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Earlier Tuesday, a lot of the talk was about whether or not the Red Sox ought to go for it and trade for Cliff Lee. Lee, of course, is an ace, a rare breed, but he’s also paid like one, and reports suggested the Phillies were holding out for a wheelbarrow of prospect talent, along with complete contract assumption. People occupied both sides of the conversation, but it didn’t look like a wise idea for the Sox, given how much they’d have to give up for one individual shorter-term interest. The Red Sox really wanted a starter, but they also really wanted to not give up their top-level young talent. It was up to them to find a way.

Later Tuesday, the Red Sox got their good starter. According to reports, the Red Sox and White Sox couldn’t work out a straight-up Jake Peavy trade, but then they got the Tigers involved and a deal was struck. Peavy is off to the other Sox, while the Tigers are up one Jose Iglesias and the White Sox are up one Avisail Garcia. And, of course, there are some other bits. The complete summary:

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After a rumor filled day with no real action, it looks like the last night before the trade deadline is going to bring some actual deals, and the A’s have gotten the ball rolling by picking up infielder Alberto Callaspo from the Angels in exchange for minor league infielder Grant Green.

This is an interesting trade for a number of reasons.

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With the Phillies finally admitting that they’re not going anywhere fast, Ruben Amaro is talking to teams about Cliff Lee. The Red Sox are reportedly showing the most interest, and despite the fact that Boston is on Lee’s 21 team no-trade list, those are almost always negotiable, and Lee would probably rather play for a winner than an aging team with no clear path to get back on track. So, in a market that has been mostly littered with back-end starters and bullpen pieces, there’s finally a bonafide ace in play.

Make no mistake, Cliff Lee is an ace. Over the last three calendar years, Lee has thrown 660 innings and posted +16.4 WAR, coming in behind only Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Felix Hernandez. He’s not a low FIP/high ERA guy either, as his RA9-WAR is +16.5. No matter how you evaluate pitchers, Cliff Lee is one of the best pitchers in the game. He may not be the hardest thrower in the world, but his command and overall repertoire allow him to dominate opponents just the same as if he throw 100 mph.

But acquiring Cliff Lee, Bonafide Ace, will come at a very high cost, and depending on what Philadelphia is asking for, the Red Sox might very well be better off walking away. Read the rest of this entry »

People sometimes ask what initially got me interested in economics. The truth is that one of the first things that caught my attention was an application of supply-and-demand graphs that explained the war on drugs. What seemed like a set of policies with unpredictable effects actually had some very predictable — and undesired — consequences. Applying these concepts to Major League Baseball’s war on performance-enhancing drugs is naturally an article I was destined to write. I’ll start off by running through the basics of supply and demand for illegal drugs, show the concepts I found so fascinating years ago, and then show you how well they apply to what MLB is trying to do with PEDs and with Biogenesis in particular. I understand that drugs are a somewhat sensitive topic, and I have no interest in preaching any normative points of view. I will instead trust that readers can think of my commentary as descriptive, and not assume any agenda. I’ll also be peppering in references to The Wire throughout, because I’m definitely never going to get to do it again.

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Here’s one reason you wouldn’t think the Rangers would consider trading closer Joe Nathan: they’re only a game and a half out of the second American League wild-card slot, despite a current team-wide slump. Plus, their division isn’t entirely out of reach. Here’s a second reason you wouldn’t think the Rangers would consider trading Nathan: just a short while ago, they put a package together to land pending free agent Matt Garza. And here’s a third reason, in case you wanted a third: earlier this month, Nathan got the save for the AL in the All-Star Game. That isn’t about the significance of the game; the game doesn’t matter, for our purposes. It’s that Nathan was an All-Star, because to this point he’s been super good. For the Rangers, he’s been a major contributor.

The Rangers, though, have talked about a Nathan deal. According to Buster Olney, they’ve actually been aggressive about it. The idea would be trading from a perceived strength to address a perceived weakness. It would represent neither buying nor selling, or it would represent both. What the Rangers want, right now, are some hitters. What the Rangers feel like they have, right now, are quality late-inning relievers, especially with Joakim Soria back and Neftali Feliz on the road. Most teams talk about most things, and the Rangers seem to have been intrigued by the idea of cashing in their closer for immediate help.

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Hank Aaron. Barry Bonds. Albert Pujols. Edwin Encarnacion.

If one of those names doesn’t seem to fit, perhaps you haven’t been paying close enough attention in 2013. (And you probably didn’t read Dave Cameron’s trade value column.) The fact that Encarnacion is third in the majors in home runs and fourth in runs batted in doesn’t put him in elite company in historic terms, though.

No, it’s something Encarnacion is not doing that makes him unique.
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In 29 games out of the Texas Rangers bullpen, Neal Cotts is 4-1 with a 0.85 ERA. The 33-year-old left-hander is having a very good season. Not long ago, it looked like his career might be over.

When he took the mound in late May, it was his first big-league appearance since May 2009. When he logged a win on June 5, it was his first since 2006. During the past four years, Cotts has undergone multiple surgeries and been released by multiple teams.

Cotts, who appeared in 284 games with the Cubs and White Sox from 2003 to 2009, was signed by the Rangers in February. He talked about the evolution of his career — including the speed bumps — when Texas visited Fenway Park earlier this summer. Read the rest of this entry »

“There’s just no excuse for that,” people wrongly often say of things. Truth be told, there’s pretty much always an excuse — it’s just a matter of whether or not the excuse is thought to be good enough. People don’t do the wrong things without reasons, and sometimes they even have the best intentions. There are, of course, deliberate rule-breakers. But there also are  rule-breakers who were just trying their best, with lousy results. That in itself is lousy and common.

Umpires are people and umpires get things wrong sometimes, even though they’re not trying to be wrong. Their very livelihood depends on not screwing up. What they get wrong most often are strike/ball calls, because they call so many dozens of pitches a game, some more important than others. It can be understandable when an umpire makes a questionable decision on a pitch on the edge. As much as we’d like to think of the zone as being black and white, it’s practically impossible for things to work that way. But sometimes umpires call balls on pitches more or less right down the middle. For this, people would say there’s no excuse. Myself, I’d like to know about the excuses. Because, after all, they have to exist. Umpires don’t try to make obviously wrong calls because that could jeopardize their careers. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems everyone is writing about the sports programming bubble, wondering whether it’s here and when it will burst. Just Google “sports TV bubble” and you’ll find this story from the New York Times in January, and these from FOX and ESPN in March. But it’s not just this year. Forbes warned of a sports TV bubble in late 2011 and followed up in early 2013 declaring that the bubble existed and was about to pop.

What is the sports TV bubble anyway? It’s the hyper-inflated prices sports networks, cable and satellite companies, and consumers pay to produce, show, and watch live sporting events. Live sports means no fast-forwarding through commercials on the DVR. Advertisers pump gobs of money into the system to place their products in front of an engaged 18- to-35-year-old male audience.  Target consumers are valuable. They make sports programming valuable. Networks pay billions to broadcast sports to those consumers but everyone — not just sports fans — foot the bill.

How did we get here? I touched on these issues in this post in May, when Senator John McCain introduced a bill that would eliminate regulatory barriers to a la carte programming by cable and satellite companies:

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On Monday, the Rangers gave up a pretty hefty haul to acquire the rights to Matt Garza. With so many teams out of the race not selling, the prices that the few teams giving up talent can charge is very high, and so despite Garza’s impending free agency, the Cubs did very well in their return for a few months of a good-not-great pitcher. With Garza off the market, the teams hunting for starting pitching will likely now turn their attention to Jake Peavy.

Peavy doesn’t have quite same reputation as Garza does, and he probably won’t command the same kind of return. But if we actually stop and compare the two, it’s hard to make a case that Garza was the jewel of the summer and Peavy is simply a fallback plan for those who missed out on the big prize. In fact, the evidence actually suggests that Peavy might just be the better acquisition.

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