caulfield12

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 08:31 AM) I know the first thing I thought of when I read a beckham salespiece was "Hey, remember that time several minor Cubs players dressed as Theo and jed?" Too bad nobody did that with Ozzie or KW. The best story we have is the Swisher/blow-up doll thing in Toronto, unfortunately.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 08:00 AM) Since we are discussing only endorsements here, what company has accused Agent B of being a pain in the ass? And again, how does Jay-Z's endorsement potential translate to getting more endorsements for his clients? Will he give his up? Will he agree to promote products with his clients? Do you want to compete with your agent for endorsements? Who is going to turn down Jay-Z's phone call? In MLB, about 1/3rd of the teams don't want to have anything to do with Boras, the White Sox, historically, one of them. And how many corporations like Nike or McDonald's or Apple even know anything about Boras, unless their marketing departments are REALLY into baseball. They all know Jay-Z and CAA, as well.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 07:48 AM) People have offered that Jay-Z would have an edge with signing clients, and I can see that. I believe that Boras has an edge in getting endorsements for his clients. For the same reasons as were offered that Jay-Z has an edge with clients. Except he's not very concerned with getting endorsements. He would rather secure the big contracts. I think it's a cop out. Sure, there are the Buehrle's, Credes, in this example...Matt Holliday, but there are a ton of players who would love to get the chance to broaden their exposure and increase their income, too. "Marketing is completely different in baseball than if you're a model or a musician or even a basketball or football player," Boras said. "It requires tremendous knowledge of the industry and the player to do this correctly. If you don't do it correctly, anything you make in marketing will serve as a loss of hundreds of millions in what a player can earn contractually." In other words, if Robinson Cano is so worn out from chasing endorsements that he hits .240, Madison Avenue will lose interest very quickly. The baseball season is such a grind, a lot of players don't have the appetite for day-long photo shoots in January. They'd rather spend free winter days sitting in a duck blind, or playing golf, or making up for lost time with their families. "I have four kids, and I'm really not interested in [endorsements]," said St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday, a Boras client since 2005. "Scott has a great marketing team and they tell you they can get you some side money, but the one thing he stresses is, 'You can make a ton of money as a great baseball player, so worry about being the best player you can be.' They don't necessarily want their clients flying around the country doing commercials in the offseason. That's a great opportunity to work on your game and your body to make sure you're ready to endure 162 games at the highest level."

Matt Holliday said it himself, if you want someone who has more control of your life, Boras isn't your guy. If you want someone who cares 98% about how you play on the field and only 2% about maximizing your revenue off the field/court, then Boras is your guy. To just ignore all the possibilities, though, for baseball players is one of the reasons that baseball has fallen so far behind the NFL and even with the NBA (although I would still put MLB ahead of the NBA...the NBA does a MUCH better job marketing it's top 20-30 stars to the rest of the world). It's not like these baseball players are going to spend even two weeks of their offseason jetsetting around the globe shooting commercials. A bit of a weak excuse...it's where endorsements take over a player's life to the point where his level of play suffers. Somehow, the likes of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods (until the Thanksgiving Night Massacre) were able to manage it all quite well...LeBron James, Michael Schumacher, Maria Sharapova, whatever example you might want to use.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 06:52 AM) Really, with what industry? Look at pictures of the Fortune™ 500 CEOs and top officers and tell me if they look like the guys that want to hang with Jay-Z. On the other hand, everyone that's rich but not so well known or famous, probably 90% of them have that Jerry Jones/Daniel Snyder/Mark Cuban bug and the desire to put themselves on the map by adding the final element, FAME. It's not a matter of wanting to hang out with Jay-Z, per se. It's using his contacts and connections to leverage yourself into a different realm. For every white player (thinking someone like Josh Hamilton) who would be totally uncomfortable, there's all the African-American/Dominican/Venezuelan players who totally feel uncomfortable with Boras, no matter who he surrounds himself with... Finally, you have to look at it from a demographics standpoint. Every team in baseball wants to have a bilingual manager and coaching staff. The Hispanic/Mexican (especially) portion of the US population is growing at an unprecedented pace...if you ignore them in marketing, you're leaving out 25-30% of the the entire country. Film-makers have already cued into this trend...look at the Fast and the Furious series. They're checking off the box in every segment of the population (Ludacris and Tyrese, Eva Mendes, Michelle Rodriguez, Tego Calderon and Dom Omar, even Indonesian kick-boxer/martial arts actor Joe Taslim). Look at how nearly every teenager outsider of the US fancies himself a hip hop star and tries to emulate what he sees in the music videos. http://www.forbes.com/sites/darrenheitner/...esent-athletes/ You think Forbes doesn't love to write these Jay-Z stories?

Warm Bodies was a surprisingly nifty little film...in some ways, I enjoyed it a lot more than the big budget World War Z.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 06:09 AM) Exactly, GMs aren't going to whitesox.com and reading a Merkin article for their "insider" information. These fluff pieces are intended to hype up the meatball portion of the fanbase for the coming season. Shouldn't Merkin work for Epstein/Hoyer, then? During one of the Cubs' "bonding" theme trips in 2012, during which players, coaches and manager Dale Sveum dressed up as their favorite superheroes, Jeff Baker and Reed Johnson went as team president Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer. The front office executives were amused. "I actually got a text from Theo saying, 'Hey, you nailed the front office khakis and the colored shirt — you look like dorks," Johnson recalled. Johnson and Baker were traded soon after, but the self-described "dorks" are entering Year Three of their rebuilding plan with another manager and another plea for patience.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 7, 2013 -> 06:08 PM) He might have some impact. Boras has changed the game at every bend. The guy literally wrote the book on being an agent. Jay-Z is really good at rhyming. So is Doctor Suess, but I sure wouldn't trust him with my baseball contract. You don't think you're selling him a bit short? He basically (along with Sean Combs) defined the word entrepreneurial in the new media age. Plus, he landed Beyonce. Despite being worth $450-500 million, he's not the most handsome guy in the world. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226279

Ryan Dempster, who spent nine seasons with the Cubs before winning his first championship ring last week with the Red Sox, has a good perspective on that subject. The Red Sox were able to change their culture one year after a last-place finish, while Renteria enters with Cubs in the midst of yet another five-year plan. "The one thing I noticed (in Boston) is the amount of talent in the minor leagues is coming on a steady basis," Dempster said. "We get rid of a guy like (Jose) Iglesias, and have a guy like Xander Bogaerts come behind him. We have got a guy like (Brandon) Workman in the bullpen, but also arms in Triple A like Allan Webster and (Rubby) De La Rosa and Anthony Ranaudo and all these guys coming behind them. "That's what Theo and Jed are doing, and have done a great job of stockpiling talent, because you have to sustain that. Look at what the Cardinals did. You have to have that coming. In the long time I was there, we had very few impact rookies who could really make a difference. When you have that you don't have to go outside the organization and tradeplayers away to get that kind of talent." Paul Sullivan had a REALLY long story in the Tribune, you can read the whole thing here. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...0,2812141.story http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/rosen...,7764048.column Rosenbloom, in Theo Oopstein's problems hiring managers and inspiring fan base

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 7, 2013 -> 04:50 PM) Scott Boras is one of the top 5 agents in all of sports, and you can certainly make an argument that he is absolutely 100% the best agent. Jay-Z is a rapper. This is like saying "Who is going to be better, Guy who has done this for his entire career or new guy who you know from something else that is doing this now because it's easy money?" I mean, are you comparing Scott Boras and Gary Sheffield? Sheffield had better bat speed. Actually, with CAA as part of the team, Jay-Z has at least a 25-50% chance of making a huge impact. That and the continuing deterioration of African-Americans playing the sport, despite all the best efforts of the RBI Program. If nothing else, Jay-Z might have some impact there (then again, it's not like there are 25 African-American golfers who are in the Top 100 junior pipeline because of Tiger Woods, which a lot of people thought would or could happen)....

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 7, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) Right, so to expand, they are usually guys who have yet to reach free agency, and therefore, do not have guaranteed contracts but are making enough money through arbitration to warrant not tendering them a contract because they suck. As Wite implies, the money most teams have at their disposal right now has outstripped the salary considerations most of these guys are entitled to, so it isn't very common if the player is worth anything at all. There was also a lot of talk about Carlos Quentin falling into this category before they dealt him...mostly because his projected salary in the final two years of arbitration was becoming quite high (and it's relative), but at least 50% of it was concern about his long-term viability as a player due to health concerns, too many HBP's, too intense, etc. Crede and Jenks fell into these same categories...not sucking so much as "how much money are they really worth to the team?"....risk/reward or cost/benefit analysis. How likely is he to stay healthy/productive?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove13/story/_/...ott-boras-jay-z I'm going to go with Boras, simply because I think he's right about the limited endorsement potential (regional/local rather than national) for most baseball players. Now part of that's due to MLB and the fact that the NFL, NBA, NASCAR...PGA golf tour even, have gotten out ahead of baseball in this area. On the other hand, with all the MLB broadcasting properties and their profitable expansion over the past decade, it would seem there's a LOT more untapped potential for MLB in terms of sponsorship/commercial endorsements. That and the fact that you have all these new emerging markets like the Caribbean, Mexico, Venezuela/Colombia (eventually Brazil), Japan/Korea/Taiwan. One of the biggest keys will be finding another trendsetting version of Yao Ming/Ichiro Suzuki but from China, India or Brazil.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20721958,00.html Reviews swinging in the wrong direction on Thor. Started at 87, went to 82, now down in the low 70's at rottentomatoes. Looks like it will debut somewhere between $80-100 million, which is still pretty remarkable considering where the Thor franchise stood after the first movie came out in early 2011.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Nov 6, 2013 -> 06:32 PM) That's his M.O. - low OBP, declining veterans. Like Nick Swisher and Adam Dunn?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 6, 2013 -> 12:12 PM) And during that 1 inning they had a 6 run lead, I would have gone with a reliever to keep Garcia's arm fresher. This ultimately didn't matter. Greg said Ozzie was a genius for leaving his starters in. It is my belief that he absolutely was not a genius. If he wants to believe that, he can; I'm merely on here to state my opinion (and one shared by hundreds others on here) that Ozzie is not a genius for that. I am attempting to prove why using numbers. I have said that I have no problem with his decision to do so, given the circumstances, just that he was not. Ultimately, the decision to leave his starters in as long as he did during the 2005 season may have affected their performance in 2006, which would also make him the opposite of a genius and more of a masochist. That is a far greater gray area than 1 inning a reliever would have thrown when up by 6 runs. It was started as a result of the TTOP; Garcia was at a far greater likelihood to blow up in that situation than a reliever. Ultimately, each outcome is its own independent action and the reliever very well could have blown up. In that instance, at least Garcia would have been fresher for a game 7, right? But had Garcia blown up and gone over the 120 or the 130 pitch mark attempting to get a complete game, then he is more fatigued and the Sox are in a worse spot. Neither came into play and it didn't matter either way. Let bygones be bygones and be happy that they won. It's OK. I am not attempting to get the last word in; people take shots at my posts that I believe are shots at my character, so I feel the need to defend them. Nothing more. Your post is a perfect example of that. It's not a personal attack, but it's questioning me. Thus, I feel obligated to answer. If I cared so much about getting the last word in, I could just use my "mighty mod sorcerer powers" and lock the thread when I make a final post. I have yet to do that and won't do that unless it becomes necessary, and thus far, it has not even gotten close to that point. Except they avoided playing in 7 out of a possible 19 games that post-season, one of the shortest post-seasons for any World Series winner since they went to the 4-5 teams format (the Yankees were the other one, I think). I would argue that the injury Contreras suffered in late May in 2006 (I think it was against Cincy) had as much as anything to do with the results of 2006 compared to the post-season starters pitching almost all complete games in 2005. Jenks certainly wasn't overused, and he went down to injury problems as well.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 6, 2013 -> 10:48 AM) But ultimately, as proven by its depth and effectiveness in the World Series, there is a 99.999% chance it would have made no difference because that bullpen was probably the best in White Sox history. So #1, Ozzie was lucky that the White Sox were in a position to throw 4 straight complete games and #2, in retrospect, I would have made a move that would have ultimately made no difference in the outcome of the series (because a White Sox reliever giving up 6 runs to that Angels offense in 1 inning was not going to happen). This is virtually a pointless debate at this point. The points have been made and beaten to death, but you have chosen to drag a dead horse through the mud. Except Hermanson and Marte were really struggling for different reasons at that point. Vizcaino was the last one in usually. I'll give you Cotts, Politte and Jenks. So I'd say the best back end of the bullpen in White Sox history.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 6, 2013 -> 09:15 AM) Didn't know he was still playing Well, I guess we can debate "ever seen" then, haha. If the poster was say, 55 years old, just depends on the context.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 06:24 PM) I'm watching. Nothing groundmoving in terms of information. I will say he is perhaps the most wellspoken MLBer I have seen. Gives a great interview. Can see why so many people like him. Mike Mussina...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 11:58 AM) KW went to Stanford for 1 year. You mentioned Beane "would have" gone to Stanford. He didn't. This is baseball,not something that you can learn in a classroom at a University. I just think that some of these guys are from more highly thought of schools is just coincidence at this point. I don't really think there is anything at Cornell or Harvard or Yale or Stanford that actually better prepares you for a MLB GM job. The guys with the advanced degrees seem to have the same problems the GMs who barely made it out of HS have. You have to be at the right place at the right time. If you speak Spanish, that's very helpful. I should have gone to Venezuela or the Dominican and worked with the winter league teams, but if you work for a minor league team, offseason is all sales work. If I had things to do all over again, I would have accepted an internship from the Red Sox paying I think it was $300-500, but I instead took a job working for a minor league team because I thought it would give me a broader array of experience, I could do sales/marketing right away and earn more money (at least $1000-12000 per month, plus they gave me a free apartment). I also had a job with the Cardinals but I blew it by joking around with the interviewer about what I would do if I had free tickets....the answer, even in jest, wasn't selling them. But, oh well. If you're not a former professional baseball player and you haven't gone to an elite school, the odds are stacked against you. Twenty years ago, everyone was following the new/emerging sports management trend. Right now, I'm sure almost none of the GM's have degrees in anything but Econ, Math/Quant Analysis, MBA/Law School, etc. Very very few liberal arts majors, I think one or two English or Communications majors. Daniels was in marketing/MBA/advertising if I remember correctly. I made the second big mistake of meeting the wrong NFL football player and placing my trust in working for him and organizing a charity for him. I wasn't at all surprised a decade later when he was convicted for real estate fraud ($11 million total) and ended up in Federal prison in Miami. Made me think of him last week when I saw a similar story about Irving Fryar.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 11:27 AM) According to my BP, USCF, while a homer haven, is slightly better than neutral for hitting overall. Last year, the 3 year factor was exactly neutral. So if the White Sox stay away from flyball pitchers, they usually fare pretty well at home. In fact, there were a number of hitters in recent years who've actually done much better away from USCF, for whatever reason, like Beckham and Quentin. And, for most of those years, our pitcher's home ERAs were comparable or even better than on the road. As far as the flyball issue goes, that's one of the arguments for keeping Quintana over Santiago. If they could get Hector to stop worrying about throwing 95 MPH and throw more two-seam sinking fastballs, he'd probably be much better off.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 11:02 AM) i am sure it takes a lot of intellect/IQ/EQ to send Ortiz and Manny to PED providers that wont get caught. Manny left the Red Sox and it all fell apart Well, surely that's the main reason they hired Terry Bevington and Ozzie Guillen. So why are we to believe Hahn's better qualified to be a GM because he went to Northwestern and Harvard Law? If I remember correctly, Jon Daniels went to Cornell. Epstein went to Yale. Jeff Luhnow went to Penn and then Kellogg for MBA. Chris Antonetti went to Georgetown/UMass-Amherst. DePodesta went to Harvard. Kim Ng, University of Chicago. AJ Hinch, Stanford. KW, Stanford. Cherington/Amherst. Hoyer/Wesleyan. Michael Hill (Marlins) Harvard. Beane would have gone to Stanford. Josh Byrnes/Haverford. Anthopolous (McMaster/Canada-ECON). JP Ricciardi from St. Leo University is an outlier. Or this guy, the front office member with the most interesting background in all of baseball, not to mention the fact that he's Indian-American.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Mejdal J. Mozeliak, Univ of Arizona/Univ. of Colorado, Jack Z. (Austin Peay), Andrew Friedman (Tulane) Wouldn't 50-75% of the GM's be coming from "non-elite" or state university Sports Management programs? Back when I was going to graduate school, Ohio University, UMass, Ohio State and Georgia Southern University (where I went) were all among the top five graduate programs. Whether it's presidents or MLB GM's, people have an expectation that leaders should have attended elite educational institutions and possess higher IQ's/SAT scores, what have you.

Developing a catcher isn't an easy thing to do, obviously. I went through the Top 100 prospects from 2011/12/13 and here's the list of catchers included. Zunino d'Arnaud Gary Sanchez Austin Hedges Jesus Montero D. Mesoroco Y. Grandal B. Swihart Wilin Rosario Tony Sanchez Derek Norris Wilson Ramos Austin Romine

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 07:43 PM) The Epstein way was simply a smarter way of having more money than everyone else and spending it Whoever brought David Ortiz in from the Twins deserves half of the credit. The other half for drafting/developing Ellsbury, Pedroia, Lester, Buchholz, Dubront, Middlebrooks (although the jury's still out), etc.

It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation at all between intellect/IQ/EQ of the managers and GM's of the respective MLB teams and their respective records. We went/are going through the Ricciardi/DePodesta/Epstein/Daniels/Luhnow/Andrew Friedman "anti-traditional scouting/saber/Ivy League/MBA" time period...to see how long it takes to bounce back again.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 01:28 PM) Again, the ballpark effect is hitting you there. If the Sox were average on both pitching and hitting, they should be in the top 3-4 teams in the league in offense and bottom 3-4 teams in the league in pitching because they play 81 games in a ballpark that is a home run hitters haven. If the Sox are putting up slightly above average pitching numbers in the Cell...that's really good. If the Sox are putting up average hitting numbers in the Cell, that's pretty bad. If the Sox are the worst offense in the league playing in the Cell, that's historically bad. Except that's only 1/2 the games...AND...you have the brutal weather in April and May. Plus you have to correct for how much the White Sox spent on their starting pitching/rotation compared to other teams. There are a LOT of other factors involved.