If the Bartolo Colon trade was some big Selig conspiracy, how come Minaya offered Colon a $50-million, four-year extension? Bud had to approve that contract. Only after Colon rejected it, did Minaya trade him. Why wasn’t that mentioned? Oh, I get it – if it’s A FACT but it doesn’t fit the conspiracy template/make Bud look bad in EVERY situation template – just ignore it.
The end always justifies the means when it is Bud we are attacking. I don’t mind opinionated journalists, but when you ignore important facts to make your argument look better, it destroys your credibility. Is BP’s urge to bash Bud that strong that you must always embellish your pro-MLBPA side and ignore facts that might weaken your argument?
–KS
In an article that appeared last week on ESPN.com, Peter Gammons provided a list of 20 players whom respondants to an informal straw poll described as candidates for a breakout season. The list, derived from a survey of major league executives, included a mix of pitchers and hitters, five-tool talents and makeup guys, united only in their ability to tease hibernating fantasy leaguers into dreams of greener days ahead.
If one needs any reminder that lists like these are little more than a grownup’s version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, it’s worth reviewing a similar list that Gammons produced last year.
I grew up going to Mariners games, but while visiting family in San Francisco, I always enjoyed seeing a good team play outdoor baseball in Candlestick. I loved the Giants teams from 1985-1993. They played in the sun, they were young and good, and people came out to see them, all of which made for a dramatic difference in the amount of fun I had. While I still follow the team, I’ve never been as big a fan since 1993. Because after the 1993 season, when the Giants were the best team ever to not make the post-season, Will Clark wanted to stay in San Francisco, and it didn’t happen.
Last week, Major League Baseball’s owners unanimously approved Commissioner Bud Selig’s proposal to give the league that wins the All-Star Game home field advantage in the World Series.
Most people have never been involved in any sort of arbitration procedure. Arbitration is a process that falls under the umbrella of ADR, or Alternative Dispute Resolution. When people have a dispute over a contract, payment, or other agreement that they can’t or won’t come to a settlement on, arbitration is one of the avenues, short of a civil court, that people use to resolve the dispute.
Team Health Report: Anaheim Angels January 2003
Jonah Keri has ably analyzed the Colon trade and its ridiculousness for the Expos. I want to focus on the deal as an indicator of the shadiness and shame implied by the league’s ownership of the Expos.
Team Health Reports: St. Louis Cardinals January 2003
Team Health Reports: Minnesota Twins January 2003
Getting accurate injury information is about as easy as getting good seafood in Indianapolis, so adding in language barriers, time zone calculations, and trying to figure out the vagaries of international calling on my cell phone makes things especially challenging. So went the quest to find out the status of Mariners reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki.
Without getting off into a tangent on why the Reds backed off their plan to move to a four-man rotation, any Reds fan should be a bit concerned that so much is expected of Graves.
Serious Baseball Analysis Hits the Airwaves
After any article in which I include a toss-off reference to politics, like calling our president “President-by-court-order,” I get a lot of email that says, essentially, that I shouldn’t talk about politics. For those of you in this group, I’m going to get to baseball here in about four paragraphs.
Baseball is steeped in politics. The issues of tax burden and allocation: is it right to build a stadium for a team, and what good (if any) does it for the city? Labor relations and the roles of unions in the modern economy.
Dr. Chris Yeager: I finished my Ph.D. at Southern Miss and my study was on the biomechanics of the baseball swing–specifically the effect of the stride and weight shift in the swing. Based on that and my research is where I draw my philosophy and conclusions on how force is produced in the baseball swing.
Today’s Expos trade of Bartolo Colon and Quadruple-A infielder Jorge Nunez for Orlando Hernandez, Jeff Liefer, Rocky Biddle and an undisclosed amount of cash in a three-way deal with the White Sox and Yankees caps a two-month circus that’s left fans of the Expos and plenty of other teams nauseous. The Yankees dealt Hernandez and $2 million cash to get righty set-up man Antonio Osuna and Triple-A pitcher Delvis Lantigua.
Flash back to January 1987. Walk Like an Egyptian is at the top of the pop charts. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has coasted past 2,000. John Elway has broken Cleveland’s heart for the very first time. And in baseball, the free agents are getting utterly and completely shafted.