Here's hoping for the best.
Sweat, I'm no fan of rain outs either, but I don't think you have to look much further than Tom Cheek's situation to find an example of something worse.
NFH is already on our Roster, we're very happy with his performance, and I will take the opportunity at this time to categorically deny that the Blue Jays, or any other organization, have talked to us about him. We hope that NFH retires as a Bauxite.
I didn't check, but I believe Miller is. Glynn, I don't know, but I wouldn't be suprised at all if he is.
Too bad there's not a good site for keeping track of options.
I think this is a fair question and deserves to be answered in view of the poverty claimed by management at the time of the signing. I can't imagine the 900K was garuanteed but if it was, this move is open for criticism. If the money is payable then surely the team would have done their due diligence prior to signing.
It was either Mike or Craig who thoughfully suggested last week that the team could consider sending him down to AAA to work things out or get out from under the contract by having him claimed. It looks like Koch probably had a clause in his major league deal barring such a move. There should be more to this story. Hopefully SF can crack it.
Any time you spend less than a million dollars on a major league free agent you can't be expecting that much from them. They signed him knowing full well that there was a good chance he wouldn't be useful. He was signed because of the moderate chance that he could return to his old form and become extremely useful. It didn't happen. For a little perspective, he fell in between Valerio De Los Santos and Tanyon Sturtze on the payscale.
It looks like Koch probably had a clause in his major league deal barring such a move
It's not a clause in his contract exactly, it's in the CBA. Any player with 3 or more full seasons in the majors can refuse assignment to the minors. In that case, the player becomes a free agent and the team is still on the hook for the contract. That's no different from the situation they're in now.
Ofcourse you are right. A little braincramp on my part. But the assertion that he could be useful and revert back to old form is perhaps being to kind.
There was two seasons of evidence that this was extremely unlikely. I think thats why the signing was fairly roundly questioned by the posters on this board. Though I admit I think I was pretty silent on it choosing to wish for it to work out. Also to be fair to management, when the press releases came out management was clear the Billy was not signed to be the closer, suggesting some merit to your thoughts Ryan. However, 900 grand is not chump change in a $50 million budget. Thats a pretty expensive gamble on a player that didn't even make it to the end of spring training. As it turns out it was obviously a longshot.
Not to boast or anything, I made a comment a week or so ago that suggested something was up. I smelled something fishy at the start of spring training just after pitchers and catchers reported. There was an article and I think it was in The Sun, that talked about who was getting the time with the coaches and getting to pitch off the mounds. Koch was at still the end of the line after a couple days. He said something along the effect that he would just go behind the shed and pitch alone to get his work in. At that time I thought, whats up with this? Is there a communications problem between the player and coaches. Was Koch feeling neglected?
If one reviewed the ensuing press I think it is pretty obvious that the coaches were not happy with him. There was no cover up or supportive comments we are acoustomed too from the team such as: "We're happy with where Billy's at right now. He got his work in and thats what matters" Instead he was allowed to swing all by himself after the poor performances.
