A staffer at Minnesota Public Radio has about as tired and lazy a take on the Santana trade talks as you will ever find:
The Big Market Teams (BMT) are low-balling the Twins with offers that won’t include another star player (like Jose Reyes or Robinson Cano) or two-top shelf prospects (like Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester). This is a travesty.
The travesty is that my tax dollars are going to fund an outlet where a man who apparently failed out of his high school economics class on day one gets to speak his empty mind.
The team that acquires Santana gets ONE YEAR of his services, plus the value of an exclusive negotiating window, blunted somewhat by the fact that the acquiring team would then have to extend Santana for 2009 and beyond before seeing what he does in 2008. This writer wants another team to give up, say, four years of Jose Reyes signed to below-market salaries PLUS something else for that one year of Santana. It is conceivable that there would be a GM stupid enough to make that trade, but the fact that no one is willing to make that trade is not a travesty; it is common sense.
The writer in question, David Zingler, says that this situation demonstrates “exactly what’s Wrong with Baseball.” I think his article shows exactly what’s Wrong with Public Radio. Despite a simple economic argument that trading Reyes for Santana would be a terrible deal for the Mets, and despite mountains of evidence that there’s nothing substantially wrong with baseball, Zingler plows right on ahead with his argument, because he’s a Twins fan and he’s angry. He can be angry if he wants to be, even if his reasoning is fault, but it would be nice if he wasn’t doing it while on the dole.
UPDATE: Great minds, etc., etc.
Even worse than the fact that your tax dollars are being used to pay for this lazy reporting is the possibility that many listeners will accept the argument as valid simply because it’s on public radio. I’m a fan of public radio and it’s usually better than this. Thanks for taking the time to explain the issue.
Well put, Keith.
But wait, didn’t his capitalization of ‘Wrong with Baseball’ do something for you? Come on, you see what he did there.
…sorry.
The “travesty” in all of this is not that some GM won’t pony up what this writer thinks is fair for Santana (and his idea of fair seems about equal to sports radio callers who propose trades that always grossly favor their team). The travesty is that the Twins owner – reportedly the richest in baseball – won’t pay Santana market value to stay with the team despite the fact that the people of Minnesota just paid for the Twins new stadium! (talk about being on the dole). Disgusting.
And this guy is baked if he doesn’t think 5 years of Lester, 6 of Lowrie and Masterson, and 2-3 affordable years of Crisp isn’t worth 1 year of Santana.
Keith, I discussed this issue on my blog (click name). There’s a link in my post 11 which shows that some people do get it.
I’m a lifelong Twins fan. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone has even considered the possibility that Jose Reyes could be involved in a Santana trade. That’s asinine.
What this really indicates to me is that the Twins’ fans and local media expect a trade that compares in lopsidedness to the the Pierzynski deal. Everyone seems to agree that the financial powers in baseball are much smarter than they were in 2003. So why do we now expect to fleece them like that again?
The Twins can’t win a championship in ’08 due to obvious shortcomings on offense (consider that three of Adam Everett, Mike Lamb, Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, and Brendan Harris will have to play on the infield). The respective Sox/Yanks packages are worth more than the compensatory picks plus one more year of Santana in a losing cause. This seems like a no-brainer to me, even if it does render my Santana jersey obsolete.
Zingler’s either a shameless homer, underinformed, or some combination of both. Obviously.
What is less obvious – and less convincing – is that he is singularly an indictment of public radio, generally. I’ve never understood the inclination to cherry pick failures of public broadcasting, which is on balance relatively credible in my view, to bemoan the waste of “my” dollars.
Personally, I can think of a couple of things the government is currently spending money on that I’m more concerned about. Zingler or no Zingler.
But maybe it’s just me.
Stephen: I don’t understand why we need public radio at all. The entire enterprise seems to be a waste of money to me. Last time I checked, both dials were full of alternatives, covering a broad spectrum of perspectives.
while i think your analysis of the santana situation is spot on, public radio is not sports radio. the criticism of npr is misplaced and way over the top.
Fair enough, and a subject that I suspect we’ll just have to agree to disagree about.
While I am – as indoctrinated by my hedge fund running brother – a staunch believer in free markets and capitalism and all that fun stuff, my belief is nonetheless that a public radio is a worthwhile service. And not just because I had Sesame Street underoos.
Whether or not I’m choosing facts to defend my personal feelings on the subject is a point worth debating, but the continuing commercial success of journalism as practised by Fox does little to assuage my concerns. Even the four letter is generating its share of material for your excellent new ombudsman.
At the very least, on a list of items I’m concerned about funding, public radio would be far, far down the list. That said, I understand that not everyone shares that sentiment.
Generally, I don’t go to MPR for my sports news. My wife really enjoys MPR and we often have it on during the weekend as background noise. I always perk up a little bit when they get around to discussing some unavoidable sports topic (e.g. Super Bowl, World Series) because it is usually about a minute of mispronounced names and uncomfortable small talk.
MPR (and NPR) should stick to what they are good at…namely discussions about politics, food, books and music and leave the sports talk out. The sweet spot of their audience couldn’t care less about sports anyway.
Tax dollars represent a pretty small portion of the budget for NPR (1%) and its member stations (15%).
http://www.npr.org/about/funding.html
http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html
I hope most of the government money goes directly to the “Car Talk” guys.
The person you’ve identified as “a staffer” is not, in fact, a staffer, but a freelance writer.
The staffers who matter at MPR anyway, are Cleveland Indians fans, of course.
I should’ve made clear earlier. Zingler is NOT on the dole. And, no, you didn’t pay for this.
What should we talk about now? (g)
Keith,
The point of public broadcasting is not to represent perspectives not available elsewhere, but to use a portion of the public broadcast spectrum for content that is not dictated by the profit motive.