Categories
Sports

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.

https://twitter.com/MLB/status/691086807333613569/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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.

Categories
News

Global oil glut fuels thaw in US-Iran relations

The glut of global oil may be accelerating the thaw in relations between the U.S. and Iran.

The announcement on Saturday that economic sanctions against Iran have lifted frees roughly $100 billion to flow into Iran, which can resume oil exports. The end to the embargo came after United Nations inspectors certified that Iran honored commitments to dismantle major parts of its nuclear program.

The Iranians reportedly met their nuclear-related promises months ahead of schedule. The speed reflected in part a determination by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to boost the flow of funds into the treasury before parliamentary elections slated for next month.

“They were highly motivated to get it done,” an American official told the Times, which notes that the falloff in oil prices has slashed the Islamic Republic’s national revenue.

Iran says it can produce 500,000 barrels of oil a day. That would add to an oversupply that has pushed prices to below $30 a barrel, their lowest in a dozen years.

The action by Iran to dismantle its nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions culminates a deal reached in July between the Iran and six world powers: the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

The end of sanctions means that Iran can connect with the international financial system, and that Iranian business can trade with the EU. Details for trade between Iran and the U.S. may take longer to hammer out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Sports

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.

Categories
Sports

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.

Categories
Finance News

How the blockchain benefits financial transactions

A patent filing in early December by Goldman Sachs hints at the promise of digital currency to speed financial transactions.

The investment bank aims to create a cryptocurrency called SETLcoin, which would guarantee execution and settlement of securities trades within minutes, according to the filing.

The move, which was reported by American Banker, mirrors similar efforts by banks worldwide. At least 42 financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Barclays, have joined a consortium that is developing distributed ledger technologies. Some of the same banks also have teamed up with the Linux Foundation to develop open-source software for business transactions.

To appreciate the potential of peer-to-peer technologies for exchanging stocks, bonds and other assets, consider the process as it exists currently. As described in the filing by Goldman:

“As implemented by [SETL.coin], a trader no longer trades securities by meeting at an exchange with an indication of cash for security and then settles the transaction seconds, hours, or days later, meanwhile bearing all of the associated credit risk in the interim.

Traders using the described technology exchange securities by presenting an open transaction on the associated funds in their respective wallets. SETLcoin ownership is immediately transferred to a new owner after authentication and verification, which are based on network ledgers within a peer-to-peer network, guaranteeing nearly instantaneous execution and settlement.”

The promise of the network turns on the so-called blockchain, a database for recording and verifying transactions that was developed in connection with the exchange of bitcoin, a digital currency that is traded independent of banks and governments.

In “Digital Gold,” his book about the origins of bitcoin, Nathaniel Popper summarizes the steps that form the process for exchanging bitcoins. As Popper describes a hypothetical exchange:

“To recap, the five basic of the bitcoin process were laid out as follows:

Alice initiates a transfer of bitcoins from her account by signing off with her private key and broadcasting the transaction to other users.

The other users of the network make sure Alice’s bitcoin address has sufficient funds and then add Alice’s transaction to a list of other recent transactions, known as a block.

Computers take part in a computational race to have their list of transactions, or block, added to the blockchain.

The computer that has its block added to the blockchain is also granted a bundle of new bitcoins.

Computers on the network start compiling a new list of unconfirmed recent transactions, trying to win the next bundle of bitcoins.”

For bitcoin, the blockchain enables the movement of money without a bank or central authority. For banks, the blockchain promises to virtually eliminate the risk that arises during the lag between a transaction and its settlement.

As Oliver Bussmann, chief information officer of UBS explained in August to CIO.com, instantaneous settlement means that someone who buys a share of stock for $100, for example, would settle the trade at $100, compared with a trade that takes days to clear, during which time the value of the share might fall, with the buyer bearing the risk.

Magnify that and you can understand why banks are experimenting with the blockchain. “The ability to do those changes within minutes or seconds instead of waiting two days for an execution… is a big change,” Bussmann said.

 

 

 

Categories
Sports

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.

https://twitter.com/andrewbogut/status/675899017973342208

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.

Categories
Law

The last word (for now) on NSA data collection

Saturday marked the end of the National Security Agency’s gathering information about the phone calls of millions of Americans indiscriminately.

A law passed over the summer overhauled the government’s authority to collect so-called telephone metadata with a framework that provides for phone companies to hold such records subject to the government’s obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that authorizes their release.

The change, embodied in the USA Freedom Act, originated with revelations by Edward Snowden that the government was collecting phone records of Americans in bulk and randomly. The law gave the government 180 days, until Nov. 29, to comply.

In a ruling on Nov. 9 that held such collections likely unconstitutional, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia noted that the end of bulk collection would not be “the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry.”

Categories
Sports

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.

Categories
News

Paris, Beirut attacks

https://twitter.com/jean_jullien/status/665305363500011521

https://twitter.com/MGHuff/status/665966897775706113

https://twitter.com/dmascret/status/665820842224435200

Categories
Law

Why New York’s attorney general has a case against DraftKings and FanDuel

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman made news on Tuesday when he ordered FanDuel and DraftKings to stop accepting wagers in the state.

Both of the daily fantasy sports sites allegedly run afoul of New York law, which prohibits bookmaking that profits from illegal gambling activity, according to Schneiderman.

The cease-and-desist order adds to the scrutiny faced recently by both leagues, which call their contests games of skill, citing as support a federal law passed in 2006 that excludes fantasy sports from the definition of the term “bet” or “wager.”

Schneiderman’s office thinks otherwise. In a letter to FanDuel (a nearly identical version went to DraftKings), Kathleen McGee, chief of the attorney general’s Internet bureau, wrote:

“Our review concludes that FanDuel’s operations constitute illegal gambling under New York law, according to which, ‘a person engages in gambling when he stakes or risks something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under his control or influence.’

FanDuel’s customers are clearly placing bets on events outside of their control or influence, specifically on the real-game performance of professional athletes. Further, each FanDuel wager represents a wager on a ‘contest of chance’ where winning or losing depends on numerous elements of chance to a ‘material degree.’”

The Empire State classifies as gambling games that involve a significant amount of chance. As David Apfel and Andrew Kim of the law firm Goodwin Proctor noted in a column last April, most fantasy contests involve some element of chance. The degree matters.

The federal law that excepts fantasy leagues from the definition of Internet gambling does nothing to upend state laws that prohibit, allow, or regulate gambling, leaving the leagues to navigate the variations in laws governing gambling in each state.

Currently DraftKings, FanDuel, and other fantasy sites operate in 45 states that allow games with some element of chance so long as skill predominates.

But elements of daily fantasy sports—significantly both the dailiness and fact that prizes vary with the number of participants—suggest that chance may outweigh skill in the outcome. According to Apfel and Kim:

“Many states distinguish between entry fees and bets, and have a clear law stating that paying to play in a game or contest for a prize is perfectly lawful, provided the prize has nothing to do with the number of entrants. Where a game’s prize is set in advance and does not turn on how many individuals enter the game, these states permit the game to proceed. But where prizes consist of a percentage of the entrance fees or are otherwise dependent in whole or in part on the number of participants, the laws in these states treat the otherwise benign entry fees as illegal bets or wagers.”

The frequency of the contests suggests that playing daily fantasy is less about drafting well—a skill that tests entrants’ ability to size up the skills of players they draft for their fantasy teams, an activity akin to what professional sports teams do as part of their business—than about luck.

Dustin Gouker, who covers the daily fantasy industry for Legal Sports Report, put it this way recently:

“There are thousands of contests that you can choose to enter on a variety of sites, with entry fees from 25 cents to thousands of dollars. Those buy-ins are how daily fantasy sites make money; they take a percentage of each entry fee. The biggest contests routinely pay out millions of dollars.

Does it sound like gambling, on its face? Gambling can be defined as wagering money on an uncertain outcome — like, say, a last-minute fumble that wins a player more than a million dollars. Sure sounds like daily fantasy fits the bill.”

A lot of money rides on the distinction. FanDuel and DraftKings each are valued at more than $1 billion and count among their investors the NBA, NBC Sports, Google, and Time Warner/Turner Sports (FanDuel), and Major League Baseball; Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots; Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Fox Sports (DraftKings).

Together the companies have 1.1 million active players in the Empire State, which houses 12.8% of the fantasy sports market, according to the Times. Being shut out of New York would cost the leagues a combined $35 million in revenue per year.

Then there’s the ad spending. FanDuel and DraftKings have spent more than $220 million since August, as anyone who has watched sports on TV or the Internet during that time knows. Fox Sports’ investment in DraftKings came with a promise by the fantasy site to spend $250 million on ads with the network over the next three years.

Judging by their investments, the investors thus far have concluded that benefits of backing the companies outweigh the risks. For the leagues, daily fantasy sports translate to viewers for games. Nearly two-thirds of daily fantasy players say they watch more live sports as a result of fantasy play, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, an industry group.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel are pushing back against the charges by Schneiderman. DraftKings said in a statement it “will examine and vigorously pursue all legal options available” to continue operations in the Empire State, and accused the attorney general of failing to “understand our business or why daily fantasy sports are clearly a game of skill.”

“Fantasy sports is a game of skill and legal under New York State law,” echoed FanDuel.

Of course, a larger threat to the companies may come less from what happens in New York and more from what happens if other states follow Schneiderman’s lead. Last month, regulators in Nevada ordered daily fantasy sites to stop accepting wagers until they obtain a gambling license. The Department of Justice reportedly is investigating the sites, too.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel say they welcome government regulation. Officials in some states seem inclined to agree. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said on Wednesday that daily fantasy sites constitute “a form of gambling” but added that “it’s important to get beyond that.”

“Let’s focus on the issues, let’s focus on protecting consumers, and let’s set out some really robust standards for how this industry should operate, if it’s going to operate here in this state,” Healey told MassLive.

Healey’s suggestion may represent a lifeline. For those in the business of daily fantasy sports, a rule book soon may seem like the safest bet of all.