Steve Cohen, getting things done and giving few craps about it.
The umptillionaire owner of the New York Mets cut veteran Robinson Canó today as rosters needed trimming from 28 to 26 players.
- Canó came up in 2005 with the crosstown Yanks and was instantly very good. The second baseman finished 2nd in Rookie of the Year voting.
- He remained solid throughout his 9 years in pinstripes, improving as time wore on. He won a pair of Gold Gloves and finished Top 10 in MVP votes four years in a row.
- He became a free agent in 2013. The Mariners banked heavily on Canó, offering him $24 million a year for 10 years.
- Two of his first three years in Seattle lived up to the bankroll. After that, his value faded (he was 34 then, after all) and he was suspended 80 games for Performance-Enhancing Drugs. In 2018, the Mariners were so desperate to dump this albatross contract that they were willing to eat $20 million of it.
- The problem for Mets fans is that (a) that still left $100 million on the contract and that (b) the Mets were willing to bite. Interestingly, the Mets GM at the time was Brodie Van Wagenen, who had been Canó's agent who struck the megadeal. Sounds all wrong? It was.
- Canó has had a handful of unimpressive seasons for the Mets and was suspended for all of last year with a another PED violation.
- He began this year with a mission to rectify all of that with a brilliant Mets season.
- In 43 plate appearances, Canó registered a .195/.233/.268 line, meaning a .501 OPS. Bleh. His defense was even worse, according to sabermetrics.
- Today, he was designated for assignment.
The icing on the cake . . . Cohen sent Canó's agent an invoice for the remaining 40 mill. Because Canó's agent is once again, of course, Brodie Van Wagenen. (Worth mentioning is that Cohen had fired Van Wagenen hours after buying the team in 2020.)
Anyway, just to fuck with him and remind him of the rotten-in-Denmark deal that BVW saddled everyone in Queens with, Cohen dished out some douchery in the form of that invoice, and it made me smile.
Not as much as Canó can smile for being paid that dough to do nothing, but still. Not bad.
Posts
15 comments:
that is fantastic douchetrollery.
also fantastic, a) the fact that we have new content, and b) fulham won the championship! up the whites!
I rather like the term douchetrollery.
From now until mid June is where my usually reasonably measured sleep deficit really suffers. Western Conference playoff games are a test of will.
pretty bleak day for people who think women should be able to make decisions about their bodies. very curious what the gheorghie barristers think about the notion that alito’s draft opinion opens the door to the rollback of a lot of other ‘settled’ laws. looking at you, obergefell.
At least there are people in influential positions who are nominally opposed to this decision.
These players are so powerful that they can express sincere concern, wring their hands, AND shrug their shoulders.
There are a lot of armchair constitutional scholars that have come out of the woodwork in the last 24 hours on both sides of the political aisle. Many are talking completely out of their ass.
I think Loving is safe, but Griswold and its progeny (Roe, Lawrence, Obergefell, ect.) are in question with this court.
The decisions of the Warren court and follow ons were in many ways necessary to allow the law to catch up with social reality. I think some of them are stretches legally under the constitution to get to the right decision morally. While it has been 50 years since Roe, this was always a possibility as evidenced by how fraught the SCOTUS confirmation process has become since the 1980’s. The far right has been organized for years getting laws passed, including trigger laws that will ban abortion in 22 states if Roe is overturned. I wish the democrats had been as focused.
That said, this may be a case of the dog catching the car. It’s a win for conservatives but I’m not sure it helps them. I can see them losing the midterms over this. Dems in red states need to be introducing legislation NOW establishing these rights. Make republicans go on record voting against issues that 70’s of Americans now support. Hold their feet to the fire. Use this as a wedge to win back governorships and state houses. Alabama and Mississippi may be too far gone, but use these issues to take back these state governments from the smaller, but well organized right wing. March on state houses, protest, and force politicians into this century.
As usual, Marls is largely right and slightly wrong. I think Griswold is safe, Eisenstadt too. I don't think this will energize too many people in red states to vote the Republicans out--many of them will be happy and many of them don't care. The bigger problem is that DJ Trump can say "I appointed three of those five votes, promises kept!" and he will ride that will success back into the White House. And the same states that ban abortion will rig the election so he wins.
Good times for a change…
In the draft opinion, Alito does try to differentiate Roe from Griswold, Eisenstaedt and others as it relates to contraception, intimate sexual relations and marriage by claiming that abortion is different. While I don’t think that anyone is clamoring to create laws to outlaw contraception I feel pretty confident that at least some of this majority would be happy to apply the same reasoning to strike down Griswold as judicial overreach with regard to contraception and return the issue to the states.
As for the political repercussions, I fear that Z may be right but I’m hoping he is wrong. There are going to be a lot of angry women. This is the same group that cost Trump the last election and killed the republicans in the 2018 midterms.
just a quick perusal of facebook this morning serves as an anecdotal confirmation of marls' point about angry women. everyone from my 75 year-old mother to my neighbors to my nieces is justifiably and righteously outraged. the question is whether the democrats can harness that outrage in the midterms.
relatedly, don't get me started on jd vance. that cynical motherfucker.
Drove an hour up across the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel (paying a round-trip $25 toll) to present some workforce development updates to our neighbors on the Eastern Shore. When I got there, they told me I’m up first and that I should talk for 10 minutes.
1. You can’t pen this guy in like that. I spoke for 20.
2. Puzzled and a little annoyed at the teensy ROI for such an event (do they have Zoom on the Shore?), I turned the opposite way out the drive and went into Cape Charles. Having fresh oysters and fish tacos at a shanty shack on the water.
Much better.
Yo Marls and z, I've read in several places that courts are generally loath to legislate from the bench and prefer that elected bodies do so. But since Congress is gridlocked and practically abdicated its co-equal status, the courts -- SCOTUS included, obviously -- end up doing what Congress should. I guess my question is: are SCOTUS and courts actually doing more openly partisan legislating, or is whatever they do more jarring and obvious because of feckless and ineffective legislators?
Some surprises on the RNRHOF list. I assume Beck didn’t get in because he played in the steroid era?
Don’t preempt tomorrow’s post
Dave - an argument could be made that the court is actually doing the opposite of legislating from the bench. Arguably Roe was “legislating” by overturning statutes enacted by various state legislatures. In that way, the Warren/Burger court was usurping legislative power by finding rights not specifically enumerated in the 14th amendment to create law. The Alito opinion pushes this issue back to the individual state legislatures to decide. This is another example of how the Republican ground game over the past 20 years focusing on taking control of state houses and legislatures is killing progressive efforts. Voting Rights, Abortion, privacy are all issues that this court will all likely defer to the states where federal power is not specifically enumerated.
You are right that feckless and ineffective legislators are partially to blame because they have not succeeded in codifying Roe at the federal level. Of course, I’m not entirely sure that such a statute would hold up with the current court. Interested in Z’s thoughts. From what I have read, the Women’s Health Protection Act was very carefully crafted to pass scrutiny under the framework established in Casey. Notwithstanding the fact that West Virginia Joe’s lack of support made it DOA, even if it had passed the leaked decision might make it moot. The WHPA is written to protect a right that Alito opinion says does not exist. If the right doesn’t exist, there is nothing to protect.
Post a Comment