always side with the player. But I’m not going to cry about somebody “only” getting $200M rather than $300M when there are players who earn a tiny fraction of that. Like, it’s weird to me that so much ink gets spilled on handwriting over whether player X is earning ENOUGH hundreds of millions when you’ve got guys in the minors not even making a living wage.
While I can't too loudly criticize Franco for taking the money, I sort of feel like the union has a responsibility to the players to make sure they understand that they're helping the owners more than they realize, and that every player who signs one of these deals puts more pressure on other players not to aim for free agency. Certainly this does little for player empowerment in baseball, but that doesn't seem to be a thing of late outside the NBA.
And that aside, I look at deals like this and wonder why every team isn't doing this with its top level and even second level rookies. Which is to say, I don't get why the Mets never lock up any of their young players, and why Aaron Judge had continued to not be offered any sort of contract by the Yankees. From the side of management, these days seem like a no-brainer, and yet...
And sure enough, Herman Melville WAS born in NYC. The things we learn from the bard of Hibbing.
Wishing everyone a happy Turkey Day weekend, which this year leads into Hanukkah. As such, my wife and I are skipping the family get-together tomorrow in favor of a get-together with the same exact people on Sunday, and hosting a "friendsgiving" shabbos dinner Friday night. No turkey, since my wife does not like turkey, but stuffing and cornmeal pudding and potatoes and string beans, and more importantly good company.
Aaron Judge is turning 30 in April and has a body type that does not project to age well. Hardly an apt comparison to Franco who is almost exactly 9 years younger.
And while this might be a team-friendly contract in years 6-10, it is most definitely not team-friendly in years 1-5. Franco would’ve made about 600k each of the next two years. Now he’s getting more than 20x that. I think it’s a pretty fair deal all around. And if he truly is a transcendent player, whatever NY/LA team he’s on by then will try to renegotiate the last couple years to lock him up into his mid-30s.
Compare the contract to Acuna (signed before 1 full year, 8 years, $100M) and Tatis (signed after two years of service, 14 years, $330M) and it seems that Franco is around what we'd expect. Fair to both sides.
The player who took generational wealth, eliminated risk, but sold well under what he could have is Ozzie Albies. Albies signed for 7 years at $35M after 2+ years of service. I think but am not sure that Albies was NOT a SuperTwo.
Yeah, Albies had some horrible financial advice on that one
I can't recall specifically who, but I can remember a writer speaking to an agent about the Albies contract, and the agent basically said, "I would drop Albies as a client before I allowed him to sign that deal. Having my name attached to a contact that player-unfriendly would make me look like a terrible agent."
But Judge wasn't 30 when he was rookie of the year. And even if he shouldn't be getting the same money, he's been forced to schlep through arbitration and not make the money he's due as the Yankees' best everyday player (when healthy). So even though I don't root for him, I don't like that he has not been appreciated by his team, and think that it would have made sense to tie him up for a long time just as the face of the team. Though since he doesn't seem to be put out by not getting a contract, he's not really doing himself any favors.
I think I just hate that a player becomes a star in NYC and isn't paid right away. He and Alonso both. Even if he craters quickly. Which in fact makes me want to see him paid even faster since his opportunity to get a huge contract is limited.
Also, I hate the whole arbitration thing. Free agency now!
Fair enough. I took your comment to be about why Judge wasn’t getting that contract offer now.
That said, the Yankees would never lock up young players with a contract like this when their entire model is signing other teams’ best players and/or trading for contracts like Tatis/Franco.
Except that it seems like they aren't entirely sticking to that model. If they really go through free agency without grabbing one of the big name shortstops, I would even say that model is in suspended animation. Either way, I wonder what will happen to Judge in a year.
Judge was 25 as a rookie though, so not comparable to a 20-yo who plays a premium defensive position. Judge is also huge and doesn't have many good comps, but the industry consensus is that he's a risk to lose effectiveness at an earlier age than other players.
Yup. It sucks in terms of earning potential to be a late bloomer, but smart teams have learned not to extend their Ryan Howards.
I agree that he was so good at first, you would think he would merit some buyout, but, I think the Yankees getting stanton blew their projected budget
Yeah, not only are the Rays already the team most likely to trade that contract with a year left, they're also the team most likely to have their financial model explode. They are a poor drawing team with a good RSN contract with Sinclair. No way Sinclair gets their package of regional networks with extremely high leverage through the length of that contract. Their only hope to even keep the status quo is to get the Lightning and Magic to pool their rights with them and create a NESN/MASN type team owned network they could sell through the Fubos and Rokus.
Perhaps the strongest argument to take the money now is that it might not be there later from any team as the RSNs collapse. Though then Franco and any other player who got paid faces the headache of being traded somewhere they don't want to be instead of having the choice of a free agent. (Really, I am more put out by "they sacrifice the right to play where they want" than "they lose out on more money.")
Aaron Judge was also 25 in his rookie season. Not remotely comparable to an up-the-middle 20-yo.
Latkes go great with leftover turkey.
I don't think the MLBPA should discourage a player from taking a contract that will guarantee generational wealth even if, had all broken right for Franco, he could have earned 2-3x more. As long as they understand the risks and rewards, that should be their individual choice, not the choice of anyone else. And Franco isn't exactly unrepresented nor is he unfamiliar with MLB business practices - two of his uncles played in the Majors.
There's a running joke by a sports yakker in Minneapolis that Dylan is from Bemidji - sort of like whenever he's mentioned the yakker says "he's one of us, from Bemidji." Then there's the predictable followup of callers mansplaining that's he's really from Hibbing or even Duluth-born/Hibbing-raised. The yakker pushes back with "no, it's Bemidji" and the locals, who are as tribal as anyone in America, explode. Lather, rinse, repeat; every 6 months or so.
I agree that players should fully understand what they sign, but I disagree that players should feel beholden to their fellow players more than their own families (which is essentially the gist of the argument that they should feel obligated to go through years of being underpaid, taking in all of the risk for poor performance/injury/illness, in order to earn the highest possible FA contract years from now).
This particular contract does not feel absurdly favorable to either side. Yes, if Franco becomes an MVP he will be underpaid in the back half of that contract. But if he gets hurt or just regresses, he’ll be wildly overpaid. I’m certainly not crying for the team if that happens - they’ll be fine - but they are definitely taking on some risk here.
I'm too young to remember Bill Virdon as a player. As a manager, I kept hearing stories that when he played he was the only one - or one of very few - who wore glasses on the field. But with Reggie Jackson, Greg Luzinski, and others, that didn't seem at all odd to the 10 year old dlf.
I did see Bill Virdon, called “the Quail” by KDKA play-by-play announcer Bob Prince, play the outfield at Forbes Field. He was never out of place, and covered a vast park that included the batting cage, (in play). The apex was 457’ from the plate. Craig mentions a “fun fact”, that Virdon was pressed into service while a coach in 1968. Those games were down the stretch to the pennant.
For many years, after his “retirement” in 2002, he would be found instructing outfielders; playing balls off the wall his specialty. His fitness, loyalty to the Pittsburgh Baseball Club, and coaching endeared him to generations of Pirate fans. He was a gentleman.
Apples and oranges, but every time I see a young player get criticized for an extension I think of Ian Desmond, who bet on himself by turning down a (team-friendly) extension from the Nats ... and lost the bet. He was older, but I don't think he came out ahead on that.
It used to be that young players had to subsidize the vets' contract extensions - and it feels like that is about to come back around the other way.
I don't know the details of the one year team friendly Nats extension offer, but while Desmond lost in the short term, signing a 1 year $8M deal with Texas, the next year he got 5 years/$70M from the Rockies. I'm guessing that was better than the Nats offer.
7/107 but that included a two-year deal to buy out his arb eligibility; new money was like 5/90. [Full disclosure: some of it was deferred, because Nats.]
Source: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2620682-ian-desmond-loses-100-million-shows-danger-of-betting-on-mlb-free-agency
Well then you are correct, and I am incorrect. I was just going off the Rox giving Desmond what seemed like way too much money, even at the time. Then it turned out even worse than we expected.
Yeah - and by that time he wasn't a major-league SS anymore. It's hard to say if impending FA undid him or not but he clearly ended up leaving money on the table.
Obviously his situation is different but as a younger player I think you have to consider his experience when deciding on a massive pile of money now versus an even bigger potential payday down the line.
Worth noting that I like and admire Desmond greatly - and he certainly didn't go broke - but in this case he bet on himself (with support from the PA) and lost.
You also have to consider the time value of money for Wander. Invested intelligently, he could end up with way more in the bank than if he waited for the free agency payoff. At worst he should about break even. If you assume he could make double in free agency, his early year earnings should double in 8 or 9 years if he does nothing but throw big chucks of it into a Vanguard whole market index fund.
I haven't seen any details on the contract, but it may be back loaded such that the money he has to invest in the early years is limited. I still don't blame him for taking it no matter how the money is structured.
he has to get that MLB tat covered. that is his sole motivation for money now
Honestly, I think we are underselling the risk to Wander Franco to not get the big money. He still has six years of team control. That's a lot of time in ACL, UCL and rotator cuff years. All those things can be repaired but you lose a year and a half in what is basically a (1+x%)^n equation. Throw in the possibility of a lockout taking away part of another year of service time and he's looking at the possibility of having only 2 years of compound earnings growth through arbitration instead of 4, if arbitration even still exists at that point because again, new CBA.
"Tell me you have actuarial skills without actually saying you have actuarial skills."
Bingo.
We talk about how much money do people need to live and why people in the stratosphere should be taxed more heavily; but we question whether a kid from an impoverished country like the DR is making a mistake taking a guaranteed $200 million when, if he waited a few years and rolled the dice on his health (because career ending injuries are so unusual) and the risk that he'd wind up back in the DR scrimping to make a living and support a family, maybe he could make more money.
I'm all for the players making as much as they can, but screw that if the idea is that Franco is hurting other players by taking less now. In this particular situation, Franco should do what's best for Franco and his family.
sure, but he is a position player. Contact and zone control are his current calling cards. He will survive injury
Gonna be irrationally mad at the baseball universe all weekend for not getting Virdon to 1000 managerial wins.
be happy Lasorda didn't get to 2000
I think the view that the "first bet free" stuff is casinos looking to rope people in and get them addicted to sports betting is largely nonsense. The "first bet free" stuff is ordinary marketing, looking to get potential customers in something new to use website A over website B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. These websites aren't looking for addicts. Addicts are a headache. Sometimes they sue, claiming that the casino enticed them to keep betting knowing they were addicted, for example, as I'm sure you know. These websites are looking for the casual bettor who likes to throw disposable income on games without any of the mathematics that allows the very few to determine those infrequent instances where a bet is favorable, risking $110 or more to win $100. That's it.
Sure, getting new people to bet may result in a minority of these new customers becoming addicted. Does that mean that overwhelming majority of people who aren't addicted to gambling should be barred from this kind of entertainment?
Craig, is your argument that sports gambling should remain illegal (or like how it was pre-2018), or just that the incessant advertising and the influx of gambling talk into sports media is the real problem?
The latter. Prohibition is not a viable approach to a popular vice. I am very disturbed by the intense level of promotion and leagues and the media tying their financial fortunes to gambling.
With regards to the Dollar Tree price increase - has anyone bothered to comment on the proliferation of these "dollar stores" in the past decade or so, and WHY they've become so common? I doubt it's because people actually *prefer* buying cheap knockoffs of household items....
Also, they tend to crowd out real grocery stores, leaving many lower income communities lacking access to actual produce and healthier choices.
I do a lot of driving through rural areas of New York State and Pennsylvania. In many areas, the only "real" store you see is Dollar General.
That's not a good thing. Yet they keep voting for the people who are the reason their primary store is a Dollar General.
There have been some efforts by cities in the last few years to ban dollar stores or at least restrict them.
https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/city-council-approves-restrictions-on-dollar-stores-in-north-tulsa/article_994a90f3-0609-51db-9a07-6278e7abe3e0.html
YUP. Lifesucking, community-destroying stores. I've started flipping them off when I see them while driving.
UGH.
From ESPN: New York Mets owner Steve Cohen calls out Steven Matz's agent for 'unprofessional behavior'
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32705676/new-york-mets-owner-steve-cohen-calls-steven-matz-agent-unprofessional-behavior
At this rate, we'll be lucky if the rotation isn't Charlie Brown and the guys Bugs Bunny replaced in that cartoon. And even Charlie Brown might not want to deal with this crap.
I tried to ratio Cohen's tweet on my own:
-- "this from the guy who paid the SEC $1.8B to stay out of prison"
-- "words and promises" the musical -- hope they can get Nathan Lane.
-- "wint burner account"
-- unhappy billionaires for $1000
-- 'words and promises'? know it? I WROTE IT!
for the last one you have to know the filthy joke for which that is the punchline.
anyway, billionaires with hurt feelings are always a fun thing.
say what you will about Hal -- he don't tweet
A lot more of them do it publicly now, since clearly having public tantrums works for some.
A bit of Vonnegut I'll bet you haven't read:
Around 1980, International Paper commissioned a series of essays by people of note to appear in two-page ads. Called "The Power of the Printed Word", they covered things like enjoying Classic literature (by Steve Allen), writing a business letter (Malcom Forbes), and improving your vocabulary (Tony Randall).
Kurt Vonnegut contributed "How to Write with Style":
https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/7977944264_d5d9a0218f_k-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C814&ssl=1
They gave us that whole series of essays in school. I am pretty sure International Paper was distributing them as stand-alones. And I think this was my first exposure to Vonnegut.