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Friday, October 10, 2008
Bobby Cox on TV’s “CSI” … sort of
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So I’m relaxing last night, enjoying a needed slow week away from Braves news, watching the season premiere of CSI, when this random, improbable line is delivered by an actor in one of my favorite TV dramas:
“I can’t believe Bobby Cox is still managing.”
I had to go back (I was watching on DVR) to make sure I heard what I thought I heard.
Yes, in the middle of the season’s first episode, the corrupt cop who killed Warrick sits down in a hotel room, with what appears to be a Dodgers-Braves game playing on the TV, and that’s the first line he utters to the cop in the next room, the cop who the corrupt cop is ostensibly hiding and protecting (but actually is planning to kill).
Anyway, it was a surreal moment, and for a second I had to make sure I hadn’t been dreaming.
Anyway, hope things are going well for all the denizens out there in the short lull between the regular season and baseball’s version of the NASCAR “silly season,” in which large contracts are to be handed out and trades consummated.
Anything but silly for the parties involved, and all of us who spend so much time either watching, writing about, reading about, or simply enjoying baseball.
Looking forward to seeing whether the Phillies can take this NLCS and whether the Rays can give the seasoned Red Sox a run in the ALCS. In the meantime, I’ve spent most of an off week running around doing errands and fixing stuff in my house, normal-life stufrf that I don’t have time to do from early February until at least the first week of October.
Speaking of schedule, you guys notice how much later it starts next year? Opening day isn’t until April 6, a full week later than this past season’s March 30 Braves opener.
And yet we go to Dark Star at the same time. Pitchers and catchers report Feb. 14, full-squad reports Feb. 17, first full-squad workout is 18th. Yes, that means nearly an extra week immersed in Disneyfication.
But hey, no need to start with the cynicism now. I’ve vowed to cut back the frequency of my snide comments about that place. No, really, I’ve made that vow. To myself. But only myself. Which means it’ll be easy to break….
Speaking of the 2009 season, I noticed a comment here today from one of the denizens, a guy wondering whether the stock market decline and general state of the economy might have an impact on the Braves’ stated plans to raise payroll (by an unspecified amount).
So I took your concern straight to the man who would know, CEO Terry McGuirk. I asked him if the economy might have caused Liberty Media to reconsider and if there might be any changes to that plan to raise payroll, which GM Frank Wren discussed the day after the season ended.
And here’s the e-mail response I got from McGuirk a few minutes ago: “No changes. Full speed ahead.”
So there you have it, folks. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. No changes to the plan to raise payroll (by an unspecified amount).
Andruw in Atlanta: Watching baseball on TV, like the rest of us. That’s what Andruw Jones is doing these days.
The L.A. Times’ Dylan Hernandez caught up with the former 10-time Braves Gold Glove center fielder and Dodgers first-year bust at his suburban Atlanta home this week.
Jones was moved to the 60-day DL on Sept. 13, after hitting .158 with three homers and 76 strikeouts in 209 at-bats for the Dodgers in an epic career free-fall.
More than anything, the move was a way to open a spot on the 40-man roster, since the Dodgers had no intention of having Jones on their postseason roster after his woeful performance. Yes, he had knee problems all season, and had one knee ‘scoped before the All-Star break.
But folks, believe me when I tell you, Jones played with similar knee pain in recent seasons with the Braves. He played hurt more than anybody else in the lineup, and played quite well.
But not this year. Whether age, weight and/or accumulation of injuries, his bat slowed down and pitchers exploited his inability to get to breaking balls away and his inexplicable tendency to “bail out” on swings more than ever before.
He was a first-year disaster for the Dodgers, after the signed him to a two-year, $38.2 million contract that left many of us with jaws agape when it was first announced during last year’s Winter Meetings in Nashville.
After the Dodgers moved him to the 60-day DL last month, Andruw asked manager Joe Torre and GM Ned Colletti if he could leave the team rather than get in others’ way in the training room.
That, plus, “I don’t want to jinx them,” Jones said in the Times article, referring to the Dodgers, who rolled over the Brewers in the division series but dropped NLCS Game 1 against the Phillies and Utley/Burrell.
Andruw has a sophisticated batting cage and gym in his home here in the ‘burbs, and he said he’s getting his knee ready to play winter ball in the Dominican Republic in December, which would be the first winter-ball experience for the Curacao native since 1996.
To me, this falls squarely under the category of desperate times calling for desperate measures. Good choice by Andruw to play winter ball, if you ask me.
“I had a bad season and a terrible season back-to-back,” he told the Times. “I have to have a great season and show people I have baseball left in me.”
If he plans to get another significant contract, he’s going to have to show he’s not washed up at 31.
Andruw told the Times that the Dodgers should try to re-sign Manny Ramirez, but added, “If they sign him, there’s going to be another issue. We’ll still have me and Juan Pierre. [Andre] Ethier has to play. Matt Kemp’s going to have to play.”
“After they win the World Series, it’s going to be interesting,” he said, adding that he expects to be the Dodgers’ every-day center fielder next season. “I’m an every-day guy or I need to move out,” he said.
Yeah, I’m sure the Dodgers would have no problem moving him and that $18 mill salary in 2009.
Uh, about that offer for the Cubs…. You think maybe Tribune Co. wishes it had pulled the trigger and sold to Mark Cuban or one of the other suitors who were prepared to pay $1 billion or more for the team, Wrigley Field and the whole operation lock, stock and barrel earlier this year?
Between the collapse of the economy and the collapse of the Cubs in the first round of the postseason, the price tag might have dropped quite a bit in recent weeks. Speculation is that Tribune will have no choice but to wait a while for the stock market and economy to recover a bit, that or take quite a bit less than those preliminary offers they were mulling from several potential ownership groups.
“Yeah, it’s going to affect the deal structure,” Cuban said to Chicago reporters on Thursday, before his Dallas Mavericks played the Chicago Bulls in an exhibition game at Chicago. “Because of the way the deal was originally meant to be structured, it’s going to create a challenge. So it’ll certainly have an impact. Anytime the cost of capital goes up, the cost of assets goes down. Which is what you’re seeing in the stock market….
“In a market like this, when there’s so much uncertainty and IBM and General Electric don’t know how much they’re going to pay on a loan, Mark Cuban doesn’t know, either. Six months ago, you could say: ‘Here’s how much this debt is going to cost you. Here are the terms that are available. Yes or no?’ Now you can’t do that anymore. Even if we wanted to close the day after tomorrow, the banks might not be able to close. There’s that uncertainty that gets involved. So that just changes the tenor of it.”
Those screams you just heard were the Tribune Co. executives and baseball executives who thought it would be wise to make this sale proceed at the same pace — glacial — that most such transactions or rules changes occur in baseball.
Peavy speculation: While teams wait for the postseason to conclude so the silly season can begin in earnest, Padres GM Kevin Towers’ recent comments that he might listen to potential offers for ace Jake Peavy has predictably led to speculation the deep-pocketed Yankees will be potential players in the matter.
Peavy’s agent, Barry Axelrod, told the Bergen Record of New Jersey on Thursday that Peavy’s first choice is to be on a winning team with the Padres, but that if they were going into rebuilding mode for three or four years, that’s now what his client “signed on for.”
Axelrod said if the Padres wanted to trade him, Peavy would consider waiving his no-trade clause, depending upon the location. The agent told The Record that there were “three teams in the AL that could entice him.”
“Any kid, you’d imagine, always thinks about wearing the pinstripes some day,” Axelrod told the paper. “But it’d be a pretty significant move for him.”
Folks, I’ll repeat what I said earlier this week: Peavy is an Alabama native, a country boy who goes home and lives in ‘Bama with his wife and kids once the season ends.
He grew up loving the Braves, and I’m guessing Peavy would waive his no-trade clause in a heartbeat if the Braves made an offer for him that entices the Padres. Now it’s just a matter of how serious the Padres are about dealing him, and whether the Braves would be willing to give up at least one of their top pitching prospects and probably another young player and lesser prospects.
Haven’t heard anything new on the matter, but didn’t expect to just yet. But I do think the Braves are, or will, explore the opportunity to acquire Peavy, a bonafide ace who’s in the prime of his career and signed to a reasonable contract for a pitcher of his ilk.
Peavy will make $11 million in 2009, $15 million in 2010, $16 million in 2011 and $17 million in 2012. There’s also a $22-million team option for 2013, with a $4 million buyout. That’s a total of $63 mill he’s owed, including the buyout.
For him to agree to waive that no-trade to go to the Yankees, you can bet your butt that Peavy and his agent would demand at least that the Yankees pick up the $22 million option, assuring the right-hander of $81 mill over five seasons.
But I think there’d be a reasonable chance he’d come to the Braves without making them guarantee the option year. I could be wrong, but that’s my take on the situation, just from afar and from what I’ve heard of those who know Peavy and understand how much he likes being back home.
For a Braves team with what’s believed to be more than $40 mill to spend on additions for 2009, Peavy’s backloaded contract could work because it would also allow them to sign or trade for another starting pitcher and outfielder, and bring back one or more from the veteran group that includes Mike Hampton and the two veterans uncertain about comebacks from surgeries, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine.
Peavy averaged 13 wins over six full seasons with mostly mediocre San Diego teams. He posted sub-2.90 ERA in four of the past five seasons.
Alright, time to post this. We’ve got Game 2 of the NLCS starting as I type.
A tune to take us out, one of my favorites from a guy who’s a legend himself:
”UNKNOWN LEGEND” by Neil Young
She used to work in a diner
Never saw a woman look finer
I used to order just to watch her float across the floor
She grew up in a small town
Never put her roots down
Daddy always kept movin’, so she did too.
Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair flyin’ in the wind
She’s been runnin’ half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin’ with the very air she breathes
The air she breathes.
You know it ain’t easy
You got to hold on
She was an unknown legend in her time
Now she’s dressin’ two kids
Lookin’ for a magic kiss
She gets the far-away look in her eyes.
Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair flyin’ in the wind
She’s been runnin’ half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin’ with the very air she breathes
The air she breathes.
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