Author: AJ

Playing Hack-a-Shaq

By Blaidd Drwg

Dwight Howard recently broke the NBA record for free throw attempts in a game with 39. Howard, a career 59% free throw shooter, managed to hit only 21 of his attempts but still scored over 40 points and lead his team to victory. It got me thinking, how well does the hack-a-Shaq approach work? There have been 29 instances of a player shooting 25 or more free throw attempts since 1985. Here are the results of them:

Player Points Scored FTA FTM Career FT% Game Result
Dwight Howard 45 21 39 59.5% Win
Shaquille O’Neal 41 19 31 52.7% Win
LeBron James 47 24 28 74.4% Loss
Shaquille O’Neal 39 15 28 52.7% Loss
Shaquille O’Neal 40 14 28 52.7% Win
Karl Malone 32 15 28 74.2% Loss
Willie Burton 53 24 28 78.6% Win
Kobe Bryant 52 20 27 83.7% Win
Kobe Bryant 45 18 27 83.7% Loss
Gilbert Arenas 60 21 27 80.4% Win
Allen Iverson 60 24 27 78.0% Win
Vince Carter 46 22 27 79.7% Loss
Charles Barkley 26 22 27 73.5% Win
Sleepy Floyd 30 22 27 81.5% Win
Michael Jordan 58 26 27 83.5% Win
Kevin Martin 50 23 26 86.4% Loss
Kevin Durant 46 24 26 87.9% Loss
Kobe Bryant 40 23 26 83.7% Win
Tracy McGrady 62 17 26 74.7% Win
Kobe Bryant 47 23 26 83.7% Win
Rony Seikaly 30 12 26 67.9% Win
Charles Barkley 47 21 26 73.5% Loss
Gilbert Arenas 45 23 25 80.4% Win
Kobe Bryant 62 22 25 83.7% Win
Gilbert Arenas 43 21 25 80.4% Loss
Jermaine O’Neal 55 19 25 71.1% Win
Latrell Sprewell 41 22 25 80.4% Loss
David Robinson 71 18 25 73.6% Win

In cases where someone went to the line 25+ times in a game, that player’s team came out ahead 18 out of 29 times. It isn’t a good comparison, since in a large number of those cases, it was the team’s best free throw shooter, and that is usually the last guy you want to foul. If you saw that 75% is where you want an NBA free throw shooter to be, lets take a look at all of the guys under that mark. There were 13 cases in which the guy at the line was under 75% and they won 9 of those games.

I was also surprised that Shaq didn’t end up on this list more often. I then though, maybe teams only use hack-a-Shaq in the playoffs. So I looked at Shaq’s playoff numbers from 1993-2005 and here is what I found:

  • Shaq played in 192 games and his teams sported a 121-71 record, good for a 63% win rate.
  • In those 192 games, Shaq only shot 20+ free throws 7 times, with a high of 39.
  • I lowered the threshold to 15+ per game, thinking that they played hack-a-Shaq later in the game and found that there were 41 games where he went to the line at least 15 times.
  • In those 41 games, his team sported a 29 – 12 record, good for 71% win rate.

I don’t want to bother doing this for anyone else since I have to look manually through the game logs to figure this out, but I am willing to make at least one general assumption:

The moral of the story, repeatedly fouling the big guy really doesn’t pay off.

 

 

Surplus Superbowl Swine Snacks

by A.J. Coltrane

In keeping with the “excess” theme for Superbowl food, I thought it’d be fun to make an oddball dish (in addition to the Sizeable Pizza Bianca Sendup.) Something like Hum Bao. Or something like a pulled pork sandwich. Except that I wanted a crisp, crunchy, wonton wrapper instead of the typical Hum Bao steamed dough, or a floppy pulled pork hamburger bun.

I settled on BBQ Pulled Pork Potstickers.

 

We put these together in the morning before the Superbowl. I had intended to cook them once everyone got to the house… By that point though, we had so much food on the table that I forgot all about them.

 

We didn’t miss them. We even decided to skip baking the pizza rolls (a SB tradition) and still did fine on food.

The filling was a combination of pulled pork, bbq sauce, soy, worcestershire, lime juice, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, and sambal oelek.

The dipping sauce was Gulden’s mustard, soy, sesame oil, canola oil, and honey. Sort of an asian inspired honey-mustard.

The cooking was standard potsticker technique: Preheat a non-stick skillet with a little canola oil. Add the dumplings and cook 3-4 minutes. Add 1/8 cup of water and quickly cover the pan, cook about 6 minutes covered. Uncover and cook about another 3 minutes until the bottoms of the potstickers are crispy.

I was fairly pleased with how it came out. The honey mustard sauce played nicely with the bbq pulled pork, the bottoms were crispy/crunchy, and the asian “bend” to the whole thing kept it from feeling like something I’ve had 1,000 times. I wouldn’t make it again for the Superbowl though — it’s too much cooking to do with that many guests in the house.

Yu Darvish, the next “Next Big Thing?”

By Blaidd Drwg

There is always the “next big thing” pitcher coming out of Japan. First it was “Nomo Mania”, then it was Hideki “Fat Toad” Irabu, then “Dice-K” Matsuzaka and his mysterious “gyro-ball” and “No-Kei” Igawa and now you have Yu Darvish. Darvish just signed a $60 million dollar contract with the Rangers. The Rangers also had to pay $52 million to Darvish’s Japanese League team as a posting fee, so they essentially signed him to a 6 year, 112 million dollar contract, roughly what Matsuzaka cost in 2007 and roughly the average of what Jered Weaver is making a season.

Japanese starters have largely been unsuccessful making the leap to MLB (there are a number of relief pitchers that have done well though). Nomo is far and away the best and Matsuzaka had a couple of decent seasons (there were a few other decent back of the rotation guys, but no one worth mentioning) , but neither had been dominant to the point of being called a franchise pitcher. Both Nomo and Matsuzaka entered the league at age 26, so let’s take a look at how they did, year by year compared to Jered Weaver. Yes, Weaver had already been in the league 3 years by the time he turned 26, but it is a fair comp since Nomo and Matsuzaka were both expected to be top of the rotation starters the second they entered the league.

Year 1 – Age 26

Year W-L ERA IP K/9 BB/9 ERA+ WAR
Nomo 1995 13-6 2.54 191.1 11.1 3.7 150 4.9
Matsuzaka 2007 15-12 4.40 204.2 8.8 3.5 108 3.2
Weaver 2009 16-8 3.75 211.0 7.4 2.8 117 4.5

 

Year 2 – Age 27

Year W-L ERA IP K/9 BB/9 ERA+ WAR
Nomo 1996 16-11 3.19 228.1 9.2 3.4 122 4.4
Matsuzaka 2008 18-3 2.90 167.2 8.3 5.0 160 5.1
Weaver 2010 13-12 3.01 224.1 9.3 2.2 132 5.6

 

Year 3 – Age 28

Year W-L ERA IP K/9 BB/9 ERA+ WAR
Nomo 1997 14-12 4.25 207.1 10.1 4.0 91 1.7
Matsuzaka 2009 4-6 5.76 59.1 8.2 4.6 82 0.3
Weaver 2011 18-8 2.41 235.2 7.6 2.1 158 6.6

 

Rest of Career

Year W-L ERA IP K/9 BB/9 ERA+ WAR
Nomo 1998-2008 80-80 4.66 1349.1 8.1 4.4 92 9.6
Matsuzaka 2010- Current 12-9 4.81 191.0 7.5 4.6 90 1.0

Nomo basically became league average in his 3rd season and then broke down after that, posting just 1 season with an ERA+ over 105 the rest of his career. Matsuzaka basically broke down in his 2nd season and, despite some nice looking numbers in 2008 (thanks to a ton of run support), really wasn’t all that good – he threw a lot of pitches and averaged less than 6 innings a start when healthy. He also probably won’t pitch in 2012 due to arm injuries. It really seems to be a trend where Japanese pitchers come into the league, take it by storm for a year or two and then fade away. These guys should be following a career curve like Jered Weaver, putting up their best seasons between the ages of 26 and 29, but they are not.

I have a few theories on as to why this is:

  • They are abused and throw a ton of innings in Japan prior to coming over to the majors. I can’t find pitch counts for Japan, but I would be willing to bet these pitcher routinely through in the 120-130 pitch range early in their career.
  • Their conditioning is not sufficient enough for the longer MLB season (the season is longer by about 20 games or 4 starts). Four starts may not seem like a lot, but it is roughly 15% more pitching than what they are used to. To put it in perspective, imagine running a 26 mile marathon and then being told you have to run another 4 miles before you are actually finished.
  • They don’t adjust to the talent level in MLB. Basically, they are getting by on raw stuff their first couple of years until hitters figure them out and make adjustments. Once the hitters make adjustments, the pitchers don’t and become hittable.
  • They don’t adjust to the strike zone. If you look at the stats of Matsuzaka in his last few seasons in Japan, he walked 84 hitters in 401 innings; he walked 80 in 205 innings in his first big league season. The same hold true for Nomo.
  • Their deliveries put too much torque on their arms. Hence the breakdowns at around age 28.

I am not saying that Darvish is going to flop. He shares a lot in common with Nomo and Matsuzaka – they are all power pitchers, they all threw a ton of innings in Japan at an early age, they are all 26 in their first MLB season. Maybe Darvish will be different and have a long career as a top of the rotation starter. Then again, maybe he will fall apart after a couple of seasons.

My prediction: Darvish will have a 135 ERA+ type season, winning the ROY in 2012 and then basically be a league average starter by 2015. I figure he will have ERA+ of something like 118 in 2013, 108 in 2014 and 100 in 2015, getting hurt sometime in 2014-2015 for an extended period of time. I would love to come back to this post in a few years just to see how accurate I am.

Pizza Bianca — A Sizeable Superbowl Sendup

by A.J. Coltrane

A Superbowl sendup on the Roman “Pizza Bianca”, inspired by this recipe, created by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats. He describes his process here. Here’s the photo from Serious Eats:

Kenji's Pizza Bianca. Check out his process at Serious Eats.
A little bit of background:  The Pizza Bianca I’m referring to is created at Antico Forno in Rome. It’s a flatbread about 2 meters long; made with olive oil, salt, and rosemary. The baker scrunches up the dough like an accordian onto a peel, then shimmies the dough out to its full expanse in the oven. The pizza is sold by length, rather than by the slice.

That sounds good to me, though I don’t have an oven that’s six feet across.

What I do have is a grill that’s 24″ x 18″. It’s my biggest cooking surface, and I thought that for the Super Bowl it’d be fun to make a flatbread the size of the grill.

Here are the two formulas, Kenji’s is the “Original” in the center column (Baker’s Percentage definition here):

Weight in Grams Original Sizeable
Flour 500, Bread Flour 800, AP Flour
Water 375 544
Salt 10 16
Yeast 5 5
Olive Oil 1/4 cup 3/8 cup
Rosemary 1 TBP, minced 1.5 TBP, minced
     
     
Baker’s Percentage Original Sizeable
Flour 100 100
Water 75 68
Salt 2 2
Yeast 1 0.63
Olive Oil 10.6 10
Rosemary 1 TBP, minced 1.5 TBP, minced

Kenji’s uses a 75% hydration and an overnight rise, since his is based around the Lahey No Knead recipe. I decided in advance that if I used a hydration that high then I’d be unlikely to get *that* much wet, oily, dough onto the grill without a mishap. I cut back the hydration to a more manageable 68% and allowed for a three day rest in the refrigerator. (My “regular” pizza dough is 60% hydration.)

Sizeable.

The recipe:

Use a spatula to combine all of the ingredients above in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap. Leave the dough in the refrigerator for 3 days in total, folding the dough (in the bowl) a couple of times per day. Remove the dough from the refrigerator about 4-5 hours before it’s time to grill. (If the dough is threatening to rise too much then either go ahead and grill it, or fold it again to buy another hour or two.) Flour a work surface and roll the dough out to into a 16″ x 22″ rectangle.

Arrange the dough so the long dimension goes from left to right. Generously brush both the dough, and the back of an inverted sheet pan, with olive oil. Fold the dough in half (left to right) to transfer it to the sheet pan (see below).

Further explanation:  The 16″ side of the dough (what *was* the short side) goes lengthwise on the sheet pan, the “long” side of the dough (which is now 11″, because it’s folded in half) sits folded across the short dimension of the sheet pan. The “inside” of the dough has now already been oiled. The bottom on the dough is now sitting on oil. All that remains is to oil the new top. Preheat the grill to medium.

To transfer to the grill:  Pick up the dough (still folded in half) and rapidly move it over to the grill, then unfold the dough and carefully try stretch it out a little if it needs it. When the dough stiffens up, shows some color on the bottom, and feels about half cooked then it’s time to flip the monster. I slid a cheap pizza pan under the dough and flipped it over. I used the same pan to remove the finished pizza from the grill — the pan was smaller than the pizza, but it worked ok overall. Hot pads are recommended, the pizza will be lava hot. I used a pizza cutter to score the pizza, to try to make it easier for everyone to tear off a piece. As part of a nice Super Bowl layout this easily fed 10 people with leftovers — it’s basically the same size as two large pizzas, combined.

Pasta all’amatriciana

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I like incredibly simple meals. One of the simplest and tastiest is pasta all’amatriciana. It has a whopping 5 ingredients – guanciale (essentially pork jowl bacon), tomatoes, pepper flakes, cheese and pasta (well, technically 6 if you count the pasta water) and takes probably 20 minutes to prepare. The recipe that I used was stolen (with a few modifications) from Jennifer McLagan, James Beard Award winning cookbook author, who pilfered it from another cookbook. The only thing that I really did differently was used cappelini instead of bucatini since Mrs. Iron Chef doesn’t like thick pasta. It worked, but it would have been better with thicker pasta as the thin pasta really does absorb more of the sauce. Either way, this was a pretty killer dish.

Note – I converted the measurements from metric, but I used the metric measures when I made this, so it might be a little off. I also left the metric measurements in there if you are so inclined.

The Software
6 oz (175 g) guanciale – sliced into 1/4 inch lardons
2 cups of diced roma tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons grated Parmiggiano Reggiano
2 tablespoons grated Pecorino-Romano (plus extra for topping the pasta)
16 oz (400 g) pasta
1 cup reserved pasta water

The Recipe
Cook the pasta until al dente (time depends on the type of pasta), reserving 1 cup of the pasta water. Cook the guanciale over medium heat until browned, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. DO NOT DRAIN THE FAT FROM THE PAN. Add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat for about 5 more minutes. Add about 1/2 of the pasta water and cook for 2 more minutes. If the sauce is still too thick, add more of the pasta water (it should be slightly watery). Add the pasta and cheese, stir to combine. If the sauce looks too thick, add a bit more pasta water, if not, serve with some grated cheese and ground black pepper.

Notes
If you like more heat, add more red pepper. If you can’t find guanciale, use really fatty pancetta or bacon and you may need to add some olive oil to the pan for additional fat. It won’t be as good, but it will work in a pinch. Use your judgment in adding the water – my tomatoes were very dry so I needed more water that I thought I would. You can add less. Canned tomatoes would probably work if you drained them before adding them to the guanciale. I didn’t take a picture of the sauce, but here is what it should look like before you put the pasta in (I am linking rather than posting my pictures because Chef McLagan is a professional and, frankly, hers was much prettier than mine).

Random Super Bowl Thoughts

By Blaidd Drwg

One of the Puppy Bowl Starters - Aberdeen. So much cuter than Tom Brady.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 2 weeks, you know that the Super Bowl is this weekend and is a rematch between the Patriots and the Giants. As outlined here, I will be rooting for the Giants and to make the game interesting, I have a bet on the game (straight up – I have the Giants) with a friend of mine, Big Mike, who is a rabid Pats fan. If I win, I get lobsters shipped from Massachusetts (and maybe a reimagining of a lobster dinner I did a couple of years ago). If he wins, he gets a Northwest goodies basket.

I really don’t have a great deal of interest in the game and I really just want it to be over. I am tired of the 2 weeks of analysis of every aspect of the game, I am tired about hearing about Tom Brady and Eli Manning and frankly, I am tired of Patriots fans in general – they are obnoxious, sore winner, even worse losers; essentially the Yankees fans of the NFL.

If you aren’t much of a football fan or just want to watch something other than a 50+ year old Madonna doing a pre-recorded halftime show, switch on over to Animal Planet – they are running their 8th annual “Puppy Bowl”. What is Puppy Bowl? It is several hours of puppies running around, playing and generally looking cute to raise awareness for shelter animals. It is really just puppy overload. If that isn’t enough, you also get the kitty halftime show, which is a bunch of kittens playing, and, new this year, is the piglet cheerleaders. Overall it is just going to be hours of animal cuteness. Animal Planet runs it on a loop pretty much all day, so you can see pretty much any time you want. You can see more pics of Puppy Bowl here.

If for some reason you really want to watch the game, Volkswagen has 2 great Star Wars themed spots for this year’s game. If you really care to see them in their entirety, they are below. The first one is brilliant, the second one is just laugh out loud funny.

Danny Ainge and the Demise of the Celtics Empire

By Blaidd Drwg

There is an article on ESPN about Danny Ainge being willing to break up the Celtics Big 3 of Garnett, Allen and Pierce. The Celtics are an old team, more than half of their roster is 29 or older and 4 of their 5 starters are over the age of 33. That is really not a recipe for success in the NBA. Is it any real wonder that the Celtics have started 5-8? What I really found interesting is a comment Ainge made in the article:

Ainge saw the Celtics pass up deals when Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish were aging, and the result was a steady deterioration that saw Boston not make the playoffs or advance beyond the first round from the 1992-93 to 2000-01 seasons.

“First of all, it’s a different era,” Ainge told The Globe. “I sat with Red (Auerbach) during a Christmas party (in the 1990s). Red was talking to Larry, Kevin, and myself and there was a lot of trade discussion at the time, and Red actually shared some of the trade discussions. And I told Red, what are you doing? Why are you waiting?

“He had a chance to trade Larry (to Indiana) for Chuck Person and Herb Williams and (Steve) Stipanovich and he had a chance to trade Kevin (to Dallas) for Detlef Schrempf and Sam Perkins. I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ I mean, I feel that way now. If I were presented with those kind of deals for our aging veterans, it’s a done deal to continue the success.”

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that this conversation took place after Bird, Parrish and McHale were retired. If that is the case, why the heck would you have said “What are you doing? Why are you waiting?” If this conversation took place in the 1990’s, those deals were long since past being able to be made. So either the conversation took place in the 1980’s, which would be odd, or Ainge didn’t think about the tense of his quote and should have used the past tense. My best guess is that this offer came around 1988-1989, which, ironically, would have been the year the Celtics traded Ainge to the Kings with Brad Lohaus for Ed Pinckney and Joe Kleine (not one of the better deals for the Celtics).

Would these deals have benefited the Celtics, most likely. The Celtics would have come out way ahead on the McHale deal. The problem is much more than just swapping players. I lived in Boston for 12 years. Larry Bird is pretty much as close to God as you can get in Boston after Ted Williams. I remember going to Celtics games well after Bird retired and he would get a standing ovation from the crowd, at half time, every time he walked across the floor to the tunnel. Red may have been the architect of the greatest franchise in history and not even he would be dumb enough to be known as the guy who traded Larry Bird. Bird was going to be a Celtic player as long as he wanted to be, as long as Red had any say in the matter.

I think what really did the Celtics in was poor drafting and a change in the way the game was played. Right around 1990, the NBA went from being a sport about teamwork to a game dominated by inside post players. Let’s look at the Celtics 1st Round picks from 1988 – 1995.

1988 – Brian Shaw (24th Overall)
1989 – Michael Smith (13th Overall)
1990 – Dee Brown (19th Overall)
1991 – Rick Fox (24th Overall)
1992 – Jon Barry (21st Overall)
1993 – Acie Earl (19th Overall)
1994 – Eric Montross (9th Overall)
1995 – Eric Williams (14th Overall)

Only one of those players, Dee Brown, averaged better than 10 Points per Game in his career. Granted, they were generally drafting in the bottom half of the first round, but the effectively drafted a bunch of role players and never supplemented that with a solid free agent signing. There were 2 truly awful picks in that group, solely on where they drafted.

In 1989, which is one of the deepest drafts in NBA history, the Celtics got 3 lousy seasons of Michael Smith and passed up the following players, all of whom were drafted in the first round after Smith: Tim Hardaway, Dana Barros, Shawn Kemp, BJ Armstrong and Vlade Divac (although the Celtics did redeem themselves a bit by taking Dino Radja in the second round).

In 1994, they completely blew it by taking the “great white hope”, a slow footed center from UNC, Eric Montross. Granted, there wasn’t a huge amount of talent at the back end of the draft, but honestly, it wasn’t hard to see that Montross wasn’t going to be the force in the middle the Celtics needed him to be. The poor drafting was supplemented by poor roster management. Here is the roster the Celtics fielded the year after Bird retired:

No. Player   Pos Ht Wt Birth Date Exp College
4  Alaa Abdelnaby   F-C 6-10 240 June 24, 1968 3 Duke University
7 Dee Brown G 6-1 160 November 29, 1968 3 Jacksonville University
12 Chris Corchiani G 6-0 185 March 28, 1968 2 North Carolina State University
20 Sherman Douglas G 6-0 180 September 15, 1966 4 Syracuse University
55 Acie Earl F-C 6-10 240 June 23, 1970 R University of Iowa
44 Rick Fox F-G 6-7 230 July 24, 1969 2 University of North Carolina
34 Kevin Gamble F-G 6-5 210 November 13, 1965 6 University of Iowa
43 Tony Harris G 6-3 190 May 13, 1967 1 University of New Orleans
30 Todd Lichti G-F 6-4 205 January 8, 1967 4 Stanford University
31 Xavier McDaniel F 6-7 205 June 4, 1963 8 Wichita State University
27 Jimmy Oliver G-F 6-5 205 July 12, 1969 1 Purdue University
00 Robert Parish C 7-0 230 August 30, 1953 17 Centenary College of Louisiana
54 Ed Pinckney F 6-9 195 March 27, 1963 8 Villanova University
40 Dino Radja F-C 6-11 225 April 24, 1967 R
50 Matt Wenstrom C 7-1 250 November 4, 1970 R University of North Carolina

Not exactly striking fear into the hearts of opponents, huh?

A few years ago, when Ainge started building the current Celtics roster, I told a friend of mine they probably were built for a 3-4 year run before the team got too old (and I had a very low opinion of Ainge as a GM and his ability to build a team with home grown talent). This is year 5 of that Celtics run. The Celtics have gotten old and have gotten little out of their last 5 drafts. Unfortunately, I believe the Celtics are headed for yet another down period in their storied franchise history.

Mariner’s Fanfest Impressions

by A.J. Coltrane

Impression #1 — The line.

We got there right at 11:00. The M’s had one line for the autograph seekers, and one line for everybody else. As might be expected at kid-friendly event, there were a *lot* of big purses/ backpacks/ strollers. It took a while to get in. Casper Wells spoke at 11:10, but we were just barely in the stadium by then. Missed it:

See the point of convergence at the horizon? The line continues around the corner from there.

Impression #2 — Taijuan Walker and James Paxton seem to be a couple of personable guys. Paxton in particular knew how to handle the crowd and give all the “right” answers. They’re both pitchers, and Baseball America has them as the M’s #2 and #4 rated prospects, respectively. (Jesus Montero is #1, and Danny Hultzen is #3.)

 

Rizzs, Walker, and Paxton.

Impression #3 — Miguel Olivo did a good job with his interview as well:

Brad Adam and Miguel Olivo

 

Impression #4 — These young teenage guys aren’t getting laid for a long, long time. They sat in front of me and seemed oblivious to the fact that I was taking pictures, though clearly it wasn’t the only thing they’re oblivious of:

You can see Olivo off in the distance.

Impression #5 — I’m pretty sure he was getting paid to wear this ensemble:

 

Working for the guy in the golf shirt. I'm not sure which is worse, the sombrero, or the sweater.

Impression #6 — The Mariners couldn’t afford an animatronic Dave Niehaus, so they had him bronzed instead. (The M’s elected to bump up the creepiness by having some of Dave’s most memorable play calling on an endless loop…)

 

Wild Spending in the Baseball Offseason

By Blaidd Drwg

After years of screaming poverty in Montreal, Jeff Loria was part of the ridiculous scheme that gave the Expos to MLB, gave him the Marlins and gave John Henry, another fantastically rich man who was crying poverty in South Florida, the Boston Red Sox.

As you know, MLB did everything they could to make the Expos fail in Montreal and eventually moved them to DC, Henry all of a sudden “found” the ability to pay for a team with a 140 million dollar payroll and Loria just kept screaming poverty in his new home in South Florida, saying he needed a shiny new stadium paid for by public money to be successful. and effectively selling off any player that became a free agent.

This season, thanks to a new taxpayer financed stadium and a horrific new logo, Loria all of a sudden has found extra millions to do this:

December 9, 2011 Agreed to terms with LHP Mark Buehrle on a four-year contract. Designed RHP Clay Hensley for assignment.
December 8, 2011 Agreed to terms with SS Jose Reyes on a six-year contract.
December 5, 2011 Agreed to terms with RHP Heath Bell on a three-year contract.

The Marlins had a payroll of somewhere around 58 million in 2011. Care to guess what their expected payroll number in 2012 is? Well, according to baseball-reference’s wonderful salary tracker, somewhere around 105 million. Amazing what rebranding a franchise will do to loosen up the purse strings. The Marlins back loaded the above deals so that Buehrle and Bell are only making 6 million this season and Reyes is making 10 million. The problem with back loading a deal is at some point you get a big jump in what you are paying the players. Let’s take a look:

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Reyes 10 million 10 million 16 million 22 million 22 million 22 million
Buehrle 6 million 11 million 18 million 19 million
Bell 6 million 9 million 9 million

It gets really ugly in 2014 for the Marlins. On top of the salaries above, their 2 best pitchers, Josh Johnson and Ricky Nolasco, are both free agents in 2014, Hanley Ramirez is scheduled to make 16 million and their stud first baseman, Mike Stanton, is eligible for arbitration. Just counting Reyes, Buehrle, Bell and Ramirez, the team is on the hook for 59 million in payroll. Heck, for 2013, the Marlins are projected to be somewhere between 125 and 145 million for payroll, which I don’t think is going to happen. I think we are going to see a repeat of a disturbing trend that has been there since the beginning in South Florida – owner bumps up the payroll to a long term unsustainable level to make a World Series run, sells off the players returning the team to mediocrity and then sell the team.

The Marlins could be in for an interesting ride – they have the ever volatile Ozzie Guillen at the helm, they have a new stadium which no one knows how it is going to play, they have a number of players coming off of injuries, Hanley Ramirez is unhappy about being moved to 3B and they added the ever entertaining Carlos Zambrano to the mix. My prediction is the circus in South Florida yields a .500 team this season and they are breaking the team up by June of next year.