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JOSE ALTUVE, THE SMALLEST GUY IN BASEBALL, PUTS UP ANOTHER GARGANTUAN NUMBER.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez, News · , ,

Hey there, piggy banks. It’s time for a little pre-season math lesson, brought to you by the twin gods of baseball negotiations; Insanity and Yurshittinme.

Baseball is a numbers game, right?

Baseball men count everything — at bats, hits, runs, steals, earned runs, wild pitches…probably even how many times a guy adjusts his junk in an inter-league game with less than two outs and a man on third. It friggin’ ridiculous. They even make up things to count, like Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). This make-me-laugh stat zeroes in on how much batters and pitchers contribute to their teams compared to a fake position player or pitcher of league-average talent. Now that’s GOTTA be somethin’ created by agents. Anyway, baseball is a game that lives and dies on numbers — national debt-size ones when it comes to contracts.

So here’s a number for ya: 151,000,000.

That’s what the Stros’ are shellin’ out for their sawed-off second baseman, José Altuve, for the next five years. Not $150 million (cuz that woulda been an insult). One hundred and fifty-ONE million. Not bad for a guy who still has to travel with his Graco Nautilus booster car seat. Did the Tuve have a stack of other big numbers last year…especially during the playoffs? Totally. But holy craptoids!

Baseball is also a game of inches.

That means at 5’6″ (66 inches) José Altuve is now the highest paid player in baseball, based on height, and will be rakin’ in $454,545.46 per inch, each of the next five seasons. That would be 2,945,436,200,000 bolivars in Venezuela — where Altuve is from — according to the unofficial but often used exchange rate of dolartoday.com. Surprise, surprise…official Venezuelan government exchange rates are considered overvalued. Of course I could say the same thing about pint-size second basemen gettin’ paid 3 trillion bolivars a year. Nobody is worth that. Not even Scarlett Johansson.

Is America great or what?!

No matter how Lester Holt tries to paint it, America just ain’t that bad. And Little Joe’s contract extension illustrates that in 4K living color, my friend. Take Venezuela, for instance, where the latest increase in minimum wage to 97,531 bolivars a month — an amount equal to $12.53 in Houston, Texas, America — means that Altuve, all by himself, makes as much money as 200,851 of his countrymen. Pretty friggin’ incredible.

America: Land of the free, home of the highly overpaid. Especially if you pretend (act) or play baseball for a living. But hey…I say more power to Altuve. Right up until they meet the Cubs in the Series this year. (Not that the little bat swingin’ munchkin needs anymore power, with his obscene slash line and all.) As far as his contract goes, though…if I were in his size 3-1/2 shoes, I’d take every penny they wanted to bury me in. Includin’ that extra million.

Are you still with me?

I know I lost White Sox fans, Cards fans and probably Major League umpires — who can only count to four and require one of those umpire counter things to do it — the moment I mentioned “math.” But for the astute Cubs fan (and is there any other kind?) what all this means is that Altuve is gonna be a Stroh for a while, the Stros are likely to be contenders for a while, and the people of Venezuela are worse than dirt poor. Whatever is worse than dirt — which I don’t know what it would be — that’s it.

Saving the best for last.

As long as we’re talkin’ about mucho bolivaro, here’s a piece of good news for the rest of us: After gettin’ boystowned by the Ricketts family the last two seasons, Cubs tickets are stayin’ relatively flat, with 2018 prices gettin’ goosed by less than one percent. This means the average ticket will set you back 518,946 bolivars, or $66.67. Consider yourself lucky, pallie. A minimum wage Venezuelan has to work through June 10th to make that much scratch.

Joe

FORMER CARDS SCOUTING DIRECTOR GETS OBSTRUCTED VIEW SEAT FOR NEXT 4 YEARS.

· Joe Sez, News · , , , ,

CHRIS-CORREA-JAIL

Hey there, pot stickers, Joe “Untouchable” Schlombowski, here. So I was readin’ in the Trib that Chris Correa, the Cards’ former scouting director, was just sentenced to a skosh under 4 years in the slammer for spyin’ on the Stros. This story is so whacked that I’m havin’ trouble knowin’ where to even start. But, hey, I’ll give it a shot.

First, Chris Correa isn’t exactly on par with the Pink Panther when it comes to bein’ a criminal mastermind. I mean if you rob a bank, and you’re wiley enough to get away with it, you end up with a ton of cash. BOOM! Instant payoff. Rocket scientist Correa, on the other hand, hacked into the Stros’ database in order to get his beady little eyes on their draft list, notes on trade discussions, player evaluations and a 2014 team draft board. What the hell is the payoff with that kinda move? Sure, over time, the Cards maybe, possibly, eventually might, sorta, kinda be able to make some minor gains at the expense of Houston, but we’re talkin’ about stuff that typically takes years to develop. And Houston isn’t even in the same league, let alone the same division as the Cards, which if they were it would have the greatest possibility of makin’ a difference. And what does Correra get outta any of it anyway? Maybe a raise if and when enough of it pays off, but … wow … is that a roundabout way of gettin’ ahead.

Second, if you are gonna do your own little Richard Nixon reenactment, why the hell would you target baseball? Now, I could be wrong but it seems like whatever Apple Computer is plannin’ for the new, new thing might … just might … be a little more valuable than the OPS of some 16 year old phenom from Barahona. Yeah, I get it … Correa was in baseball so he was workin’ the turf he knows. But the risk/reward trade off is just too thin. It’s Twiggy on a liquid diet. It’s friggin’ anorexic.

Third, and no offense to the Stros — well, the usual amount, but no more than that — if you’re just bound and determined to partake in corporate baseball espionage, is hackin’ into the Astro’s database where you wanna start? That woulda been like Nixon’s guys breakin’ into the Bethesda Motel 6. If I’m Correa — and thank God I’m not cuz I’d have the IQ of driftwood — I’m hackin’ the Cubs. Why? Look at ’em. Look at the club, the depth, the talent, the farm system. If you get away with it — and I gotta assume that was part of Correa’s plan — why wouldn’t you go after the information that can make the biggest difference for you, both in terms of it face value, and the fact that you’d be takin’ it from your arch-friggin-rival? Nope. Correa goes for the Stros in what can best be described as a pinheadian move of gargantuan proportions.

But then, what would you expect from a Cardinals guy?

Joe