Tuesday, February 23, 2021

In Rotary confessional blowout, Mariners poohbah spills the beans... and other Tuesday click-worthy clacks

It's always kismet when a three-martini suit speaks truth to the halls of Babbitry. The latest is Kevin Mather, former CEO of the forever-tainted Seattle Mariners, who socked it to the Harper Valley PTA the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club in a recent speech, in which he admitted:

a) Dirty dealing by the owners
b) Collusion by the owners
b) Underpinnings of racism by the owners
d) The moon landing was faked.

Actually, no. 4 is wrong... maybe. Keeping you on your toes. Mather - who resigned after his lapse in felony-grade deceit - basically confirmed everything the players union has claimed for the last seven years. His confessional tour de force stemmed from the claim - (which I don't buy) - that MLB lost $2.9 billion last year. According to the NY Times, he said:

“The industry lost $2.9 billion, and before any of you make faces: No, nobody cares that rich owners lost money. But we lost $2.9 billion last year, and we have taken the position that there are 180 free agents still out there on Feb. 5 unsigned, and sooner or later, these players are going to turn their hat over and come with hat in hand, looking for a contract.”

So it went. This explains why just days before Camp Tampa opened, the Death Barge  signed Justin Wilson and Brett Gardner, and why franchises regularly hold back prospects, screwing them in future contracts. But, yawn, everybody knew this. Soon after the current Players Union contract took effect, the owners began sailing yachts through their loopholes - the biggest one, which allowed luxury taxes to replace the salary caps that union men long ago went on strike to avoid. 

So Mather will spend a few months in the penalty box, then resurface in some quieter job with duct tape over his mouth, and nothing will change - until next winter - dear God, next winter - when the new contract comes up, and all hell breaks loose. 

In other Yankee clickbait...

Surprise! Clarke Schmidt has a barking elbow, and if you're not thinking the worst, you haven't been following the Yankees. The team says it's minor, that he'll rub dirt on it and be back by May. I'm sorry, but who believes this? I've heard more reasonable predictions from Q. Let's wish Schmidt the best - he's already gone through Tommy John surgery - but remember that talk about a six-man rotation? What a joke. Yesterday, they were talking about finding Domingo German another team. Now, he's in the rotation. 

Luis Severino - he of the eternal injury list - told reporters he hopes to be back by July.  Thus, this glass season is either half empty or half full. The last time we saw Sevy, he was battling the cheater Astros in game 5 of the 2019 ALCS. He fought hard, worked 4.1 innings - 97 pitches - and gave up two runs. (We lost, 4-1.) Did the Yankees rush him back from injury? 

If somebody had simply said, "Luis, it's not worth risking you in the long haul, so sit out the playoffs and come back next spring," would we have him now? We'll never know. 

Yeah, I'm oversimplifying this: Severino wanted to pitch, they had nobody else, and he'd looked good in a few regular season outings (until his last one, when he didn't.) But we somehow managed to make a double bank-shot of negativity. We lost the playoffs, and we lost Severino. So... back by July? Sure. 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

One large thing...

I've written this before but apparently MLB is committed to the big lie.

They did not LOSE $2.9 billion. They lost potential revenue. It's not the same thing. I'm pretty sure that the TV money covered MLB's actual expenses last year. So they would have broken even.

Breaking even is NOT losing money. So for them to act like they are in the red is total bullshit. They lost a year. Join the club. We all lost a year in various ways.

Doug K.


JM said...

I've missed a lot of posts lately, but I'm catching up.

Our outfield will never be the outfield it's supposed to be due to injuries.

We got Gardy again and a Justin.

We're down a Sevvy and a Clarke on the mound. Forever? Maybe.

German has his work cut out for him in every way possible. He may not make it for any of those reasons.

The owners lie.

The Mariners fired their president because he's an asshole.

Did I miss anything?

Looks like not much has changed. Good posts regardless.

Alphonso said...

JM...You may have forgotten to celebrate the fact that Cashman and Hal managed to convince Giancarlo Stanton to " opt-in" to his clause, assuring that he remains with the Yankees for at least the next seven years.

God knows, there must have been a bunch teams more than willing to overpay the man.

The yankees are just lucky.

A DH who can hit lefties, one in a while.

Although how many lefties will our all righty line-up be seeing?

HoraceClarke66 said...

Good point, Doug K.

Did the MLB teams pay their vendors, ushers, and other ballpark personnel last season? Did they keep subsidizing all those minor league teams that didn't play? Did they keep shelling out tax money to the cities that own their ballparks?

(I kid, I kid: professional sports teams in America almost never pay taxes.)

And yes, next year comes Baseball Armageddon. Which might not be such a bad thing...

HoraceClarke66 said...

Their pitching of an injured Severino is a travesty. And it started even earlier.

I refer to how they went on pitching him for the whole last half of 2018, as he visibly crumbled. And after he had been abruptly pulled from a laugher against the Red Sox in which he was pitching a shutout.

See July 1, 2018.

Sevvy was the best pitcher in the American League at that moment. Neither he—nor the Yankees—have been the same since. The claim was that the Yanks couldn't be sure of his injury without giving him the potentially harmful arm dye. But obviously, they knew something bad was going on.

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