Chicago -
By Dan O’Shea
Let us start this exercise by admitting that it is impossible to replace Clayton Kershaw.
But, he’s been out for a month, and quite possibly could be out for the rest of the season.
You’re certainly not going to drop him, given there’s still a chance he’ll be back, but you’re going to need another SP on your roster for the foreseeable future.
Here are a few recommendations among SPs who are surging, but not so widely owned:
Posted on July 21, 2016
By Roger Wallenstein
Before he died a couple of years ago, Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner told the story about his contractual negotiations with the legendary Branch Rickey when both were employed by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Of course, Rickey is best known as the general manager who courageously brought Jackie Robinson to major league baseball when Mr. Rickey was general manager of the Dodgers.
While acknowledging Rickey’s monumental contribution to the game, Kiner had another view of the man known as The Mahatma. Without a union or an agent, each player negotiated his own contract, and Kiner disclosed that Rickey was determined to hold on to as many dollars as possible. Rickey’s concept of player compensation was, politely, frugality. Kiner saw him as cheap.
Posted on July 18, 2016
By Marty Gangler
Kris Bryant says he has never had an alcoholic drink in his life. He’s 24.
That’s not right.
Is he immune to advertising? A cold beer with your buds!
Immune to movies? A martini shaken, not stirred!
Immune to music? He must not have friends in low places. He never slips on down to the oasis?
Posted on July 17, 2016
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
Starring Jake the Snake. Plus: Breaking: Cubs Not Only Team With Great Players!; The Plan! The Plan!; White Sox (Sort Of) Winning; and Chicago Baseball Is Now Chew-Free.
Posted on July 15, 2016
By Matthew L. Myers/Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids with the Beachwood Added Value Affairs Desk
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Friday afternoon, historic Wrigley Field will witness a new milestone: Chicago’s first tobacco-free Major League Baseball game.
With Chicago – home to two storied teams – joining the growing list of tobacco-free baseball cities, it’s time for Major League Baseball and its players to set the right example for our kids and promptly agree to prohibit smokeless tobacco use at all Major League ballparks. As more and more Major League cities become tobacco-free, the only question is when all baseball will become tobacco-free.
Posted on July 15, 2016
By James Saft/Reuters
To paraphrase Walter Matthau on poker, it seems baseball card collecting combines all the worst aspects of capitalism (and investing) that have made our country so great.
Well, maybe not all of them. After all, no baseball card company, that I know of, ever fabricated the statistics of a player in order to make his card more valuable, as Enron and others have done and will do with their books.
But a new study finds that the market for baseball cards shows some of the same kinds of anomalies, or factors, as the stock market. Baseball cards that out- or under-perform in value tend to keep on rising or falling, a phenomenon called momentum. As well, newly issued baseball card sets and those of rookies, like Initial Public Offerings, tend to underperform the broad market for a sustained initial period.
Posted on July 13, 2016
By Eric Emery
People say last week was a pretty poor week for the Ol’ U.S. of A. Typically I’m not that optimistic, but it wasn’t that bad. I simply believe many problems came home to roost last week. And we’ll probably dance around them all once again, posting a bunch of silly stuff on Facebook in the process.
AFCB supporters would say last week was a pretty poor week for the Ol’ Cherries as well. AFCB attempted to lure winger Jordon Ibe from Liverpool, but Ibe delayed the move to “keep his options open.” Worse yet, England’s shit show of an international squad is without a manager. The English rags claim that amateur competitive eater and Sunderland manager “Big” Sam Allardyce and beloved AFCB manager Eddie Howe are two of the main targets.
In my first BinA, I discussed how the player transfer system worked. Managers work the same way. And when your country calls to run their shambolic program, you have to answer.
Posted on July 11, 2016
By Marty Gangler
Okay, we’ve all dealt with losing and the Cubs before; it’s what we know.
But this is just different. This is a brand new kind of losing.
It’s the lulling us to sleep with softly waving ‘W’ flags and then waking us up abruptly by throwing a wet smelly goat in our laps kind of losing.
It’s losing that isn’t supposed to be happening.
And it’s been going on for awhile now.
The Cubs are really Cubbing up this whole thing.
Posted on July 11, 2016
By Jim Coffman
A wide swath of Chicago sports fandom has only one fundamental question at this point: Are the Cubs collapsing?
There is a good chance they are. But the team will have to double or even triple down on its poor play this month for all of it to result in missing the playoffs. In other words, this will have to be an unprecedented collapse even by Cubs standards for it to completely blow up the season.
In other, other words, a team can collapse for a good long while and still survive to slip into the postseason if it has enough of a cushion. But does anyone really believe that this team is close to being the best in the National League? Better than the Giants and their pitching staff?
Posted on July 11, 2016
By Roger Wallenstein
196-173.
49-27.
17-12.
You won’t readily recognize these numbers, but they’re the scores of the last three All-Star games for the NBA, NFL, and NHL, respectively.
Actually the NHL score is from 2015. After that folly, the league decided upon a new three-on-three format. It got that bad.
Posted on July 10, 2016
