Thursday, December 25, 2008

"The Sox should bid on (player X) to raise the price for the Yankees to get him."

It's not best for the Red Sox to raise the price on a free agent whom the Yankees are going to get to make the Yankees pay a higher price for the player. Doing this would hurt the Red Sox because agents of future players will use these players as comps. For example, it's not a coincidence that the Yankees' first offer to Sabathia was a little higher than what Santana got with the Mets. We don't want that to happen with future players the Red Sox want when the Yankees are either out of the picture or not interested. The main, if not the only, example of when the Yankees are out of the picture for a potentially expensive free agent is when the Red Sox are going for one who plays a position the Yankees already have filled, like when the Red Sox signed J.D. Drew while the Yankees already had Cabrera and Damon for CF and Abreu for RF.

12/09 edit: When the Red Sox signed John Lackey during the 2009-10 offseason, his agent used A.J. Burnett's contract as a comp. Had the Red Sox driven up the price of Burnett during the 2008-09 offseason, it likely would have cost the Red Sox more to sign Lackey.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

"Al Gore said he invented the internet."

I still see my share of times, and not just in Views & News, when people post about the internet that Al Gore said he invented. If you see someone post this, or if you hear someone tell you this, you can refer that person to this from snopes.