Yahoo Sports – James Harden may no longer be with the Houston Rockets, but his number is set to live in the rafters at the Toyota Center forever. The Rockets, owner Tilman Fertitta said on Tuesday, are set to retire Harden’s number later this season.
“James Harden will always be a Rocket,” Fertitta told the Houston Chronicle. “Of course, we will retire his jersey. He made my first three years of owning the franchise unforgettable. The success he brought this franchise over eight years and the memories he created for our fan base/community [are] truly remarkable.”
Harden will be the seventh player in team history to have his number retired by the organization, joining Calvin Murphy, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Rudy Tomjanovich, Clyde Drexler and Yao Ming. Longtime assistant coach and team executive Carroll Dawson had his initials retired, too.
This is like putting a giant framed picture of your ex-wife on the mantle in the house for your new girlfriend to look at every single day. I understand James Harden is undeniably one of the Rocket’s best players of all-time as a former league MVP and 8x All-Star, even if it didn’t lead to a championship, but it’s been less than TWO MONTHS since Harden shut it down and shot his way out of town. The dude was going to strip clubs (sorry, birthday parties) in the middle of a pandemic and missing games on the regular. The guy looked out of shape and unmotivated and was publicly criticizing his supporting cast as he demanded a trade through the media. So announcing that you plan to retire his number *this season* is some sad stuff.
In fairness Harden did play 8+ seasons with the Rockets, which is more than Yao Ming, Clyde Drexler, and Moses Malone. So I’m not saying you need to nuke your entire relationship with the Beard, but maybe give it some time to breathe before giving him the ultimate honor. And this is coming from a Celtics fan where every other number is already up in the rafters. The Celtics will probably be the first team to introduce three-digit numbers out of pure necessity.
But have some pride, man.
This ain’t Kevin Garnett reluctantly accepting a trade to Boston and giving up on Minnesota late in his career. This is a guy that routinely dictated moves he wanted like bringing on Chris Paul, then shipping out Chris Paul, then bringing on Russell Westbrook, then shipping out Russell Westbrook, and then looking around and deciding nah it ain’t working here, I’m out. And the Rockets aren’t some dumpster fire either, they made the playoffs every single season Harden was there, going as far as the Conference Finals twice. So if I’m a Rockets fan you bet I’m a little annoyed at the franchise immediately opting to retire his number like six weeks after Harden flipped the bird on his way out of town to greener pastures.
In what has been the absolutely worst kept secret, Deshaun Watson and the Texans appear to be done as the Pro Bowl QB has officially requested a trade. I mean what did the Texans expect? They continuously bungled personnel and front office decisions and then tell their best player they’ll include him in decisions such as the hiring of the next GM. And then they hire Nick Caserio, who despite the past interest between both sides is someone who wasn’t actually on the list of the candidates their highly publicized search committee put together. Even worse, the move came at the behest of Petyr Baelish AKA Jack Easterby himself. I wrote about how bad things had gotten with Easterby in the fold last month and then Sports Illustrated wrote their second hit piece in just over a month absolutely demolishing the guy. Then the team tells Watson they’ll include him in the process of hiring the next head coach. And they completely ignore Watson’s request to interview Chiefs innovative Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy, only interviewing him after it came out how pissed the QB was. A terrible look. So last night the Texans hire 65-year-old David Culley who’s never been an Offensive Coordinator in the NFL. Then this morning Schefty was promptly announcing Watson’s trade request to make it all official.
Deshaun Watson at this point:
So Watson is going to get traded it’s just a matter of where and how much will it cost. Trading for a 3x Pro Bowl QB who is coming off an MVP caliber season and is still just 25-years-old is going to get EXPENSIVE.
But would you rather the Patriots try and find their next QB in the draft? With the departure of Caserio, who was Belichick’s right hand man in football ops and scouting for the last several years, I am even less confident in the Patriots finding elite talent. Now in the next breath it must be addressed that Caserio did in fact go to run the show in Houston where he is seemingly going to have to trade the best QB in franchise history as his first move. So does that familiarity between the two sides work in their favor or does it immediately kneecap the Patriots’ chances because Caserio doesn’t want to look like he’s doing his old boss a favor?
Another aspect to consider is Watson has a full no-trade clause, which is pretty rare in the NFL, so it will require not only making the trade but convincing the player too. This ain’t three years ago. New England isn’t exactly an enticing place for a player to join these days. With no tight ends to speak of and a receiver core that ranges from undrafted overachiever to first round bust, why would Deshaun want to come here? It’s basically the same situation he’s currently in.
Except the coach and the owner.
That’s their only shot. After years in the clown show that is Houston, he could come in and play for the best coach in the history of the game. Maybe, as was mentioned in that same SI article, Watson really, genuinely longs for a winning culture like he had back in Clemson. Well if that’s true, there is no better place than New England. Just a couple of years removed from their last Super Bowl win and actively looking for the next young guy to take the mantle of the most successful team in NFL history, with a Hall of Fame coach, and a well respected and beloved owner. That could be enticing to Deshaun Watson.
Now of course this all assumes the Jets, the Dolphins, or even the Jaguars don’t value Watson as much as I do and bow out of throwing a bunch of first rounders at Houston. Because the offers those teams can make would blow the Pats out of the water. Granted the Patriots are sitting at No. 15 and are unlikely to have any (according to draft “experts”) elite franchise QBs fall to them so I’m more than willing to trade that pick. But if you’re the Patriots you just got punched in the head with the reminder that if you don’t have an elite QB you are cooked right out of the gate. After 20 years of consistent play from a first ballot Hall of Famer under center it’s easy to forget that not every team has been so fortunate. So if you’re Belichick you should be calling the Texans right now telling them pick what you want and send over the paper work. Whether that’s 3 or even 4 first rounders I’m doing that 100% of the time. A franchise QB is just that valuable and yes the Pats need to fill some holes around the player, but thats something you worry about after bringing him in. With a ton of cap space to work with they could find a Tight End and a Receiver to fill things out alongside Watson pretty quick.
Realistically there’s not really any chance of landing Deshaun Watson so I’m just kind of daydreaming right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d trade everything but the kitchen sink for him. Hell, throw that in there too.
Click2Houston – A frightening scene on a Houston highway. A woman clung to the hood of a speeding car while trying to get back a stolen puppy. Police said they are now searching for one of two suspects they believe was involved after an arrest was made Tuesday…James said on Nov. 4, a couple came into her store to look at different breeds of dogs. They decided to buy a $10,000 exotic bully, according to James. Then as she went upstairs to grab paperwork for a nearby UPS driver, the couple left the store, the woman had the dog in her arms.
Surveillance cameras caught the couple leaving.
Then James bolted after them. She said her only concern was the 7-month-old bully, who just had surgery days earlier and needed special medication.
“My mind is focused on her health, I obviously didn’t care about my wellbeing,” James said.
She chased the couple to their car. James said she demanded they give the dog back, instead, they hit her with the car, then threatened to run her over.
“Next time I heard the gas go, he went very aggressively and it (the bumper) kind of like slapped me on top of the car,” James said.
She clung to the car as they sped throughout the area.
This young lady can drink from my canteen any day. You have to watch the video to understand how crazy this scene really was. This wasn’t even her dog! She just worked at the pet store that this scumbag couple decided to rob.
Everybody bitches about their job, complaining about the horrible working conditions AKA your apartment. Meanwhile this woman is narrowly escaping death in the middle of her shift and laughing it off with Channel 2 later that week. I imagine her as Dante in Clerks when all this shit goes down and she’s on the hood of the car bombing down the highway just thinking to herself how she got into this situation.
The crazy thing is, I think every dog owner can relate to this situation. You better believe I’m jumping on the hood of that car if it’s my pup someone tries to snatch. I’ll throw hands with a nun if she’s trying to take my dog. This woman essentially turned into the T-1000 from Terminator 2 when these two dognappers tried to make away with the pup.
You can run, you can fight, but you ain’t getting this dog without adding Assault With a Deadly Weapon to your rap sheet. So for that I tip my cap to this pet store employee. Hopefully the owner gives this girl a raise for laying her life on the line for a part-time job.
PS – Don’t spend $10,000 on a puppy. There are tons of dogs you can rescue and adopt for 1/20th of that cost while saving a dog’s life and at the same time not supporting puppy mills.
Sports Illustrated –His path to the top of the Houston Texans’ front office is unlike anything the NFL has ever seen. Many from his past see him as a chaplain with a heart of gold or an underdog outsider with the tools for greatness. Others are skeptical, unable to square his relentless ambition with claims of selflessness. Two years after his arrival in Houston, those inside the Texans’ building describe an atmosphere of mistrust, a state of constant chaos and a sense that he isn’t fit for the roles he’s taken on…Then there was Jack Easterby, hired as the franchise’s executive vice president of team development in April 2019, a man who’d risen from low-level Jaguars intern to Patriots team chaplain to lauded character coach—before making an unprecedented shift into football operations. Easterby, those Texans told each other, was Littlefinger, the nickname of Petyr Baelish, a shadowy and cunning operative who on TV espoused righteousness as a strategy, but sought to consolidate power through chaos and isolation and the pulling of strings behind the scenes.
Chaos is a ladder. This is a blog I meant to write back in October, but never got around to it because I’m a perpetual procrastinator. The headline of that blog I never wrote was: “With Bill O’Brien Fired, Jack Easterby is Officially the Petyr Baelish of the NFL.” A guy who was hired to be a chaplain, a glorified character coach for the Patriots, somehow rose to the rank of General Manager for the Houston Texans. How the fuck did that happen? Seriously, Easterby should walk around with a mockingbird sigil pinned to his chest.
I often thought my disdain for this man I never met was just my Patriots red and blue bleeding through after Easterby trashed Robert Kraft on his way out of New England because he *allegedly* got an HJ from another adult. People that act holier than thou are usually the worst ones behind closed doors. Well, turns out it wasn’t just me as Sports Illustrated just published an extensive article TRASHING Jack Easterby and also borrowing my Baelish analogy.
Long story short, Easterby worked his way up from camp counselor to college character coach to chaplain for teams like the Chiefs and Patriots, before heading to Houston for a promotion in Player Development (Easterby then also tried to poach Nick Caserio while at Kraft’s house for a Super Bowl ring ceremony), and then *nine* months after being on the job for the Texans, he somehow slides into the EVP of Football Operations/GM role after the vacuum left by the firing of current GM and coach, Bill O’Brien.
THAT is some ladder climbing folks.
Easterby’s role wasn’t clearly described to many of his new colleagues, but he was expected to build on the position he held in New England, setting an organizational culture and mentoring players.
These are the kinds of hires that are always disasters in companies because if nobody really knows what somebody is supposed to be doing then it allows them to, at best, be unproductive and at worst work in the shadows to craft their own job description.
One former staffer says that when Easterby is asked for specifics about a subject on which he’s out of his depth—not uncommon considering his scope of responsibilities and limited NFL experience—he’ll artfully deflect and move on to a new topic. They watched curiously as Easterby’s responsibilities expanded well beyond the role for which he was hired—in some cases, outside his areas of expertise. As another colleague puts it, “Jack was basically doing everything O’Brien was doing, except for calling plays.”
See what I mean?
But you seriously have to read this entire SI article just to see the long winding road a guy with zero actual NFL chops somehow jumped from position to position, manipulating relationships (and to be honest probably naive, hyper-religious people) from team to team, until he somehow went from character coach to the guy in charge of a National Football League franchise. Unreal, you almost have to respect it.
While Easterby aspires to be a transformational leader, guided by religion and morality, people who have worked alongside him in Houston have increasingly come to see him as transactional. Says a colleague: “If you combine a faith-healing televangelist with Littlefinger, you’d get Jack Easterby.”
The one thing that I can’t seem to figure out is his apparent close relationship with Belichick. You would think this is a guy Bill would tell to get the hell away from him. He has always been distrustful of charlatans like Tom Brady’s guy, Alex Guererro. Although it seemed like his act may have been wearing thin and more people were starting to wise up in the Patriots organization.
One person who saw his sideline histrionics up close says they were more show than substance: When you see him and the big personality and how he’s moved up the ladder so fast, you’re like, ‘Man, this isn’t authentic. Something doesn’t feel genuine about this.’ ” Others saw him sidling up to assistants. They noticed that he hired an agent who represented coaches and executives, an unheard-of move for a chaplain in pro sports. One Patriots staffer compared Easterby to a preacher at a megachurch—a man of God who stands onstage and denounces the ills of poverty, then slips out the backdoor, into a private jet. Several current and former colleagues, from Foxboro and Houston, agree that this description is accurate.
Theres also a ton of stuff in there about Easterby seemingly straight up lying on his resume and experience such as helping 50+ universities in their coaching searches over the years without offering any specifics. Until he got called on it that is.
As recently as November, a bio for Easterby that appeared on the website for the Greatest Champion Foundation (a nonprofit with a goal of serving athletes holistically through faith and founded by Easterby and his father) claimed that Easterby has over the years “been entrusted with over 50 head coaching searches at both power-five and mid-major universities for multiple sports.” Neither the Texans nor Easterby addressed specific questions from SI about which programs he has worked with on coaching searches and in what capacity.
That foundation’s site was down for most of the past month—a staffer explained that it was due to a redesign and migration to a new content management system—and when the new version launched last weekend, Easterby no longer had a bio.
It seems like the Texans may finally be wising up to Littlefinger’s act of ladder climbing as well. Apparently they sent out an email to all season ticket holders announcing a star studded team devoted to finding the next GM and coach of the team. Just as it ended for Baelish, you can only climb so high on trafficking misinformation before you make enough enemies that it catches up to you.
After reading that absolute hit piece by SI though, if I had to summarize Easterby in one gif, it’s this.
Folks, let me introduce myself. I have gone by many names: Big Game, G-Smooth, Jimmy Lips, etc. But for these exercises, I’m just the dude who researches sports information and makes educated guesses on the outcomes of player performances. There will be facts. There will be jokes. And hopefully, there will be success.
Let’s start out west in the Raiders and Chargers game.
Justin Herbert O270.5 pass yds(-115)
Co-Rookie of the Year favorite, Justin Herbert has been money both on the field and for fantasy owners this season. He has passed for over 271 yards in five of his six starts and the only time he didn’t was in his MNF showdown in Nola, when he finished with 264.
Over the past four games, the Raiders have allowed the following passing yard totals:
Josh Allen – 288
Patrick Mahomes – 340
Tom Brady – 369
Baker Mayfield – 122
Context is needed for the Mayfield outlier and it should be noted that the winds were howling and it was raining the entire game last Sunday.
DJ Chark O50.5 rec yds(-112)
Jaguars WR DJ Chark was not originally going to make the cut, but sometimes you have to wait (5 days) for good things to happen.
Texans CB Bradley Roby is out on Sunday due to disciplinary reasons.
“So what, James?!”
Well, that’s significant because that frees up Chark to roam a bit more comfortably. You’ll recall that Davante Adams just torched the Texans in Week 7 for 13-196-2. I am in no way implying that DJ Chark doo doo doo doo doo doo is Adams, but that Week 7 performance came with Roby on the field.
Over the past 5 weeks, the Texans have allowed just under 200 rec yds per game to WRs and the 2nd-most TDs to that position over that span (9).
Sterling Shepard O4.5 catches (-118) and O54.5 rec yds(-112)
I know what you’re thinking: “James, I don’t even know you, and yet I can tell this is a homer pick.”
Hear me out with these quick facts, though:
-Shepard has 18 targets over the past two games
-Shepard has has gone over 54 in each of those contests
-Shepard has 6+ catches in three of his four games this season
-WFT has allowed 3 WRs (Kupp, Woods & Cooper) to go over 54 yds in the last 3 gms
So this may very well be a homer pick, but it's a well-researched pick.
I am exhausted from years of [insert player name] Watch over the years only to watch said player never even come close to landing on my team. We just did it with Stefon Diggs for two years, people continue to do it with Odell Beckham Jr. and don’t even get me started on Danny Ainge. Pining for a superstar your team has no shot at ever landing (Anthony Davis, Karl Anthony Towns) is basically a requirement for Celtics fandom.
With that being said, are we now doing Deshaun Watson Watch for the next Patriots QB? It sure seems like it. This all started the other day when oddsmaker BetOnline.com set Deshaun Watson as the PROHIBITIVE favorite to be the Patriots starting QB in 2021. Huh? Granted this came just days after Bill O’Brien made one of the dumbest trades in league history and gave away arguably the best receiver in the league in DeAndre Hopkins for spare parts. Getting a washed up David Johnson and a 2nd round pick for an elite talent like Hopkins (not to mention one of the last lifelines for a seemingly flailing relationship with Watson) is a fireable offense in my opinion.
There were rumors floated by HOF receiver Michael Irvin that Hopkins and O’Brien had a tumultuous, shitty, bordering on disrespectful relationship, but thats no excuse to dump your second best player for a running back who hasn’t been good in THREE years. Trust me, I’ve had him in fantasy 2/3 of those seasons and got burned every time.
The Texans No. 1 goal every year should be to keep Deshaun Watson happy. No. 2 is make the playoffs. In that order. Thats how important Watson is to this franchise…sooo maybe don’t spit in the guy’s face by trading his best weapon. This would be like if the Patriots traded Julian Edelman last year. Just doesn’t make sense.
Even with all that I still find it very hard to believe an elite young QB in his prime would somehow find his way under center for the Patriots next season. It just does not happen in the NFL. Watson is entering the final year of his rookie deal with a 5th year option in 2021 so theres no huge rush for the Texans to trade him, yet. He is going to sign a contract somewhere close to $40M per year depending on what Patrick Mahomes signs for, but as Mike Reiss reports the Patriots coincidentally are set to have around $100 Million in cap space next offseason. Hmmm
Andddd now we are officially getting subtweets from Deshaun Watson!
My team suddenly doesn’t have a QB of the present or the future and now one of my favorite young players to come out of college in years is subtweeting Drake lyrics just days after his team traded his top playmaker?
I’m not sure I’m emotionally ready to handle another [insert player name] Watch, but I don’t think we have any choice. Deshaun Watson Watch is officially on.
ESPN – Longtime Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio is closing on a contract extension with the club, a source confirmed to ESPN. Caserio’s contract is set to expire after the 2020 draft, and head coach Bill Belichick has cited his dual role in personnel and coaching as a “great asset” to the organization. Caserio, 44, has played a central role in drafting and signing players under Belichick, while also contributing to the coaching staff as a regular presence at practice and in the coaches’ booth during games.
After all the drama and rumors of Nick Caserio potentially leaving town to go work for the Texans, he probably saw Houston promote Bill O’Brien to Coach/GM and had a come to Jesus moment. Wait, I wanna go *there*?
This wasn’t just some media concocted story either, the Patriots literally filed tampering charges against the Texans last offseason. The former Patriots priest or character coach or whatever you want to call him Jack Easterby left the team because Robert Kraft may have allegedly gotten some hand stuff done to him. Easterby then got a job with the Texans alongside fellow former Patriot Bill O’Brien, which the Pats were “livid” about. Then Easterby came back for the Patriots Super Bowl ring ceremony over the summer and allegedly tried to poach Nick Caserio to come be the GM/Executive VP for the Texans. IN ROBERT KRAFT’S OWN BACKYARD. The Texans even went as far as to fire their own GM the day after that party and then requested to interview Caserio three days later.
So this is great news for New England with all the turnover this team has had over the past year and thats before we even get to the uncertainty around Tom Brady. We’ve seen Joe Judge, Brian Flores, Matt Patricia, and Bill O’Brien all leave the team in recent years. Although a lot of former Patriots coaches and executives have gone on to less than stellar results, sometimes stability is a valuable asset. Not to mention Caserio has done everything in this organization and is one of the few, if only, executives in the NFL that has a hand in coaching and is on the headset on game day. I would expect a new title as he’s been the Director of Player Personnel since 2008, but I suppose a generous raise may do the job.
ESPN – Major League Baseball is mulling significant changes to its postseason, including increasing the number of teams from 10 to 14 and adding a reality TV-type format to determine which teams play each other in an expanded wild-card round, sources told ESPN.
MLB is considering a move in which each league would have three division winners and four wild-card teams making the postseason starting in 2022, sources said. The best team in the league would receive a bye into the division series. The two remaining division winners and the wild-card team with the best record of the four would each host all games of a best-of-three series in the opening round.
Once the teams clinch and the regular season ends, the plan gets congested:
The division winner with the second-best record would select its wild-card opponent from the three wild-card winners not hosting a series.
The division winner with the worst record would then choose its opponent from the remaining two wild-card teams.
The final matchup would pit the wild-card winner with the best record against the wild-card team not yet chosen.
All of the selections, sources said, would be unveiled live on television the Sunday night of the final regular-season games.
I don’t like the idea of nearly half the league making the playoffs, but I do love that MLB is considering shaking *something* up. Baseball has been painfully slow to adopt any significant changes. Remember when they put in the rule that batters had to stay in the batters box and players immediately ignored it and MLB did nothing? Remember when MLB was testing a pitch clock in Minor League Baseball with the plan of then implementing it in the major leagues? That was in 2015. Whether it’s rules to improve pace of play or ideas of how to combat the culture of rampant sign stealing; baseball is afraid of change. So I am intrigued by this pretty radical shift in the playoff format. Baseball needs to become more like the NFL and try things out. Hell even the NBA tested a new ball in 2006, which was a complete and utter disaster, but the point remains; at least they tried something new.
My favorite part about this new format is it gives teams a real incentive to play for the No. 1 seed, which there isn’t really any of currently. Too many teams these days play out the string as they’d rather get their rotation set for the playoffs than try to win as many regular season games as possible. The new Wild Card format of the past few years has helped negate that a little bit, but a first round bye would have teams gunning for the top seed.
Another aspect that would be great is we would no longer have to hear the song and dance about how players don’t care who they’re playing in the playoffs. Bullshit! Now we’ll know exactly who you want to play and who you think is an easy out. Just imagine the Red Sox winning 100 games in 2022, 5 games out of the No. 1 seed behind the Astros, selecting the 90 win Twins for obliteration in the Wild Card round. How awesome would it be to see team officials cringe on live TV as their fates are sealed like an NBA Draft Lottery special? The reality TV aspect of it all just has me picturing Kramer hosting the Merv Griffin Show.
I am far from a baseball purist so count me in.
Not everyone is sold on the idea including Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer.
No idea who made this new playoff format proposal, but Rob is responsible for releasing it, so I’ll direct this to you, Rob Manfred. Your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball. You’re a joke.
To be fair though, this is the guy who got scolded (and traded) by Terry Francona for launching a ball over the fence after getting yanked from a game. Seems like a guy who doesn’t take it well when things don’t go his way.
People who complain about changing the game forget just how much the rules have actually evolved, some faster than others, over the years. In 2011 the MLB added the new Wild Card format, the Astros changed Leagues in 2013, balls have been juiced and unjuiced, steroids were encouraged ignored then banned, the mound was lowered, and on and on we go. So testing out a little tweak to the playoff format is not going to have Branch Rickey rolling in his grave. It’s baseball, lets have a little fun.
ESPN – The kneecapping of the Houston Astros went off Monday in exquisite fashion. Big names were fired. Draft picks were revoked. A record fine was levied. Pounds of flesh were exacted from egregious cheaters. The optics worked. The Astros’ comeuppance was here, and it was severe. Major League Baseball was righting an obvious wrong.
As the day rolled on and people around baseball pondered exactly what had happened, a less obvious version of the story emerged. It was all so tidy, all so clean, so carefully orchestrated and meticulously calibrated — like something the Astros, ever lauded for their efficiency and ruthlessness, might concoct…As much as MLB played the big, bad monolith in delivering the ruinous news from on high, this was not some unilateral punishment for the Astros. It was a sneak peek inside the sausage factory of power and the anger that Crane’s relative acquittal caused across the league…Multiple ownership-level sources told ESPN that dissatisfaction with the penalties had emerged following a conference call with Manfred, in which he explained how the Astros would be disciplined, then told teams to keep their thoughts to themselves..”Crane won,” he said. “The entire thing was programmed to protect the future of the franchise. He got his championship. He keeps his team. His fine is nothing. The sport lost, but Crane won.”
It’s a long read, but I definitely recommend you check out Jeff Passan’s whole story because it is a pretty fascinating peak behind the curtain. My first reaction to the Astros news yesterday was that they got absolutely HAMMERED by the league. The other owners don’t seem to agree. While I completely understand owners around the league still being bullshit at the Astros, this Passan story just shows how out of touch these team owners have become. What the hell do you want Manfred to do? He fined the Astros the largest team penalty in league history at $5M (and the maximum allowed under MLB rules), banned the GM and the manager for a year and took 1st and 2nd round picks from the team for the next two years. I know, I know the Astros will recoup most of that $5M, if not more in money saved from not having to pay those four draft picks.
With all things considered, thats still pretty, pretty savage. Especially for an organization like MLB that is basically setup like a franchise model thats comprised of franchisees operating their own businesses. For all his faults, Manfred is working with what he’s got here and a lot of that is playing politics amongst 30 billionaires. These owners have no idea what it takes to appease a boss, let alone 30 bosses that make 100x what you make annually, so to bitch and moan about the punishment rings hollow.
“Manfred’s report named Beltran as one of the players involved in the scheme, though the league did not discipline him because it gave players immunity in exchange for their testimony.
That choice registered publicly as another curious part of Manfred’s ultimate decision. What sort of disciplinary action clears players for a “player-driven” scheme? The answer is a practical one. Between the well-defined lines that held GMs and managers responsible and the fear of the Major League Baseball Players Association defending any discipline against active players and sending the cases into grievance hell, Manfred’s pragmatism here, though not satisfying, is understandable.”
Have these guys never watched a cop movie in their lives? Or an episode of The Sopranos? You gotta let some of the small time guys off the hook if you want to get anyone to talk about the Capos. This ain’t the NBA in the 70s where David Stern could just tell some bum owners what was going to happen and they had to accept it.
Now its just a matter of time until Alex Cora gets absolutely roasted himself. Passan cited two sources saying “the end of Cora’s time in Boston could be coming” Alex Cora got the axe from John Henry on Tuesday night. During the middle of the Jeopardy GOAT Tournament no less, which is about as big of a news dump as I can remember.
This came as no surprise because of the optics of the situation. There was no way the Sox were going to take that heat for a guy who in all likelihood won’t be able to work for *at least* the next year. AJ Hinch already completely threw Cora under the bus in the statement he released
“While the evidence consistently showed I didn’t organize or participate in the sign stealing practices, I failed to stop them”
I think any reasonable person understands sign stealing happens in baseball and the more technology you add the more sophisticated the sign stealing is going to become. Granted it’s my favorite baseball team that is embroiled in this, but as former Marlins slugger Logan Morrison has said, he knows first hand of several teams that do the same type of stuff.
Some more detailed accusations from Logan Morrison on Instagram, calling out the Astros as far back as 2014, as well as the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox for using technology to aid sign-stealing. pic.twitter.com/h7TySzpO1W
Manfred’s report directly references how teams like the Yankees were fined for doing the same exact thing in 2017. I mean Cora even joked about Carlos Beltran and how much he’s “helped” the Yankees after the Sox got bludgeoned by them in the London Series last season.
Here’s video of the Alex Cora soundbite we just played on @WFANmornings. This was following the Yankees’ sweep of Boston in the 2019 London Series. Check out the wink after he brings up Carlos Beltran’s name around :27 and unprovoked usage of the word “devices.” (h/t @Pacmangrig) pic.twitter.com/HgkglIoB7O
So lets not all start acting like this is someone stealing a $20 out of the Sunday School collection basket. This is a bunch of guys getting bagged doing something they should not have been doing and they knew it. This is not the 1918 Black Sox throwing a game and ruining the integrity of baseball.
Just take a look at the response Passan got when he asked an unnamed team president if he would take that hit for a World Series title:
“I don’t know that I would,” one team president said, “but I don’t know that I wouldn’t.” It was an honest answer.”
So everybody just pump the breaks on the hysteria train before you hurt yourselves.
Shoutout to this guy for sacrificing the body to make sure his beers stayed upright, cool, and crispy. He took it off the chest like it was a lob pass in soccer. Except it wasn’t, it was a goddamn rock hit 330+ feet. Do you know how fast that baseball was moving? I took a sabermetrics class in college under the guise of a Math and Economics class so please excuse the baseball nerd jargon. According to Fangraphs, the mean exit velocity of a home run in the MLB this season was 103 mph. 103! So this guy took a triple digit baseball off the chest all so he could maintain the dignity of his Bud Lights. God bless him because that shit is gonna leave a mark, but hey at $13 bucks a beer he really had no other choice.
This dude even got free tix to Game 6 out of it courtesy of Bud Light. What a time to be alive.
JUST IN: @budlight is sending “beers over baseball” guy, Nationals fan Jeff Adams, to tomorrow night’s Game 6 in Houston. They’ve also made him a shirt. Media value to Bud Light, according to @ApexMarketing, was $7.2 million. pic.twitter.com/fvP2bz2PoH
The 300s 