Nate from Connecticut has a question for all you number freaks out there: have the Yankees spent more in player payroll this millenium to not win a World Series than the Red Sox did in 86 years? The Yankees, as has been wildly reported, have spent around a billion dollars on player salaries since 2000. The Sox, according to Nate’s computations, spent around $875,000,000 to not win a Series between 1985 and 2003, leaving them approximately $125 million for the period in between 1918 and 1984. Baseball-reference.com only has a salary database going back to ‘85; anyone know where Nate can find the rest of the info he needs?
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
Back in September, Yale professor Jeb Rubenfeld published his first book, The Interpretation of Murder. It was the most hyped and most publicized first novel in a long time; Henry Holt had a mind-boggling first printing of 185,000 to go along with a 15-city book tour and an almost unprecendented $500,000 marketing campaign.
Rubenfeld’s book has been, to put it gently, a huge, spectacular, awe-inspiring flameout. It never hit the best seller list, and to date, BookScan reports that it’s sold approximately 15,000 copies; BookScan represents somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of book sales, which would put Interpretation somewhere between 21,500 and 25,000 sales. To put that in perspective, if Holt had simply spent its $500,000 on buying the book on Amazon, it could have bought around 28,000 copies and given them out as holiday presents.
EDIT: I haven’t seen it, but apparently there’s a WSJ story in today’s paper about this very subject. And here I thought I was all ahead of the curve.
So many people are gushing over Oliver Perez’s 5.2 inning, 5-run outing last night in St. Louis you’d have thought Pedro hobbled out of the Mets’ clubhouse and pulled a Schilling. ESPN called Perez the game’s unsung hero because “he kept the game close — before the Mets’ offense exploded — and went deep enough to give the bullpen a much-needed break.”
Topping that, the Times’s peerless Murray Chass* wrote, “Perez did not resemble Sandy Koufax or Mickey Lolich, but he did the job the Mets needed him to do in their 12-5 victory. Of such efforts heroes are made, in this case an unlikely hero.” Then, citing the Elias Sports Bureau (Chass’s favorite “source” — he’s cited Elias 17 times since the baseball season started), Chass wrote, “Perez, after all, had a 6.55 regular-season earned run average with the Pirates and the Mets, and that is the highest E.R.A. ever for a pitcher making a postseason start of any kind, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.” I’m pretty sure Elias doesn’t keep stats like this, but I bet it’s one of the only times a pitcher was called a hero after giving almost a run an inning and doing his best to give up a lead.
To wit: Perez gave up a run in the first, gave back a 2-1 Mets lead in the third, and, after the Mets scored three in the 5th, coughed up a home run to perpetual power threat David Eckstein in the Cardinals’ first at-bat in the bottom of the inning. (For those of you keeping track at home, Eckstein hit two home runs in 123 games this season…which, granted, is a bit off of his career-average of a four-bagger ever 31.5 games.) Before being yanked in the sixth, Perez gave up two more homers, although the Mets’ six-run explosion meant even Perez’s best efforts couldn’t bring the Cards back in the game. Context is everything, I guess. (Or, perhaps, in the world of sports reporting, reality is nothing.)
* Increasingly, the Times seems to feel that Chass is, well, peerless as well. Chass’s piece is nowhere to be found on the homepage for the paper’s sports section, and, in what increasingly appears to be a trend, Chass (unlike George Vecsey, Dave Anderson, or Harvey Araton) is the only one of today’s sports columnists who’s piece you can read without being a member of TimesSelect.
“We’re running into a better team, and they’re knocking down everybody in their path. It’s not frustrating, they’re better than we are.”
– A’s third baseman Eric Chavez after Oakland’s Game 3 2006 ALCS loss.
“We have to do what’s never been done in Major League baseball history and that’s come back from a 3-0 deficit.”
– Johnny Damon after the Red Sox’s Game 3 2004 ALCS loss.
“It’s as big a hole as you can dig yourself, but obviously, you’re going to keep fighting them and try to dig your way out of it.”
– Bronson Arroyo, ditto
“It’s never fun being down 3-0, but there’s still hope. We’ve still got a chance.”
– Tim Wakefield, ditto
My LCS wish-list:
* Tigers beat A’s in a seven-game series
* Mets sweep Cardinals
Apparently, either I got it wrong or the baseball gods thought LaRussa was still lurking around like a sunglass-wearing sex-crime parolee in the Oakland dugout.
As Jerry Remy pointed out at the end of the year, Boston is “probably the only place in the country where there’s a baseball story in both papers every single day of the offseason.” That’s a lot of column inches to fill, and not a lot of news to fill them with. Which is why it pays to be creative.
Take the “Baseball Notes” column in Sunday’s Globe, in which we learn that…
* Manny Ramirez might be the answer to the White Sox’s left fielder problem…but only if Boston can get someone like, say, Freddy Garcia in return
* The Yankees and the Cubs might be swapping third basemen, with A-Rod going to the Chicago and Aramis Ramirez coming to New York
* Barry Bonds might be going to the Orioles, and
* Kevin Millar might be coming back to Boston (Schilling and Francona will undoubtedly head the welcoming committee).
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the most likely scenario is that none of these things actually happen…and I’d be shocked if more than one actually did.
Still, my pet peeve of the piece is the following: “Bill Belichick might want to purchase a Tigers jersey. Jim Leyland has proven he’s the best manager in baseball.” Leyland is a great manager, and he did a good job this year…but guiding a team with three 20-HR players, two 19-HR players, and a staff with a 3.84 ERA (and two players who throw 100-MPH heat) to the playoffs does not, in itself, mean a heck of a lot. Sort of how last year’s White Sox victory didn’t mean Ozzie Guillen was a genius any more than the Marlins’ ‘03 victory meant Jack McKeon was a genius.
(Leyland is a helluva lot of fun, though. I wish I’d TiVo’d it, but in the post-game on-field presentation after the Tigers finished their mercy killing of the A’s, Leyland was asked something along the lines of whether this was the highpoint of his life. Leyland — who toiled in the minors for the Tigers from ‘64 to ‘69 — said something along the lines of, “No: I wanted to be Yogi Berra, not Casey Stengel.” Then he gave a wan grin and shuffled off the on-field stage. Undoubtedly to have a smoke and kiss a fan.)
I got some grief for even hinting that the New York tabs might find some way to make light of Cory Lidle’s death. Granted, this isn’t on the front page…but once again, the Post managed to be far more tasteless than I ever could have imagined.