forkit

I love Robbie. I'd like to have him back at the right price. But this rings of Robbie's agent being told by Robbie that he had agreed verbally to a one year agreement and then the agent told him to back off--he could get him more. I think when all the available players are out there--today or tomorrow--Robbie's gonna wish he had taken the $3 mill and been happy. Remember his statement about, "This isn't about money. I'm basically set for money now. I want to play somewhere that likes me, where we can win..." And of course, in the end it was about money. His ego and his agent just had to try to squeeze for more. He might even have gotten more if he would have just waited quietly until KW makes a mjor move or two. But instead he had to head to the newspapers and get his word out about "respect." This is a declining salary market, especially for aging vets. I like Robbie. I wish he had thought about it before opening his mouth. Forkit!

Sox have a $30 mill cash offer for three years on the table, no deferrals, no incentives. It is apparently his best offer now... Forkit!

But you know what would happen... We'd be the front runner for him and then Boras would play the same bait and switch game and we'd end up "pounding sand" again... Forkit!

Who is Tejada's agent? Forkit!

I'd think he feels that like this past year's playoffs, the declining salary market puts the Sox again in the position where if you can just get to playoffs, yoiu have a chance if you get hot. It will take a year or so more for all the MLB teams to catch on to the reality of lower salary structures [not to mention the players]. That uncertainty often means no clear favorite will exist until things settle out. That's what chaos or change breeds...uncertainty. Perfect time to up the ante--or at least hold your hand a little longer than you normally would. Forkit!

Cubkilla... This is done all the time with contracts. A player with one season left re-works his contract--basically an extension--with the last year rolled in with the new years. In declining salary markets, you'll be seeing more and more of this and of salary deferrments, as teams have to "eat" portions of old contracts that are still at the past's "higher" market price. Why would you view this as the Sox screwing Maggs? This is the Sox trying to keep Maggs. Apparently, his agent isn't convinced that salaries are going lower and that Maggs ain't going to get $15 mill a year over XX years. I think he'll get the message eventually, but by then, it's hard to tell if Maggs will still be in a Sox uni or if we'll have moved on to add a different impact player with his salary "slot." Forkit!

What are they doing? I think they are playing an interesting game of poker. It will be interesting to see if the hand plays out at all like what they are hoping for... I think they still want Colon back and I think they want to land at least one other impact player--CF and or SS... As prices fall and other teams slash payroll, the Sox may be able to add these players and not add too much payroll. Who knows? Maybe JR will let the payroll ante climb a bit higher IF the right free agents see their value drop to within the Sox salary range? It will be interesting to see. I'm not going to b**** and moan until I see how they play their hand out. So far, nothing has happened. Forkit!

There weren't that many. Some were damaged beyond repair. Some weren't available yet. I think the Sox were shocked by the demand, as well... Forkit!

Both Colon and Flash will be offered arbitration. And so far, neither has an offer by another team. This is posturing by a player looking for a multi-year contract. All these people taking jabs and JR again, as if he has done or hasn't done a thing yet this off season, is typical BS. So far, he's made a nice offer to Colon. That's it. No one's been traded or cut...no player has signed with another team. We've all heard quite a few teams are cutting payroll, some drastically. It looks like the Sox payroll will remain about the same, plus or minus a few mill. At a time when other teams are cutting payroll, how is this such a terrible crime by JR? No one even knows what the team's going to look like, but everyone's all gloom and doom and swearing at Sox management. At least wait until you see something worth getting all worked up about, for crying out loud. And by the way...Flash wants $5 mill per for multiple years at a time when so far, player salaries are soft. And he has a health history worse than mine [mot a good thing]. How is that something that makes JR a bad guy? If he signed Flash to a multi-year deal at $5 mill per right now, that would make him a stupid owner. He's not. Do you guys have to keep writing the same tired old "JR is cheap" posts every day? Recent poster: "It's raining like hell outside today!" Recent reply: "Jr is cheap as hell!!! We'll never win until he sells!!!" Forkit!

Things change...they can change in baseball. The owners had a great chance in 1994 to change the salary situation and then a few caved in, even though baseball [fans, players and owners] had already paid the pain. It was clear salaries could not continue to escalate at the rate they were going. ARod was getting about what the Angels sold for...and there are 25 players on a team. Revenues were not keeping up with salaries. We are seeing the first results in a soft salary situation for the second year in a row. Things will change when either several teams go under and others are worried about their existence and/or when the players begin to see stability in salaries [salary cap and floor] might be better for players as well as owners. Will it happen? This is now a world where there are more and more places to spend your time, energy and money for entertainment. My mother was telling us the other night over dinner about growing up on a farm near Batavia, IL. They didn't have electricity--just a battery that a generator kept charged. They only used the battery for emergencies and for her dad to hear the baseball games at night when he got done working the farm. As she said, "God help you if you touched that radio...That was only for dad and the baseball games." Those days are long gone. Not just because electricity, but because you can watch 750 channels on TV and see a zillion different sports or watch new movies on demand at home or play computer games and on and on and on... Things change. Forkit!

Actually, someone was willing to give ARod and his people offices and a staff as part of his contract. And of course, someone accepted a diminished skills clause. Never say never...it just hasn't been done yet. Maybe someone will offer a player a greater amount than he or she could get elsewhere, but the option portion of the clause deminishes the value of the "overpayment" if the player performs poorly. What sounds crazy now sometimes becomes normal. And what is now normal may later sound...well, crazy. Forkit!

Ok, all valid answer to my questions. I'll ask one more: For those of you that don't know, JR and EE are very astute businessmen. These aren't dotcom idiots that made their money in a market frenzy, like some of the newer owners that many here are enamored with. These guys are real bottom-line oriented businessmen. And I really believe JR loves baseball, though that's probably irrelevant to this question, but perhaps not. Given that they are such astute businessmen, does anyone have any idea why they wouldn't subscribe to the "put a better team on the field, and we'll make more money" theory? If the answer is so obvious to the fans that post here, how could they possibly miss it? Good businessmen don't continue to be profitable businessmen by missing "sure things." Forkit!

Rex: That is eactly my point. Even *I* know which horse will win the Kentucky derby in 2003. I even know which American League team will win the 2003 ALCS. Even *I* know that Konerko's contract is bloated by the current standards and that he had a bad year in 2003. Oh, he's slow and he will ground into lots of double plays in 2003, in case you want to know. But I don't remember thinking the contract was out of line at the time, nor do I remember anyone here or at any of the other forums talking about his new contract when it was announced. But now, all these people are criticizing the Sox organization, writing what a stupid deal it was and how typical it is of how they spend their money. Errr...where were you all when they were negotiating with Konerko? Did one of you post that signing him to a long-term deal as stupid, because he was gonna be a slow bust in 2003? This isn't a pro-Sox post, before someone tries to tag me with that line. It's a post pointing out the obvious: It's easy to take shots at these contracts that suck after the fact. Sometimes, they're just "normal" contracts when they are signed and no one thinks twice. A confluence of events can make decisions look foolish after the fact, but that's always the case in life. Hell, if I could make a living pointing out stupid decisions people make *after the fact,* I'd be rich! To me, there are obvious bad decisions that owners have made: I think paying ARod $250 mill was bad business for everyone involved. In fact, I even think it took some of the bloom off of ARod and took lots of the bloom off of Boras. It certainly finished off the Rangers. Similarly, Kevin Garnett in the NBA has a similar situation. I remember when the team owner said publicly that he was not going to give in to the agent's demands, because he would soon be paying a player more than he paid for the rights to own the team...Unfortunately for him, he buckled to league pressure and is now continually trying to get out from under the albatross contract, as is Garnett, who is now tired of losing on a one man team. But most deals aren't that easy to point out as "stupid and a waste of money." Unless you do it several years later. Just my three cents. Forkit!

Ok, I'm just curious. Even in a post about the renovation of the Cell, people are bringing up how stupid Konerko's contract is... Obviously, the Sox gave him a huge salary right before the salary market got really soft. And of course, he didn't perform well last year. But what was the general concensus when the deal was struck? Were there a great deal of people wringing their hands because they felt the Sox just overpaid for a slow first baseman? Or is this just a case where the people are stating the obvious [a player had a bad year and got a huge contract before the bad year] coupled with the "new" reality of player lower contracts, as though they "knew" he was never going to be worth the new contract? Frankly, I don't remember batting an eye when the new contract was announced, but maybe someone will jog my memory. Forkit!

Interesting article. It says he wants to command between $1.5 mill and $2 mill per, and people in Asia think he ie better than Matsui. For $2 mill, there should be some takers. Forkit!

Pastime: Let me re-phrase the question you asked and answered yourself: You said: "...If investing more money than usual in the store would increase the amount of customers that walked through the door (advertising, special deals, etc), then yes. I would spend." The real answer is that you'd spend more IF you felt it would add more to the bottom line. I don't believe you meant to say that you'd spend more if it meant more traffic, but instead were implying that more traffic would translate into a better bottom line. What if JR really feels he is at the best ratio of spending to bottom line profits? What if he feels that he cannot put out $70 million in payroll in 2004 and turn a profit? As a businessman [not a baseball fan spending 'play' money], should he spend what he feels is best for his business? To further the discussion, I always wonder why they don't ALWAYS make the upper deck seats cheaply available on game day, because an empty seat means no concessions sold for that potential seat. Why not $5 upper deck seats when you buy them at the door on the day of the game? Wouldn't it be better to always get at least 20,000 times $5 a day, plus the concessions sold than have the upper deck empty? These guys are very astute businessmen...I assume they did the math, right? Or am I assuming too much? And of course, there is one thing not mentioned in this discussion...don't you feel some of the players didn't show up for the whole season? Whether it's not performing under pressure or being unable to play well the first couple of months, I wonder if JR and friends feel a little like they added to the team [instead of subtracting through trades] at the All-Star break and then got less than acceptable performance from some of the players when it counted. More $$ does not always equal more performance, which translates into more fans at the game, etc. I'm not criticizing your post in any fashion. I am just wondering out loud after reading your post. Forkit!

I don't think the deal will go down. I doubt it was ever even considered. But Boston would do it because Pedro told management he is leaving Boston in no uncertain terms. He told them to get what they can in return, because he is leaving. So maybe someone thought they'd be trying to get something, even something in Maggs that'd have to be re-signed, than nothing when Pedor walked... But I doubt the trade was ever a possibility [though I know nothing, obviously]. Forkit!

Well Jim, my little guy just turned five a few weeks ago and he asked me a question that made so much sense, I almost drove off the road... He wanted to know why all the ballparks look different on TV. He was specifically talking about the Green Monster at Fenway, but when I tried to explain to him that all the parks are built to be a little different, he told me, "That isn't right. Shouldn't everyone play in the same kinda park," or something to that effect. I told him that the Green Monster is a very old ballpark and that that wall has great meaning for some folks. So he asked, "the new parks are all the same though, right?" It's odd that today, there isn't any minimum requirement for left and right fence lines, etc. I'm not suggesting they make all parks the same and generic, but perhaps there should be some standards about minimum size...and by the way, why do places tell lies about the distance to their fences? I think I'd like to see pitchers hit again, and chin music tolerated more, since the other pitcher could just take care of the offender. And I'd like to see them give the pitchers the old mound back, as well as continue to work to get the strike zone back to what it is defined as in the rules. Last, I wouldn't let players wear all that protective junk on their elbows so they can hang over the plate. I really love baseball. I have annoyances about the game, but nothing I really hate. How long until the first spring training pitch is thrown? Forkit!

No, that would be "grillion." Forkit!

Nice word. Ok, I take back a few 9's.... But you get the idea. Forkit!

Let's see... Ask United Airlines and Boeing and Sears, to name a few, just how much the taxpayers did for them... The taxpayers make revenue on the Cell...It's called interest on the bonds floated to build the place, or didn't you know that? Again, why can't people just think things through before spouting this garbage? And don't forget...Sox games [and other sporting events] bring tons of revenue to the city, and that flows down to other businesses. It's not as simple as you'd like to make it. The constraint the Sox must deal with is called cash flow. Look it up and learn about it. Forkit!

The Jose re-signing has me scratching my head as well... Even if we had a $80 mill payroll and only had $5 mill left, I don't think I would have re-signed Jose. Maybe I'll understand better when spring training rolls around...but I doubt it. Forkit!

Pastime: Do you own a business? Why do so many people here think it's easy to be an owner that wins a championship? So many people think the answer is just "sign every player I like and we'll win." What about profits and losses? What about players with talent that play poorly? You can call Sox owners all the names you want, but they own the franchise. It's easy to throw big ideas and insults around, but finding the money to own a franchise and then fronting the money to put a team on the field is not something 99.999999999999999999999 percent of the baseball fans could do. Any owner's first priority is to his business. Period. That is how a good businessman operates or he soon loses the franchise. All franchises are NOT created equal. As a businessman, you make the decisions you feel are best for your franchise and play the hand you are dealt. If you make the right decisions and are lucky that year, you get a winner. Do you really think JR and EE sit in an office and scheme about putting a losing team on the field to piss people like you off? Forkit!

Well, for $7 mill, I don't think he fits in our plans. Forkit!

I don't think Carl will get more than $5 mill per because I do think the market will that soft...but again, I thought Jose would have problems finding a backup role. To quote someone else: "What the hell do I know?" Forkit!