What can we expect from Masahiro Tanaka in 2016?

You've heard the figures a gazillion times: How the Yankees have nearly $70 million of their payroll tied up in the onerous contracts of CC Sabathia ($25M), Mark Teixeira ($23.2M, and Alex Rodriguez ($21M). How the team is hamstrung because of these ridiculous contracts, and won't be able to spend until they're off the books (Tex comes off books after this year; CC has a $25M vesting option w/$5M buyout for next year, and A-Rod is off after 2017.)

Well, here's the thing: as expensive as these three players are, they were not only an integral part of the Yankees winning the 2009 World Series, but two of the three (Tex and A-Rod) combined for a 7 WAR, and were the top two reasons the Yanks made it to the playoffs at all in 2015.

The really untold story when it comes to the Yankees payroll are some of the players added within the last two years, all of whom have been disappointments. Masahiro Tanaka is owed $22M this year, and $101M total, but has not pitched like an ace, other than his first few months. Jacoby Ellsbury is owed over $100M as well, with $21M on the books for 2016. Yet he did not start the team's Wild Card game last year. Chase Headley is "only" owed $39M over the next three years, but his numbers are pretty mediocre, even for that amount. But Tanaka is the biggest expense. And arguably, the biggest disappointment.

The Bergen Record's Bob Klapisch writes today about the enigma that is Tanaka. He says that the pitcher is a "sensitive" subject for the Yanks:

The problem is the disconnect between Tanaka and the Yankees when it comes to the real-time condition of his arm. Club officials were shocked to learn an old bone spur in his elbow had grown last season, resulting in surgery in October. Tanaka never said a word about it. While no one suggests the Japanese star tried to mislead his superiors, they clearly wished they’d known he wasn’t at 100 percent as they were chasing a wild-card spot.

I was on my pal Paul Francis Sullivan's SullyBaseball's podcast last summer, and I said that I would like to see Luis Severino to start the Wild Card game, because he was a new pitcher that the rest of MLB was not yet familiar with. Given Tanaka's underwhelming performance in that game, not to mention his unknown injury, maybe they should have gone with him in the first place.

Klapisch writes:

Was Tanaka really telling the truth about being pain-free while he was being outpitched by Houston’s Dallas Keuchel in the Yankees’ 3-0 loss in the wild-card elimination game? And can he be counted on to be honest in the future? The Yankees’ answers, in order, are: Not sure. And not sure. They admit they’ve been in the dark about Tanaka’s day-to-day pain level, if only because he’s stoic by nature. “We had zero idea,” [Brian] Cashman said. “He never complained, he never came in for treatment. He went through the exit physical and didn’t say a word.”

The bone spur marks his third arm injury as a Yankee. Yikes!

So what can we expect from him this year? He's apparently not ready to commit to being ready to pitch on Opening Day. And I watch every Tanaka game wondering if this will be the game in which he fully tears his UCL and needs Tommy John surgery. He's an above-average pitcher now, but the magic is gone, and I don't know if and when it will be back. But regardless, the Yankees still owe him over $100 million. Yeesh.

Shocker: Randy Levine reveals the Yankee Ticket Exchange is a huge failure

Would you buy Yankee tickets
from this man?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have interviews this weekend with New York Yankees president Randy Levine. He's doing damage control for Lonn Trost's elitist comments when the COO tried to do damage control over the team's ticket kerfuffle. This is like Yasiel Puig advising Jonathan Papelbon how to be a good teammate. Like David Ortiz telling Jose Bautista to tone down his home run celebrations. You catch my drift. 

When are the Yankees going to learn the first rule of holes? When you're in a hole, QUIT DIGGING!

Instead, Levine is out there, shovel in hand, still trying to justify the Yankees' new policy as protecting the fans against fraud. But, just as Trost's damage control went awry, so did Levine's, as he inadvertently confirmed the real reasons for the new policy -- that the team doesn't believe in the free market when it comes to showing the true value of tickets. And that the Yankees Ticket Exchange is a big fat flop.

He told Billy Witz of the Times: “We strongly believe that we have the right to maintain control over our inventory as long as the market provides ample opportunity to have choice in other ways.”

Levine told Jared Diamond of the Journal: “This is our product and our inventory. We have the ultimate right to protect the value of our inventory as long as it’s done in the free-market society.” 

He also admitted to the Journal that only fewer than 10% of the tickets sold on the resale market go through the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And the Journal's story also revealed that, according to StubHub, 40% of their Yankee ticket sales occur in the 72 hours before the event. Which this new ticket policy would not-so-coincidentally negatively affect.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

Levine is confirming what Yankee fans like myself have been saying all week. This is all about increasing the resale value of Yankees tickets, and nothing about protecting fans from alleged "fraud."

Like all too many people in Yankeeland, Levine is living in the past. He wants a monopoly on ticket sales, at the very same time he's claiming he's all about the free market. Child, please.

Fans understand economics better than Levine does. The tickets are overpriced, and the free market, as evidenced by the secondary market, is showing that. The proof is in the pudding. The one secondary ticket venue with a price floor is the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And even though they are the easiest for season ticket holders to use, with integration with the team's ticket system, and even though they are integrated into Yankees.com, the exchange, by Levine's own admission, has only captured under 10% of the secondary market. That is an amazingly bad number.

This is why Levine and Trost are pushing this ban on print-at-home tickets and trying to stop fans from using StubHub for these last-second ticket sales. Because three years ago, they sold team owner Hal Steinbrenner on the idea that StubHub needed to be smashed. And they had the Yankees spend the money on this rival ticket exchange, figuring fans were so stupid, they would go to it because it was the official one. 

Yet it is a colossal failure. So now, the Yankees are trying to smash StubHub in another way -- by preventing their own fans from getting good deals on tickets.  They love the free market when it comes to corporations spending big bucks for boxes, but not so much when it shows that their ticket prices are too high.

That's not all that Levine said about the ticket brouhaha. From the Times:

After Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, was lambasted as elitist for suggesting in a Thursday radio interview that some fans do not belong in premium seats, the team president, Randy Levine, in an interview Saturday, said StubHub had stoked the controversy, accusing it of putting out a narrative “that’s completely fraudulent and completely false.” 

1. What did StubHub have to do with Trost insulting the Yankee fan base? (Incidentally, it's been 72 hours and counting, and the Yankees still haven't apologized for what Trost said. Shows how much the front office cares about the fans.)

2. What part of the narrative, exactly, of what the Yankees are doing by banning print-at-home tickets is “completely fraudulent and completely false”?  That the Yankees has been on a vendetta against StubHub for the last three years? That the Yankees sued to force StubHub to move their Last-Minute Ticket Center from 68 East 161st Street, across the street from the Stadium, to the Bronx Terminal Market at 651 River Avenue and 151st Street? That despite the narrative that Lonn Trost pushed, that StubHub is not the entity holding up them being able to access mobile tickets -- the Yankees are? (And Levine even admits that the Yankees are holding this up, but still blames StubHub for it.)

Individual Yankee ticket sales for 2016 start tomorrow. But the team's brass has spent the last week doing the worst PR you could imagine for selling their own product. Good grief.

What can we learn from Liverpool soccer fans' protest of ticket prices?

Yankee fans and Red Sox fans have more in common than we want to admit -- especially with The Rivalry being so snoozeworthy these days. The latest example of this is something my Boston friend Tyler has been griping about. Tyler, who mashes for Monstah Mash, wrote about the recent uprising with Liverpool Football (Soccer) Club fans, and how team owner John Henry, who also owns the Red Sox, had to back down and apologize to that fan base.

Here's the story. The team announced that they were raising the best ticket prices to 77 pounds (approximately $112) for next year. (Gee, I think both Boston and New York fans would be jumping for joy if that were our top ticket prices!) Liverpool tried to spin the price increase as only affecting some tickets but Liverpool fans were outraged. So the fans planned an in-game protest. At least 10,000 fans walked out in the 77th minute of a game, when their team was leading, 2-0. Their team, apparently flummoxed by the fans leaving, ended up giving up two goals. That got the powers that be's attention.

All it took was this one walkout for John Henry to cry uncle, apologize to Liverpool's fans, and roll back the price increases. He wrote a letter of apology to the fan base that Lonn Trost and the Yankees could learn from.

And my Sox friend Tyler is irate. He wants to know when Boston fans get an apology:

Here’s my big issue with all of this though, where the hell is OUR apology? Where is the apology for ridiculously high ticket prices (sh*t I’d love it if our tickets capped at $112), the second mortgage I had to take out just to buy a hot dog, and not to mention the classless buffoonery we’ve seen from the three stooges in their cushy box seats since they came here? Where’s our apology for gutting Terry Francona, screwing up the Jon Lester negotiations while insulting him in the process, and ruthlessly canning Don Orsillo or putting “sexy” star power over actually good players? Honestly I’m so sick of the Sox ownership and management I just have nothing left to say. Heck, maybe we could take a cue from Liverpool fans and stage a walkout or boycott at Fenway Park because apparently nothing is getting through to these bone-headed greedy pieces of crap who pretend to care.

Remember what I said about us having a lot in common with Boston fans? See what I mean?

Lonn Trost still has yet to apologize for his offensive comments about fans.  And now Boston fans are losing StubHub; the Red Sox are starting their own ticket service, with a price floor, of course. Whatever happened to the free market?

Anyhow, I wonder what we fans can do to show our disgust. Would a walkout work? Petitions? Simply not buying tickets? It's a conundrum, to be sure. Any thoughts of what might get team owners' attention? Please leave it in the comments section below.

Lonn Trost's comments harken back to an ugly time in Yankees' history

Thursday was the Yankees' first official day of spring training, when pitchers and catchers report. This should have been a fun, exciting day for us Bombers fans who haven't seen baseball since October. But instead, Yankees COO Lonn Trost managed to make headlines that day for all the wrong reasons, as I discussed yesterday.

You've heard me say this a hundred times about the Hal Steinbrenner regime in Yankeeland. Since Prince Hal neither really has a fan's interest in the Yankees, nor any business sense short of being a member of the Lucky Sperm Club, he allows the inmates to run the asylum. And that's how you have somebody like Trost, an elitist twit who has said so many dumb things over the years, speaking for the team and stepping all over the first day of spring training. All because he was apparently ticked off over what the tabloids and bloggers like yours truly said about the team's new ticket policy. Ha!

Per Roger Kahn's 'Rickey & Robinson,'  Lonn Trost is carrying on
a grand premium seat tradition.  pic.twitter.com/fSo8eoabY6

— Greg Prince (@greg_prince) February 19, 2016

Trost's quote was all over the media last night. Does Prince Hal agree with him? Is anybody in the organization going to rebuke the COO for it? The only followup I've seen from the team was in this morning's New York Daily News: "A Yankee spokesman said Trost meant no offense by the comment." That's it? Not even a quote with a person's name attached? That's unacceptable. Trost insulted the team's fan base. He needs to apologize, and/or lose his job. Enough!

There are a few more things I wanted to point out about this controversy. The first is a quote that Faith and Fear in Flushing's Greg Prince highlighted from Roger Kahn's book Rickey & Robinson. It's about why the Yankees took so long to integrate the team. It was eight long years after Jackie Robinson for the Yanks to bring up an African-American player -- Elston Howard. And part of the reason is that George Weiss feared that having black players would bring in black fans that would alienate the rich, white fans. Oy. That was an ugly part of the team's history. And Trost's awful quote, whether it is race-based or class-based or both, harkens back to that attitude.

The second was my friend Steve's point about season ticket sales. Steve, a former season ticketholder, wrote about this situation in his Was Watching Yankee blog about the idea that a season ticketholder with a premium seat would be mad if somebody sitting next to him paid less money:

It doesn’t matter to me if the Yankees charged me $90 and they charged some other guy $90 – and then that other guy went out and decided to sell his ticket for $2. That’s his problem, not mine. In fact, it’s REALLY not my problem. I had season tickets to the Yankees from 2001 through 2014. And, a big part of why I gave them up after FOURTEEN YEARS was the fact that no one wants to pay face value for a Yankees ticket anymore and I was taking a beating on games where I couldn’t attend. And, that’s probably the Yankees real problem. People like me will no longer buy their tickets because of the secondary market. That’s why they want to shut down the secondary market.

The answer? Don’t charge so much for tickets that it makes it so attractive to buy them on the secondary market at such a cheap rate. Or, put a product on the field that makes people want to see the games so bad that they would never consider selling their tickets. It’s all about supply and demand. Create the demand for the supply and the market will take care of itself.

You know, this is New York. Where people brag about getting deals and paying less for something than others. And I think what it comes down to in Yankeeland is that Yankee fans got tired of paying full price for tickets, especially when, as Steve points out, they would lose so much money on the season tickets they couldn't use. The only advantage to having any sort of season ticket plan is the ability to get playoff tickets. But when the team has had exactly one postseason game in the last three years, that doesn't really matter much anymore, now does it?

And finally, if this alleged ticket fraud that Trost keeps on harping on is such an issue, then why hasn't Ticketmaster dumped print-at-home tickets completely? Instead, they STILL offer this as an option. It says right there on their website: "It’s your tickets, your way: Print at home OR get in with your smartphone. You decide! Just remember: While you can print the same ticket you put on your phone, the first one scanned at the venue is the only one that will work." Yet Trost claimed yesterday that "multiple people" were getting into Yankee Stadium with the same ticket. Hmmmm. Sounds like he played fast and loose with the truth!

Yankees' COO Lonn Trost to the 99%: Drop dead

Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost has an elitist excuse for why secondary ticket sales are bad, and why the team is trying to stop any other parties from doing them but themselves. Neil Best of Newsday recounted his explanation, as told to WFAN's Boomer and Carton (emphasis added):

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and [another] fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount."

Trost then added a comment that raised eyebrows on social media because of its seemingly elitist undertones. "And quite frankly," he said, "the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

So basically, only the 1% deserve to get to sit in the good seats in Yankee Stadium. And the 99% better know their place, because they don't belong in the premium location. And their very presence might upset those who paid full price for such seats.

Left unsaid was how these people would know that these interlopers paid less. Unless, you know, they weren't the "right" race or social class to be there. Not to mention that the idea that somebody could pay $1.50 for premium seats is ludicrous.

Whose idea in Yankeeland, exactly, was it to get Trost to defend this policy? He is about the worst spokesman for the team imaginable. He's the guy who blamed Hurricane Sandy for slow ticket sales. Who defended charging $2600 for the top seats at the new Yankee Stadium, saying "Some people can afford to fly first class and others can't." Who justified keeping kids from getting in front of the moat to see batting practice. Who called the obstructed seats in the current stadium's outfield merely "architecturally shadowed."  Who decided it was a good idea in 2013 to pick a fight with StubHub, claiming that they were "greedy," accused them, with no evidence, of counterfeit tickets and banned them from doing e-ticket sales. Then who had to back off on that plan when Yankee ticket sales plummeted.

It looks like he apparently was incensed by reports in the newspapers, and by bloggers about how the Yankees' new ticket policy would keep fans from buying last-minute tickets on StubHub. "Unfortunately, the papers, the bloggers have it wrong," he claimed, and said he presented the New York Post and the New York Daily News with the "facts." (An aside: Speaking of facts, I know for a fact, through somebody in the know, that I am one of the very bloggers he was unhappy about. I can't tell you how much that warms my heart!)

Trost also said fans could still use StubHub's "last minute pickup center that's right up from Yankee Stadium" to pick up hard copy tickets. Funny how Trost described that ticket center's location that way. Because when he first picked a fight with them, the team sued to make StubHub close their truly convenient location at 68 East 161st Street, saying it was too close to the ballpark. And StubHub had to move to a less convenient location for fans at the Bronx Terminal Market, Level 1, at 651 River Ave and 151st Street. which is almost 1/2 mile away from the stadium. All to prevent the team's own fans from using them.

He also blatantly played fast and loose with the truth about StubHub when it came to them being able to do mobile tickets."We know that StubHub can transfer tickets on mobile. If they choose not to, that's not our business." 

That is untrue. I reached out to Cameron Papp, StubHub's Communications Manager, to get clarification. Papp told me that they would not be able to do so without the Yankees' agreeing to this:

"As of now, due to this new policy, StubHub will only be able to offer the listings of hard tickets for Yankees games. If there’s enough time before the game, the seller will send their hard tickets through UPS directly to the buyer. If there’s not enough time before the game, the seller can send or drop off their tickets at our ticket office outside of the stadium ahead of time for the buyer to pick them up on game day."

Papp also gave me this official statement from StubHub:

"StubHub believes that the best customer experience is one on a free and open marketplace where fans can buy and sell tickets whenever and wherever they want. Yankees fans will still be able to purchase tickets on StubHub up until game time" if they go to the StubHub ticket office."

But the electronic method is out. Glenn Lehrmann of StubHub explained this to Neil Best:

"The only way we can transfer tickets is if the Yankees and Ticketmaster provide us with an API [application programming interface] feed that would allow us to do that,” he said. “It’s protected, and they have not granted us access, nor have they granted anyone access. If they wanted to grant us access, this is a different conversation."

* In addition, Trost claimed that people were printing out "multiple copies" of print-at-home tickets on "copy machines" and that "multiple people" were getting in. "And we don't even know how many," he said. Which is BS. Print-at-home tickets have a scannable barcode. And you can print one hundred copies of that ticket, but only the first person who had the ticket would get in. If the Stadium was somehow letting people in without correctly scanning their ticket, that's their incompetence, isn't it, not StubHub's or anybody else's.

* He also talked about Eric Schneiderman, New York's Attorney General, partially blaming him for the move to mobile. But he never mentioned that Schneiderman was looking into the team's policy of having a price floor in the Yankees Ticket Exchange; it may be ruled as anti-competitive. Gee, I wonder why.

Anyhow, it's really gut-wrenching to see such a twit represent the team I love. And to show such blatant contempt for fans like me. At a time when the Yankees face increased competition for ticket sales from the Mets, they ought to be doing their best to put fannies in the seats, not get those fannies to decide to sit at home on the couch and watch the games on TV instead. Good grief.

I am quoted in the New York Post about the Yankees' new fan-UNfriendly ticket policy

What would Judge Judy say
about the Yankees' new ticket policy?

I am in today's New York Post! Click here to read the article, and read on to see how this happened.

I was sitting at my desk in my office in the big city yesterday afternoon when my cell phone rang with "Unknown" on the Caller ID. I very cautiously answered the phone. It turns out that David K. Li of the New York Post wanted to talk to me. My very first, totally primal, reaction when he introduced himself was to think, What the heck did I do to get the Post's attention? Did I do something wacky after my 10-mile race in single-degree weather that warranted a Post story?

The reporter then explained the purpose of his call. He had seen my Squawk about the Yankees' new ticket policy, which is being spun as helping fans against fraud (even though hard-stock tickets can also be counterfeit), when it's really about increasing the Yankees' bottom line by killing the use of StubHub. In fact, the initial stories in the mainstream media spun the team's pablum about this ticket fraud non-issue. (Incidentally, I saw somebody say on Twitter yesterday afternoon: "Amazing how the Yankees are experiencing so much fraud with print at home tickets, but no other franchises are." Exactly!)

So I gave Li my spiel against the new policy: how the team likes the free market, until fans use the free market to get cheap tickets. Then all of a sudden, the team wants price floors so that the ticket prices don't go below a certain level.  I talked about how I never had a problem with free agents and even teams making money, per se, but that the flip side was that fans should be able to use that same free market to buy and sell tickets at whatever prices the market will bear. And at any rate, the Yankees already made money the first time they sold the tickets. Why did they insist on getting a cut with the second time the tickets were sold, especially when it would hurt their own fan base?

I also pointed out that it will also hurt fans' flexibility in buying tickets. No longer will they be able to go to StubHub and get a deal on the day of the game. And how the team was so shortsighted on this decision. Because not only will they not get those fans into the ballpark, but that they will not get those fans' money from them buying food, drinks, and souvenirs. We also talked about how this new policy would hurt ticket sellers, too. Most of whom are season ticket holders just looking to get some of their money back for games they can't attend.

Anyhow, Li wrote up a great story that made the Post's website last night, and that will be in Thursday's paper. The article correctly points out how much this will negatively affect the average fan. I am quoted several times in the piece, including the kicker at the end. Which, if you know anything about journalism, is a great place to be!

But the Yankees are still trying to spin this as somehow helping the fans. From the article (emphasis added):

“Mobile is the most convenient, accessible, efficient and safe way to provide tickets,” said Yankees spokeswoman Alice McGillion. “Yankees fans are extremely happy, this is what they wanted. The only unhappy people are the ticket brokers and ticket speculators.”

Listen up, Alice McGillion. If you honestly think that Yankee fans "are extremely happy" over this new policy, you need to get your head out of your you know what. As I always say, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining!

While some Yankee fans may have welcomed the mobile option, nobody was saying to themselves, "Gee, what I really want is for the team to take away my flexbility in being able to buy a cheap ticket at the last minute." Or "Gee, I really want to help the Yankees and Ticketmaster make even more money." And, Ms. McGillion, most of the people selling tickets -- and buying tickets -- are your most dedicated, hardcore fans. How do you think this move is going to sell in your fan base?

This is one of the many things odious about the Hal Steinbrenner regime. Since he was born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple, he doesn't have a clue how bad these quotes sound from the team's PR person (!), especially when they are sandwiched next to quotes from actual fans. And because Prince Hal is so worried about looking like his father, he does the opposite of George in so many ways, including never seeming to fire anybody nor wanting accountability in anything. Then again, I guess the front office is doing his bidding in squeezing every last drop out of the fans, the way his big innovation for this winter was to have the Yankees be the only team not to sign a free agent. At least it used to be that we knew the high ticket prices were going to getting the best players. Not anymore.

And, as I wrote in the blog the other day (also, thanks to Mets Police for highlighting it in their blog), and also told the Post reporter, the Mets' Spring Training Sendoff that Squawker Jon and I attended on Monday was very disorganized. But I appreciated that they tried to do something nice for their fans. (Incidentally, Jon and I each got an emailed apology from the Mets yesterday for the logistical problems at the event -- and a voucher for two free field-level tickets for Monday-Thursday games through June of this year. Can you imagine the Yankees ever doing that?)

I have written in this blog about how the Yankees' ticket sales are declining, while the Mets are increasing. So does the Yankee organization think that screwing over their own fans is the way to arrest this trend? And it's one thing for the team to have the arrogance of doing whatever it wants when they were winning world championship after world championship, and were the top team in town. But, unfortunately, the team's front office still has that arrogance, even in a time when their crosstown rivals are actually putting a better product on -- and off -- the field. This is the time people in Yankeeland ought to be looking long and hard at innovative ways to get their fans to keep on coming to games. Not alienating them yet again.

You know, I've been a Yankee fan since I was 10 years old. I will remain a Yankees fan for the rest of my life. But gee, it would be nice if some of this passion was reciprocated. Or at least if the organization didn't pee on me and my fellow Yankee fans' legs and tell us it's raining!

Lisa quoted twice in New York Post ticket story

Squawker Lisa's takedown of the Yankees' new policy of no longer accepting print-at-home tickets caught the attention of the New York Post, who interviewed her for their story on the ticket travesty. Lisa is quoted midway through the article and again at the end. Go Lisa!

Pitchers, catchers, and a new top team in town

It's finally time for pitchers and catchers, when it's so good to see baseball back that I put aside my grumbling that, as usual, ESPN ranks one New York team #2 and the other New York team #17.

Wait a minute - it's the Mets coming in at #2 while the Yankees are at #17! Play ball!

There's such a buzz around the Mets that Squawker Lisa even waited with me for two hours in 20-degree weather and snow coming down to get vouchers for Met tickets!

Thousands of people came out on a wintry day to get those tickets. And despite long lines and disorganization, people waited patiently in the cold for a chance to see the defending National League champion New York Mets.

Not to be repetitive, but I feel like writing that again: National League defending champion New York Mets!

For much of the postseason, the Mets looked like they would be content with being a small-market team that managed to make the World Series one time. Tampa Bay was the model small-market franchise for awhile, but that one World Series appearance in 2008 seems like a long time ago. Then the Mets found a way to bring Yoenis Cespedes back. Think ESPN would have had the Mets at #2 without Cespedes?

The last time the Mets were good, they choked down the stretch in 2007 and 2008 while the hated Phillies went on to five straight division titles, two pennants, and one championship.  Now it's the Mets' current main rival, the Washington Nationals, that have to deal with the "choke: label:

Will new skipper Dusty Baker let the Nationals, um, choke again in 2016?

The Mets have players like Cespedes, who took less money to come back to New York, where he finished 13th in MVP voting despite only being on the Mets for two months. While the Nationals have the player who won the MVP, Bryce Harper, they also still have the teammate who tried to choke Harper in the dugout, Jonathan Papelbon.

Optimism in February for the Mets vs. trying to get excited over signing Alejandro De Aza? Sign me up!

Yankees screw over fans -- again -- with new ticket policy

One of my favorite sayings in real life is "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." (I have been known to use the more profane version of this expression as well!) I stole it from Judge Judy. In case you don't know what the expression means, it is basically saying, "Don't screw me over and then act like you had nothing to do with it."

I couldn't help but think of that expression when I heard about the Yankees' new ticket policy. The team announced in a press release this week that they were finally going to accept mobile tickets. But the real story is that they're no longer accepting PDFs or printouts of online game tickets. Here is how the organization spun this news:

As the Yankees are continuously striving to implement technological advances to provide our fans with a ticketing experience that is unparalleled, convenient, safe and secure, the Yankees are excited to announce, as a complement to traditional hard stock paper tickets, the availability of mobile ticketing for the 2016 baseball season. Print-at-home paper tickets (PDFs) are being discontinued so as to further combat fraud and counterfeiting of tickets associated with print-at-home paper tickets (PDFs). In addition to traditional hard stock paper tickets, the Yankees will be offering the opportunity for fans to receive mobile tickets on a fan's Smartphone. For more information on mobile ticketing, visit yankees.com/mobile.

Mobile ticketing is an advance that is long past due. But the team discontinuing print-at-home paper tickets has very little to do with combatting fraud and counterfeiting and everything to do with yet another money grab. Because guess what? Hard stock paper tickets can be counterfeited as well.

The counterfeit tickets Michael Kay
had purchased for "Hamilton." Photo
courtesy of @RealMichaelKay

And how do I know this? Because I heard Yankees TV broadcaster Michael Kay tell his ESPN Radio listeners on the very same day as this ticket announcement about his disastrous Valentine's Day, in which he tried to use tickets to the very popular Broadway show Hamilton that were purchased on Craigslist, only to discover that the ducats were counterfeit. And, as you can see from the picture Kay posted on Twitter, these were traditional tickets, not PDFs of etickets!

No, the real reason the Yankees are eliminating print-at-home tickets is to put StubHub and other secondary ticket markets out of the business of selling Yankee tickets, and to move such sales to the Yankees Ticket Exchange, where the Yanks make money on every resale. (It wasn't enough that they make money on the initial sale of the tix; they have to make money on the resale as well!) And where the site has a ticket floor on prices, so that they don't get too low. (Savvy fans know that StubHub can have great deals on Yankee tickets, especially when it gets close to the day of the game, due to fans wanting to sell their tickets quickly.)

Funny how big businesses like the Yankees praise the free market -- until it can negatively affect them, and then they put in artificial measures to protect their businesses!

Incidentally, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a few weeks ago that he was looking into the Yankees Ticket Exchange, as well as the NFL's secondary ticket market program, because of that very reason -- the price floor being an anti-competitive measure. I will be curious to see what happens with that.

Anyhow, there are going to be several repercussions to the Yankees' new policy. Forget about buying tickets on StubHub on the day of a game. If you want to get tickets, you will have to go to the Yankees' own site to do so. This also means that they will gather your personal info when you sign up at yankees.com for an account in order to download the tickets. 

In addition, you'd better make sure your smartphone is fully charged when you get to the ballpark, or you won't be able to use your e-ticket. And given how quickly iPhones run out of juice -- I have gone from 100% to zero power on my phone just going from Staten Island to Manhattan! -- this can be a real problem.

And finally, the team doesn't seem to be aware -- or to care -- that not everybody has a smartphone these days, for various reasons: cost, fear of technology, etc. And that they are essentially shutting those fans out from being able to buy tickets online. 

You know, given the uninspiring product the Yankees are planning on putting on the field this year, the team ought to be looking for more fan-friendly ways to get people into games, not looking for ways to shut them out. This new policy is really shortsighted, and sounds like something Randy Levine and Lonn Trost cooked up to increase the team's bottom line -- and screw over their own fanbase.

The irony is, though, that it will mean fewer people will buy Yankee tickets online at StubHub at the last minute. Which means fewer people going through the door and buying food and drinks and souvenirs. Does anybody ever think things out in Yankeeland? 

These sorts of shenanigans are why I could at least appreciate the gesture the Mets made with their Spring Training Sendoff event that Jon and I attended this week. While the day was a hot mess, I can see the team was trying to give their fans something for free to show some appreciation for their loyalty. The last time I can remember the Yankees doing something similar to show appreciation for their fans was in 2009, when they opened up the ballpark for fans to watch Game 4 of the 2009 World Series in. And that was a long time ago indeed. Oy.

As for that supposedly groundbreaking "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue: Don't believe the hype!

Want to really be groundbreaking, SI? Put some
men on the cover in such provocative poses!

I don't know what's more obnoxious: having the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition shoved down my throat each year. Or now having this retrograde publication getting all this positive press for being "empowering" now because they put MMA fighter Ronda Rousey and plus-size model Ashley Graham on separate versions of the 2016 cover. "History in the making" is what the magazine touts itself as doing. Oh, please. Spare me.

The SI swimsuit issue has bugged the heck out of me since I was a kid. I grew up in a house with two brothers who were big sports fans, and I got into sports from a very early age myself. So we always had Sports Illustrated in our house. If you were a child of the 70s or 80s, and you cared about sports, you pretty much had to subscribe to SI.

But I also grew up seeing the sexist Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue every year as well. And it would be a slap in the face to me and every other female sports fan who read the publication. A reminder that if you were a girl who cared about sports, pretty much the only women you'd ever regularly get to see in the magazine were sexy models whose only sport was taking their clothes off. And it was also a reminder that as much as I enjoyed reading SI to keep up with sports, the magazine wasn't really meant for me and the rest of my gender.

Look, I have no problem with guys wanting to see pictures of women wearing swimsuits (or much less). My issue with it is that this is in a sports magazine that not only seems to ignore that it does have female readers, but it never objectifies men in the same way as they do women.

And it's not just the swimsuit issue when it comes to SI. Look at the provocative Serena Williams cover, with her legs spread, when she won the 2015 Sportsperson of the Year cover. I defy you to find any Sportsman of the Year cover showing men in such a sexual pose. (An aside: Yes, I know Williams obviously agreed to the cover. But that still doesn't make it right.) 

It's 2016, and the swimsuit issue seems sorely out of date. So what to do? The magazine could have stopped running the issue (not bloodly likely, given how much money they make out of it.) Or they could have gone ESPN's route, and featured men as well, the way ESPN the Magazine's Body Issue does. At least with that issue, not only are both men and women of all ages and body types treated equally, but the focus is more on muscles and what the body can do, and not just titillation. And the ESPN issue's pictures frequently have a sense of humor that is sorely missing from SI.

But instead, Sports Illustrated has tried to act like it's now some pioneer for women in having a so-called "curvy" model on the cover. (Which goes to show, yet again, why curvy is a dumb euphemism for overweight. Because being curvy has always been a job requirement for SI models!) And Rousey in a "swimsuit" made of body paint. Would they do the same to David Beckham? Tom Brady?

MJ Day, the magazine's assistant managing editor, said that these covers showed that "beauty is not cookie cutter." Except that it is, because they won't show the beauty of men in their issue. What's up with that?

Day also described Rousey as the "perfect combination of beauty, brains, brawn and humility." Huh? If you know anything about Rousey, she has about as much humility as Kanye West does. That's precisely what helps makes her an interesting fighter.

At any rate, don't believe the hype. SI's swimsuit issue is still about objectifying women by showing them in as little clothing as possible, while men are never exploited in the same way. Just because the magazine has expanded the types of women who are in the issue doesn't make it any less retrograde. Want to be really groundbreaking, SI? Put some sexy men on your swimsuit cover. Make your male readers have to squirm for a change.