FanHouse Mlb Biz

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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*.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.