A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
bad hammy wrote:The 50 games costs Cabrera about $2 million in salary. Additionally this is a contract year for him so he likely just cost himself many millions more on a fat extension the Giants were working on. Not to mention the Giants lose one of their key players for the playoff drive. That's a decent penalty in most folk's books.
Good point. It's not really about the $2 million in salary lost this year. It's about the $30 to $50 million of guaranteed money that he stood to gain on next year's free agent market (his contract with the Giants was up at the end of the season). If you look at Cabrera's numbers last year with the Royals (305 ba, 201 hits, 18 hr), which were significantly better than his career norms, it seems likely that before last year he decided to juice to reap potentially huge financial gains on the open market. He rolled the dice and lost. Unfortunately, I believe that too many athletes are still willing to take the same chance in the hope of making big money in the future.
To be honest, I had thought that "being out of New York" was the main factor in Melky's improvement. Yes, it went from .269 as a career Yankee to a whopping .346 as a Giant. But I thought of a lot of folk who flourished outside of the jungle of New York (see AJ Burnett's 15-4 in Pittsburgh this year!).
But I'm realizing the difference. Burnett, for all of his issues in New York, has quite a few seasons with double-digit wins. Melky only has the .305 in KC and .346 in San Fran to show. In New York, I thought Melky had the best center field arm in baseball, but no where near having a bat!
With only a 50-game (2 months) suspension for first-time offenders abd no risk of having your guaranteed contract voided, is anyone surprised that baseball players continue to dope?
jazzcyclist wrote:With only a 50-game (2 months) suspension for first-time offenders abd no risk of having your guaranteed contract voided, is anyone surprised that baseball players continue to dope?
But they won't let you go to the Hall of Fame!
Seriously, you are right. By the way, I hear on ESPN that in some clubhouses these guys are claiming there are inspectors all the time, which I find hard to believe. With 30 teams, how many inspectors are there?
I saw a piece (Wall Street Journal?) about the players being traded to Toronto and the loss in net income due to the higher taxes in Canada. Not much for the smaller salaries, but a non-trivial (but not game-breaking) amount for the big ones. When negotiating a salary from scratch you can adjust but when traded, it just takes the listed salary to the other team.
26mi235 wrote:I saw a piece (Wall Street Journal?) about the players being traded to Toronto and the loss in net income due to the higher taxes in Canada. Not much for the smaller salaries, but a non-trivial (but not game-breaking) amount for the big ones. When negotiating a salary from scratch you can adjust but when traded, it just takes the listed salary to the other team.
