The New York Times runs an article on Orlando Cabrera today, in which I learnt, among other things, the trivial fact that Orlando and Jolbert Cabrera are brothers. The article also mentions that a cable company in Cartagena has purchased the rights from NESN to televise Red Sox games to Colombia. I always wonder about the effects of securing a player that’s iconic, the way Pedro is for Dominicans. It almost certainly helps in terms of ensuring fan support, but does it also help our farm teams by breeding a generation of would-be Sox players?
As for the defensive upgrade, I think the best thing about good infield defense is it gives you breathing room as far as relievers go, since by saving runs and turning hits into outs you get the starting pitchers lower pitch counts and push them into later innings. There’s two limitations in constructing a baseball roster. One, most obviously, is payroll. But the other is roster slots, whether you’re talking about the 25 or 40 man. (And you can try to solve this constrained optimisation problem using a Lagrange multiplier… oops, economics coursework somehow revisited itself upon me.) So slotting in a good defender at certain key spots (SS, 2B, CF) may allow you to carry one less reliever and put in a DH/PH type hitter instead.
Incidentally, how come the New York Times doesn’t need to disclose its part-ownership of the Sox when running stories about the team?