Mr. EFL Answer Man

Answer Man: Options and New Contracts

Mr. Answer Man,

Suppose a team (the Cottage, say) has a player who is listed as a free agent this off-season with the qualifier “$6.25MM club option with a $750K buyout.” If the Cottage, who owes him $4 million next year were to release him and the club picks up that option, would they be released from their salary obligation?
Thanks!
— Absolutely Not the Cottage
Dear  Mr. Mansion:
Yes — an MLB team exercising a team option is the same thing as a team signing a new contract.
But why release anyone?  Remember:
“DFA is the modern way.”
Or do you still listen to cassette tapes or, God forbid, 8-track cartridges?
— Mr. EFL Answer Man

3 Comments

  • There is *so much* wrongness here. I don’t know where to begin. Oh, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

    – We are not “the Cottage”. We are “the Cheese”, or “the Cottage Cheese.” If you’re lactose-intolerant, “Cottage” is sufficient.
    – We have no players who are owed $4 million next year. I think we *used* to have somebody like that, but we already DFA’d him.
    – This post has no category, so I assume that I’m the only one who has seen it.
    – The reply is addressed to “Mr. Mansion”, a name that bears no resemblance to anything except for “Mr. EFL Answer Man.” Could it be that Mr. EFL Answer Man’s son (“man’s son” = “mansion”, ha ha) is asking the question? Or perhaps Mr. EFL Answer Man himself is sending me a handy hint just in case I haven’t memorized every rule in the book?

    Hmmm.

    • Dear Mr. Cheesed:

      The Answer Man noticed, of course, the incorrect reference to “the Cottage” in the original letter. The Answer Man notices many, many things he doesn’t comment on. The Answer Man has never graduated from the Kindness for Beginners class, but he does remember sometimes not to point out every error a correspondent makes.

      As for why the Answer Man addressed the reply to Mr. Mansion: to make clear that the correspondent was neither The Cottage, nor even likely to dwell on a Cottage Street, especially not after the just-completed season. This was to protect the correspondent’s anonymity, a difficult task in a nine-person league. Answer Man was not writing to himself, and your speculation about it being a play on “man’s son” was incorrect.

      (Aggh, now I’ve gone and pointed out an error in your note, Mr. Cheesed. Please accept my apolocheese. )

      — Mr EFL Answer Man

      (PS — I did forget at first to put this in a category, but I fixed it before I saw your reminder. I’m getting better. )

      • Thank you, Mr. EFL Answer Man, for your kind reply. Your apology is certainly unnecessary. In fact, I apologize for getting all cheesed off, but it sort of goes with the territory. Or I may have been reading too much Facebook recently.

        I note today’s transaction for the Dragons. The author (John, I presume?) writes “The Haviland DFAs Alcides Escobar.” I’m guessing that John wrote this himself, not Ron, since Ron uses an incorrect apostrophe (DFA’s) when he DFAs somebody. (Yes, I did it too. Sue me.)

        What’s important here is his use of “The Haviland”. Could this be his reveal as the author of the infamous “The Cottage” remark?

        Or could it be that since the EFL season is over and there is nothing to do, that I’m making a big deal out of absolutely nothing?