link - Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, aka that guy who makes movies by zooming in on daguerreotypes with jangly bluegrass music playing in the background, is ready to debut the sequel (that's totally not a sequel, nope, because Ken Burns doesn't do sequels) to his 18-hour opus from 1994 Baseball. Later this month on PBS, the four-hour Baseball: The Tenth Inning will play over two nights and will cover the national pastime from 1994 until present day
link - More than anything, I just wanted to use this chance to mention (again, probably) how badly Omar Minaya messed up with Heath Bell and Francisco Rodriguez. Last season, Bell led the National League with 42 saves. This season, he's got 41 saves and hasn't blown a chance since late May. Of course, not so long ago Bell was a Met and Minaya gave him away. Well, that's not completely true. Minaya traded Bell and Royce Ring to the Padres for Jon Adkins and Ben Johnson. Since then, Adkins and Johnson have combined to appear in 14 major league games and Heath Bell has 85 saves and a 2.51. How did this happen? I wasn't there. Maybe Bell was biting the heads off chickens and spitting their blood at elderly clubhouse attendants. But my guess is that Minaya placed too much faith in Bell's short time in the majors and not enough faith in his minor-league performance.
link - In that respect, there is no more accomplished person available than former San Diego Padres GM Kevin Towers, who is biding his time for the right job offer as a special assistant to Yankee GM Brian Cashman. Considering that the Mets are almost certainly going to be downsizing, facing the prospect of having to eat a lot of money next year, Towers - who won four division championships in 15 years in small-market San Diego and is the architect of this present Padre team that has been in first place most of the season with a payroll of $37.7 million - is the absolute right guy for the job. More than any other GM in baseball, he has a proven record of how to win with less. The question is, if the Wilpons are prepared to pay Minaya $2 million more through 2012 to take a diminished role, would they be willing to pay Towers more than twice that to replace him?
link - As a righthander who rarely exceeds 90 mph with his fastball, Gee still managed to set a Buffalo Bisons franchise record this year with 165 strikeouts - but he also finished the Triple-A season with a 4.96 ERA. Gee's manager in Buffalo, Ken Oberkfell, said he saw a pitcher this year who learned how to control his changeup, curveball and slider/cutter with precision that baffled Triple-A hitters. Oberkfell noticed improvement during the season. "He always had good command of his fastball," he said. "Early in the year, his command of the other pitches wasn't as good, but as the season when on, he got command of his changeup. His changeup is really good, and that's the big pitch for him."
link - As for the manager, there appears to be absolutely no question that Manuel is done. If so, the Mets need to act fast on this, foregoing their customary deliberating, and even now they should have a pretty good idea about his replacement. I say this because there could be be seven or eight other managerial vacancies after the season, and the buzz around baseball is that clubs are going to be moving fast to fill them.
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