6-4-3

6-4-3: Kenny Williams, A’s Fan

The ESPN.com version of the wire story has the headline "White Sox send Durham to Athletics for prospect, cash." Um, no. Jon Adkins is 24, and had a career minor-league ERA of 4.13 coming into this season, during which he's been lit up in Sacramento, with an ERA that would fit neatly above the median for the Texas Rangers and peripheral numbers that do not hold much promise. Maybe Adkins will be the one guy in a thousand who breaks the mold and turns into a legitimate quality major leaguer. It's not likely, but you have to root for the guy.

6-4-3: Senor Schindler es el Bueno…

by Gary Huckabay 7/19

Regarding saving $160 million (or more) through prudent contract management, MS (and many others) writes: How on earth is Jeff Bagwell at $6.5 million a waste of a roster spot, time, money, etc.? Sure, his power numbers are way off, but he's got an 872 OPS, and baseball can't work that with the first signs of your best player ever showing a little decline, you release or trade him.... He's still an above-average offensive player, and bound to turn it around in the next couple of months.

6-4-3: How to Easily Save $160 Million

by Gary Huckabay 7/12

So how come the media, for the most part, doesn't connect the dots, and call GMs on the carpet more for some of these downright miserable signings?

6-4-3: Duality

by Gary Huckabay 6/28

Americans are big fans of cognitive dissonance. It's hard to identify a single segment of society that doesn't have a significant amount of hypocrisy.

6-4-3: Quality Control: Say what you like, just…

by Gary Huckabay 6/21

Let's check out the Florida State and California Leagues.

6-4-3: Czervik! The Musical

by Gary Huckabay 6/14

Drinking games!

6-4-3: Rounding the Bases

by Gary Huckabay 5/24

Hard as it may be to believe, I’m going to spend less time than usual on this column, despite the large number of interesting things to talk about. Sexual Orientation Ok, so Mike Piazza says he’s not gay. Bobby Valentine says that MLB’s ready to deal with an openly gay player. Mike Timlin says he’s...

6-4-3: Gone Shootin’

by Gary Huckabay 5/17

Among longtime rabid fans, there's a kind of vague denial, wrapped around the idea that "there's no way they'd let 1994-95 happen again." With all due respect to those people, 1994-95 wasn't that bad for the owners or players. It was bad for addicts. I don't think I got rid of the shakes until about 1997. Baseball attendance recovered almost immediately, well before the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa show.

6-4-3: Gone Shootin’

by Gary Huckabay 5/17

There’s a state people kind of ease into when things around them are collapsing. It could be that their company is in the midst of a death spiral, or perhaps their group of college friends is gradually drifting apart. Or, in a strictly hypothetical example, an activity that’s a core part of their enjoyment of...

6-4-3: Who Are These People Behind the Stained Glass Windows?

by Gary Huckabay 5/10

Anyway, let's go on to the minors. I apologize if there's not a lot of breadth here; I'm focusing on those guys who I've been able to talk to some scouts about, and I'll get to more over the course of the season. I'm concentrating on guys with some upside, or guys who, for some reason or other, are interesting because their level of performance may have changed.

6-4-3: Who Are These People Behind the Stained Glass Windows?

by Gary Huckabay 5/10

Since we’re about a month into the season, and I’m getting a lot of mail with specific questions about prospects, I thought I’d bounce through some of the early performances from the minors and talk to a few scouts. Originally, I had hoped to have a Win Shares review done by now, but the responsible...

6-4-3: managing.com

by Gary Huckabay 5/03

There’s a book out now by Phil Kaplan, who runs a very famous Web site called f—edcompany.com. His book is basically a re-hash of what has run on his site during the past couple of years, as lots of Internet companies predictably cratered. Kaplan’s basic premise is pretty simple–it’s ridiculous to expect to make money...

6-4-3: managing.com

by Gary Huckabay 5/02

As the Month of Gory Managerial Death fades away, is there some sort of central lesson that can be learned from the various dugout purges? Were the decisions to hire Davey Lopes, Phil Garner, Tony Muser, and Buddy Bell just bad decisions from the outset, or were they good decisions that just didn't have good outcomes? Is there anything at all to be learned from this wave of firings? What will a smart organization take away from all this? One word thrown around a lot when a manager is fired is "accountability." At the end of the day, managers are accountable for what happens on the field--the wins and losses.

6-4-3: Glittering Prizes and Endless Compromises

by Gary Huckabay 4/19

Some thoughts on Ichiro Suzuki and baseball's "inevitable" return to Washington, D.C.

6-4-3: Glittering Prizes and Endless Compromises

by Gary Huckabay 4/19

I’d like to get to a couple of topics today, so let’s jump in… Ichiban! On Valentine’s Day, I made the mistake of making an apparently unflattering comment about an extremely popular player. I wrote: TV, as a visual medium, lends itself to interesting moments, and all of us have a tendency to remember the...

6-4-3: Noises from the Feedbag, Part Two

by Gary Huckabay 4/12

As I explained last week, we asked the attendees at each Pizza Feed to predict the results of the divisional races this year, along with the World Series winner, major award winners, managerial firings, etc. This week, we'll take a look at the American League divisional races.