Latest Mlb Biz Stories
Posted: Jul 3rd 2009 6:23PM ET by Tom Fornelli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rangers, AL West, MLB Biz, MLB Rumors

The Texas Rangers were a popular darkhorse pick to win the AL West this season, and for a time they were leading the division. Unfortunately over the last few weeks they've seen their lead on the Angels disappear and are a game back going into Friday night's action. In fact, if you were so inclined, you could say that the Rangers' division lead has gone in the red.
Which seems somewhat apropos at the moment because it's not just their division lead that the Rangers couldn't maintain. Apparently owner
Tom Hicks couldn't meet last month's payroll and had to
borrow $15 million from Major League Baseball to pay his team. Posted: Jul 2nd 2009 11:05AM ET by Josh Alper (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Police Blotter

The Newport Beach Police Department landed themselves a doozy of a case on Monday night.
Scott Boras, much-maligned baseball agent, had dinner at Bandera Restaurant and returned to a disturbing scene in the parking lot after his meal. His Land Rover bore signs of a brutal assault, with damage to the windshield and driver's side window.
Someone used an unknown hard, long object (that's what she said)
during the assault, but police are short on other leads. If they hope to crack the case, they'll probably need to start working in shifts as there's no shortage of people with an ax to grind -- or window to break -- when it comes to Boras.
Posted: Jun 22nd 2009 3:12PM ET by Matt Snyder (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz
Donald Fehr has been the executive director the
Major League Baseball Players Association since December 1985. During a press conference Monday afternoon, he announced that tenure will come to a close within a year. Assuming the board approves the move, his replacement will be general counsel
Michael Weiner. Fehr had originally joined the association as a general counsel in August 1977.
Fehr has overseen quite a bit of polarizing event during his time leading the players Association. On his watch: The infamous Steroids Era, a player strike that resulted in the canceling of the World Series, the beginning of drug testing, expansion, realignment, testimony on Capitol Hill on more than one occasion and a free agency collusion case in which he won a $280 million settlement from the owners for the players.
Posted: Jun 16th 2009 5:30PM ET by Josh Alper (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Media Watch

You probably couldn't get through nine innings of any baseball game without hearing one player or another described as being smart. That description only applies between the lines, though. Book smarts are a different category, according to the
Wall Street Journal.
The
Journal scoured media guides from all 30 teams in the major leagues and found that
only 26 current players and managers received a college degree. They also ranked each ballclub by its level of education, i.e. players and managers who had spent any time in college, to see if there was any correlation between success in the classroom and success on the diamond.
Posted: Jun 11th 2009 12:00PM ET by Matt Snyder (RSS feed)
Filed under: AL Central, AL East, AL West, NL Central, NL East, NL West, MLB Biz

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.
Among the general population of sports fans,
Scott Boras is a very unpopular individual. He's referred to as greedy, a snake, and "Bor-ass" (what a clever way to use his name in a derogatory fashion, huh?), among other things. Teams threaten to never deal with him again. Fans claim he's ruining baseball and is everything wrong with professional sports. And on and on -- just
check out the reader comments on this Jeff Fletcher piece.
You know what I call him? The best agent in the history of sports.
Posted: Jun 11th 2009 9:00AM ET by Andrew Johnson (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Draft

Drafting
Stephen Strasburg No. 1 overall in the
MLB Draft was the easy part. Now the Nationals are staring at potentially (OK, likely) two-plus months of negotiations with his adviser, agent
Scott Boras.
What are the rest of us left to do? Sit and wait. Gawk at the numbers and
rhetoric likely to be thrown out from the Boras camp. Cross our fingers and hope Nationals president
Stan Kasten -- one of the more hard-line pro-management executives in the game -- gets in on the fireworks.
That might be fun for a week, but two months? Nah. So the MLB FanHouse gang decided to spice things up the best way we knew how -- by gambling on it.
The rules are simple: Each member of the staff submitted a figure for the total guaranteed value, including bonus, of Strasburg's contract with the Nationals (presuming of course he signs); The Price Is Right
rules are in effect. To the winner goes a heavy dose of pride and bragging rights. After the jump, you can see a visual representation of all of our guesses and can leave your own in the comments*.
Posted: Jun 11th 2009 8:00AM ET by Ed Price (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Draft
SECAUCUS, N.J. – Baseball's draft took another step forward out of obscurity with Tuesday night's prime-time showing on MLB Network.
I'm glad to see it, because I enjoy following the draft and I know how important it is, maybe more important than the draft is in the NFL or NBA.
Unfortunately, there are still problems with it. And unfortunately, I believe the best way to fix the problems isn't a worldwide draft or a draft with tradable picks.
It's no draft at all.
Posted: Jun 11th 2009 7:00AM ET by Jeff Fletcher (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Draft

With all the hand-wringing about the increasingly outrageous bonuses amateur players are getting these days -- and none will be more outrageous than what
Stephen Strasburg hauls in -- I can't figure out why baseball still doesn't have a NBA-style bonus structure.
I mean, I know why. It's because the players' union has not allowed the owners to implement one in collective bargaining. One of these days the major league players in the union are going to realize: "Hey, all that money going to amateur kids could be going to us!"
And that would be good for the big-league teams and for the current big-league players.
Posted: Jun 10th 2009 12:49AM ET by Ed Price (RSS feed)
Filed under: MLB Biz, MLB Draft

SECAUCUS, N.J. – Mike Trout was the star of MLB Network's coverage of Tuesday's draft.
But only because Trout, a first-round pick of the Angels, lives in Millville, N.J.
Trout braved the two-hour drive upstate to the MLB Network studio in Secaucus, making him the only draftee present at the new-format draft.
Posted: Jun 5th 2009 7:23PM ET by Ed Price (RSS feed)
Filed under: Braves, MLB Biz, MLB Inside Scoop

In light of the backlash against the
Braves for their handling of
Tom Glavine's release, team president
John Schuerholz has issued an apology.
But he could conceivably have to offer up more than that.
Glavine could pursue a grievance through the players' union, claiming he was released for financial and not performance reasons, though it would likely be a very difficult case to prove.
The Braves have been adamant that they believe Glavine could not succeed with a fastball in the 82-mph range. But Glavine, 43, was never expected to build up any more velocity than that.