Late Night Royals Links: Royals Sign Aaron Crow, While Ken Rosenthal Gives Voice to the Poor & Silenced Voices of the Mainstream Media

by Freneau on Sep 17, 2009 10:50 PM EDT

Ken Rosenthal googled himself at some point and did not like what he found.

Maybe Ken Rosenthal googled himself after the fake bloggers-and-steroids controversy. Maybe he did so before. No matter when he did so, it's pretty obvious that he didn't like what he saw.The odd thing is that prior to this summer, Rosenthal didn't seem to be an especially controversial figure: he did harmless in-game reporting on FOX games and he broke trade rumors and... that was it. I can't remember anything he wrote ever being controversial from an analytical perspective. Still, it is evident that he's upset about something, and now the internet must pay.

Increasingly, he just seems like another (subconsciously perhaps) threatened guy with an axe to grind. He's on TV constantly. He writes for a big website. He has a cell phone contact list that looks like a MLB directory, and yet he feels silenced somehow by (of course) people in their basements. This is the reaction of a man who somewhere deep inside is beginning to realize that other people out there, people who don't even get paid to do so, actually know a lot about baseball too.

My position of extreme prominence is not prominent enough!! My peers having 95% of the audience is not enough!!

The extremely ironic thing about all of this is that the MVP Award is not decided by a popular vote or even some kind of mega-debate. The AL MVP will be decided by a group, BBWAA members in AL cities, which is about one quarter the size of the United States Senate. Which is why I tend not to get involved in the endless MVP wars.

Devil Fingers and Poz are both good on this.

Royals:

Grab Bag:

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confession: I Google myself sometimes, too

Often it’s when my wife is asleep and I’m alone in front of the computer.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Sep 17, 2009 11:12 PM EDT via mobile reply actions

in your mother's basement?

"Things could always be worse." - Buddy Bell

by buddyball on Sep 17, 2009 11:24 PM EDT up reply actions

with all due respect

who gives a f*** about Ken Rosenthal. Lets talk about Aaron Crow! That’s the real news here. So did he end up getting less money then the Nats offered?

Great, now Kansas City has TWO delusional GM's who think that contending in 2010 is still a possibility. Note to an NFL GM: if you win 2 games one year, dont expect signing four players whose ages sum to 141 and expect to make the playoffs the next year. Super reach for Tyson Jackson, huge contract to a QB who's still very much a question mark, questionable FA signing, why have we already given Pioli the benefit of the doubt? On the other hand, I have nothin to say about Dayton Moore, he's dead to me.

by RoyalFlush on Sep 18, 2009 12:20 AM EDT reply actions

does anyone understand the 3-year thing?

by Freneau on Sep 18, 2009 9:04 AM EDT up reply actions

Not really...

Seems like the royals get to sign him for less up front than he would have gotten last year, but they added some performance bonuses to get the total number above 4.5M so that Crow can save some face.

by billexgordler on Sep 18, 2009 9:15 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions

for all of their apparent faults,

GMDM’s FO does seem to do a good job of getting draftees signed and to appropriate contracts, which they should get credit for

"The life of a (Royals) fan must be lived forward but can only be understood backward" -- Kierkegaard (more or less)

by benfunke on Sep 18, 2009 11:35 AM EDT up reply actions

He burns options from day 1

And more importantly, he is well placed when the contract runs out. If he is Super 2 eligible, he has a higher base in negations, if he isn’t, it is very unlikely the Royals risk upsetting him by cutting his pay as they would be entitled too (by up to 80%, or league minimum I think).

Take Hooch. The ML contract he signed after being drafted expires this year. He isn’t arb eligible. In theory the Royals could slash his salary from the $1.3m it currently stands. They are incredibly unlikely to do that. So Hooch will be a two year player earning over a million dollars. Which is exceptional in the absence of a long term deal. He also gets paid more in the minors. He earned $850k pro-rata this year in Omaha. Chris Hayes (a typical non rostered AAA player) gets just over $1000 a month. So Hooch wins there too.

by kcbottom9th on Sep 18, 2009 9:57 AM EDT up reply actions

thank you...

but he will not be a free agent…. just a guy not making the minimum (in all likelihood)

by Freneau on Sep 18, 2009 10:35 AM EDT up reply actions

i really liked Poz's piece about the writers history

I’m glad I wasn’t around in the pre-internet days. I’ll take whatever is missed or construed by SABR’s over ingrained baseball writers mythology and elitism anyday

My stories a lot like yours only more interesting because it involves robots!

by AvilesRotY on Sep 18, 2009 12:26 AM EDT reply actions

Not sure if this was brought up...

but did anybody see wednesdays kc star? “Hey, the mistake was the offer, not me accepting it. Nobody really expected me to be worth 12 million at my age, did they?” Jose Guillen. Priceless

My stories a lot like yours only more interesting because it involves robots!

by AvilesRotY on Sep 18, 2009 12:30 AM EDT reply actions