The SoapBoxers

My fantasy draft is under way!

First, a bit of background for those of you who aren’t familiar with my baseball league.  I run one of the more interesting fantasy leagues you’ll encounter.  It’s called the Alphabet Soup League, and the main twist is that you can’t start two players from the same letter of the alphabet (last name).  If you have Holliday and Halladay, one of them must sit.

The draft is also a bit odd.  The ten participants are spread across six cities in four states (from New York to Colorado), so a live draft is out.  An automated draft is also not feasible, because player valuations are changed dramatically by their letter group.  Mike Napoli, the power hitting catcher from the shallow letter N, is arguably a better option than Albert Pujols.

Instead of a normal draft, each player is assigned two letters (or a group of shallow letters) in each of ten “rounds”.  If you have T and M, for example, you are the only person who can pick players with last names beginning in T and M during this round.  This allows the draft to be conducted by email, without forcing anyone to wait on anyone else (regardless of what the guy with C and F does, you are still drawing from the same pool of players – T and M).  I always announce my picks for the round before the round begins, so that I can’t use knowledge of other people’s picks to my advantage.

With further ado, a look inside Kosmo’s draft so far.

Round 1 

I have the latters W and G.  W is a no brainer.  I go with Baltimore catcher Matt Wieters.  Position scarcity can be an even bigger problem in this league than other leagues, since you can’t just make a position a priority and draft a player from that positon.  You have to have a good letter for that position.  Many of the best catchers are bunched up in M (quirk of fate), so the selection of catchers at most other positions is pretty weak.  I always try to get a catcher, shortstop, and second baseman early, before the talent drops off.

G was a harder choice.  I do ike Zach Greinke quite a bit, and he rebounded quite well after a slow start in 2011 … and I rarely pick a first baseman so early, since there are a bunch of sluggers available.  Still, I love the Super Marioesque eyebrows of Adrian Gonzalez, and think that he’s a safe bet to repeat his 2011 numbers – and probably even improve his home run totals.  His numbers were suppressed by PETCO for many years, but this guy is a tremendous player.

Round 2

I have K and the letter group (Q, U, X, Y, Z) in round 2.  I’m looking to fill the 2B and 3B spots here.  Ian Kinsler and Chase Utley are potentials for 2B and Michael Young and Kevin Youkilis are the options at 3B.  I end up simply taking the younger player in each case, hoping that younger means less susceptible to injury.  Ian Kinsler is my 2B and Kevin Youkilis is my 3B.

Round 3

This is where the draft gets interesting for me.  I have the letters S and N.  S is a great letter, and the obvious pick for me is Marco Scutaro.  As the shortstop for Boston last year, he retains that eligibility this year, and I still need a shortstop.  Plus, Scoots will be the second baseball for the Rockies this year, giving him eligibility at a second position.  And did I mention that Coors Field is a great hitter’s park?

So, naturally, I pick Cleveland catcher Carlos “Sweet Music” Santana.  Why?  More about this later.

N is a shallow letter, and an easier pick.  Joe Nathan was signed by the Rangers to be their closer.  Big money means he’ll get every chance to keep the job, even with former stud closer Neftali Feliz toiling in the bullpen.

Round 4

I get P and D for round 4.  There are some so-so shortstops available, but I hold off.  I’m rolling the dice that Asdrubal Cabrera or Starlin Castro will drop to me in the sixth.  That’s a pretty safe bet, and if both those guys are off the board, there will be some stud players available that I can grab and spin in a trade.  I’m not usually a riverboat gambler when it comes to my shortstop, but I think the payoff is worth it this time.  I take Mets frst baseman Ike Davis.  The fences are coming in at Citi Field this year, which should help Davis.

P also has a decent SS on the board in Jhonny Peralta.  There are also pitchers Michael Pineda, David Price, Rick Porcello, and J.J. Putz, just to name a few.  However, I have officially turned the bastard switch at this point … my choice is Buster Posey.  At this point, most of the others should realize that I’m attempting to corner the market on quality offensive catchers.  A couple of teams are going to be stuck with horrible hitters behind the plate, and this should put me in a good trade position in the trade market.

Check back later for an update on my draft.

Today is Super Tuesday, and the four leading Republican candidates are fighting for delegates.  Mitt Romney is favored in some states, Rick Santorum in others, Gingrich expects to win in Georgia (he represented the state in congress), and Paul might even have a shot in one state (North Dakota).

Then we come to Virginia.  Only two candidates are on the ballot there – Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.  It’s expected that Romney will win convincingly.  If Santorum and/or Gingrich were on the ballot, it might be a different story.

Critics of Virginia’s primary rules call them onerous.  Signatures must be collected be residents of the state (no out-of-state staffers), ten thousand valid signatures must be collected, and there must be four hundred signatures from each district.

Rick Santorum failed to get ten thousand raw signatures, so his case to get on the ballot is a non-starter.

Gingrich apparently fell short after some signatures were declared invalid.  It has been mentioned that in previous elections, the validity of the signatures was never checked – anyone who turned in ten thousand signatures got on the ballot.  While that’s interest, there’s not logical reason why such a bad practice should be continued.  If the rules say ten thousand valid signatures, then it only makes sense that the validity of the signatures be checked.

The final hurdle to jump through is to ensure that you have four hundred signatures from each of the eleven congressional districts.  The “problem” this year was that there was redistricting due to the results of the 2010 census – and that the requirement referred to the new districts, which were non-existent when the signature-gathering began.  However, this isn’t the first time that redistricting has occurred – district boundaries change after every census.  There are a few relatively straightforward ways to mitigate this requirement.

Signature Gathering Tips:

Gather signatures in every reasonably sized city in the state.  While redistricting might shift a few cities around, all of the new districts are going to have at least a few decent sized cities.

Do extra credit extra.  Don’t stop when you’ve hit 401 signatures from each district.  If you far exceed the required numbers, you’ll less likely to get the number knocked below the threshold when invalid signatures are tossed.

If your state is reducing the number of districts, there’s a really easy solution.  Focus your efforts on the physical center of each district.  While the  borders are going to shift a bit, the physical center of most districts should remain somewhere within the district (barring outright right gerrymandering).  Situations where a state gains districts is more difficult, as the new district might be a combination of the fringes of several old districts.

Are the requirements to get on the ballot onerous?  There are eight million residents of Virginia.  Ten thousand signatures means that one in 800 residents of the state signed your petition.  Each congressional districts contains about 700,000 people … meaning that the requirement of four hundred signatures from each district would necessitate signatures from one out of ever 1500 people in a particular congressional district.

If you can’t reach such a minimal level of support, maybe you’re not ready for prime time.  It’s true it’s hard to get people to turn out to vote in primaries, but it’s the candidate’s responsibility to energize the supporters!

And here’s the final reason why I am not concerned with Virginia’s rules.  The primaries are not a government election, but a party election.  Let the parties decide how they want to choose the candidates, and let the parties decide what’s necessary to get onto the ballot.  Don’t like how they do it?  Get into a leadership position and change it – or form your own party.

When I logged onto Facebook on Thursday evening, two of my friends has posted a link to an article proclaiming the great news.  Apple was going to bring 700,000 jobs to America – jobs that are now down by workers overseas (mostly in China).

The grand plan was to drop 70,000 on each of ten cities spread throughout the country.  By the end of 2013, all 700,000 jobs would be staffed.  Apple, a company that was fighting for its very existence just 15 years ago, would breath life into the economy and slash the unemployment rate from 8.3% to 7.8% – a tremendous amount of impact from just one company.

The news made sense for a few reasons:

• Apple’s never been one to follow the lead of other companies, often opting for unconventional paths.  Not only that, but with CEO Tim Cook out of the shadow of Steve Jobs, maybe Cook would make some decisions that Steve wouldn’t have.
• Apple has around $100 billion in cash and has a market capitalization in excess of a half trillion dollars.  That’s not a typo. Apple is the most valuable company in the world – and it’s not particularly close.  Oil giant Exxon Mobil trails by a hundred billion dollars – meaning that it is worth 20% less than Apple.  If Apple wanted to employ 700,000 workers in the US, it could afford to.
• Finally, Apple has been under fire for the working conditions at FoxConn, one of its major partners.  FoxConn is a large company that builds components for a lot of tech industry giants, but Apple has been the company taking the most heat.

I wasn’t born yesterday, however, so I hit Google and search for the news on other sites.  Nobody else was running the story.  That seemed odd.  Heck, Apple’s own site didn’t mention it.

Gotcha

Then I read the article more closely.  Really, 700,000 jobs by the end of 2013?  Was it even possibly to get factories built in that amount of time?  Sure, Apple could probably take over the facilities of some bankrupt companies and retrofit the facilities, but that still seems like a pretty aggressive timeline.

And the quote from the Chamber of Commerce seems a bit out of line:

“Just because corporations get the rights of American citizens doesn’t mean they should be burdened by the same responsibilities,” the statement said. “For example, everyone knows people can’t kill people — but sometimes job creators like corporations need to be able to kill people, as the Supreme Court is working on right now.”

So I look at the subject tags.  Yes, one of them was “satire”.  And in the comment, writer Shane Finnegan admitted that this was indeed a satirical piece.  And why not?  It’s his job to write satire for the Ocean Beach Rag.

Well played, Shane.

But why not?

Why doesn’t Apple, or some other tech company, bring jobs back to America?  It’s all about the money, of course.  Labor in China is far cheaper than in the United States, and there’s no hiding the fact that it’s also more expensive to comply with US safety regulations.

If there is ever a flood of manufacturing jobs back into the United States, tech companies will probably be the last ones to the party.  Why?  Because computers, TVs, and smart phones have a very high cost:weight ratio.  The cost of shipping an iPhone or a MacBook Pro from China is a tiny percentage of the cost of the item, so it’s really not that expensive to ship them.  Ramen noodles, on the other hand, have a low cost:weight ratio, so shipping them thousands of miles would be relatively expensive, percentage-wise.

At this point, there’s not much incentive for companies to bring jobs back to the US.  Sure, it’s what the citizens want, but the higher labor costs would make a company’s products much more expensive than those of their competitors.  At this point, I don’t see this changing at an point in the future, unless the government decides to make it prohibitively expensive to import the finished products.

I love to read, but it often comes in fits and starts, generally dependent on how easily my kids go to bed (which directly affects the amount of free time I have).  I’ve been doing a bit more reading lately, and have purchased  fair number of books lately.  Here’s a quick rundown of a few.

I’ve been buying almost exclusively for my Kindle lately … great little device.
 

 

11/22/63 by Stephen King

I really enjoy King’s writing, but my favorite books of his are the ones he writes outside of the horror genre.  Perhaps my all-time favorite is Apt Pupil, although Shawshank Redemption is also quite good.  FYI: you can find both of these novellas in King collection Different Seasons.  Buy it.  Now.

In 11/22/63, the protagonist, Jake Epping (current day resident), receives a call from the owner of his favorite greasy spoon.  The guy has found a portal into the past.  He’s become too sick to take advantage of it, but wants Jake to go into the portal and save the life of John F. Kennedy.  I’m 20% of the way into this book and loving every page so far.  Really nothing supernatural about it, aside from the whole aspects of time travel (and I’m a sucker for a good time travel novel).  I’m beginning to have some thoughts about a few characters in the book and might have an idea about a sub-plot that might develop, but it’s far too early to tell if I’m right or wrong.
 

Enough Rope by Lawrence Block

Enough Rope is an omnibus of short stories by mystery grandmaster Lawrence Block.  The wheels on the omnibus do indeed go round and round.  The stories include popular Block characters Bernie Rhodenbarr, Matt Scudder, Keller, Tanner, and Chip Harrison, as well as dozens of other stories.  It’s nearly 900 pages in hardcover.

I’ve actually talked about the book before.  Probably more than once.  Until recently, it held a fairly unique distinction of being one of just a handful of books that I owned in paperback and hardcover.

Now, it is the only book that I own in three formats.  I finally broke down and bought the Kindle edition.  Yeah, it’s that good.
 

 

What it Was by George Pelecanos

With several dozen (eh, probably as many as a hundred) books in my “yet to be read” queue, I buy a book from an author I had never heard of before.  I must have had a very good reason for doing that, right?

Well, yeah.  Lawrence Block told me to.  Here’s a pro tip: if you want me to buy your book, have Lawrence Block say something nice about it.

Also, the pre-order price was just 99 cents (and as of Feb 28, 2012, it’s at that price again).  I’ll gamble a dollar on an unfamiliar author.

Like 11/22/63, What it Was is also set in the past (1970s), but via the normal method (by having the author set in in that period) rather than time travel.
 

A Changed Man by Martin Kelly

Ok, I’ll be honest with you on this one. I didn’t actually buy this book.  I have a publisher’s copy, since I’m the publisher.  As the regular readers know, Martin is a longtime writer for this site.  A few years ago, he knocked out A Changed Man during the month long NaNoWriMo event.  He’s been refining it ever since.  Last week, he flipped me the Word file, and a few days later, it had been Kindleized.

The book is about how a man reclaims his life after being involved in a serious accident.  He was drunk and the other driver died.  I’m not very far in yet (Martin’s going head to head with 11/22/63, and Stephen King’s a tough draw in the “books Kosmo is reading” bracket), but I like what I’ve read so far.  I’m definitely wondering why the DA dropped the charges, though.  I’m sure there’s a reason, and look forward to finding the answer and exploring more about John Lickler’s life.
 

 

OK, now let’s turn the tables.  Which books have YOU bought lately  – and what are you currently reading?

Image via CrunchBase

Regular visitors to The Soap Boxers have probably noticed  changes in the past week.  Yes, we’ve become more image conscious.  I’ve often wanted to add images to articles (because they give articles an extra bit of flair), but finding royalty-free images for every article seemed like an impossible undertaking, and using images without permission is a no-no.  What to do, then?

Enter Zemanta

Our friend Elizabeth West had a lot of her images get wiped out and needed to replace many of them.  Commenter Arlee Bird of Tossing It Out recommended the WordPress plug-in Zemanta.  Always intrigued by software with strange names, I decided to give it a short – I added Zemanta to my WordPress installation.

How does it work?

Welcome to Elizabeth, West Virginia (Photo credit: J. Stephen Conn)

Zemanta uses the text of the article to find images that might be appropriate.  Sometimes the choices are spot on.  Other times, you get images like the one you see on the right.  Sure, we mention Elizabeth in this article, but not that Elizabeth.

Don’t worry – if Zemanta doesn’t automatically find an image you like, you can change the search criteria and have it try again.  I can usually find something I like within a  minute or two.  Once you find an image, you can choose to justify it left, center, right and also choose the size (small, medium, large, or the custom option which allows you to specify the width.

Where do the images come from?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Over time, you’ll probably notice that a lot of the images are from Wikipedia.  This is not by accident.  A basic rule of Wikipedia is that only royalty-free images can be used.  So when Zemanta plucks an image from Wikipedia, it knows that the images is OK to use.

If Zemanta was just pulling from Wikipedia, it’d be a time saver, but not a big deal.  But Zemanta doesn’t stop there.  It also finds images that can be used, but with certain restrictions.  The restriction that I’ve seen is that a small version of the image can be used, as long as there is a link back to the originating site.  I see this as a win-win.  Bloggers get access to some cool images they might not otherwise have access to – such as this cool image of new Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish.

There’s more

There’s more to Zemanta than just images.  You can use it to automatically find related articles, and Zemanta will also suggest “tags” to add to the article and in-text links to add.  There’s also some Amazon affiliate integration, although I haven’t figured out exactly how that works yet. 

Image via Wikipedia

How much does it cost?

Like much software on the internet, Zemanta is free. 

Naturally, this begs the question of how they make any money.  I don’t know the internal workings of the organization, but I’ve spotted a couple of their profit-making opportunities.

You can opt to use Zemanta’s Amazon Associates account if you don’t have your own Amazon Associates account.  This allows Zemanta to get a commission on sales derived from your links.

Some of the ink-text links are marked as “promoted”.  Promoted simply means the site’s owner is paying Zemanta for suggesting their site as a link.  While I don’t use the in-text links myself, I really haven’t seen anything glaringly inappropriate.  The sites are always related to the actual topic, it’s just that by using the promoted link you might link to news site A instead of news site B.

It’s worth noting that it would be very difficult for an experienced WordPress user to accidentally activate any of these options.  You have to actually take an action to trigger them. 

Verdict 

At this point, I’m only using a subset of the features that Zemanta offers.  Nonetheless, I’d recommend Zemanta just on what I’ve seem so far.  It’s free, and it’s easy to use.  While it sometimes doesn’t pre-populate exactly what you’re looking for, it has a pretty good initial success rate.

Am I going to go back and Zemantafy every article on the site.  Good lord, no.  There are more than 1000 articles.  I did take a bit of time to update the most popular articles and also add images to many of the articles from the last week.

Hopefully, this will make the articles look more attractive and will result in repeat business for The Soap Boxers.

This story originally ran on January 8, 2010.  As NASCAR season begins once again, I’ve opted to re-run it.  Enjoy.

The radio crackled to life as her spotter’s voice filled the car. “Debris on the track. Stay high and prepare for caution.”

A moment later, the crew chief’s voice came over the radio. “Yellow is out. Come in to the pits.”

“Two and fuel?” asked Sarah.

“You got it. Left sides and a splash of fuel.”

A moment later, caution was out on the racetrack and Sarah Churchill eased the #14 car into her stall on pit road. The tire changers quickly replaced the worn left side tires while the the fuel was topped off. Sarah charged out of her stall seconds later and found herself jockeying for position as she raced off pit road.

The pit strategy had paid off in the short term. Most of the field had opted to change all four tires, allowing Sarah to improve her position from fifteenth to fifth. Two of the cars ahead of her had made a quick splash and dash – just fuel, no new rubber. James Jackson had chosen a pit strategy identical to Sarah’s and had simply beaten her off pit road.

The other car ahead of her had chosen to stay on the track during the caution and had inherited the lead. It was no surprise that this driver was Ron Barth. The legendary driver was the last of a dying breed who threw caution to the wind and raced for wins rather than racing for championship points. Sarah thought that Barth was probably a lap or two short on fuel, but wasn’t taking this for granted. Many times in the course of his career, Barth had picked up wins while his opponents patiently waited for his tank to run dry. Barth was the king of fuel conservation.

Behind Sarah was a mixed bag – most of the drivers had changed all four tires, but a handful had chosen to change two. This was the classic choice between track position and tire wear. Sarah was confident that her fresh left tires would allow her to run down the drivers who had taken fuel only, but she had to hold off the drivers in her rear view mirror who were sporting four new tires on their cars.

The green flag waved, and Ron Barth timed it perfectly, jumping out to sizable lead over the second place car. The car in front of Sarah missed a gear during the restart, and Sarah flew past him and into fourth place.

James Jackson was riding the bumper of Gordon Jeffries, trying to find a way around the #24 car. Jeffries was having none of it, blocking Jackson’s every move. Gordon Jeffires could run three wide when he was the only car on the track. Their cat and mouse game slowed their racing speed and allow Sarah to creep on them. They were intently focused on their duel and seemed oblivious to her presence.

Jackson made another move for the lead, trying to get past Jeffries at the top of the track. As Jeffries went high to block, Sarah drove her Chevy down to the bottom of the track. By the time Jeffries noticed, it was too late to block her – Sarah was into the lead. Jeffries took out his frustration on Jackson, banging fenders with the defending champ. Jackson made a great save to avoid making contact with the wall.

Sarah’s car kissed the bottom of the track as she tried to put distance between her car and those of Jeffries and Jackson. All that stood between her and her first big win was the legendary Ron Barth – the man who taught her everything she knew about racing. Her mentor – and more importantly, her father.

Sarah knew that she couldn’t yet out-race her father on the track. She needed to force him to run out of fuel. First, she needed to catch him. Sarah set her mind to catching him, and began driving an aggressive style that bordered on dangerous. She drove deep into the corners before easing up on the throttle. This allowed her to maintain a lot of speed through the corner, but also greatly increased the risk of a crash.

The strategy paid off, and six laps later, Sarah was on the bumper of Ron Barth. Sarah’s aggressive driving had put significant distance between herself and the rest of the pack. It was a two driver race at this point.

The safe route for Ron Barth would have been to ease off, hand over the lead, and go home in second place. He was running dangerously low on fuel and his worn tires were inferior to Sarah’s. The riverboat gambler refused to yield, however. He aggressively blocked Sarah as she tried to maneuver past him.

As the white flag waved for the final lap, Ron had a one car length lead over Sarah. As he rounded the final turn, his engine hiccuped as his car’s fuel pressure dropped precipitously. Sarah raced past him to pick up her first win at the highest level of auto racing.

Sarah smiled at the irony of beating her father on this, Father’s Day. He would be so proud.

As you probably know, Jeremy Lin has been taking the NBA by storm lately.  He even managed to get me to write an article about him last week.  Considering that I’ve very apathetic about the NBA for nearly twenty years, that’s a pretty big accomplishment.

On Friday night, the seven game winning streak of the Knicks was snapped.  Lin’s nine turnovers – eight in the first half – didn’t help New York’s chance.  He’d turned the ball over eight times in a game two other times, and would finish with seven in Sunday’s game (six in the second half), and while the turnovers have brought some negative press in otherwise glowing media reports of his exploits, it was different on Friday night because the Knicks lost.

On Saturday morning, I noticed a headline on ESPN.  They were apologizing for a racist Lin-related headline that had appeared on their mobile site for a half hour, beginning at 2:30 AM.  By Sunday, they had upped the ante and apologized for thee incidents.  In addition to the headline, an ESPNews anchor had said something inappropriate, as had a commentator on a radio show.

ESPN took decisive action.  While the commentator was not an employee (and thus out of their reach) the anchor and the headline guy were employees.  The anchor was suspended for 30 days … and the headline guy was fired.  ESPN (smartly) did not repeat the comment.

This made me very curiously.  I had heard all kinds of Lin-related comments (Linsanity, etc) could could not figure out how to turn “Lin” into a racist term.  So I hit Google.

Chink in the Armor

Yeah, that was the headline.  It was referring to Lin’s propensity to turn the ball over – which is fine – but used a racist term to do it.

This is a guy who was born in the United States, graduated from arguably the most prestigious college in the country (Harvard), and played the one professional sport that was completely invented by an American (as opposed to evolving from other sports).

And still, in 2012, some people see him as simply a “chink”?  I applaud ESPN for taking action.  Racism has no place in society.  The word of sports is predicated upon the concept of a meritocracy.  If you shoot a free throw, the basket doesn’t care about your race – but simply whether your aim is true.  We should judge athletes by their stats, and not the color of their skin.  And that ideal should apply off the playing field a well – judging others by their accomplishments and not their gender, race, religion, age, or sexual orientation.
 

 

Baseball is just around the corner.  Pitchers and catchers will report to spring training in a few days.  I’ve been looking for a copy of the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) ever since it was announced that an agreement had been reached.  I still can’t find one, but there is a downloadable summary that does give a few more details.  I gave my thoughts on the new CBA a few months ago, but here’s an update version based on the details in the summary document.  Some of this article will rehash the details of my previous article, but there’s also some new content in this article.

Two wild card teams per league – I hate, hate, hate this idea.  One of the things I love about baseball is that it’s very hard to make the playoff.  Currently, just 8 of the 30 teams make it.  I also hate the one game “coin flip round” of the playoffs, because one game is a very poor judge of which team is better.

Free agency – MLB is finally dropping the Elias rating system for free agents.  This was an incredibly flawed system.  Among other things, one of the rankings for catchers was related to the number of putouts.  A catcher is awarded a putout on a strikeout by the pitcher … so a catcher on a team with a dominant pitching staff would see his ranking artificially inflated.  Stats like runs and RBI – heavily dependent on the players around you – were also included, and there was no attempt to normalize statistics for the player’s park.

Additionally, an older, quickly fading player could be a Type A free agent and scare off potentially suitors because of the fact that they’d lose a top pick to sign him (the Braves lost a 1st round pick to the Mets when they signed an aging Tom Glavine.  The Mets used the pick to draft Ike Davis).

The new systems awards compensation when a team offers a pending free agent a one year contract worth the average of the top 125 salaries.  In other words, you have to demonstrate the player’s value to your team – by putting your money where your mouth is – before being awarded compensation.  (Note: under the old system, a team had to offer arbitration to  a player, and have the player decline the offer, in order to be eligible for compensation.)

Draft bonuses –  My opinion is that a true commissioner should be an unbiased arbiter between the owners and the players.  Bud Selig has instead become merely the president of the owner’s group.  For years, the commissioner’s office has recommended draft bonus amounts for each slot in the draft.  I’ve always chafed at this, because I feel that the free market is a better way to handle this.  Beginning this year. there will actually be penalties for going above slot.  There will be an amount assigned to each team, based on where their picks fall.  This is the amount that can be signed on picks from the first 10 rounds.  Exceed this amount by 5%, and you start losing draft picks.  If you exceed the amount by 15%,  and you lose 1st round picks in the next two drafts.

What baseball is trying to do is avoid having teams with lots of cash to spend (Yankees) have player drop to them because of signability concerns.  The core problem here is that teams can’t maximize that value of a pick by trading it.  Eli Manning didn’t want to play for the San Diego Chargers.  Did the Chargers just skip him because of signability concerns and grab the next player?  No, they drafted him and immediately traded his rights.  This can’t be done in baseball.

If draft bonuses are going to be capped, then I think it makes sense to reduce the amount of time a player is under a team’s control (currently at least six years).

I think this can have a real impact on dual sports athletes.  These players often fall in the draft because a team is taking a risk that they won’t sign, or will choose their other sport over baseball (case in point: Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson has announced that he is choosing the NFL over baseball).  If often takes extra money to get these players to commit to baseball full-time.

A similar system will be in place for signing of international amateur free agents (but not international professionals, such as Yu Darvish).

The top 200 draft prospects and top 100 international amateur free agents will also be subject to pre-draft drug testing and a pre-draft medical program.  The medical program should not be overlooked – this may allow teams to spot undiagnosed medical conditions that could affect a player’s ability to succeed at the major league level.

Competitive balance lottery – Teams that are in the ten smallest markets and teams that have the ten lowest revenues will be entered into a competitive balance lottery.  There’s certain to be a lot of overlap in this group, so I’m guessing this will usually be 12-15 teams.  A team’s chance of winning a lottery picks is based on their winning percentage (I assume that the teams with the worst records will have the best odds).  There will be six lottery picks between the first and second rounds.  The non-winners are put into a second lottery for picks between the second and third round.

I’m not sure if post-season revenue is included in the calculation or not.  If post-season revenue is included, you might see a team drop out of the lottery by winning a few games down the stretch in October.  Conversely, you might see some teams attempt to limit their late season revenue in order to get into the lottery.

As a fan of a small market team (Rockies), I’m not a fan of this idea.  A billionaire owner (Mark Cuban, for example) could also turn this idea on its head by purchasing a small market team, grabbing lottery picks as birthright of being a small market team, and then spending freely in free agency.  Basically, he could build the Royals into a better version of the Yankees.

Is there anything at all I like about the competitive balance lottery?  Sure.  You can trade these picks – that’s a step in the right direction.

Do you have any new thoughts on the new CBA?

Are you ready for baseball?

Not getting much bench time these days. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I haven’t followed the NBA much since Magic.  I don’t mean the Orlando Magic, even the vintage variety with Shaquille O’Neal tearing down baskets (literally).  I mean Magic Johnson, who retired (for the first time) nearly twenty years ago.

Since then, I followed Isiah Thomas and the bad boy Pistons for a while, and then followed Alonzo Mourning for pretty much the duration of his career.  But my interest in the NBA was in a gradual decline and dropped to almost zero by the time Alonzo retired.

After all these years, I once again have an interest in the NBA.  Not because of LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, but because of Jeremy Lin.  I’m getting live in-game updates of Knicks games.  The Knicks.  I’ve never been a fan of the Knicks, and they have often been on my “hated teams” list.

As a high school player, Lin was the player of the year in his state.  His state wasn’t Iowa, Idaho, or Montana.  It was California.  The most populous state in the nation.  And yet, the scholarship offers didn’t come  No interest from his dream school, UCLA.  No interest from hometown school Stanford.  So Lin packed his bags and traveled cross-country to his fallback school.

When was the last time you heard Harvard referred to as a fallback school?  But for Lin – talented both on the court and in the classroom, Harvard wasn’t where he wanted to be.  He wanting to be banging bodies with the hoops stars at the big schools, proving his mettle on the big stage.  Instead, he became a big fish in a small pond, starring for Harvard – and facing racist commends from opposing crowds and at least one opposing player.

The Harvard grad couldn’t find a job immediately after graduation.  He finally latched on with the Golden State Warriors in 2010 and played sparingly.  He was waived before this season began and claimed by the Rockets, who had him for twelve days before waiving him themselves.  Then the Knicks gave the Jeremy Lin carousel a spin.

Last year, Lin played a total of 284 minutes and scored 76 points.  Prior to February 4, Lin had played a total of 43 minutes this year and scored 27 points.  Then came the Linsanity. Crippled by injuries and running out of players, the Knicks were forced to play Lin. The results:

He sealed the Feb 11 game from the free throw line (after a lackluster second half performance) and won last night’s game in dramatic fashion by drilling a three pointer with less than a second to spare.  In addition to skills, the guy has ice in his veins.  He’s still a bit turnover-prone, but I’d expect those numbers to come down a bit when he gets used to the game a bit more.  And the most important statistic of all?  The Knicks are 6-0 in these games, rising from the ashes of a 8-15 start to pull to within a game of .500 at 14-15.  The Knicks are now firmly in contention for a playoff spot – something that seem an impossibility ten days ago.

Why is everyone suddenly a fan of Jeremy Lin?  It’s not because he’s Asian-American.  While that’s unusual in the NBA, it’s not the reason.  It’s because Lin is the consummate underdog, proving that he can play once the coach finally gave him the ball.  Seriously, when he went head to head with Kobe Bryant last Friday, was anyone actually cheering for Kobe?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

You know who he reminds me of?  A guy who played football in one of the largest cities in his state, was passed up by the two largest universities in the state, starred at the state’s 1-AA school and bounced around football’s minor leagues before getting the ball due to a teammate’s injury – and then excelling once he had the opportunity to play.

Yeah, you know who I’m talking about.  Hy-Vee’s most famous former employee – Kurt Warner.
 

 

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, joy.  Random odds and ends in today’s column 🙂

I’ve finished off  a free freelance jobs in the past couple of weeks.  I have a pretty decent backlog of articles and could keep pretty busy with the freelance work if my schedule allowed for it.  While The Soap Boxers makes a negligible amount of money, it’s nice to have freelance gigs where I get paid.  The cash is nice, but so is the underlying meaning – someone things my writing is good enough to pay me for it.

Johnny Goodman wrote an interesting article and submitted it to me.  You won’t be seeing it on The Soap Boxers, though.  I found a market for the article and brokered the sale for him.  It’s Johnny’s first professional sale, and he’s nearly as happy about it as I am.  I guess technically it makes me a literary agent.

The murder-suicide in Washington state saddened me greatly.  Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of case of parents killing kids in Iowa City in the last few years.  As a parent, I find it extremely disturbing.  Personally, one of the strangest details about the whole incident is that he emailed family and friends about where his money was and how to get utilities shut off (I’m guessing the gas company is going to shut off gas supply to the raging inferno without being explicitly asked).  So he was able to think through all these insignificant details, but overlooked that whole “killing my kids is very bad” aspect?

Rick Santorum picked up wins in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado.  Mitt Romney finished second in Missouri and Colorado, but third in Minnesota (Ron Paul was second).  Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot in Missouri and failed to hit 15% in the other states.  At the moment, it looks like Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich will all stick around for a while.  Santorum and Gingrich would be better off if one of them dropped out, and it would allow the “anyone but Romney” faction to consolidate behind one candidate instead of fracturing the vote.  I suppose Ron Paul is also taking votes from someone.

Scouts from the Baltimore Orioles have been banned from attending games in South Korea after signing a 17 year old who hadn’t yet begun his senior year of high school.  While Major League Baseball allows teams to sign foreign players (those not subject to the draft) at age 16.  However, the governing body of Korean baseball does not allow players to interact with professional teams until their last year of school (applicable to both high school and college players).

The band Alabama is touring once again, sans longtime drummer Mark Herndon (there was a lawsuit over some royalties).  I’m hoping to see some new music from the guys very soon, but will definitely miss Mark’s drumming.  I’m a huge fan of the group, owning more than 30 of their albums (including some very hard to find stuff).  I’ve been reacquainting myself with a lot of their work lately, and can’t help but enjoy some of the forgotten songs from their albums – such as Pete’s Music City, Pony Express, and Clear Across America Tonight.  None are signature hits for the group, but these songs – and dozens of other – are very enjoyable to listen to.  Hard to believe that some of these songs are 25-30 years old.

The Pony Express has a special place in the history of this country.  Care to guess how long it was in operation?  10 years?  5 years?  Nah – a mere 18 months.