10/14/11

Baseball: - Adam Dunn, Ken Williams, Cuba in World Cup, Bosox Hatchet Job, Big Papi to NY


Coming into the 2011 season, there were 3 sure things: death, taxes and Adam Dunn’s offensive statistics. Dunn was the epitome of a ‘sure thing’. His home run totals from 2005-2010 read like clockwork: 40, 40, 40, 38, 38. Likewise, his RBI totals were also machinelike in their regularity and predictability: 102, 101, 106, 100, 105, 103. Then, came the summer of 2011.  Dunn finished with 11 HR and 42 RBI and set a major league record with a .159 BA. He also ended up with 18 more strikeouts than points on his batting average, beating Mark Reynolds mark of 13 more Ks than BA points. Somewhere, Rob Deer is smiling. The lesson to be learned? Never draft a player and consider it money in the bank. - http://baseballreflections.com/2011/10/03/lessons-learned-fantasy-baseball-2011-and-fantasy-baseball-2012

If there is one thing that can be said about Chicago White Sox General Manager Ken Williams it is that he is always bold. Williams has spent a career making bold choices whether it was claiming Alex Rios off of waivers or making a trade for Jake Peavy, Williams is always aggressive. His aggressiveness has led to a .527 winning percentage since 2000, two division titles, and one World Series title. Aggressiveness can equal success, but the downside of having such aggressiveness is the very real possibility of making a big mistake. The 2011 version of Alex Rios was such a mistake. Jake Peavy hasn’t been all that healthy - http://fcpbaseballreport.com/category/newsletter-volume-02-issue-09

It seems that this year’s Baseball World Cup tournament could be the last.  I suspect that such a decision by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) would have a lot to do with the recent creation of another competition that brings together many of the best players from around the world: the World Baseball Classic. Cuba has historically dominated the World Cup tournaments, having taken home a total of 25 gold medals, while the United States has trailed closest behind by picking up four. - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=52853

On Friday afternoon, September 30th, less than an hour after  Terry Francona – the only man to manage the Boston Red Sox to a World’s Championship in the last 93 years – announced more in sorrow than in anger that he would not be returning to the job next season, a trusted baseball friend told me “now a lot of crap about Tito is going to come out.” This morning -  just as the architect of the Red Sox dynasty of the last decade, General Manager Theo Epstein, was finalizing his own  departure to take over the Chicago Cubs – my baseball friend’s prediction came true. The Boston Globe has printed a remarkable hatchet job on Francona, and to a lesser degree Epstein, cobbled together from a series of anonymous sources that appear to mainline directly back to Red Sox ownership. - http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/2011/10/12/the-curse-of-the-lucchino  

Longtime Boston Red Sox slugger and free-agent-to-be David Ortiz spoke about the possibility of signing with the AL East rival New York Yankees during an interview Wednesday with ESPN's Colleen Dominguez, after expressing frustration with the state of the Red Sox, who've seen manager Terry Francona and general manager Theo Epstein leave in the wake of the team's September collapse. "There's too much drama, man," Ortiz told Dominguez in reference to the Red Sox. "There's too much drama. I have been thinking about a lot of things. I don't know if I want to be part of this drama for next year." - http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7094409/david-ortiz-talks-boston-red-sox-mess-possible-free-agency-move-new-york-yankees

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