I Ain't Got Nobody
In 2004, when the Oakland A's were beginning the sell off their three aces, Mulder, Hudson, and later Zito, the one I didn't mind seeing gone would be Zito. (See Archives re: paying for performance.) Last year Zito bombed and was bombed. As I wrote to my son-in-law, "The picture of Zito in the papers the day after one of his more common outings was of him looking up, waaaay up, and then out to center field.
Last year: How did he start 2006? Season opener against the Yankees - he didn't get out of the second inning in a 15-2 loss. In that second inning, he gave up seven runs!
We all pretty much knew that the A's would run out of steam, but to put Zito in the first game of the of the American League Championship series against the Detroit Tigers was a disaster. He lasted just three innings, allowed five runs, seven hits with two home runs and three walks. The Tigers swept in four games.
Fortunately, The San Francisco Giants are more poorly managed than the A's. Who but the Giants would pay $126 millionfor a pitcher with Zito's recent history? I had a "told ya so" moment when, last Saturday, I had the pleasure of seeing him open the Bay Series. He walked four of the first five batters. By the time he was lifted in the fifth, he had given up seven runs in a 15-3 loss.
Billy Beane is considered a genius. In baseball, if you can write a chapter in a book, you're a genius. What Beane does, however, is he keeps a mind set that says, by the time you're 27, you're ready to be auctioned off. He gets rid of a potential high salary and goes to the farm system that's second to none.
The point? The point is that Zito is being paid about $5,000 PER PITCH. Baseball is supposedly a business, but if it was your business, would you be THAT crazy? He puts butts in the seats, the saying goes. Yeah, but for how long? He's of a decent character, but he's not even a character. He should have a good career ahead of him in broadcasting. (Certainly not singing. I've heard him sing. But he can say, "That was a good take" in 30 ways.)
Someone asked a question on this bulleting board last week about COLAs. My guess was that there aren't too many private companies giving cost of living adjustments, and my guess is based on more than 30 years of advising companies about paying for performance once you measure it. One of the problems businesses have over baseball is that, in business, it's harder to measure performance unless it's in sales. Baseball is all measurements. There are statistics on statistics. And even in business, I suppose we would pay a very decent commission to someone who made 2.5 sales out of every 10 calls, just like hitting.
.... Okay, I've been trying to think of other relevant comparisons. In business, we fire people who fail drug tests. We don't like people throwing tantrums, let alone chairs. We don't have farm systems because we don't trust our farms to produce crops of personnel who won't sell out to somebody else. Besides, a farm system is like education reimbursement, except in business we're always afraid that we're educating people for other companies. (Actually, that's exactly what we used to do, but we knew that we could get others from like companies so it was usually a wash. "I'll trade you two Whartons for a UCLA with three year's experience." God, I miss those days.)
I love baseball. The day after the A's lose, it's a bummer. The day after the win, it's good for an hour of good feelings. And then there's another game. (I still have a Tivo of the A's beating the Giants 16-0 from last June. It's only the six-minute wrap-up, but whenever I need a warm-all-over feeling, that'll do it.) I love baseball because people are doing stupid things with other people's money. But baseball also drives me nuts. $126 million! Think of it. Think what you could do with it! The Giants' fan who said he was worth every penny of it was probably running a dot com in 1999, and it wasn't Google.
Then again, if baseball were to pay for performance, would there be baseball?
P.S. The last quake we had, uh, my Eric Chavez bobblehead fell and all I have is a head. I'm willing to trade a Lee Iococa for a complete Chavez and a future bobble pick.
I Ain't Got Nobody
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