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Cespedes signing affirms Mets’ approach

The Mets got their man on their terms.

The National League champions announced late Friday they had reached a deal with Yoenis Cespedes following an offseason in which it appeared the center fielder might sign elsewhere.

The pact calls for the Mets to pay Cespedes $75 million over three years, including $27.5 million for the first year, after which he can opt out.

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That means Cespedes, 30, can test free agency again next winter, and that the Mets will have a center fielder who hit 35 home runs last season and batted .328 with runners on base.

On paper at least, the pact vaults the Mets back to the top of the league. In addition to Cespedes, the Mets added second baseman Neil Walker, who hit 16 home runs last season while batting .269 for the Pirates, to go with a starting rotation that may be the best in baseball.

Re-signing Cespedes also seems to validate the Mets’ approach this offseason.

Earlier this month, general manager Sandy Alderson dismissed “as populism involving Cespedes” suggestions that the Mets were not spending enough to win another championship.

Cespedes reportedly sought a deal for six or seven years that would pay him about $22 million a year, which the Mets refused. As recently as Thursday the Nationals were said to be offering him a pact worth $100 million over five years that also contained an opt-out clause.

So why did Cespedes accept the Mets’ offer? “Perhaps he also figures that if an opt-out from the Nationals would enable him to become a free agent after say, two years, he might as well just accept the shorter deal from the Mets,” Ken Rosenthal at Fox Sports speculated on Thursday.

Indeed. By the end of next season, Cespedes will be 31 years old, or three years past prime for a position player, as measured by wins above replacement (WAR), which tries to sum up a player’s contribution to his team in one statistic.

Cespedes’ WAR with the Mets last season was 2.3, compared with 4.0 a year earlier in Detroit and 3.9 in 2012, his first season in the league, with Oakland. Position players tend to peak between the ages of 26 and 28, according to an analysis last year by Alex Speier at The Boston Globe. As Speier wrote:

“Meanwhile, after turning 30, players experience a clear and steady decline in the likelihood that they’ll be productive offensive contributors, with 33-year-old players delivering 2.0 WAR with less than half the frequency of players 26-29. The picture gets progressively uglier from there.”

The deal also highlights the significance of an opt-out clause, a provision that allows a player to walk away from the pact and releases the team from its promise to pay him. Though such clauses would seem to benefit players, they benefit teams, too.

“The seasons at the end of a contract that a player would abandon are precisely the years in which he expects to be paid more than he is worth,” the Economist concluded recently in an analysis of contracts that are known to contain opt-outs.

Based on the data, Cespedes had no reason to delay his opt-out another year. Of course, the Mets know that too, which may explain why the prospect of their rival signing Cespedes failed to rattle them.

Ten days ago, when it appeared that Cespedes might sign elsewhere, Mets captain David Wright told The New York Post that he has learned to trust Alderson.

“I don’t know what the situation is with Cespedes and the Mets, but I do know that Sandy has earned the right to make these type of decisions,” Wright said.

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The Mets at midwinter

Eleven Sundays from now the Mets open their season at Kansas City. But the hot stove league has reached its midpoint.

The Mets are investing to win, according to general manager Sandy Alderson, who told reporters recently that the team is on track to boost its payroll to as high as $120 million, or about $35 million more than two years ago.

Alderson dismissed as “populism involving Cespedes” the idea that the team is failing to spend enough to compete for the pennant. That was a reference to outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, whom the team shows little interest in signing.

“We know Cespedes was instrumental in getting us to the postseason,” Alderson said. “But I think along the way we learned a few things about ourselves and the team.”

One of those lessons may be that it’s better to first see how the team comes together on field and then add players as you go. Think back to June, when the Mets were at the bottom of the league in runs scored. The Mets needed a big bat, which Cespedes, who hit .328 last season with runners on base, brought.

But in the postseason, Cespedes hit just .232 with runners on base, which may explain the Mets’ reluctance to open their wallet for the outfielder, who reportedly is seeking a seven-year deal for about $25 million a season.

A similar phenomenon may have led the Mets to part ways with second baseman Daniel Murphy, who in December signed a three-year, $37.5 million contract with the Nationals.

Despite homering five times in the Mets’ win over the Dodgers in the NL Division Series, Murphy committed an error in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the World Series that allowed the Royals to tie the game, which they later won.

The Royals also silenced Murphy’s bat. After hitting seven homers in the playoffs, Murphy hit zero in the series. The Royals varied the pitches that Murphy faced, with fewer fastballs and more pitches up and away.

So why are Mets fans freaking out? Because eight National League rivals each have shelled out more for free agents this offseason. Of course, much of the outlay was for pitching, of which the Mets have a bullpen full. (“The Mets have the best rotation in baseball now, and there really isn’t a close second,” writes ESPN’s Buster Olney.)

It didn’t help that on the same day Alderson addressed the media the Giants announced the signing of center fielder Denard Span. But the Mets don’t need Span, who led the league in hits two years ago but who missed nearly two-thirds of last season with the Nationals because of injuries, in the leadoff spot.

Nor does it help that Paul DePodesta, the analytics whiz who oversaw player development for the Mets, left the team recently to take over as chief strategy officer for the NFL Cleveland Browns. Still, one has to imagine that DePodesta influenced Alderson’s thinking about both Cespedes and Murphy.

Meanwhile, Cespedes remains a free agent. Which means the Mets may yet offer him a deal, albeit one for two years.

We learned on Monday that the Mets have scouted Kieran Powell, a cricket batsman from the West Indies. The Mets, one of 11 teams to have watched Powell work out, reportedly have encouraged him to pursue center field.

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The NFL eyes a return to LA

The NFL may be readying a return to the City of Angels.

Or not.

Owners of the league’s 32 teams are slated to huddle on Jan. 12 and 13 in Houston to weigh proposals from the Chargers, Raiders and Rams for relocating to Los Angeles. The owners also will hear from San Diego, St. Louis and Oakland — the teams’ current home cities — about plans to keep the teams put.

The showdown stems from a mismatch between America’s most popular sport (according to a poll last year by Harris Interactive) and its second-largest city, which has been without a team since the Rams and Raiders decamped following the 1994 season.

(For more on why the teams left Los Angeles and why no team has returned since then, read here.)

In February, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, formed a committee made up of owners of six teams. Goodell charged the panel with overseeing the application of the league’s relocation guidelines if a team or teams applied to move.

The guidelines reportedly give deference to keeping teams in place if their home cities can accommodate – generally meaning fork over their share of the cost of a stadium – them. But the owners can do what they want, according to a lawyer who represented the Rams in their move from Los Angeles.

“It doesn’t matter one iota,” Mark Levinstein, the attorney, told Sports Business Daily recently, referring to the guidelines. “It is written for litigation. The goal is to be able to say to jurors, ‘We had a good reason,’ when the reality is, ‘We had 28 guys voting for God knows what reasons. And we don’t want all the discussion and back-room dealing and all the rest the focus of the case.’”

The cities themselves have until this Wednesday to present proposals for blocking a move, which requires a three-fourths vote. Teams have until a week later, on Jan. 4, to apply for a move.

Rams owners Stan Kroenke – a billionaire who also owns a majority stake in the English Premier League club Arsenal, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, and Major League Soccer team Colorado Rapids – has announced plans to build a domed stadium in Inglewood, about 12 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.

The Chargers and Rams have proposed to build and share an outdoor stadium in Carson, about 14 miles further south.

For their part, officials in St. Louis have offered to build a $1 billion stadium using mostly public funds. Officials in Oakland, which is still paying off its share of upgrades to the stadium where the Raiders play currently, say they would like the team to stay and suggest they might forgive the $100 million in debt the team owes on the building in return for the Raiders’ agreeing to remain.

San Diego has proposed to build a $1.1 billion stadium for the Chargers, but the team has rebuffed the plan, saying the city will be unable to persuade voters to commit to paying roughly a third of the cost.

In early December, the Rams told the NFL they would consider partnering with the Chargers or Raiders (they didn’t say which one) on the stadium in Inglewood, a compromise that might help persuade owners to back the Rams’ bid.

Though taxpayers nationwide have paid 60% of the $10.5 billion spent on new NFL stadiums since 1990, researchers concluded in a study published in 2011 that local communities derive few economic benefits from stadiums, sporting events and franchises.

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Warriors win streak ends at 24

It had to happen eventually.

The Golden State Warriors ended their NBA record of 24 straight wins when the Milwaukee Bucks topped them 108-95 on Saturday.

The first five minutes of the game foretold the outcome. The Warriors looked tired on the last stop of a seven-game road trip and seemed unable to get their offense going.

In the end, Golden State shot 6 for 26 from three-point territory. Stephen Curry, the Warriors all-galaxy point guard, hit just 25% of his shots from beyond the line or about half as many as he has sunk from outside the arc all season.

Center Greg Monroe led the Bucks with 28 points.

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Warriors’ interim coach Luke Walton dismissed a suggestion that the loss spelled relief for his team. “Losing sucks,” he told reporters. “Even if you are 24-1, losing still sucks.”

Still, Walton speculated that his players might experience “a little relief mentally” now that pressure to maintain the streak has ended.

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Golden State Warriors and the values that support a record start

In his book “Winners: And How They Succeed,” Alastair Campbell reports that the winningest winning mindsets are in sports.

The Golden State Warriors, who have set a record for the best start to an NBA season, underscore Campbell’s finding.

Guard Stephen Curry and his teammates will look to go 18 and 0 on Saturday when they host Sacramento.

The Warriors’ start sent me to stories about the team and the values instilled by Coach Steve Kerr: joy, mindfulness, compassion and competition.

Joy means “he wants us having fun,” interim coach Luke Walton told reporters on Tuesday. (Kerr is on leave to recover from a spinal fluid leak.)

Mindfulness, said Walton, means “thinking the game. It’s not just trying [to] out-talent people; it’s not trying to go for your individual stats. It’s being mindful of the right way to do things.”

“There’s compassion—for each other and for the game of basketball,” he added. “And then there’s competition.”

On Friday, Curry scored 41 points on Friday against Phoenix despite not playing in the fourth quarter. Equally amazing: He hit nine of 16 3-pointers to edge past LeBron James in all-time 3-pointers made. Curry now has 1,278 threes for his career, which spans 433 games. James, by comparison, has 1,276 threes in 927 games.

On offense, it can seem as if Curry and his teammates operate continually beyond the three-point line. After hitting a shot, Curry spins and, without a trace of celebration, heads down the court to play defense.

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Cricket All-Stars, NFL show globalization of sports

At JFK this week I passed a billboard for a financial firm that depicted a ball shaped like an American football but flatter at each end, like a rugby ball, with the pattern of a soccer ball.

The mythical mass served as metaphor for globalization, which two items in the news this week suggest is accelerating when it comes to sports.

First is a cricket match slated for Saturday at Citi Field in New York, the first of three exhibitions to be played in the U.S. this month by teams of retired all-stars. The other is an announcement by the NFL that it will play at least three games in London in each of the next five seasons after three contests there this year.

The moves mark a quickening of activity by two sports that have yet to arrive in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, on a national level. Of course, cricket has billions of fans around the world. Test matches between England and Pakistan, and between India and South Africa, are among the top events this weekend in all of sport.

The matches in the states will feature Sachin Tendulkar, who retired from the Indian national team two years ago after scoring 15,921 runs in 200 test matches, or 2,000 more than his closest rival; and Shane Warne, an Australian who retired in 2013 and ranks second of all time in wickets taken (getting a batter out) in test matches.

Tendulkar, 42, who may be the greatest batsman of all time, and Warne, 46, among the best bowlers ever, will helm opposing teams of former greats from Pakistan, India, England, South Africa, the West Indies, and Sri Lanka. “The vision is to globalize cricket,” Tendulkar told the Times. “Somewhere we need to start.”

That could be America, which in 1844 hosted the first international cricket match, between the U.S. and Canada. Today roughly 35,000 Americans play cricket, according to the United States of America Cricket Association.

The grounds at Citi Field will include a pitch that organizers of the matches have trucked from Indiana, where it was grown for the occasion by Mark Perham, the former groundsman at Eden Park, the largest stadium in New Zealand. The pitcher’s mound, which had a workout in the recently concluded World Series, will be lowered so as not to present a hazard for cricketers.

American football comes to rugby grounds

Separately, the NFL announced on Tuesday it has leased Twickenham Stadium, which normally houses rugby and recently hosted the sport’s world cup, for each of the next three seasons.

That brings to three the number of venues the league will use to host games in London between now and 2020. In addition to Twickenham, which holds 82,000 people, the league will play at least two games a year at Wembley Stadium over the coming five years.

The NFL also is slated to play two games a year at a stadium being built for Tottenham Hotspur when it is completed in 2018.

According to the league, the three games it hosted this season at Wembley averaged 83,777 fans apiece, a crowd roughly equivalent to the capacity of MetLife Stadium.

The push by the NFL to expand internationally will extend south as well. The league is expected to play at least one game in Mexico City in 2016 and says it is exploring matchups in Germany and Brazil.

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The Mets finish a series and fill a season

mets_capBy the time Eric Hosmer doubled off Matt Harvey to cut the Mets’ lead in half in game five of the World Series on Sunday night, the armless chair that I occupied in games one through four had developed a groove from all the times I had winced or felt my body cringe involuntarily.

Mets fans, including this one, recoiled when closer Jeurys Familia gave up a home run to Alex Gordon that tied game one with two outs remaining in the bottom of the ninth. In what was to become a pattern, the Mets seemed to outdo the Royals. Until they didn’t.

We flinched in game four, when second baseman Daniel Murphy missed a ground ball for an error that scored the tying run, setting up Familia to blow the second of three blown saves.

On Sunday, Harvey had shut out the Royals through eight innings before insisting that manager Terry Collins allow him to start the ninth.

“Pride, meet fall,” the Daily News later scolded.

But dwelling on mistakes by the Mets overlooks the constancy that defines the Royals. It’s hard to imagine a team that competes more relentlessly, runs the bases better, or makes contact with the ball more often.

“The Royals crowd the bases with runners, and that puts on nonstop pressure,” Mets captain David Wright told reporters after game four.

Though the Mets were outmatched, both the series and the season provided plenty of euphoria. I don’t think I’ve ever loved watching pitching as much as I did watching the Mets’ young starters.

Or seeing Murphy hit seven home runs in nine postseason games, like a modern-day Babe Ruth.

It was such a joy to watch the Mets at times you didn’t want the games to end. Which is how I will remember this season.

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FIFA shows what can happen when governance becomes an afterthought

The rules for international soccer fill 140 pages and prescribe, among other things, that the color of artificial playing fields must be green.

If FIFA had brought such specificity to its governing practices the governing body of the world’s most popular sport might have avoided the alleged infractions that have led to corruption probes by prosecutors in the US, the UK, and Switzerland.

The failures of governance at FIFA became clearer this weekend with publication by the Financial Times of an interview with Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president, whom the organization’s independent ethics committee suspended in October amid allegations that he misappropriated funds.

At some point in their existence, organizations decide on the rules and practices by which they’re directed so as to ensure their long-term success. Or they don’t, in which case they expose themselves to excess financial or business risk.

Such basic practices as term limits for executives, a mandatory retirement age, or transparent processes for setting executive compensation and electing directors all seem to have been missing from FIFA’s boardroom throughout Blatter’s tenure.

Blatter told the FT he remained president of FIFA for so long—he was elected in 1998—because of a push by a majority of the organization’s board to counter a move by UEFA, the governing body for European soccer and the most influential of soccer’s six confederations, to dismantle FIFA.

As for a payment by FIFA in 2011 of roughly $2 million to Michel Platini, the UEFA president, that Blatter has said was owed Platini pursuant to an employment agreement when Platini served as Blatter’s adviser between 1998 and 2002, Blatter reiterated to the FT what he has said previously: that there was no agreement in writing to document the outlay because Swiss law allows for oral agreements.

When Malcolm Moore, the reporter, followed up by noting that’s now how large companies act, Blatter distinguished FIFA as “a club” but refused to address why there’s no record of the payment to Platini.

Blatter’s suspension may relieve pressure on FIFA from its biggest sponsors. About a week before Blatter’s suspension, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Visa all called on the embattled executive to step down.

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NFL player Pierre Garçon sues FanDuel fantasy sports site

Pierre Garçon is charging FanDuel with illegal procedure.

The Washington Redskins receiver contends that the fantasy sports site uses his likeness and those of other NFL stars for commercial purposes without their permission, according to a suit filed on Friday by Garçon with the U.S. District Court in Maryland.

FanDuel makes millions of dollars using players’ images without compensating them, contends Garçon, who says that violates the players’ rights to publicity.

“FanDuel continues to promote and operate its daily fantasy football contests on the backs of NFL players, whose popularity and performance make the defendant commercial daily fantasy football contest possible,” Garçon alleged in court papers.

The suit adds to the controversy over sites such as FanDuel and
DraftKings, which allow contestants to assemble rosters of NFL players and compete for cash prizes based on the performance of their teams.

Though critics charge fantasy sites with hosting illegal gambling, the sites operate pursuant to a federal law passed in 2006 that authorizes simulated sports games that pay out based on the “relative knowledge and skill” of participants.

FanDuel garnered $57 million in revenue and paid out $2 billion in prizes last year, Garçon charges.

For its part, FanDuel says the suit lacks merit, citing the federal statute.

FanDuel counts the NBA and NBC Sports among its investors. Major League Baseball owns part of DraftKings. In a letter released Thursday, FanDuel’s CEO wrote that the company would back “sensible regulation.”

DraftKings and the NFL Players Association struck a deal in September that allows that site to use some of the league’s top-rated players in marketing efforts

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Yahoo stream of NFL game to mark a milestone for digital TV

For the National Football League, the action on the gridiron this Sunday may pale in comparison with what happens online.

That’s because Yahoo will stream a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars in London live, for free. The webcast from Wembley Stadium will mark the first time an NFL game has aired primarily via the Internet and a milestone in the evolution of online TV.

Yahoo, which reportedly paid $20 million for the rights to the game, will stream a live feed of the game produced by CBS. Other than in Buffalo and Jacksonville, where affiliates of the network will televise the matchup, the game will be available exclusively online.

Roughly 30 companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Snickers and Toyota, are slated to advertise during the webcast, which Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has called a “historic opportunity.”

The ability to watch live telecasts of sports typically requires a subscription to pay TV.

Experts say they’ll be watching Yahoo’s webcast to see, among other things, the size of the audience, its age and demographics, and whether viewers watch via mobile devices, TVs or desktops.

Neither the NFL nor Yahoo have said what size audience they anticipate for Sunday’s game. A game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins in London on Oct. 4. drew nine million viewers on CBS, compared with the roughly 20 million viewers who tune to network telecasts of NFL games played on Sunday afternoons.

“Broadband and Internet distribution has gotten to a critical place where it can support an NFL game,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president for media, told Adweek. “One of the reasons we’re there is to see if this could be viable distribution for more than one game.”

“We’ll know a lot more on [Monday],” he added.