Indians have claimed LHP Scott Maine off waivers from the Cubs. He has avg'd 11.3K/9.0IP this year for Cubs while lefties hit .130 (3-23)
Indians announce the latest dumpster diving. Looks to be a cheap potential replacement for Smith/SippYes, campers, that's billions with a B. Deal includes digital and radio as well as TV. The deal is about double what the Network Who Shall Not Be Named pays now, and averages about $700 million/year. If, indeed the money is being distributed equally, this is about $23.3 million per club per year. This is lunch money, of course, for the Yankees, but real money for the Indians. If I'm doing the math right, this figure is up from about $11.9 million/team from the current ESPN deal. This probably also pushes up substantially the prices that will be paid for the playoffs when they come up for bid from Fox and whoever will be bidding against them, so there will probably be another jump in media fees. The ESPN package includes one Wild Card Game and, for those of you who hate the NWSNBN, here's a money quote for you: "ESPN also picked up rights to carry games featuring more popular teams, like the Yankees and Red Sox, more frequently." Update: Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk does some math and estimates that when all the deals are done, each team could have increased annual national TV income of $25 to $40 million. This is an increase in baseline money, before local TV, radio and attendance figures are considered.
Perhaps you knew some of this, like how bad Frenchy has been for the Royals, but there's some additional fun stuff there.
Neat. The way this season is going, maybe the Indians should give him a call to try this in September.
In case anyone is interested in discussing the rumored "major blockbuster" between the Dodgers and Red Sox, otherwise known as the Sox vomiting out one of the largest hairballs in recent pro sports history
The least surprising story of the month is here in fanshot form for your perusal.
Matt LaPorta recalled from AAA Columbus. RHP Frank Herrmann optioned to Clippers to allow room for LaPorta (19HR, 62RBI, .822OPS at AAA)
Official team announcement via twitter. I wonder if this is the beginning of his last stint in Cleveland.Some choice nuggets: "As I sit here today, I have no intent to make any changes. I have to understand what's happened. I'm not going to have that understanding today. Hopefully, sometime in this off-season, we'll be able to assess and move from there.' "We had a team threatening to make the playoffs that has collapsed. We have to understand what happened, and I'm not going to make judgments on that right now. It's going to take more time to assess what we have, what we need, and what we're capable of doing.'' "Over the last five seasons includes teams that have had some success, including the best team in baseball,'' Dolan said. "The fact that we haven't won consistently is frustrating to all of us. But we have been, on balance, a team that has accomplished some things, in contrast to some teams that have done nothing." I think that "a team that has accomplished some things" should be their marketing slogan next year.
Another "shocking" story from baseball