Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

The Yankees and Roy Oswalt

The New York Yankees have been the biggest non-story of the off-season. Not surprisingly, given the role the Yankees play in baseball’s shared consciousness, this non-story has itself become one of the major themes of this off-season. Shortly after the World Series, the Yankees renegotiated a big contract with their ace pitcher CC Sabathia. Since resigning Sabathia, the team has done almost nothing. They have signed Hideki Okajima to a minor league contract, parted ways with longtime catching star Jorge Posada, but made no significant changes to their major league roster.

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The Republicans in 2012 →

2012, like most years, promises to be an interesting political year. Some of the stories which were so significant in 2011 will continue, while others will fade away. The tragicomic reality show which was the Republican nominating process will quickly give way to a presidential election with two candidates who, unlike Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry -- who horrified us, made us laugh and otherwise entertained us in 2011 -- have a real chance of being president in 2013. The campaign between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will likely be very close with a great deal of drama as the US engages in the quadrennial event known as "The most important election of our lifetimes."

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Russia and Putin in 2012

While it is clearly too early to know what will happen in Russia, there are several aspects to the current situation in Russia which could become increasingly significant as the current political crisis in Russia unfolds. First, when faced with a domestic political crisis, leaders often seek to identify an external enemy at whose feet to lay the blame for internal problems. This can take the form of rhetoric and propaganda, but it can also manifest itself through military actions. The Russian regime has already sought to increase its anti-American rhetoric, as it has done periodically throughout the last decade or so. This time, this approach has not been very effective. Efforts by Putin to depict the demonstrations as a western conspiracy have largely failed.

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The Sum of Obama's Foreign Policy Parts

The problem the Obama administration faces, both politically and substantively, is that while it has numerous foreign policy accomplishments to which it can point, the whole to which they add up remains less than the sum of its parts. For example, while the killing of Bin Laden is something about which Americans are rightfully happy, and the conclusion of the military effort in Iraq, while almost a decade late and a few trillion dollars short, is also a good thing for the U.S., the overall impact these things have on American security, stability in South Asia or the Middle East or other related issues is less clear.

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Will the Phillies Regret the Jimmy Rollins Contract?

It is striking that while after Jeter resigned last year, the baseball blogosphere was teeming with criticism of the Yankees, the Phillies have not been targeted in this way for the Rollins signing. This is not surprising given the role the Yankees play in the collective baseball consciousness, but the Phillies are also a big market team which has now been forced into another big market mistake.

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A Republican Primary With No Real Competition →

Rather, the main story of the Republican primary season has been that the race has been extraordinarily uncompetitive. Despite the absence of a Republican incumbent or even sitting vice president, the sense among many in the Party that President Obama is very vulnerable and a base energized by the Republican victories in the 2010 midterm election, Mitt Romney has been the front runner for the nomination almost since the day John McCain lost in 2008. With two weeks to go before the first votes are cast, he still occupies that position.

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Something is Happening and You Don't Know What It Is, Do You Mr. Putin?

Putin’s strongman regime has long drawn its legitimacy not from winning free, fair and competitive elections, but by the popularity of Putin himself and the strength of the regime. Both of these things are now drawn into question by the poor showing of Putin’s United Russia party in the polls and the newly discovered increased willingness on the part of ordinary Russians to protest against Putin’s rule. Even if these protests do not lead to any significant change, the people of Russia may no longer view Putin’s rule as inevitable or unassailable. Accordingly, the Russian government will have to respond to these demonstrations either by liberalizing somewhat or by taking a more authoritarian turn. The latter approach is considerably more likely, but even that offers little guarantee of stability for Putin and his supporters. The current demonstrations, after all, occurred in spite of an increasingly unfree media and civic environment in Russia. Limiting these freedoms even more will not be easy, especially now.

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The Hall of Fame Ballot-Returning Players

If I had a vote for the Hall of Fame, I would drop Walker from my ballot, but would not add Murphy, so the returning players who would get my vote are Bagwell, Larkin, Martinez, McGriff, Raines and Trammell, as well as first time candidate Bernie Williams.

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Can Newt Stop Himself? →

The Gingrich ascendancy is at least as much about good timing, even luck, as about anything Gingrich has done, but timing and luck always play an important role in presidential politics. Gingrich is benefitting both from the predictable collapse of Herman Cain's campaign and of being the non-Romney flavor of the month at the right time. Gingrich's challenge is to hold on to that mantle until the voting starts. Significantly, others such as Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have been unable to maintain that position as scrutiny has increased.

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The Future of Elections in Russia

In last Sunday’s election for the Russian Duma, the ruling United Russia party, while winning a clear plurality of the votes did considerably more poorly than many expected. United Russia’s vote total is hovering around 50%, but the party will still maintain a clear majority in the national legislature. Additionally, this election occurred in a media and civic context that was far from free or open; and there have been numerous accounts of various kinds of election fraud during the voting. Following the closing of the polls there have been demonstrations in Moscow and elsewhere as the Russian people express their discontent about having another election stolen. Taken together this means that for the Russian leadership, more or less everything that could have gone wrong with the election did.

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Romney and the Business Narrative →

The absence of any personal narrative around Romney does not mean there is no narrative to his campaign and the image of "All-Business Man, the world's most boring superhero" which, according to the New York Times, he has cultivated. Romney is not the first GOP candidate to present himself as a leader from the private sector uniquely positioned to rebuild the country and the economy. The businessman as savior is a popular Republican theme, which is consistent with the Republican's ideological preference for business interests over those of working people, youth, senior citizens, the environment or anything else.

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Don't Dismiss Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame Candidacy Too Quickly

The arguments against Williams are clear. He was not great defensively, was never one of the best hitters in the game, was surrounded by better players and did not play much past his prime. The arguments in favor of Williams candidacy are less obvious, but also very powerful. Williams was a very good hitter who had a very long prime. Between 1995-2002, a period of eight years, he hit .321/.406/.531, good for an OPS+ of 142. He did this while playing a key defensive position decently. Although he retired at age 37, thus truncating the decline phase of his career, he remained a useful player until the end hitting .281/.332/.436 during his last year with the Yankees.

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In Egypt, Don't Blame the Elections

In the recently concluded Egyptian elections Islamists combined for roughly 60% of the vote. Although this is the beginning of a reasonably complex process to form the lower house of the Egyptian parliament, this outcome suggests that Islamist parties will be well represented in that legislative body. Accordingly, it is likely that the post-Arab Spring Egypt may adapt a foreign policy to the west and to Israel that differs sharply from that of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt. Moreover, it is all but inevitable that the legislature will adapt laws and policies that are illiberal and will not sit comfortably with western democrats.

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The New Free Agency

One would expect that many teams would be courting Pujols and Fielder, both of whom are likely to remain among the best players around for at least a few more years. The relative lack of interest in both of them indicates quite a bit about the state of baseball economics and salary structures today. As has been the case for many years now, although all teams are free to pursue Pujols and Fielder, there are several small market teams for whom, due to their lack of revenue and payroll limitations, signing a premier free agent is not a realistic hope. It has been a long time since the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals or Minnesota Twins, for example, have made a major splash in the free agent market.

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The Failure of the Super Committee and the Dismal Future of Congress →

The failure of the super committee to agree to a compromise that would lead to reigning in the national debt and spearhead a more balanced budget could only have come as a surprise to somebody who has spent the last decade or so living under a rock. The notion that a smaller bipartisan microcosm of congress could resolve these problems and reach an effective compromise was always something of a fantasy. The super committee quickly devolved into a mixture of partisan grandstanding and posturing, predictable and tiresome ultimatums about taxes, muscle flexing by powerful lobbies and a complete absence of political courage. In short, it looked quite a bit like congress has over the past few years.

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Occupy Wall Street and American Soft Power

Every image of a New York City or Oakland policeman abusing his position, every story about how a veteran or senior citizen was injured by one of these policeman, every image of a university police officer casually pepper spraying a few college students doing nothing more than sitting quietly at a demonstration damages the ability of the U.S. to influence people and governments around the world and provides fodder for those authoritarian leaders who would like to ignore American entreaties before killing or beating up demonstrators in their own countries.

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Ignorance of the Issues May Not Be as Useful as Many Republicans Think →

Herman Cain's recent inability to demonstrate a command of even the most basic facts and debates around recent events in Libya made Rick Perry's failure to recall which three federal agencies he wanted to abolish during a recent debate seem positively statesmanlike by comparison. Cain, however, is not the first presidential candidate, or occupant of one of the country's highest offices to make the kind of mistake that would embarrass an above average high school student. Vice President Dan Quayle famously advised a young schoolboy to add the letter "e" to the end of the word "potato" during a spelling exercise. Similarly, poor command of the facts and garbled pronunciation were almost a defining characteristic of George W. Bush during his campaign for the presidency.

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More Wild Cards, Fewer Pennant Races

If the expanded wild card system, which will be in place by 2013, had been in place this year, this second story, which may have been the defining baseball story of 2011 would not have occurred. The Red Sox and Braves, as the fifth strongest team in each league, would have won the last wild card spot. The exciting month of September in which four teams played meaningful games every day would have been replaced by five teams jockeying for post-season position. Rather than more than fifty games about which fans of four teams cared, there would be two very brief series at the end of the regular season.

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Free Agent Decisions from the Player's Perspective

Decisions about where a player signs have impacts the rest of that players career. For example, if Prince Fielder were to sign with the A’s, which is very unlikely, his career batting numbers would be far less impressive than if he signed with the Cubs. These decisions also have an impact on how that player’s career is understood even after that player is retired. While it is likely that debating how good retired players is more interesting to fans than to the players themselves, these questions effect things that players presumably care about such as their chance of getting elected to the Hall of Fame and how marketable they are in retirement.

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Running Against Romney →

Herman Cain's turn as the front-runner for the non-Romney division of the Republican Party's presidential primary seems to be winding down. The candidate most likely to take Cain's place, at least for the next few weeks, is Newt Gingrich. Gingrich will continue the back to the 1990s feel of the Republican primary, but like Cain, and Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry before Cain, Gingrich has no real chance at being his party's nominee in the general election. Romney remains the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination, regardless of the relative positions of candidates like Gingrich or Cain.

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