KRod: The man, the myth, the legend

Immediately following the Some-Star Game last night, the Brewers acquired Francisco Rodriguez and cash in a trade for 2 players to be named later. Let's break this down a little bit shall we?

First of all, let's talk about the pieces.

KRod may not be in the prime of his career, but he is still a good reliever and will be an upgrade to our current bullpen, the biggest question is whether he is actually comfortable with coming in to a set up role. Sometimes closers, especially ones who are put there unwillingly, have issues with moving to that 8th inning slot. His contract is quite large, but the Mets ate 5 million of it in the trade and he has around another 5 million left for the rest of the year, so that will be a wash for this year and they will be able to buy out his contract at the end of the year for 3.5 million. There is a vesting clause for next year that I will talk about more in depth later.

The Brewers are sending over 2 players to be named at a later date. These are always fun guessing games for commenters and bloggers trying to speculate who might be available. Apparently the list is of 5 players and according to comments by Doug Melvin, none of those players would be considered top prospects in our farm system. It has also been said that the quality of these players will somewhat depend on how well Rodriquez performs for the remainder of the year. Hopefully that means the Mets were just looking to dump KRod's contract and didn't really care who they got back, they just wanted some bodies.

KRod just recently switched his agent to Scott Boras, on Monday in fact. With this switch came these immediate comments from Boras; “Francisco Rodriguez is a historic closer, he's not going anywhere to be a setup man.” and “Closers don't make good setup men. Does anyone want an unhappy setup man in their clubhouse?” Now one could read those comments and nod along and say, damn, KRod's gonna blow up in Milwaukee. But I'll take a different approach and it involves the little vested option for next year.

In KRod's contract, it states that if he finishes(not necessarily saves) 55 games this year, he will be vested for the next year at a salary of around 17 and a half million dollars. He has currently finished 34 games, so 21 to go. That will not happen. There is no way the Brewers will be saddled with that kind of money next for Francisco Rodriguez. This couldn't be happier news for Scott Boras and there's a reason KRod was sent to a team like the Brewers. You see, those quotes were made on Monday before this trade and after the announcement that Boras would be his agent, he knew the Mets wanted off the hook for that almost 18 million dollar vesting and that there was a very real chance they took him off his 9th inning duties if they couldn't move him. This was a hedge move by Boras, he would publicly remind the Mets that if they did decide to go this route, he could and would tell his client to shit the bed right then and there. Everyone else in the league would become blatantly aware of why KRod performed so poorly and it was because the Mets just screwed him out of 18 million. What does Boras have to gain from getting KRod out of that vesting? Well that's pretty obvious, Boras didn't negotiate this contract so he won't see a dime of the money and Scott Boras is not a man that works hard to get someone else paid.

For this reason alone, I think you will see a very happy and a very cooperative Francisco Rodriguez coming into the 8th inning and pitching as well as he can for the Brewers. A good showing will remind clubs next year that he can still close and that he is still under 30 and deserves a big 5 year contract. This will of course be a foolish contract. Rodriguez being the set up man for the remainder of the year also plays right into Boras' hands and you can bet this trade has made him very happy.

I like this trade for the Brewers, it's very little risk long term even if it is more of a psychological gain than an actual performance boost to our bullpen. We've made the first move in the NL Central and now the eyes will be on the Cardinals, Red and Pirates to match or shuffle forward.

Now we just need a new shortstop, wonder what JJ Hardy's doing in Baltimore?

Mota

I'd love to say we should cut the son of a bitch right now, but he's due 3.2 mill, at least this is the last year of his contract. Which by the way was a stellar signing by the Mets. 2 years, 5 million, Mota spent 50 games last season on suspension and only had to pitch well for 20 games this year to cash in on a fat 5 spot. I say we make him start tomorrow and pitch him until his arm falls off, that way ned yost will never again be tempted to put him in a game again when we are within 10 runs, down or up.

Complaining About a Fake Team

I had a ridiculous thing happen to me in fantasy baseball last night that I think warrants wasting space on the Internet, to match the waste I caused in my brother's brain as I bitched about when it happened last night.



It seems that the Seattle Mariners played the New York Mets in an interleague game last night. Normally, I could give a fuck less. Also typically, I don't even check to see what individual players do for me in fantasy baseball because they play about 400 games and the stats are added up every day for a week. Also there are a shitload of players on the team. I just usually change my lineup semi-daily, and look at the overall score. I'll give a "huh" when they show a score on SportsCenter and I see that Jacoby Ellsbury went 4-5, 2 2B, 3 SB or some shit. ANYWAYS (sorry, Chuck), like I said, the Mets played the Mariners last night, and I had that shitty situation where I had two starting pitchers matching up. King Felix Hernandez was going against Johan Santana. So apparently, King Felix comes up to bat in the 2nd with the bases loaded against Johan. King Felix was 1-8 with 6K's in his career, and Johan is quite possibly a hall of fame pitcher. Naturally, King Felix hits a fucking granny, which by the way was the first one by an AL pitcher in 37 fucking years. Normally, a fantasy player on my team hitting a granny is super-fantastic. However, hitting stats for pitchers don't count (which I suppose makes sense because the average pitcher hits like .175, and would change the relative values of AL pitchers). But it counts against your pitcher when he fucks up. SO, I got doubly fucked because my granny didn't count for me, but it did count against me.

End of Rant

Sports Illustrated's Stadium Rankings

Recently Sports Illustrated released a fan voting based ranking of all major league ballparks.





Now I'm not going to complain too much about the rankings because they put Miller Park at second, but I found that to be a little ridiculous. I could see Miller being in the top ten, but second seems to be a bit much.

The first category is affordability which was given to the Kansas City Royals. This seems plausible, the Royals have been terrible for quite some time and their stadium is over 30 years old, so they probably have to give those tickets away. Surprise surprise the Red Sox and Yankees were ranked last for affordability, I guess dropping 300 million a year on salaries requires you to generate higher revenue from your ticket sales.

The next category is food, the Brewers were ranked first because everyone loves brats! It seems a lot of comments about the food also revolved around the stadium's "secret special sauce". If a sauce has the words secret or special in it, I tend to be wary. For some reason the Yankees and Mets are in last place, which might be impossible seeing as how they are in New York.

Team quality places the Tigers as number one. I guess that's a tough vote to call, there's actually been a decent amount of parity in the MLB for the last few years.

Tradition's top four teams are the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Cubs and the Dodgers. That seems about right, all of those teams have been around for over a century.

Atmosphere can be a tough call. The rankings have the Mariners ranked first and the Marlins last. I think what it really boils down to with atmosphere is when the team's stadium was built. Case in point, they put the Twins down at 29th. I've been to a few games at the big inflatable toilet, it's really not that bad. I think the fans have made it out to be worse than it is because of the dome's age and the fact that they have a new stadium waiting for them in two years.

The Cardinals of St Louis have been voted the fans with the highest "IQ". I've seen people from Missoura, I'm not that impressed with their intelligence. How do you even quantify this? The fans here really seem to know what they're talking about when they are sitting in the stands? What if you're just really unlucky and always get stuck next to the same drunken asshole that can barely even form words, let alone coherent thoughts? If you've been to a weekend game you know there's a very realistic chance of this happening. The picture I used in the collage is of apparently "famous" fans of the Cardinals...

Once again the Cards get the nod for hospitality. What I found fishy about this ranking is that the Royals were number two. I don't know what goes on down in Missoura during baseball games, but apparently its the greatest experience for a visiting fan in the history of the known world.

The Brewers are first for promotions. I credit this 1000% to the sausage races. After Randall Simon gave the sausage runners national media stardom, they haven't had time to look back. Everyone loves it, and the fact that they are sausages just speaks volumes about what we rank as important in the state of Wisconsin. The Red Sox rank dead last in promotions, I'm assuming the used Manny Ramirez batting helmet give away night didn't go over as well as the execs had planned.

Traffic? The White Sox got some love for this, but I really have no opinion about traffic for these games. I'm assuming the shittier your team is, the less fans go there and the better the traffic is around your stadium. While the White Sox aren't that shitty, they are definitely the Eli Manning to the Cubs Peyton in Chicago.

Finally we have the category of neighborhood, which surprisingly enough the Padres won! Gee, I wonder who would complain about an area that's always 75 degrees and has beautiful beaches all along the city. I'm sure the Marlins are dead last because either A)Their fans just checked poor for all the answers in the survey because they hate the way the Marlins are run or B) Hurricanes are not conducive to happy tailgating.

The accuracy of this fan poll is probably directly related to the demographic base of the people who actually bothered to fill it out, so I would take it with a grain of salt. However for the next year, Brewers fans can say that Miller Park is the second best stadium in all of baseball!