The Orioles have declined to offer arbitration to RP Koji Uehara and SP Kevin Millwood.
Millwood was a no-brainer; he may have accepted. Uehara was not though. There is a market for Uehara's services this offseason, mostly due to performance as a closer over the last three months of the season. Uehara showed the ability to close and that skill is still overvalued in the marketplace.
There was a good chance that Uehara would refuse and sign elsewhere, netting the Orioles a supplemental draft pick after the first round in the 2011 amateur draft. If he accepted, I can't imagine he would receive more than $3 million in arbitration. That would allow the Orioles to either retain his services or trade him to a team that wanted his services more. (A similar situation happened with the Braves and Rafael Soriano last offseason..the Braves were able to move him when his arbitration number didn't match their budget.) As it is, the Orioles now receive nothing.
Maybe Andy MacPhail was afraid he would get something closer to his $5 million salary he has earned the last two seasons and he would probably know more about this than I would but it seems a strange decision to lose Uehara for nothing when you could have taken the chance to get something for Uehara's departure.
Speaking of MacPhail, according to Jeff Zrebiec, he was very disappointed that the team missed out on Victor Martinez. I really hope MacPhail is working the PR angle here because if overpaying Martinez was their grand plan for the offseason, I'm worried about the team's philosophy. As I stated yesterday, Martinez was not going to be the primary catcher for Baltimore and while his bat is elite for a catcher, it's rather ordinary for a first baseman. He hasn't even really caught that much over the past three seasons, only 246 games over that span. The chances of him remaining a team's primary catcher anywhere over a 4-year deal are slim.
If the Orioles were putting all their eggs in the Victor Martinez basket, I'm worried about their sanity.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Worst dressed celebrities of the week
- Micha Barton is dressed with men's trousers, seventies jacket and sandals.The colour palette is ok but her outifit look old and unfeminine, she can look so much better than this.
- Kesha, just a word:trashy! Her lipstick does not make her skin look good
- Chritina Aguilera is trashy in this look. Her hair are messy, the make up heavy she looks like a drag queen.
- Granny Pink! How many years have passed since pink was on the screen?40 years according to her hair style
- Nicki Minaj is wearing the skeleton of a fish or an insect.The overall look is too colorful in my opinion she already look like a cartoon,rejected!
This Morning at the PHL
I just got back from F terminal at the Philadelphia Airport. It's dead. There are more TSA agents than there are travelers heading out for the holiday weekend.
But I did meet and talk to a few people including the Saals, John Amy and Noah, of Newtown Square. They got there way early for their noon flight to Greensboro. And though John is not wild about new security measures that allow federal agents to view his wife reasonably naked, they'll do what they have to do to visit his mother for Thanksgiving.
More later.
UPDATE: Off a morning flight from Cincinnati came Leandra Arnold. A student in Philadelphia to visit her fiance for the holiday, Arnold said security in Cincinnati was quick and easy to get through. As for stories about more invasive procedures, Arnold said, "It doesn't bother me a bit. I'd rather be safe."
Also in from Ohio was the Miller family, Lisa and Shane and their kids, Max and Sam.
"It was so easy," said Lisa. The TSA agent were "especially" good "with the children. "They made an effort to make it smooth."
As for all the new procedures, Lisa said, "Safety's the most important thing."
In from Milwaukee, Kelsey Canfield said she had to go through a pretty standard pat down. She said wouldn't much like anything more invasive.
"I know they're just trying to keep people safe but I don't like the whole idea of invasion of privacy." Neither does she buy the TSA's claim that they don't keep the photographic images of travelers.
Still, she said, she'd rather go through the machine than go through the extensive pat down.
"If you refuse (the body scanner) they take you into a private room and really go at it. I would not go for that at all."
None of the people I spoke to voiced any great concern over the new TSA procedures, but according to a new Zogby poll a majority of likely voters don't approve of them.
But I did meet and talk to a few people including the Saals, John Amy and Noah, of Newtown Square. They got there way early for their noon flight to Greensboro. And though John is not wild about new security measures that allow federal agents to view his wife reasonably naked, they'll do what they have to do to visit his mother for Thanksgiving.
More later.
UPDATE: Off a morning flight from Cincinnati came Leandra Arnold. A student in Philadelphia to visit her fiance for the holiday, Arnold said security in Cincinnati was quick and easy to get through. As for stories about more invasive procedures, Arnold said, "It doesn't bother me a bit. I'd rather be safe."
Also in from Ohio was the Miller family, Lisa and Shane and their kids, Max and Sam.
"It was so easy," said Lisa. The TSA agent were "especially" good "with the children. "They made an effort to make it smooth."
As for all the new procedures, Lisa said, "Safety's the most important thing."
In from Milwaukee, Kelsey Canfield said she had to go through a pretty standard pat down. She said wouldn't much like anything more invasive.
"I know they're just trying to keep people safe but I don't like the whole idea of invasion of privacy." Neither does she buy the TSA's claim that they don't keep the photographic images of travelers.
Still, she said, she'd rather go through the machine than go through the extensive pat down.
"If you refuse (the body scanner) they take you into a private room and really go at it. I would not go for that at all."
None of the people I spoke to voiced any great concern over the new TSA procedures, but according to a new Zogby poll a majority of likely voters don't approve of them.
The implementation of full body scans and pat downs by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as part of security enhancements at our nation's airports will cause 48% of Americans and 42% of more frequent fliers to choose a different mode of transportation when possible, a recent Zogby International Poll finds.
Overall, 61% of the 2,032 likely voters polled from Nov. 19 to Nov. 22, oppose the use of full body scans and TSA pat downs. Republicans (69%) and Independents (65%) oppose in greater numbers than Democrats (50%).
Amazing Real New York Wedding at The St. Regis shared by New York Photographer Robert Wagner
I'm in love with this amazing wedding at Manhattan's St Regis that was photographed by New York wedding photographer, Robert Wagner. It is just dreamy!
I love how Alyssa, the bride, changed her dress to a fun and short little white dress to dance the night away! The beautiful Cake is from the amazing Sylvia Weinstock. And the fab wedding shoes are from Manolo Blahnik.
Enjoy!
I love how Alyssa, the bride, changed her dress to a fun and short little white dress to dance the night away! The beautiful Cake is from the amazing Sylvia Weinstock. And the fab wedding shoes are from Manolo Blahnik.
Enjoy!
Profiles in Ignorance
Ruth Marcus gives a reasonable, if not convincing, defense of the TSA's invasive new practices.
Her willingness to have her "saggy butt" anonymously viewed by a TSA agent in another location is for the greater good. Just as allowing a federal worker to feel in between the crevace of one's butt cheeks satisfies the same social contract for safety's sake.
As it is, polls show that a majority of Americans are willing to submit to such procedures for the greater good (security), Marcus and others talk about. In their view, the marginal benefit of being extra safe outweighs the indignity of being probed.
As for profiling, Marcus, like her colleague Gene Robinson, doesn't believe it will work because eventually terrorist leaders will recruit white, grandmotherly types to do their suicide bombing for them. This seems a stretch. Suicide bombers have a particular psychology that is played upon over months and sometimes years. The likelihood of Al Qaeada leaders being able to recruit a 56-year-old woman from Norfolk willing to blow herself up to kill hundreds of innocents is so remote that it isn't worth protecting against.
What are the other possibilities? Could such terrorists sneak enough PETN and TAPN into such a person's underwear for them to unknowingly carry the explosive onto a plane? Maybe. But then they would have to detonate the device by combining the two subtances. So no. They would need a willing subject.
What about holding family members hostage, threatening to kill them unless the old lady cooperated? That too, seems unlikely to work. What reasonable guarantee could the terrorists give that they would let the family go after the woman blew herself up to induce her to go along with the plan?
No, profiling would work. But it is shied away from by politicians and bureaucrats afraid of the CAIR and the PC police. If we are to be told that it is part of the social contract to allow physically intrusive searches of our bodies in order to protect the lives of our fellow citizens, then federal screeners ought to be ordered to use even more effective means for ferreting out terrorists. Our state department declares whole countries to be dangerous for American citizens to travel to. Our government declares certain countries to be exporters of terrorism. Why can't citizens of those countries receive greater scrutiny when traveling by air in this one?
Her willingness to have her "saggy butt" anonymously viewed by a TSA agent in another location is for the greater good. Just as allowing a federal worker to feel in between the crevace of one's butt cheeks satisfies the same social contract for safety's sake.
As it is, polls show that a majority of Americans are willing to submit to such procedures for the greater good (security), Marcus and others talk about. In their view, the marginal benefit of being extra safe outweighs the indignity of being probed.
As for profiling, Marcus, like her colleague Gene Robinson, doesn't believe it will work because eventually terrorist leaders will recruit white, grandmotherly types to do their suicide bombing for them. This seems a stretch. Suicide bombers have a particular psychology that is played upon over months and sometimes years. The likelihood of Al Qaeada leaders being able to recruit a 56-year-old woman from Norfolk willing to blow herself up to kill hundreds of innocents is so remote that it isn't worth protecting against.
What are the other possibilities? Could such terrorists sneak enough PETN and TAPN into such a person's underwear for them to unknowingly carry the explosive onto a plane? Maybe. But then they would have to detonate the device by combining the two subtances. So no. They would need a willing subject.
What about holding family members hostage, threatening to kill them unless the old lady cooperated? That too, seems unlikely to work. What reasonable guarantee could the terrorists give that they would let the family go after the woman blew herself up to induce her to go along with the plan?
No, profiling would work. But it is shied away from by politicians and bureaucrats afraid of the CAIR and the PC police. If we are to be told that it is part of the social contract to allow physically intrusive searches of our bodies in order to protect the lives of our fellow citizens, then federal screeners ought to be ordered to use even more effective means for ferreting out terrorists. Our state department declares whole countries to be dangerous for American citizens to travel to. Our government declares certain countries to be exporters of terrorism. Why can't citizens of those countries receive greater scrutiny when traveling by air in this one?
Lanvin at H&M:This is Sparta!
As you may have noticed i haven't blogged yesterday because i was out on a shopping mission:lanvin at h&m. It wasn't for me of course was for the chronicle...ehm....no one bealives that! I hit the city of Rome that was one of the selected one, of course is the capital!
I have chosen the shopping center instead of the city centre because i tought that women couldn't sleep overnight outside of a closed parking, i was wrong. They slept there and they had the bracelets distributed at 6 am in the morning. Ouch!
When i arrived (early but not enought!!)no bracelets were left. A big group of women came out of h&m with lanvin bags even if all other shops in the mall were closed.There were bouncers everywhere in the shop keeping people calm like there was Lady Gaga in the fenced area. The lanvin area was blocked off all sorrunded by women of all ages and the discontent could be felt. The H&M staff was constantly picking dresses from shelfs and giving them to people with that lucky bracelet while dissasembling shelfs.These women inside the box were waving dresses in front of the nose of those outside the cage.The exposition was dramatically decreasing. I asked if the stock was low and at 10 in the morning almost everything was gone and on a big poster i read:having the bracelet does not guarrantee the purchase.
I wanted to take home the zebra trench so i waited until the gateway was opened. What happened later i call it sparta. It was a battle really. All the women invated the fenced area like crazy, i had my hand stracthed while i picked the trench and missed to take the pink necklace. I grabbed a pair of shoes and then i got an idea:i'm going to exchange them with something else! I was there with my sister and cousin and we couln't leave without anything!
All the deluded women with nothing in hand guarded the empty shelf waiting if someone changed idea and left something.
I found myself pulling a hanger from one side and another girl pulling the other side, i left those hangers to maintain some dignity. A girl said me threateningly in roman:"Do you know that i've been here for 2 hours?" that sounds like this "Ah bella, io sto qua da du ore"
I thought: 2 hours? Lady i've been here since forever now
The following 2 and half hours were implied in speaking with other womens,in exchanging a dress with another until we got what we wanted, we managed to succeed!
When i saw the queue at first i tought we could not buy anything.
Finally we got to the cash desk, the cashier told me the jimmy choo's collection was even more messy and crowded, a old lady touching my zebra trench asked if i was buying it even if i was at the cash. We made that harmful payment but we were happy. With every dress we received a hanger, a garment cover and the paper bag.
We got a slice of pizza at the end, we totally forgot to have lunch!
Next i'm going to tell you everything about dresses, fabric quality, style fitting, i'll take some pics of my buys and then i'll tell you how to buy lanvin if you couldn't finding for you some low cost ebay listings.Stay tuned!
my dedicated manicure
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Why Baltimore is Better Off Without V-Mart
Reportedly, Victor Martinez will leave the Red Sox and sign with the Tigers for 4 years and $50 million. Since the news broke, Twitter has been all, uh, atwitter with Orioles fans lamenting the club for not being more aggressive in going after V-Mart. A sampling:
"Tigers have reportedly outbid the Red Sox, White Sox and Orioles for Victor Martinez....Not good news for BAL."
"the orioles got outbid for a good player?? No wayyyy"
"Vintage Orioles. Offer just enough to make sure they get turned down so they can say the tried."
"Dammit, Orioles. When you bid 48, then the Tigers offer 50. YOU OFFER 52!"
I was a bit surprised by all this but realized that the fans were reacting to Martinez's perceived value and not his actual value. Part of this is based on past performance, part is based on his perception in the media.
To highlight, Martinez's value, a look at the top offensive catchers, in terms of OPS, over the past 5 seasons:
There's a but of a dropoff after V-Mart and even bigger dropoffs after Napoli. Martinez has clearly been one of the best offensive catchers of recent years and is certainly worthy of the accolades and reputation he has.
However, the Orioles already have a catcher. Matt Wieters is still a promising young bat and is one of the better defensive catchers in the game today. Martinez was going to be primarily a first baseman for the Orioles (and probably a DH for the Tigers). And as a first baseman, his bat is not all that special.
Top offensive first baseman, in terms of OPS, over the past 5 seasons:
So the Tigers just gave $12.25 mil per season to a guy whose bat has been just slightly better than Adam LaRoche over the past 4 seasons. The Orioles could sign LaRoche for a third of that money, on a short deal and get similar value.
The Tigers just gave a 4-year deal to a very ordinary bat who will be 35 when they stop paying him. I suppose that's fine for them but the Orioles can't afford such an extravagance or risk. The team will be better without him.
"Tigers have reportedly outbid the Red Sox, White Sox and Orioles for Victor Martinez....Not good news for BAL."
"the orioles got outbid for a good player?? No wayyyy"
"Vintage Orioles. Offer just enough to make sure they get turned down so they can say the tried."
"Dammit, Orioles. When you bid 48, then the Tigers offer 50. YOU OFFER 52!"
I was a bit surprised by all this but realized that the fans were reacting to Martinez's perceived value and not his actual value. Part of this is based on past performance, part is based on his perception in the media.
To highlight, Martinez's value, a look at the top offensive catchers, in terms of OPS, over the past 5 seasons:
2006-2010 OPS G
1. Joe Mauer .906 670
2. Jorge Posada .879 569
3. Brian McCann .856 695
4. Victor Martinez .844 665
5. Mike Napoli .831 506
There's a but of a dropoff after V-Mart and even bigger dropoffs after Napoli. Martinez has clearly been one of the best offensive catchers of recent years and is certainly worthy of the accolades and reputation he has.
However, the Orioles already have a catcher. Matt Wieters is still a promising young bat and is one of the better defensive catchers in the game today. Martinez was going to be primarily a first baseman for the Orioles (and probably a DH for the Tigers). And as a first baseman, his bat is not all that special.
Top offensive first baseman, in terms of OPS, over the past 5 seasons:
2006-2010 OPS G
1. Albert Pujols 1.064 670
2. Joey Votto .958 456
3. Ryan Howard .947 768
4. Lance Berkman .930 722
5. Prince Fielder .922 797
.
.
.
13. Todd Helton .858 651
14. Victor Martinez .844 665
15. Adam Laroche .836 738
So the Tigers just gave $12.25 mil per season to a guy whose bat has been just slightly better than Adam LaRoche over the past 4 seasons. The Orioles could sign LaRoche for a third of that money, on a short deal and get similar value.
The Tigers just gave a 4-year deal to a very ordinary bat who will be 35 when they stop paying him. I suppose that's fine for them but the Orioles can't afford such an extravagance or risk. The team will be better without him.
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