"The Rant"
By Trav Flatt
CHUMP:
Coincidentally, I found myself getting off work early yesterday and got to catch Dan Patrick on the radio. He had Selig on as a guest, and I have to say… Bud sounds like a very amicable, honest guy. Might be a portion of the problem, though. He does not sound like the sort of Businessperson who would really put his foot down and take up a hard-line negotiation stance, which could explain why the Player’s Association seems to keep tromping all over the league. I honestly can’t picture the guy going toe to toe with Steinbrenner and telling him to go stick his absurd request up his butt. Doesn’t mean he’s not a ‘nice guy’, mind you. I’m just thinking that ‘Nice Guy’ doesn’t necessarily fit in a position where a hardass might be a better fit.
Selig could take a negotiating lesson or two from Paul Tagliabue:
From an archaic Dennis Dillon article.
"To underscore his point, Tagliabue took a yellow notepad and wrote in capital letters: NO MORE MONEY. He pushed the pad across the table. Condon shoved it back, knocking over a cup of coffee."
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Speaking of money, I spent a good portion of the week (Damn near fifteen minutes) actually browsing over what I’m technically supposed to be talking about. Looking over last week’s USA Today Sports Weekly, I took a long hard (Fifteen minutes, yep yep) look to see precisely what Big George is paying these guys for. I’ll grant that projections are subject to some drastic shifts, but it helps to put things into perspective.
CHUMP CHANGE:
Five Really Rich Persons
#5: Alex Rodriguez: $22 million, $135.8 thousand per game.
First of all, I’m stunned that anyone gets twenty-two million dollars to play a game for one season. I don’t care how talented they are OR how long the season happens to be. For 135.8 thousand dollars, I’d gleefully play my one game, have Randy Johnson bean me, and be injured for the rest of the season. A-Rod isn’t completely sucking, but for 22 mil, you’d think he could at least hit .300. Rodriguez is on pace to make, over the course of the season, $34,482.76 per at bat. At his current rate, that will earn him roughly $4,931,034.40… for striking out. If you want to be more fair about it, shave that 22 million in half to put half of his salary toward offense and half toward defense. Only $2.46 million for striking out. Much better. At present, he has a fielding percentage of .972, so he’s only on pace to make about $308 thousand for errors if eleven million is going toward fielding.
#4: Mike Mussina: $16 million, Pace: $410,256 per start.
Mussina is not performing poorly per se (Latin for "For a weenie"), but when one considers that he’s pulling down four hundred grand per start, you’d like to see more than 50% of them qualify as ‘Quality Starts’. Mike is currently on pace to make $5.3 million for 13 losses. It’s hard to blame the offense for this, considering that he’s also on pace to give up 314 hits in 241 innings. At sixteen million, you kinda want to keep your ERA under 4.50.
#3: Bernie Williams: $12.3 million, $75.9 thousand per game.
Bernie should give his agent a bonus after this season. He’s drawing down an eight-figure salary, and batting under .240 while on pace to hit under twenty home runs and to get fewer than fifty RBIs. Amusingly enough, he’s not even the biggest salary head-scratcher of the bunch.
#2: Jose Contreras: $9 million, Pace: $391,304 per start.
With a career record of 9-4 with a 4.41 ERA, I can’t even begin to comprehend why anyone would think this guy worth nine million dollars a year. At 32, it’s hard to call him a young ‘up and coming’ prospect so much as a guy who’s demonstrated for a decade that he isn’t a star-caliber pitcher. His ERA is currently hovering around 7.00, and he’s on pace to make ninety thousand dollars per inning pitched en route to 6-6.
#1: Derek Jeter: $18.6 million, $114.8 thousand per game.
Yeah, like nobody saw THIS one coming. Jeter, while looking like a significantly weenier version of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, has caught FIRE as of late! He’s driven his batting average all the way up to… well, .233, but he’s caught fire! Luckily, he makes up for this deficiency with his power, being on pace for… Uh, well… nineteen home runs. Never mind all of that! It’s his threat on the bases that bring in the big bucks, as Dwayne Jeter is well on his way to… Cough. Sixteen stolen bases. Well. Uh. At least he scratches himself very competently.
Fear not, though. For 81 home games watching these Dorks of the Diamond, it’ll only set you back roughly four thousand dollars. Jeter probably has that stuck between his couch cushions.
