Rodriguez Shores Up 9th Inning for Mets
To paraphrase an old familiar quote that goes theres gold in them there hills, you could …..
On Sept. 13, Francisco Rodriguez set a new single-season saves record, recording his 58th to pass Bobby Thigpen. That same day, federal officials and financial executives were hunting for a solution to the imminent collapse of Lehman Brothers. The first event made Rodriguez’s impending free agency seem very well-timed. The second, not so much. His agent, Paul Kinzer, wanted $75 million over five years. Instead, Rodriguez settled Tuesday for $37 million over three years from the relief-starved New York Mets and their general manager, Omar Minaya.
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“With a big-market team such as the Mets in such obvious bullpen peril — specifically needing ninth-inning help — it seemed Kinzer would have the perfect patsy with deep pockets to pony up a fortune,” Mike Vaccaro writes in the New York Post. “But Wall Street imploded, and baseball’s limitless money well dried up, and so the Mets get K-Rod for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the commitment.”
Vaccaro goes on to review the caveats about Rodriguez, as the Fix did back in July, while identifying deficiencies in the saves statistic. Nonetheless, he’ll be a huge upgrade in ninth-inning pitching. How bad was the Mets bullpen last year? If you have the stomach for it, Jay Jaffe of Baseball Prospectus provides the bloody details on SI.com. Suffice it to say that if the Mets had managed to stumble into the playoffs last year, instead of missing the wild card by a game, they would have made history, and not the good kind. And Rodriguez, while not as good as his saves total suggests, is still very, very good.
So the ninth inning is taken care of for the Mets. The first eight remain problematic. “Omar Minaya knows better than to think the Mets’ makeover is anywhere close to being finished,” Record columnist Bob Klapisch writes. “He needs at least two more starting pitchers, and, depending on the state of negotiations with Oliver Perez, actually may have to go crawling back to Pedro Martinez on a one-year deal. The biggest wart, of course, is the middle-relief corps and the absence of an eighth-inning setup man. In that sense, signing K-Rod was no more than a tease. What good is an elite-caliber closer if you can’t hand him the ball with a lead?”
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Leave it to the Yankees to steal the Mets’ thunder, by ignoring that Wall Street implosion and making a reported seven-year, $160 million offer to CC Sabathia, the best starting pitcher on the market and perhaps in baseball. ESPN and Sports Illustrated both report that the deal is a near-certainty, after the Post broke the story.
“The Yanks knew the worse scenario would be to be completely shut out on the top-tier pitching buffet,” Post columnist Joel Sherman writes. “That would be humiliating. That would be the entire sport essentially saying the Yankees have the money, but no one wants to take it as a first option any longer. However, Sabathia showed that the lure of the Yankees and their money is still powerful.”
Like time capsules, two columns about National League teams with Sabathia dreams, written before the Yankees’ coup, show how hard it can be for the small-market teams to compete at winter meetings. Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan covered Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin’s hopes of re-signing Sabathia, which essentially came down to everything else falling through. And San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ray Ratto urges locals to be nice to the Vallejo native when he comes into town for a visit.
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The Chicago Cubs are trying to land Jake Peavy or Bobby Abreu, even as the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy. Columnist Greg Couch — of, it should be noted, the Chicago Tribune’s rival Chicago Sun-Times — says paying millions to a free agent may make business sense, but it leaves him queasy.
“Sports has always been an escape from the real world,” Couch writes. “The money in the sports world has been so big that it didn’t seem real, somehow. Baseball games are a great way to have fun or to get angry and do it in a safe environment. Or, if you want to scream at your boss, just scream at the Cubs instead. But this is getting too close, one company issuing out real life in cold terms to its employees and then playing with fantasy dollars in the sports world, all in the same week.”
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Would the Kansas City Royals really trade promising pitcher Zack Greinke for Jeff Francoeur, an Atlanta Braves outfielder coming off an awful season? No, writes Joe Posnanski in the Kansas City Star, but that won’t kill the rumor: “This is what makes the winter meetings, of course. If not for the last hot rumor and the newest gossip, these meetings would be as boring as a national convention. In fact, when things are slow (like they are this year) the meetings are as boring as a national convention, but the rumors make them a little bit more tolerable. And so, a good rumor simply will not die, no matter how ridiculous it might be, no matter how illogical it might be, no matter how many people shout it down.”
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Jerry Sloan celebrated his 20th anniversary as coach of the Utah Jazz on Tuesday, then watched his team beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 99-96, in his record 1,613th consecutive game as coach. Sloan has won 1,009 games and lost just 605 as Jazz coach, yet he’s never won the Coach of the Year award, even when he led Utah to a winning record the year after Karl Malone and John Stockton retired. ESPN’s J.A. Adande gives Sloan the tribute he deserves, while his ESPN colleague Henry Abbott celebrates Sloan’s remarkable consistency.
Salt Lake Tribune columnist Kurt Kragthorpe checks in with Frank Layden, who was celebrated 20 years ago Tuesday when he stepped aside to make way for Sloan. “Undoubtedly, Layden did more for the Jazz than any coach who ever left an NBA franchise with a losing record (277-294),” Kragthorpe writes. “He could have stuck around and broken even before long, but it was Sloan’s turn, and Layden knew it.”
New Timberwolves coach Kevin McHale could learn from Sloan’s performance Tuesday, Jim Souhan writes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “On one bench last night there was Sloan, a good NBA player born to be a coach who has never wavered in his commitment to his vocation, and on the other bench there was McHale, a great NBA player who considers coaching a hobby that impinges on his lifestyle.”
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Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell takes an unusual stand for a sportswriter: He urges Redskins coach Jim Zorn to tell less of the truth, not more of it. Truth-telling has damaged Zorn’s relationship with star running back Clinton Portis, who exploded on a radio show in response to Zorn’s criticism of Portis’s preparation for Sunday’s game, a loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
“Zorn didn’t ask for Portis, he inherited him from [Joe] Gibbs,” Boswell writes. “Zorn didn’t ask for a flamboyant prima donna who pops off about his offensive line’s play or wears outrageous postgame outfits to celebrate himself. But that’s what he got. The job is to coach ‘em, not change ‘em. Gibbs knew exactly how to coach Portis. The template, over four years, including two Portis-led trips to the playoffs, was there for Zorn to copy or ignore. He tore it up.”
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