Lynched When the other shoe dropped in Chicago, it wasn’t a Sammy Sosa deal. General Manager Ed Lynch was awarded the famed Pink Slip and one month’s salary and benefits as this year’s Snuggly Cubbie Scapegoat. Team President Andy MacPhail will assume the duties of the general manager until a new warm body is found,…
ANAHEIM ANGELS Optioned RHP Lou Pote to Edmonton; recalled RHP Brian Cooper from Edmonton. [7/17] For the time being, this gives the Angels a rotation of Cooper, Kent Bottenfield, Ken Hill, Jarrod Washburn and Seth Etherton. Scott Schoeneweis should be back before the trading deadline, which gives the Angels the opportunity to either deal Bottenfield…
The potential makeup of the United States Olympic Baseball team is becoming public, and there are ill omens for USA Baseball’s chances against the world. There will be 24 players and six alternates on the team, so we can look for team manager Tommy Lasorda to take a more-or-less standard roster with 14 position players…
Ten days remain until the switch is turned off on baseball’s mid-season blue light special and, mathematically, any of the teams outside the Lone Star State could be in first place at the end of July. Since all of the clubs still harbor thoughts of donning their uniforms in October, let’s look at what each…
A HOT JULY NIGHT "It’s a very, very proud time for the New York Yankees. Their future did a great job tonight." — Joe Torre, AL Manager, on the All-Star Game "We’ve been watching that ever since he came to the big leagues." — Bobby Cox, NL Manager, on Derek Jeter‘s MVP performance "We played…
So many topics, so little time… It’s hard to argue with the suspension Carl Everett received. There is a lot of silliness on each extreme, with apologists at one end and executioners at the other. Everett lost control and in an effort to intimidate, did the thing you can’t do, which is make contact with…
Bill James wrote, some time ago, that the Hall of Fame can’t really honor players any more–it can only insult them. I don’t believe that’s true; ballplayers already in don’t care too much who gets honored after them, and anyone who gets in is generally pretty damn happy to be there. But what can happen…
The Era of Offense has not barred scrubs from the party. The last eight years are not only remarkable for 70 homers and 400 total bases and league ERAs approaching 5.00. The little guys have gotten in the act as well, putting together some of the greatest September callups and fluke seasons of all time….
In my years of following baseball, I’ve formed the impression that starters who pitch in the All-Star Game tend to be a little off in their first start after the midsummer classic. This year, while watching SportsCenter highlights of Al Leiter getting shellacked, I decided to look a little more deeply to see if my…
After we posted the results of our informal mid-season awards poll last week, we got a number of responses that looked like this: OK…who does the voting for your MVP award? NL: Name the player who leads the league in OBP and slugging (and obviously OPS), whose team is in first place and who leads…
ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS Activated 3B Matt Williams and 1B Erubiel Durazo from the DL; placed IF Danny Klassen on the 15-day DL, retroactive to 7/8 (toe); optioned OF Rob Ryan to Tucson. [7/13] Recalled RHP Nelson Figueroa from Tucson; optioned 1B/OF Travis Lee to Tucson. [7/16] Perhaps nothing reflects the immediate needs of the Snakes more…
As teams separate themselves into contenders and Cubs, organizations with little hope for 2000 and quality minor leaguers will have the opportunity to showcase their cheap, young talent. Between now and the middle of September, a number of players are going to arrive in–or in some cases, return to–the major leagues, many of them to…
This is the second in a series of rankings of major-league defenders, highlighting the top ten and bottom five at each position. The ratings are a combination of Zone Rating, Range Factor and my best (and admittedly grossly flawed) assessment of the job they’re doing. The Top 1. Troy Glaus, Anaheim. Glaus is ridiculously athletic…
We’re in Year Eight of major-league baseball in Denver, which means we’re approaching a point when we should have enough data to start determining what type of baseball, and what type of player, is best-suited to winning at altitude. We’ve seen a few different ideas implemented so far, as the Rockies have moved through flyball…
On Friday, Major League Baseball’s Blue Ribbon Panel of Certified Outside Experts released its report on competitive balance in baseball, issuing a list of recommendations on how to prevent the gap between extremely-rich teams and less-extremely-rich teams from getting bigger. The four-man group, which had access to all of the sport’s financial data, didn’t say…
As we did with the NL second-half preview, we’ll start in the Central division. I’ll reiterate what I said in the most recent AL Central Notebook: the Indians are not going to catch the White Sox, but they are going to narrow the gap. Each team played to an extreme in the first half, the…