This, that, and the other…
- The big news in baseball is the impending exclusive deal for the Extra Innings package with DirecTV. Here is a roundup of what some columnists are saying. Living in Southeast Michigan this isn’t a big deal to me. But with the Tigers surge in popularity I’m sure there are many displaced Tiger fans who will be frustrated. I’ve put up a poll related to this in the sidebar. Let me know what you think.
- The Tigers signed Joey Eischen to a minor league deal. He’ll get an invite to the big league camp, as will catcher Dusty Ryan.
- When I mentioned being surprised that the Tigers were positioning Eulogio de la Cruz as a starter, Matt sent info showing how much better de la Cruz performed as a starter last year. Matt also has a blog where he recently did a deep dive of the Tigers drafting of college players and their progressions through the system
- Jason Beck has a couple of TV notes. Beck notes that the Tigers have 6 televised spring training games. Also, the Tigers have eight 3:55pm Saturday games which is the start time for Fox Saturday Baseball.
- Cameron Maybin has a webpage. (hat tip The Surge)
- Carlos Pena is following in the tradition of Greg Norton, Alex Sanchez, and Eric Munson. He’s signing with the Devil Rays.
- For my feed subscribers, it seems like I just went full feed and now I’m back to partial. But it’s not my fault (entirely). I recently upgraded to the new version of WordPress (2.1) which supports full feeds differently than the old version. I’m hoping this gets corrected in the short term or that a work around is created. In any case I hope to be all the way back to full feed by the end of the weekend, even if it means uninstalling the new version.
I like the DirecTV deal:
1) It is a TV deal that makes money that is evenly distributed to the ML teams, much like the National Deal.
2) It will drive more teams to the MLB streaming video (Which I used at the end of last year and loved!!).
3) I will get crap for this, but Bud Selig will go down as a great commissioner because:
-He has restored Labor peace.
-We have had 7 different WS champs (and 11 pennant winners) in 7 years of this decade.
-Most importantly, he got the MLB owners to sign all of the Internet rights over to MLB who distributes those revenues evenly to all of the teams. This is going to continue to be a growing source of income.
-Sam
correction:
comment 2 should say it will “drive more fans”
-Sam
If you’re a fan using streaming video, won’t more fans using it hurt you? Or are you saying more fans using it will force them to up its quality?
The thing I like above MLB.tv is you can watch 6 games at once. The quality should improve with time.
-Sam
But the point is..what is $3 million a team a year???? NOTHING. Why not have ALL possible media outlets available? I have no problem with streaming the video on MLBTV, but it just makes NO sense for MLB to do this.
Nationwide angst expressed here, along with contact information to direct complaints to MLB:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/john_donovan/01/26/directv.feedback/index.html