ARTS AND CULTURE
14 Obiter Dicta
discrimination complaint. While the show always
had some clunky, its getting to a point of more clunky
than brilliant theses days.
The show appears aimless in its old age. While it
is fun to see the characters exasperated by whatever
wacky legal challenge is put before them, the tropes
are getting tired and the twist less creative. The writers too often dip into misunderstanding ink well;
usually Alicia thinking she’s being backstabbed or
people thinking she’s backstabbing them, to create
drama. The Good Wifeis still enjoyable but not quite
what it used to be.
Billions:
Billions is the new “legal drama” airing on Showtime.
Paul Giamatti (recently seen as the Rhino in The
Amazing Spiderman 2) plays heartless US Attorney
Chuck Rhoades, who has a flawless record of prosecuting financial crime. Damien Lewis (of Homeland)
plays hedge fund wizard and general rich guy Bobby
“Axe” Axelrod who is half Mark Zuckerberg, half
Steve Jobs in personality and for some reason talks
with a mild-Donald Trump accent. The premise is
these two titans clashing when Rhoades launches
a criminal investigation against Axelrod for insider
trading.
Here’s what I want this show to be: Game of
Thrones’ Little finger vs. Varys, set in financial New
York. Wouldn’t that be awesome show? That’s probably how they pitched this show. Unfortunately,
Billions fails on execution. The tone of the show is
erratic; I can’t tell if it’s being purposely cartoony
with its atrocious dialogue and perplexing scenes
or trying to say something serious about power and
money. The potential of a battle of wits and money is
intriguing, but both main characters are so unlikeable that I don’t particularly care who wins. Billions
is not worth your time; do not watch.
The Case For Rule Five Selections in
Major League Baseball
Why We Should Play The Most Sensible Lottery
-
kenneth cheak k wan l am
ê Source: mlb.com
General Managers (GMs) in Major League Baseball
(MLB) often want to try to catch lightning in a bottle
when and if they can, especially given the current
economics of the game, where the average salary
of a big league player now exceeds $4,000,000 per
season. One highly economic way often utilized
that goes far back in time is the infamous Rule Five
draft, which has produced the likes of José Bautista,
George Bell, and Kelly Gruber, all of which are familiar names for those who follow the Toronto Blue Jays
here north of the forty-ninth parallel.
For those of you who are not well acquainted with
the Rule Five draft, the process allows teams to select
other team’s players who are not presently on their
team’s forty-man roster for $50,000, providing that
the player was (a) eighteen years of age or younger
on 5 June before their signing, and that the upcoming Rule Five draft is the fifth one, or (b) nineteen
years of age or older on 5 June before their signing
and that the upcoming Rule Five draft is the fourth
one. While less common, a ball club can also select a
player from a Double-A (or a lower) affiliate of another
team to play for the former’s Triple-A affiliates for
$12,000. Likewise, a ball club can select a player from
a Single-A (or a lower) affiliate of another team to play
for the former’s Double-A affiliates for $4,000. Much
like the first-year player (Rule Four) draft, the selection order of all thirty ball clubs goes from the worst
team to the best one, based on their win-loss record
from the previous regular season, in each round. If
a team selects a player from another ball club, the
team making the selection must immediately add
the selected player its forty-man roster. Therefore,
it is understood that a ball club that has exhausted
all spots on its forty-man roster will not be eligible
to take part in the Rule Five draft. Furthermore, an
important caveat for the team making a selection is
that it must keep the chosen
player on its twenty-fiveman major league roster
for the whole season (and
active for a minimum of 90
days) after the draft, meaning that the chosen player
can neither be optioned,
designated to the minor
leagues, or put on the sixtyday disabled list. This sidesteps the requirement of keeping the player on the
twenty-five-man major league roster. The ball club
does have the right to trade or waive the player at
any time, however. Should the player get waived and
clear waivers by not inking a contract with a new
MLB team, the team that made the selection, or the
ball club in which the selected player is traded to
before the player is waived, is obligated to offer the
player back to the original team in which the player
is selected from for half the price ($25,000), thereby
effectively nullifying the Rule Five selection.
Assuming that each team makes a selection and
presuming that each ball club that makes t he selection ends up keeping the player for the entire season
– although either scenario is not always the case in
reality for reasons that I have already explained –
then there would be thirty “projects” in which the
ball club that made the selection would hope would
pan out down the road in each season. From its current form in 1965 to this past season in 2015, there
have been close to a total of fifty Rule Five drafts. If we
were to multiply the annual thirty selections by the
fifty seasons, we can deduced that there are approximately 1,500 total Rule Five selections that have been
made over the course of the past half-a-century.
Out of those some 1,500 Rule Five selections,
and excluding those who were selected in the minor
league portion of the draft, there were some two
dozen players who ended up becoming All-Stars,
including: Bautista, Bell, Paul Blair, Bobby Bonilla,
Everth Cabrera, Roberto Clemente, Jody Davis,
Darrell Evans, Jason Grilli, Gruber, Josh Hamilton,
Willie Hernández, Dave Hollins, Dave May, Evan
Meek, Mike Morgan, Jeff Nelson, Bip Roberts, Johan
Santana, Joakim Soria, Alfredo Simon, Derrick
Turnbow, Dan Uggla, Fernando Viña, Shane
Victorino, and Jayson Werth.
Within the above list, Clemente is a member of
the 3,000 hit club and a
Hall of Famer, inducted
to Cooperstown by special election into the player
category in 1973. Bell and
Hamilton were American
L eag ue Most Va lu able
Players (MVPs) in 1987 and
2010 respectively. Santana
won multiple Cy Young
Awards (in 2004 and 2006),
including the pitching triple crown in the latter year.
Therefore, even though it is a long shot, it is possible to find diamonds in the rough from the pool.
However, I have to admit that the odds aren’t great
whatsoever. Using the above hypothetical numbers,
the probability of unearthing a future All-Star player
is about 1.73% (twenty-six in 1500). If we are talking about top guns, then the chances are even worse
as the likelihood of finding an MVP is 0.13% (two
in 1500). Of course, the odds of landing a Cy Young
Award winner and a Hall of Famer are even bleaker as
they are both at 0.07% (one in 1500)!
So why should a GM in MLB take a flyer on a player
in a Rule Five draft? Simply put, you have nothing to lose because the cost is so minimal (at a mere
$50,000, which is pocket change by MLB salary standard) and yet the upside is so huge potentially if you
manage to win the jackpot. The last time I checked,
the odds of winning Lotto 649 is approximately one
in 14,000,000 and the chances of winning Lotto
Max is around one in 28,600,000. Hence, as bad as
the probabilities seemed, the likelihood of uncovering a hidden gem in the form of an All-Star player,
an MVP, a Cy Young Award, or a Hall of Famer is
still light years better compared to beating the nearimpossible system in Lotto 649 and Lotto Max. By the
way, despite last week’s record U.S. $1,600,000,000
Powerball jackpot, I did not bother to draw a comparison between the Rule Five draft and Powerball here
mainly because the odds of winning the Powerball
grand prize are close to one in 292,000,000. Too bad
we aren’t all playing the Rule Five draft instead of
Lotto 649, Lotto Max, and Powerball!
The probability of
unearthing a future
All-Star player is
about 1.73%