Happy Friday. Happy Halloween. Here’s a twisted video, funnier if you know the Doobie Brothers at all. If not, go slam your fingers in a desk drawer.
(h/t to SI.com’s Hot Mustard)
The natural (over-) reaction when things don’t go perfectly, especially post-season baseball, seems to be “tear it down and fix it”. Sometimes, like the monsoon that hit Philly Monday and Tuesday this week, these things are unavoidable and equally rare. Some things, however, can be addressed and changed without meaningful impact to the game, the season, the teams, the almighty revenues.
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Remember the fun video of the Yanks minor league switch-pitcher Pat Venditte? Well, he was awarded the MiLBY for Best Short-Season Reliever, whatever that means. For me, it’s just another chance to post a great picture of this kid, who can pitch equally effectively with both arms.
The Creighton University alum finished his rookie campaign 1-0 with an 0.83 ERA and a New York-Penn League-leading 23 saves, allowing just three earned runs in 30 games with Class A Short-Season Staten Island.
My message for those out there pounding their chests in defense of a neutral site World Series: STOP IT NOW.
Yes, the 2009 season, if the WS lasts until Game 7, will end on November 6th, the latest ever. Yes, if it includes a northern team not in a dome, the elements will play a huge role. But you know what? Tough. Stuff happens.
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Let me quickly set the stage: A college buddy of mine lives in Philly. He and his 8 year old son are huge Phillies fans. He went to the game on Monday, much to the dismay of his son. So he had his ticket stub to return last night, with a chance to see his team clinch the World Series, at the home ballpark. Would you have gone, leaving your son disappointed that you weren’t there to watch it with him… or would you stay home to have him sit by your side to celebrate together but miss the rush of seeing it live and the partying that goes on after?
My buddy’s answer: “I gave my ticket up to watch it at home with Noah. Before I left for the game on Monday he was very sad we were not watching together. I definitely made the right decision.“
Nice call.
Remember Scotty Brosius’ home run off eventual Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman? Feels like yesterday. Well, maybe yesterday TEN YEARS AGO! Ack.
In that magnificent postseason run, Brosius batted .400 in the divisional series sweep of Texas, then .300 in the ALCS triumph over Cleveland. He left the best for the World Series, during which he dominated the Padres with a .471 average, two home runs and six RBIs. He drove in 15 runs in 13 postseason games that October.
Well, blogger/buddy Paul DePodesta of the Padres gives you a small taste of the mindset of a front office exec in his latest entry. Naturally, I added a ton of questions via the comments section (which are moderated, meaning Paul only allows those which he wants or are acceptable to him; unlike here where anything goes!). Thankfully, he allowed my comments to go thru. I hope he answers them, which he’s done with others via comments. I’ll check back and provide an update if there is one.
Jason @ IIATMS said…Being a senior member of the team, do you guys set up a war-room for free agents? How do you prioritize and then plot your strategy? Are the scouts deployed to the various leagues already in action? How often do they report in?
Do you get involved in the marketing/community affairs stuff?
What about the things that don’t directly impact the players, such as stadium issues/upgrades? Do you get into that minutae or do you stick strictly to the “talent” side of the operations?
Looks like there are some folks who really think Sabathia and even possibly Holliday will be in pinstripes come Spring Training. Oh yeah, maybe the reason why Cashman chose to stay in NY, too.
First Sabathia:
Jimmy Rollins, a friend of superstar free-agent pitcher CC Sabathia dating back to their upbringing outside Oakland, Calif., and one of the best prognosticators in the game considering his lofty and correct predictions for his own Phillies, didn’t hesitate when I asked him where he thought Sabathia would wind up.
“New York, American League,” Rollins, an Alameda, Calif. product, said. “They’ve got enough money, and they need him.”
As Heyman rightfully noted, it IS about the money, stupid (where have you heard that before?):
As is typical, the choice may come to the usual: love or money. In that skirmish the loot usually wins out.
And regarding Holliday:
Yankees people have heard good things about Holliday. However, their one concern is his home-road splits, which show he has been more successful at Coors Field than on the road. This year the difference was minimal, as Holliday hit .332 with 15 home runs at home, .308 with 10 home runs on the road. But his lifetime numbers reflect a significant variation. He’s a .357 career hitter at Coors Field, with 84 home runs. On the road he is a .280 hitter with 44 home runs.
Color me concerned about the splits. But he runs in addition to bopping HR’s. Too bad he doesn’t play 1B.
On the cesspool that is the Mariners ownership (as compared to our cesspool, mind you):
Brian Cashman is still a Yankee in part because of Gillick’s stories about working for the current Mariners regime. Gillick told Cashman for years what it was like to answer to Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln, and Cashman is said to have never seriously considered going there in part because of those stories.
Now, if Cashman chose Hank and Hal (and George) over Lincoln, how bad does Lincoln have to be? Seriously.
Now, back to that Gillick-as-special-assistant-to-Cashman-next-year stuff…
A bit of a tanget-alert here, but sometimes you just have to take witness to the beauty of someone who has no internal editor. Doubly so when that person is Charles Barkley.
Ever lovable, ever t-rrrible, ever opinionated. Thanks to Deadspin, I ran across this (emphasis mine):
Brown: So are you going to run for governor?
Barkley: I plan on it in 2014.
Brown: You are serious.
Barkley: I am, I can’t screw up Alabama.
Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view?
Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.
OUCH!!!!
And also this pearl (emphasis mine):
Barkley: I know that, but this thing didn’t start with him. It started with President Bush and these gifts to rich people like myself — all these tax cuts and things like that. That’s my biggest problem. Uh listen, John McCain, you gotta respect anybody who goes to war. But these Republicans who ran this economy into the ground. We’ve got to end the war in Iraq and we got to stop giving rich people like myself and people who run big companies tax breaks. We’ve got to do that.
Wonder if the casinos will give him gifts and tax breaks.
UPDATE
(10/28/08, 4:20pm): Reader Steve clued me into this one, which is so far over the line it’s astounding.In discussing ways in which the Knicks should be improved this season, Barkley said, “I think they have a better coach. This coach probably won’t try to kill himself.”
Translation: if you don’t give us [a] cut, we’ll exercise the no-trade clause. Peavy can use his veto power to make sure that he captures a good portion of the economic rents generated by his contract. And it sounds like he’s negotiating for more money, possibly through an extension or a salary supplement (I’m not sure
if the latter is allowed under the current CBA). When it’s all said and done, the prospects the Padres can expect might be so bad and few – as his salary demands rise – that the Padres decide to keep him on the roster. And hey, if he likes playing in San Diego so much, maybe the Padres should reconsider their desire to trade him. Jake Peavy didn’t agree to a below-market contract so that the Padres could enrich themselves by trading him.
Meaning: As Peavy demands more to sweeten his side of the deal (almost free agent-like), the less the Padres will get in return. That plays right into the Yanks (and other large market, big salary appetites) hands. When have the Yanks let a few extra dollars of “sweetener” get in the way of getting a deal done? Posada, sure. Mo, ditto. Contreras, Pavano, Wright….wait, nevermind. I feel ill.
I’ve said all along, I’ll believe the Yanks are out of it only when the ink is signed on some other team’s letterhead.
Tim over at MLBTR.com has the latest. Have at it.
UPDATE (10/28/08, 1:40pm): Buster’s update on the Peavy/Braves/Dodgers chatter:
The Braves want to keep their best prospects, like Tommy Hanson and Jason Heyward and Gorkys Hernandez, and unless Atlanta and the Padres can find some kind of middle ground in their Peavy trade talks over the likes of Yunel Escobar and Jordan Schaefer and some pitching, San Diego figures to look elsewhere. The Dodgers remain an intriguing possibility, because they have the kind of young pitching that the Padres would need in return for Peavy; L.A. might have to part with Chad Billingsley or Clayton Kershaw as the centerpiece of the deal for a division’s rival ace and Cy Young Award winner.
Of course, by the time baseball and other sports test for HGH, the athletes will be on to some new drug. But there’s little harm in mounting a public-relations front.
Buried within this article about the Mets shopping the trade market for a closer that than pay thru the nose for K-Rod, we get this:
Major League Baseball will hold an “HGH summit” on Monday, Nov. 10, at UCLA. Chaired by UCLA doctor Gary Green, who works with MLB, the summit will feature a discussion on what must be done in order to add human growth hormone to routine sports drug testing.
The world’s leading anti-doping experts and scholars will convene in Beverly Hills, California for the summit and will be chaired by Dr. Gary Green, Clinical Professor in the Division of Sports Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Major League Baseball’s consultant on Performance Enhancing Drugs. Entitled “Growth Hormone: Barriers to Implementation of hGH Testing in Sports,” the summit will attempt to identify the scientific, medical, legal and ethical issues that must be addressed before Human Growth Hormone testing can be considered a routine part of sports drug testing.
Said my main man, Bud Selig:
“After the Mitchell report, one of my main goals was to bring together the leading anti-doping experts for an hGH summit,” said Commissioner Selig. “The effective regulation of hGH remains one of the foremost challenges for anti-doping efforts in all sports. This summit is a significant step forward, and Major League Baseball is pleased that Dr. Green, one of the foremost experts in the field, will head this initiative.”
We’ll see. I am really interested to see what sort of proactive stance they take.
Everyone is all over the place on last night’s World Series game that didn’t reach a conclusion. Some quick thoughts:
- Bud is like Charlie Brown; he just can’t seem to do right, and even when he does, he looks terrible doing it.
- Should the game have even been started? Considering both teams agreed to give it a shot, the answer is YES. Unless, of course, the banks of meteorologists could tell with certainty that the weather would get worse before it gets better.
- I think he did the right thing in postponing the game. I also like that he would have insisted that the game be played to it’s conclusion, no matter the date.
- Why, if it was pre-determined that if a game was unable to be finished, it would resume at a later date, even if it was “official” by definition with a winner determinable, did we and the players did not know this?
- If the managers knew that if the weather forced a postponement without truncating the game, why didn’t they (especially Maddon) protest to have the game postponed once it got really nasty out?
- How on Earth did Upton get that big a jump on Hamels after Hamels threw over there a half-dozen times?
How can Upton wear pants that hang below his cleats with no elastic to keep them tight to the leg without tripping?- Complaining about the start times is redundant and fruitless. That bed has been made and we’re stuck with the pre-game lasting from 8pm EST until 8:30. Until MLB’s contract with Fox expires and they force the decision with the next network to start the games earlier, this problem will continue. Remember, it IS about the money, stupid!
- Regular season games start roughly at 7pm. They are punting that start time (and by proxy FINISH time) by an hour and a half. If it was good enough for 162 games, why not keep it going in the post season? Would you rather have more viewers from 7-8:30pm or from 11:30-1am? Where are the more valuable viewers?
- Considering that both teams are East Coast-based, shouldn’t that be a consideration with regards to start times? If it were an East/West coast match-up, I can better understand the later starts. But when both teams are in the same time zone, shouldn’t they have some preference?
- My baseball-loving 8-year-old son goes to bed at 8:30. He has to mope his way to his room as the first pitch is being tossed. I have to leave him notes so he knows what happened when he wakes up. Way to get that next generation hooked, MLB/Fox.
- I read this somewhere (can’t remember, sorry) and I thought it was a fun idea: Rather than being forced to listed to McCarver and Buck, why don’t they allow the home team to use their home town broadcasters for the game? Sure there are probably contractual hurdles, but the concept is pretty cool.
- How different was this rain from the midges last year in Cleveland that swarmed on Joba? Couldn’t they have done this last year?
Your take?
