Boston Globe

thanks for the thread. i thought curt was smarter than this, seeing as how he hangs with politicians in the offseason and should know something about conflict of interest. if the BBWAA didn't address this situation right away, there existed a possibility of schilling tipping a favorite scribe to stories in return for a single Cy Young vote.

curt will claim he never thought about this potential conflict when he asked for the clause (which the red sox accepted and wrote into the contract). and maybe he didn't. maybe he is naive. beyond that, he can stand on his unpopularity with baseball writers and say he would be the last one to win a single vote that he didn't earn. but the bottom line is, this clause should never been accepted by the red sox and approved by baseball, let alone even thought about by a professional athlete of curt's stature.

That is correct. The BBWAA should not have to take action to protect the integrity of its relationship with baseball. The onus ought to be on Major League Baseball.

How I wish we had a Commissioner of Baseball.

I'm not understanding why this is all of the sudden an issue & why it's being linked to Schill.

The League MVP award is also voted on by BBWAA and there are examples across the league of these awards being included as incentives in contracts. Even Okajima has an award bonus for placing in the Cy Young ballots (finishing 1st, 2nd or 3rd). This is so common that it'd change the way player contracts are negotiated. As such, I don't believe the players union is to be 'ok' with this.

I just quickly looked at Boston contacts for such incentives (source), here are some of the examples of existing contracts:


Hideki Okajima

award bonuses: $50,000 for each for All Star, Gold Glove & LCS MVP, $0.1M for WS MVP, $0.1M for MVP ($50,000 for 2nd, 25,000 for 3rd), $0.15M for Cy Young ($0.1M for 2nd, $75,000 for 3rd), $0.15M for Rolaids award ($0.1M for 2nd, $75,000 for 3rd, $50,000 for 4th or 5th), $25,000 for Rookie of Year



J.D. Drew
award bonuses: $0.2M for MVP ($0.125M for placing 2nd, $0.1M for 3rd, $75,000 for 4th, $50,000 for 5th), $0.1M each for Gold Glove, Silver Slugger or WS MVP, $75,000 for LCS MVP, $50,000 for All Star selection

David Ortiz
award bonus: $50,000 for All Star selection

Mike Lowell
$25,000 award bonus for All Star selection

Daisuke Matsuzaka
award bonuses: $0.5M for MVP ($0.125M for 2nd, $0.1M for 3rd, $75,000 for 4th, $50,000 for 5th), $0.5M for Cy Young ($0.4M for 2nd, $0.3M for 3rd), $0.1M All Star start ($50,000 for All Star selection), $0.15M for WS/LCS MVP, $50,000 for Gold Glove, $25,000 for Rookie of Year
2009 & 2010 salaries increase to $10M with:
Cy Young award in 2007 or 2008, or

top 3 in Cy Young vote in 2007 and 2008, or

MVP award in 2007 or 2008, or

top 5 in MVP vote in 2007 and 2008

2011 & 2012 salaries increase to $12M with:
Cy Young award in 2009 or 2010, or

top 3 in Cy Young vote in 2009 and 2010, or

MVP award in 2009 or 2010, or

top 5 in MVP vote in 2009 and 2010

Josh Beckett
$50,000 award bonus for All Star selection


Curt Schilling
$1M award bonus for receiving one Cy Young vote
$2M in weight clauses ($333,333 each for maintaining weight in 6 random weigh-ins, one per month, during season)

Curt was on D&C a while back and they were asking him about the clause. He said that if he got a vote and he felt he didn't deserve it that he'd donate the entire $1 million to charity.

The difference is that it would be pretty hard to bribe all the voters. In Schilling's case he only needs 1 vote.

Or Schill's contract could be used to weed out writers who should be banned from voting.

i'm not even sure why modern athletes need these incentive clauses, other than to add more money to their already ample salaries.
that's the bigger picture behind this one small piece of business with curt.

joe torre hinted at this when he turned down the yankees' incentive-laden contract. isn't going out there and busting your balls for six months incentive enough? why put that into any contract, let alone curt's?

No, not necessarily.

"Incentive" is maybe not the right word (even though it's the standard term). It's not really, "We put in this extra clause because otherwise we don't think that you'll try hard." It's an acknowledgment by the team and player that both sides have a stake in that player's success. We'll pay you "X," but if you play like one of the best players at your position, then we agree that you should get paid like one of the best.

As such, there's probably a better benchmark in the first place than awards that are voted on by people who in some cases have an agenda, and in any event are frequently just plain wrong. There is no shortage of objective measures of performance. The awards are just an easy, convenient benchmark - with, I'm sure, a little bit of "that's just how the incentive clauses have always been done" thrown in there.

I don't understand objecting to incentives in principle (the principle, in Torre's case, wasn't incentives per se -- it was that the incentives were coupled with a huge cut in base salary). The "one vote" clause just forced the issue in terms of these particular incentives. And that's great - quite apart from any "conflict of interest" issues - because it forces everyone involved to look to those more objective measures of performance that are readily available to them.

torre was so hurt by the pay cut that he went to work for the dodgers for even less money.

the incentive idea is the classic "my generation vs. your generation" argument. i'm against them, always have been. but you do make a good point about media picking the award winners. otoh, what neutral organization is out there that sees all the games and can make a better judgement on award winners? the national baseball bloggers society?

I don't have a problem with incentives when they are used properly. For example, Manny Ramirez shouldn't get a bonus for winning MVP. He's paid at a level where MVP type numbers are expected.

IMHO incentives should only be used in the case of a player who was an upper echelon preformer who is either coming off of a horrible year or coming off an injury that caused them to miss extensive periods of time and their ability to make it through a season and achieve similar numbers to what they used to is in question. (How's that for a run on sentence?)

That's the Secretariat of run-on sentences, Slick. You almost convinced me that certain incentive clauses are okay.

I'm fine with this so long as they also put in the by-laws that any voter that leaves someone off his ballot, and he lies about his reasoning for leaving person off the ballot should lose the right to vote on any of the awards and if they have it their HOF vote.

Paging George King... please pick up the white courtesy phone.

too bad dave egan's dead. a boston writer, he left ted williams off his top 10 in 1941, allowing joe dimaggio to win the MVP.

You cite many contract clauses that aren't resulting from BBWAA voting (All-Star appearances, for example).

Also, Schilling's contract brings scrutiny because it requires literally "one Cy Young vote, any vote" (Schilling's blog) for that incentive to be paid.

When I first read that I disliked it as well.

There isn't one, unless you just want to devise a statistical formula and leave out all the suspense and all the debate. They certainly get it wrong from time to time, but they have a better track record than AMPAS (Oscars), and an immeasurably better track record than NARAS (Grammys), among others. I'm not saying that they're incompetent. Just that there are better, more consistent ways to measure performance - particularly when there are big chunks of incentive money involved.




How about a young guy signing a long-term deal in advance of his arbitration-eligible years?

Basically, though, yes. Incentives make sense to minimize a team's financial risk / maximize a player's financial reward in situations where performance is unpredictable - a 41 year old pitcher, a 21 year old phenom, a perennial DL visitor. I can understand the distaste for incentives as a vanity clause, or as an excuse to make a lowball base salary offer.

I don't know why people would be against incentives. Who cares if a player has a 250k bonus for winning the MVP or something like that? Teams would gladly pay the bonus if they have a player perform on that high of a level which is why I'm sure the Sox have so many players with those bonuses. Teams and players both want the bonuses so why would anyone care what they put into the contract?




I don't know why he cited all star game appearences but I'm guessing because its similar to getting a bonus for an award. The point remains that many players on the Sox have them. Just looking at Cots it looks like Manny, JD Drew, Ortiz, Matsuzaka, Alex Cora (hahaha), and Okajima all have Cy Young or MVP bonuses. I agree that the one vote thing is odd but I don't think its actually that bad of an idea. Basically you have to be a top 8-10 pitcher in the league to even get a vote so assuming that Schilling has no realistic shot at winning the Cy Young this is a bonus for being a top 10 pitcher in the AL.