To you, my loyal readers, I present a brief scene. It’s a tale of fuzzy math, high prices and numbers that inexplicably make sense in the end.
Setting: Interior of a college dorm room. Me picks up The Boston Globe, peruses sports section.
Me: So, Mike Hampton is now an Atlanta Brave, getting paid big bucks by the Florida Marlins to step into the Braves rotation and try to keep their streak of 12 straight divisions titles intact.
Skeptic Me: Wait. Did you say Florida Marlins? I’m confused. Let me check the numbers.
Skeptic Me rips The Boston Globe out of Me’s hand, speed-reads Associated Press story likening Colorado Rockies-Florida Marlins-Atlanta Braves trade to corporate merger, does double-take when he gets to the part about the money.
Skeptic Me: Whoa! The Marlins are paying the Braves $30 million over the next three years so Hampton can play in Atlanta. Well, that’s weird I thought Major League Baseball was trying to curb ridiculous overspending. There’s no way commissioner Bud Selig, no matter how much he looks like Skeletor, would approve that trade.
Me: Actually, alternate voice of the writer, there is a way. You see, the trade is actually good for all three of the teams involved.
Skeptic Me rolls eyes, makes obscene gesture.
Me: Don’t be immature. Just do the math.
Begin Me’s arithmetical soliloquy.
First, the Rockies traded Mike Hampton, Juan Pierre and $6.5 million dollars to the Marlins in exchange for Preston Wilson, Charles Johnson, Vic Darensbourg and Pablo Ozuna. Then, the Marlins traded Hampton and $30 million to the Braves for Tim Spooneybarger and Ryan Baker.
First of all, we don’t need to bother talking about Darensbourg, Ozuna and Baker. They’re chump change in this deal.
The Rockies, if they had kept Hampton, would have had to pay him $63.5 million over the next three years and would still have him under contract for $43 million more in the three years after that. Instead, they will pay $21 million for his signing bonus and $6 million for a buyout option in addition to total payments of $6.5 million to the Marlins over the next three years and a $1 million contribution to his charitable foundation.
The other salary the Rockies got rid of is Pierre’s. The Rockies owed him $6.6 million at the time of the trade. So instead of Hampton and Pierre’s salaries, the Rockies have Wilson’s ($26 million over the next three years) and Johnson’s ($28 million over the next three years).
Get out your calculators. Without the trade, the Rockies would have owed the players they traded a grand total of $113.1 million. With the trade, they will pay $88.5 million, saving themselves $24.6 million.
The Marlins, without the trade, would have had to cover Wilson and Johnson ($54 million). With the trade, they get $6.5 million from the Rockies while paying the Braves $30 million and handling Pierre’s contract. End result: The Marlins are $23.9 million on the plus side, despite the fact that they could have gotten 30 Tim Spooneybargers for what they’re paying the Braves.
The Braves are the only team that is (kind of) adding salary a whopping $5.5 million over the next three years, with much more to pay after that time period. They won’t see the $30 million in the form of cash, but will see it in their ability to re-sign Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux. And they get a pitcher who could still be very good for less than the league salary average (about $2.4 million).
So you see, Skeptic Me, the math works out.
Skeptic Me wakes up from nap he took during Me’s soliloquy.
Skeptic Me: Uh … right. But what is this trade an indicator of?
Me: Well, by itself, it’s just an indicator of three teams looking to be frugal and to not be burdened with overpriced, overrated players. But when you combine that with the quiet free agent market and George Steinbrenner’s bizarre efforts to cut payroll, you’re looking at evidence that the new labor deal that just went into effect might actually work.
Skeptic Me: Right, like you can tell that in one off-season.
Me: Of course not. It will obviously take some time to determine for sure if the new agreement will completely fix the game, but the way the atmosphere of the current off-season differs from past off-seasons of big spending is promising. Also, the fact that MLB is close to reaching a deal that would have the Montreal Expos playing 20 games in Puerto Rico next season is a good sign the worldwide draft will actually take place in 2003 and will be a success. What other reason could MLB have for putting the Expos there?
Skeptic Me: What about goodwill?
Me: The league has had goodwill series before. They were all three or four game sets. The Puerto Rico proposal is for two 10 game stands.
Skeptic Me: Maybe the Expos will move to Puerto Rico next year.
Me: I doubt it because of the logistics. Puerto Rico is about 1,000 miles from the tip of Florida. How many teams will want to travel upwards of 1,000 miles to play three games?
Skeptic Me: You have a point. So it has to be the worldwide draft?
Me: Well, there’s an outside shot it’s one of the two reasons you already mentioned, but I have a feeling MLB is talking to Puerto Rico as practice for the international negotiations that will have to take place for a worldwide draft to occur and to be efficient and productive.
Skeptic Me: Have you given as much thought to what you’ll do when you graduate as you have about the reasons for playing baseball in Puerto Rico?
Me: No. Not really.
SHOUT, SHOUT, LET IT ALL OUT
This Saturday against Maine, Sean Fields didn’t have his best game and the Boston University fans let him know it, cheering wildly when he left the ice and Stephan Siwiec came on.
Terrier fans can scream and carry on all they want, but it doesn’t mean their reaction is warranted. If the BU defense had not been soft all night, two of the five goals Maine scored on Fields would not have gone in and the fans’ opinion of Fields would have been far different, I’m sure.
While we’re hanging around in the BU fandom, how about those ‘BC sucks’ chants Friday night? Now, I’m all for a good stanza of ‘BC sucks’ every now and then, but Friday night, they were ubiquitous like Shawn Kemp’s illegitimate kids and they lost their meaning and intensity. Also, I’m not so proud to say I distinctly heard a chant of ‘F BC’ coming from Section 8 during the first period.
Classy, eh?
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