Stadium Renovations: Can’t Be Done

Here’s a cool slideshow of the renovation of Kauffman (Royals) Stadium.

As I discussed the other day, it’s a shame that no technology exists to convert an aging stadium, say one that opened in 1973 (or 1976), into a modern ballpark.  Such an innovative process would have allowed the Yankees to remodel their existing stadium and stay in the House That Ruth Built rather than The House That Yes Built.

It’s silly to think that they could have done that – so across the street they go.   Or they could have done what the Royals are doing.

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Orioles Jacking It This Spring

Yeah I know the headline sounds naughty.

The Orioles are jacking up ticket prices this spring.

Want to see the Bosox play the Orioles?   The O’s won’t sell you a ticket.   They will sell you a package of 15 games, or if you don’t go for that they’ll sell you a package of 4 in the bad seats (although it’s spring, how bad could they be).   No singles for the Red Sox game.

Tickets to see the Red Sox or Mets will cost you an extra $2.

Don’t worry the Mets raised the prices on the Red Sox game at Port St. Lucie as well.  $25 tickets become $35 and so on.

I understand supply and demand so I get it.   I hope the next time the Mets decide to lose 100 games that they understand it works the other way too.   At Shea in the 90’s they preferred having an emoty upper deck rather than sell $1 seats, and in the 70’s I remember attending games when the uppers were closed off.

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I’d Like To Root For The Giants But The PSL’s Make It Hard

I’m not a Giants fan.  I’m not an Eagles fan.   I have no stake in this game.  

I am a sports fan and an NFL fan and I live in the NYC area.   Last year I rooted for the Giants because they are local and my team was out (49ers) and I don’t care about the Patriots either.   I never claimed to be Captain Giants or one of these front-runners that appear every January, just a local guy who rooted against the team from further away.   I was very happy for my Giant fan friends when the Giants won.

Then the Giants announced the PSLs.   I looked at my friend whose family has had tickets for 50 seasons.  The friend whose family somehow never gets offered Super Bowl tickets (zero for four games, do the math on that – surely someone is jumping ahead of him on line).   He got a bill for $20,000.

It offends me.

So what to do?  I’m going to watch this game.   Mets Police Junior likes the Giants.   Do I root against them?  Does that change anything?  The PSL’s will still happen.  There’s thousands of people waiting in line to give the Giants money for nothing.   Rooting for the Eagles does nothing for me.   Rooting against the Giants means   I’m likely to wind up with the boring Panthers in the Super Bowl.

I like to watch sports on TV, and thus I want the best possible Super Bowl .  I think I need to root for the Giants and the Steelers to maximize my own enjoyments of sporting events.   Damn.

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Tim Redding Doesn’t Need To Win, Just Needs To Eat

The Mets signed Tim Redding.   You’re probably not impressed.   No he’s not C.C Sabathia and he’s not Derek Lowe.   He’s Pedro and he’s dirt cheap.  To be a successful Met he doesn’t need to win, he needs to eat innings.

I got killed yesterday talking about the Mets frugality , so I guess this signing is what people want, a nice cheap pitcher not one of those high priced free agents that the Yankees overpay for.   That’s what comments like these are telling me:

What are you talking about? We have the 3rd highest payroll in baseball! You don’t have to throw money around frivilously just to prove yourself to be a big market team. I am, for one, glad we are NOT like the Yankees! Look at this offseason and all the signings they made. They could have had them all for much much less. They basically competed against themselves. No one was even bidding remotely close to them!

and

What you want is the Mets to be like the Yankees. Spend spend spend. When will you and other Mets fans realize that the Wilpons, who spent over $137 million on team salary last year, do NOT want to go over the luxury tax. You want Manny, you want Lowe, you want K-Rod, you want Tex, you want this guy and that guy. ALL that signage means the Mets will a) be compared to the Yankees as just a team who spends and b) go over the luxury tax and be forced to pay the fine. Just because we spend a ton of money doesnt mean we wont collapse again. This is a good team that has to find a way to finish at the end of the year. Plain and simple. 

That post got a lot of attention and I’ll break that down tomorrow…but today I want to focus on Redding.  $2.25 million is nothing.  Redding doesn’t need to win.   He doesn’t even have to pitch .500.   He can go 10-16 and do the Mets a favor.  All Tim Redding needs to do is eat innings.

Last year I had a big problem with Pedro Martinez (people go bananas when I call him “Four Inning Pedro”) but one of the problems with the 2008 Mets was that every time Pedro pitched you had to use the entire bullpen to get through 9 innings.   Pedro started 20 games and pitched 109 innings….with some short starts in there let’s call it about 5 1/3 innings per start maybe even 5 2/3 if you throw out the really short ones.   Redding pitched 182 innings in 33 starts.   That also is 5 2/3.   He’s going to need to go a little deeper.   The front end of the rotation will bank the wins, he just needs to not waste the entire bullpen every fifth day.  It’s the old adage that no matter what you are going to lose 60 – so lose them on Redding day but don’t let it spill over.

A guy like Derek Lowe may not win 20 games, but he’ll get you over 6 1/3 per start.  (211 IP in 34 starts).   Comparatively a guy like Santana, and we saw how good he was, averaged nearly 7. (234 in 34).

Redding replaces Oliver Perez who averaged 5.7 per start.   The Mets save some money and aren’t those crazy wild spending idiot Yankees….but we’ll get back into that tomorrow.

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