Tipsheet wants to see Hollywood make “Moneyball 2” starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the perennial also-ran Oakland Athletics.
Producers would probably go for slapstick next time around. America could chortle at Beane’s nonsensical machinations.
Why would he bother signing faded steroid cheat Manny Ramirez to a minor league deal?
Isn’t Oakland’s farm system teeming with blue-chip talent that only Beane and his trend-setting, statistics-crunching analysts were smart enough to identify?
Well, perhaps not.
Beane is the guy who traded away outfielder Carlos Gonzalez after the 2008 season and placed an incongruous $36 million bet on Cuban centerfielder Yoenis Cespedes this winter.
(If he had the resources to gamble on Cespedes, why did he feel compelled to offload proven young hurlers Trevor Cahill, Andrew Bailey and Gio Gonzalez? And if he is so good at drafting, why is he always so eager to acquire other team’s prospects?)
Maybe Cespedes will someday be as good as CarGo. Maybe he won’t.
But we know this much: Beane had Gonzalez, arguably one of the top five talents in the game today, and he squandered the asset.
This wasn’t about salary. CarGo earned a modest $406,000 while crushing 34 homers and driving home 117 runs for the Rockies in 2010. Then he signed a back-loaded seven-year, $80 million extension before last season.
He will actually make less this season, $5 million, than Cespedes. Which player will have the better season?
Perhaps this wouldn’t seem so bizarre had Beane and his new-age thinkers scored a mother lode of prospects for CarGo. But they didn’t.
Beane sent Gonzalez and his closer, Huston Street, to Colorado for outfielder Matt Holliday – a pending free agent he had no chance of retaining.
So he turned around and traded Holliday to the Cardinals to get a package starring Brett Wallace. He traded Wallace to Toronto for a package starting Michael Taylor – an outfielder who stalled at Sacramento of the Pacific Coast League for two seasons.
All of this left the A’s lacking offensive pop. Coco Crisp, Seth Smith and Jonny Gomes are the team’s three established major league outfielders.
This is where Ramirez will presumably come in, once he serves his 50-game MLB suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. At least Ramirez is cheap, at $500,000.
Remember how Beane threw away $10 million on injury-diminished hurler Ben Sheets back in 2010?
The Athletics last enjoyed a winning season in 2006. From the looks of the American League West -- where the Rangers and Angels have spent a zillion dollars arming themselves for war – they will be well out of the race by the time ManRam arrives this summer.
But at least the spectacle could be fun to watch.
“It's probably not a good idea to place Yoenis Cespedes' locker next to Ramirez's,” observed San Francisco Chronicle beat writer John Shea.
And:
"If the A's were so willing to sign Ramirez, why didn't they take a flier on Barry Bonds? How awesome would it have been if Bonds suited up in green and gold and played a pigeon's journey from McCovey Cove? In 2008 and 2009, he would have been at least as good as Ramirez is now. Heck, who's to say Bonds, at 47, isn't still a better hitter? Plus, he's not suspended."
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder while the Blues start packing for their ominous five-game road trip:
What are the phone apps that every fan needs?
Is Bruce Weber wise enough to ignore the Illini message boards?
Wouldn't it be fun to own the really big toys major league baseball pitchers can afford?
Why don't more schools use vegetables as their official mascot?
QUIPS ‘R US
Here is what some of America’s leading sports pundits have been writing:
Norman Chad, Washington Post: “All right, let’s briefly look at this Jeremy Lin thing. He’s a fabulous story — one part Tim Tebow, one part Roy Hobbs, two parts UFO. But trust me, if he were doing his deeds in, say, Portland or Milwaukee rather than New York, he’d be a much smaller sensation. When it’s in the Big Apple, it’s always a big deal; imagine if Murray State were Manhattan State.”
Dennis Dodd, CBSSports.com: “The task is simple over the next few months. Twelve men with a combined three centuries of experience in college athletic administration must ‘fix’ college football's postseason. Simple? Those 11 Football Bowl Subdivision commissioners plus Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick might have it easier finding life on other planets. In both cases, the solution seems light years away.”
Greg Cote, Miami Herald: “Allen Iverson says he’s broke after making $154million in his NBA career. Note to self: Re-think idea of hiring Iverson’s financial planner.”
Jerry Greene, ESPN.com: “MMA fighter Gina Carano is going to star in a second movie called ‘In the Blood.’ Director John Stockwell said: ‘This role will showcase not only Gina's fighting skills, but also her acting abilities.’ Apparently that means she'll actually talk in this one.”
MEGAPHONE
“I want to go deep into the postseason again. There's stuff to be said about guys going deep into the postseason, throwing a lot of innings and getting tired. But there's also the other end of the spectrum -- the great ones that don't have that affect them. You can talk about that all you want, but you can also bring up ... the Roger Clemenses, Nolan Ryans -- the guys that got better with age and got better after long seasons.”
Ultra-competitive Tigers hurler Justin Verlander.
