MLB News & Notes (other than Cubs or Sox)

[funkster]

It isn't?

[Butcher]

I don't know. I'm asking.

[funkster]

It's a federal crime.  They stole player personnel and obtained secret trade communications.  It's basically corporate espionage. 

[Runnys]

Can MLB contract these fuckers? ?

[Runnys]

I know they can't.

[rok]

Pat Murphy, new Padres manager, for now.


http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/0...-bud-black

[rok]

So the Orioles just sent Wei-Yin Chen down to A-ball after he pitched 8 shutout innings on Monday......................just to prevent him from making his next start. He seems a little pissed about this, believe it or not.

 

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/0...frederick/

[rok]

As much as I dislike the Padres, you hate to see MLB talent go to waste like this.

Wil Myers To Undergo Left Wrist Surgery

16 MLB Trade Rumors / by Steve Adams / 2min ago

Padres outfielder Wil Myers will undergo surgery to remove a bone spur from his left wrist tomorrow, writes Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union Tribune. It will likely be at least eight weeks before Myers is able to resume baseball activities, Lin adds, which seems to suggest that Myers could be sidelined through the end of August.


Its been an injury plagued season for the 24-year-old Myers, who joined the Padres in a three-team trade that sent Joe Ross and Trea Turner to the Nationals while also sending Steven Souza, Burch Smith, Rene Rivera, Jake Bauers and Travis Ott to the Rays. Myers was tasked with playing center field despite not carrying a strong reputation even as a corner outfielder, and the results werent pretty, from a defensive standpoint (-9 DRS, -57 UZR/150 in 260 innings).


Myers, however, was acquired more for his bat than his glove, and he didnt disappoint in that regard. In 159 plate appearances with the Padres this season, Myers has batted .277/.322/.459 with five homers, 10 doubles and a triple. When weighting that line to account for his home park, Myers has been about 22 percent above the league average (per wRC+ and OPS+).

[rok]

What a load of horseshit.

Sox Detail Expected Ticket Sales Jump


Danny Ecker | Crain's

June 12, 2015


The Chicago White Sox say they will sell 250,000 more tickets this season than in 2014 and end an eight-year slide in paid attendance, but are unlikely to pay any ticket fees to the city-state agency that owns and operates U.S. Cellular Field.


In an annual memo to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, the team predicted it will sell 1.9 million tickets this year, its highest paid attendance figure since 2012, when it sold 1,965,955. The Sox sold 1.65 million tickets in 2014.


The team said it has sold 442,932 tickets to games played through May 31 and 874,306 tickets to games played after that date. The Sox estimate they'll sell 582,762 more tickets by the end of the season.


The team's rental agreement with the publicly owned ballpark requires it to project its final paid attendance every year in early June and estimated rent and ticket fees it will pay ISFA after the season.


The Sox also estimated that 130,000 of the 1.9 million tickets it sells this year will be "comp" ticketsgiven away to sponsors or sold for less than $3 apiece.


Those giveaways are capped at 150,000 per season and have ranged between 110,000 and 140,000 for the past five years.


As a result, the final projected net ticket sales figure will be 1,770,000, short of the 1.95 million figure the team must clear before it must pay ISFA a per-fan ticket fee.


Under the terms of the rental agreement, the Sox pay ISFA $3 for every ticket it sells between 1.95 million and 2,425,000 and on a graduated pay scale beyond that.


The last time it paid any of those fees was 2010, when the team drew nearly 2.2 million fans. Aside from U.S. Cellular Field's opening season in 1991, the most the Sox have paid in ticket fees is more than $3.5 million in 2006.


The Sox still pay a base rent fee to ISFA that goes up incrementally each year at the same rate of the Consumer Price Index. The Sox project the team's rent this year will be $1,587,826.


LOOMING DEBT


Heading toward the end of a near-decade streak of dwindling attendance is good news for the South Siders, though the team's projections could shift up or down as the season progresses (the Sox are in second-to-last place in the AL Central). The team went on a spending spree this past off-season, acquiring free agents David Robertson, Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche among others in hopes of putting a better product on the field and getting more fans to come out to games.


ISFA, meanwhile, will likely face another season of minimal help from the team in paying off its annual bond obligations for U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field.


Luckily for the agency, the bulk of its funding comes from the city's hotel tax revenue, which has been strong after taking a big hit during the Great Recession.


It also was able to reduce its payments by a total of $16 million over the life of the bonds thanks to a refunding of $291 million last summer.


Still, the agency's obligations for U.S. Cellular Field balloon from $34 million this year to nearly $87 million in 2032.


It has come up short of its debt payments only once since the Soldier Field renovation project was approved in 2001. The agency was forced to tap into the city's share of the state income tax in 2011 to cover a $185,000 shortfall in hotel tax revenue.

[funkster]

How is that possible?  They've got their worst team since, what was it, 2009 when they were like 15 games under .500?

[Butcher]

Maybe they sold a bunch of tickets in advance after acquiring all those players during the offseason.

[rok]

That's not even the part that pisses me off. It's the debt they are adding to the state with every passing year and the BS games they play to avoid paying fees to maintain that soulless atrocity of a stadium. And the tax payers don't seem to care.

[Butcher]

How do they get away with this? If the Cubs were pulling shenanigans like this, it would be headline news.

[Bricklayer]

It really speaks to how ignored and irrelevant this shitty organization is, they can do this shit and it barely registers.  

 

People aren't up in arms, politicians don't give a shit, there's no butthurt dickless beat writer trolling for page hits by calling Reinsdork the worst owner in town... which in this case it wouldn't be trolling it would be factual reporting and IT WOULD BE COMPLETELY FUCKING CALLED FOR.

[rok]

Weird things happening in Philly. They might hire MacPhail as Gillick's successor, who may then have no choice but to fire Ryno. Per MLBTR:

 

 

The Phillies’ pursuit of longtime baseball exec Andy MacPhail for a position in their front office is “quite real,” a source tells Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. (CSN Philly’s Jim Salisbury first reported Philadelphia’s interest in MacPhail.) Rosenthal writes that adding MacPhail could create an interesting scenario, as it would potentially put MacPhail, who served as the Cubs’ president when Ryne Sandberg was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in position to fire Sandberg as the Phillies’ manager. Rosenthal writes that many within the industry feel that Sandberg is overmatched, but he adds that if current president Pat Gillick were going to dismiss Sandberg, he’d probably have done so by now. As such, the decision may fall to Gillick’s successor, who could make the move himself or hire a new general manager to do so.

<p style="color:rgb(51,51,50);font-family:'Slab Serif', sans-serif;font-size:15px;">A few more notes on a Phillies team that seems destined for change on the roster, in the front office and in the dugout in the coming months…

• GM Ruben Amaro Jr. told reporters, including MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki, that he’s “fully supportive” of Sandberg and expects him to finish out the 2015 season as the team’s manager. Sandberg added that he’s not concerned about potentially being on the hot seat, telling reporters, “I worry about the game today and what has to be done today. That’s the focus and the mindset for me.”