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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Dan Shaughnessy: Baseball Genius

One could argue that Drew is a drag on the Red Sox offense. He is productive enough to stay in the lineup, but he doesn't hit a lot of home runs and he misses a month or more every year. With a lineup suddenly wanting for power (no Manny Ramírez, and David Ortiz in apparent decline), Drew would seem to be clogging up the middle.

And "One" would be incredibly wrong.

11 comments:

mike_b1 said...

The CHB has in the past also called the signing "curious" and referred to Drew as a goat.

Almost makes you forget Drew is top 100 all-time in OBP and slugging.

Anonymous said...

DO NOT DISTURB – Hypocrites at Work


If Theo makes the following comment:

"His playing 130 games at an elite level is more valuable to us than another player playing more games at an average level," said the GM. "We can put another pretty good player in there for those other 30 games.

Why doesn’t the Shank pounce on it?

Does the Shank feel it is acceptable for players to play only about 130 games per year?

Didn’t they (Shank & Theo) run Manny out of town because he only played about 145 games per year on average?

Let me see now, what helps the team more $17 million for 130 game per season player or $20+ million for a 145 game per season HOF player.

I guess it depends on the argument that Shank & Theo want to present the fans.

g

dbvader said...

The CHB has in the past also called the signing "curious" and referred to Drew as a goat.

That's just dan baselessly impugning the ethics of professionals. No big deal. He does it all the time.

Anonymous said...

Let's face it ... Dan is the supreme tool. Check out my anti-Dan book at: http://www.amazon.com/Was-Never-About-Babe-Mismanagement/dp/1602393494/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229003327&sr=8-1 ... or log my last name in on amazon.com.

dbvader said...

mike,

Is a guest post in order?

Leave your contact info Mr. Gulton.

Anonymous said...

Drew makes 14 million not 17, and Manny was run out of town for faking injuries, a lack of hustle on the field, demanding his options be picked up and mis-behaving when they were not... not for "only" playing in 145 games.

Anonymous said...

Cost-cutting suggestions for the Boston Globe:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The San Francisco Chronicle joined the lengthening list of imperiled newspapers Tuesday as its owner set out to purge the payroll and slash other expenses in a last-ditch effort to reverse years of heavy losses.

The Chronicle is going somewhere. Read Chapter 11 for details...

If it can't reduce expenses dramatically within the next few weeks, the Hearst Corp. said it will close or sell the Chronicle, northern California's largest newspaper with a paid weekday circulation of 339,430.

Right up there with the Globe, although I'm sure OB will correct me if I'm off by a few hundred subscribers...

Hearst didn't specify a savings target nor a deadline for wringing out the expenses. A Hearst spokesman didn't immediately respond to messages Tuesday.

Translation: I have no idea!

But management made it clear that the cost-cutting will require a significant number of layoffs.

"Our current situation dictates that we accomplish these cost savings quickly," Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega wrote in a memo to the staff. "Business as usual is no longer an option."


Tourniquet?

The Chronicle has given Hearst financial headaches since the New York-based company bought the newspaper in a complex deal valued at $660 million. The late 2000 acquisition proved to be ill-timed. Shortly after Hearst took control, the San Francisco Chronicle was hard hit by a high-tech bust that caused its advertising revenue to shrivel.

Also Tuesday, the chief executive of Philadelphia's largest two daily newspapers pledged Tuesday to roll back a $232,000 raise while his company tries to reorganize in bankruptcy court.

Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, which publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, 2 1/2 years after a group of local investors bought the company for more than $500 million.

Chief Executive Brian Tierney and other executives have insisted the company, while strangled by debt payments, remains profitable despite falling circulation and revenues. But some lenders balked at that analysis at Tuesday's initial hearing on the bankruptcy petition and questioned decisions being made by Tierney, a former public relations executive.


"We're profitable, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary!"

Meanwhile in New York, Journal Register Co., publisher of the New Haven (Connecticut) Register and other newspapers, won approval to continue paying basic operating costs, including employee salaries and benefits and newspaper delivery contracts. Lawyers representing lenders made no objections.

The Yardley, Pennsylvania-based company sought bankruptcy protection a day before the Philadelphia newspapers' filing and said then that JP Morgan Chase & Co. and 26 of the company's 37 lenders had agreed to a reorganization plan to cancel its stock and become a closely held company controlled by its lenders.

Lawyers for the lenders said they were unaware of any objections from any debt holders to that plan, although they did not say why the remaining lenders had yet to sign on.

Besides Journal Register and the Philadelphia newspapers, Los Angeles Times publisher Tribune Co. and owners of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis have made separate Chapter 11 filings for bankruptcy protection amid steep declines in advertising revenue.


A certain song comes to mind...

Anonymous said...

dbvader...

I can be reached at:
sportsreporter16@yahoo.com.

My book, just released, is entitled It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement and the Curse of the Bambino.

It can be ordered through amazon.com.

Anonymous said...

WOW

Mr. Gutlon dares speak the truth.

Should be an interesting read.

g

Anonymous said...

Y'all can read an excerpt from It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement and the Curse of the Bambino by clicking on my name in this post. Happy reading!

Anonymous said...

Journal Register failed because it drained all of its properties of money for years; it was a horribly run newspaper company that never reinvested in the local papers it collected, except to create joint publishing facilities for one of its clusters.

The story of Hearst and the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle is complicated by the expensive bust-up of a JOA -- Hearst flushed millions of dollars over and above the $660M it paid to buy the Chronicle in order to subsidize the transition of its former flagship, the erstwile Monarch of the Dailies, into a freebie. Hearst would have been better off to use the strategy used by Pulitzer when its Post-Dispatch took mornings over from the Herald Co.'s Globe-Democrat, or by Knight Ridder when it put the Cox's Miami News to rest, and pay a portion of the profits to the closed paper for the duration of the JOA (Pulitzer bought its way out of the St. Louis when the company was broken up prior to the sale to Lee Enterprises, but its JOA in Tucson was one of the success stories of the Newspaper Preservation Act)

The Boston Globe ain't going anywhere.