News Corporation is reportedly set to buy a 49 percent stake in the YES Network and it may be a hedge against losing its local TV contract with the Dodgers.

The YES Network broadcasts Yankee games and a full slate of Yankees-related programming. It is also the broadcast home of the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA. YES is considered the most successful and profitable regional sports network in the country.

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that News Corp. is close to acquiring a 49 percent share of YES, which has been valued for purposes of the transaction at $3 billion. A 49 percent share, then, will cost News Corp. $1.47 billion. Until now, shares in YES were divided among the Yankees (34 percent), investment banks Goldman Sachs and Provident Equity (40 percent) and a group of former Nets owners (26 percent). The deal includes an option for News Corp. to increase its stake to 80 percent within five years.

News Corp. is the parent company of Fox Sports, which owns 19 regional sports networks around the country. One of those regional sports networks is Fox Sports West, the current broadcast partner to both the Angels and the Dodgers. Last December, the Angels hit gold when they signed a new, 17-year contract with Fox Sports West valued at more than $2.5 billion. That deal gave the Angels tremendous financial flexibility when approaching the free-agent market. The result? A  10-year/$240 million contract for Albert Pujols and a 5-year/$77.5 million contract for CJ Wilson.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

Read the rest of this entry »

Later tonight, the National League Cy Young Award winner will be announced. My own fake awards picks have already been made public, and I am sure everyone was thrilled to read them. The NL Cy Young gave me the most trouble. I ended up voting for the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, but I really wanted to cast my non-ballot for the Mets’ R.A. Dickey.

What’s not to like about R.A. Dickey? He names his bats after fictional swords (only the master smiths of Gondolin could forge a weapon that enables a pitcher to rake to the tune of a career 6 wRC+). He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro during the off-season to raise money to combat human trafficking. He is trying to help others by sharing about being abused as as child. He writes children’s books. He makes an awesome face while pitching. Best of all (strictly from a purely baseball perspective), he is a knuckleballer. Oh, yeah, he also had an awesome season in 2012.

However, when I tried to justify voting for Dickey over Kershaw, I just could not do it. It was not for lack of trying, though.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball’s general managers are meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., this week, which kicks the Hot Stove burner from simmer to medium-low. The burner will turn to high next month at the Winter Meetings in Nashville.

Even on simmer, there is word from the Bronx that the Yankees won’t pursue “big time” — or even “less-than-big-time” — free agents this winter, despite rotation and outfield needs. We can debate whether to accept the “word from the Bronx” as true or just a negotiating ploy. What we do know is this: Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner has said repeatedly that he wants to bring the Yankees below the $189 million luxury tax threshold in 2014. Why? Well, that takes some explaining.

The luxury tax is a shorthand term for the Competitive Balance Tax provisions in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It imposes a penalty on teams with player payrolls above a set threshold.  The tax is levied only on the portion of a team’s payroll that exceeds the predetermined amount. The luxury tax was first introduced in the 2003-2006 CBA and was designed to keep player payrolls from skyrocketing, without setting a hard salary cap.

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right: end of the season, time for me to hand out awards based on semi-goofy. questionable stats. Along with the Carter-Batista Award, this is one of the first I started publishing.. In fact, my very first post at FanGraphs (three years this week! Time flies when you’re wasting it.) back in 2009 was a King of Little Things award presentation. You can also check out the 2010 and 2011 versions for the thrilling results. So which 2012 hitter contributed to most his teams wins in ways not measurable by traditional linear weights?

Read the rest of this entry »

Following Sunday’s conclusion of the World Series, there began the relatively brief Quiet Period — a period of time during which teams have exclusive negotiation rights with pending free agents. After the Quiet Period, anybody can reach out to anybody. Any player can sign with any team that he wants. The Los Angeles Dodgers had a pending free agent in Brandon League, and they didn’t want to risk exposing him to the open market, so Tuesday night, word got out that the Dodgers had signed League to a three-year contract.

With a fourth-year vesting option, based on games finished. As is, the three guaranteed years are worth $22.5 million. That is, the Dodgers signed League to a three-year, $22.5 million contract. The contract could end up being bigger than that, when it’s all said and done. We can all agree that paying this sort of money for a non-elite setup man would be ridiculous. And that isn’t what the Dodgers have done, as Ned Colletti says that League will be the team’s closer going forward. Closers make more money. It’s in the very definition of “closing”.

Read the rest of this entry »

It looks like a Japanese high school baseball player is going to sign directly with American team. Big in velocity and stature, right-hander Shohei Otani has confidence too: the 18-year-old seemed to imply in his press conference comments (as recorded by the Associated Press) that he think he’ll “challenge” for the big leagues soon. Though he’s an intriguing young pitcher, there are a few mitigating factors that may keep the market for him limited. No matter what happens, his signing will break new ground in Japanese-American baseball relations.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers entered the offseason a little sooner than they expected, but they have already hit the ground running in terms of their offseason planning. While they must await the results of medical exams on both Matt Kemp and Chad Billingsley, they have a pretty good idea of how they expect to attack the offseason, and that is to get after starting pitching. That is a good goal — with Billingsley and Ted Lilly potentially unavailable at the start of the season, and Aaron Harang potentially not good at any time, Los Angeles could use some reinforcements. But general manager Ned Colletti is also planning, at this juncture, to run with the combo of Luis Cruz at third and Hanley Ramirez at shortstop next season. This is a mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a rough week for Team Entropy, as sweeps by the Orioles and Athletics knocked out most of the larger snafus the Rays and Angels could have caused over the final three games:

There’s still room for a three-way tie between the Athletics, Rays and Angels, though, and the AL East, AL West and NL Wild Card could also see tied finishes as the year comes to a close.

Read the rest of this entry »