10/25/11

Baseball: - Paul Maholm, Cubs, Fox TV, Instant Replay, Managers In Uniform


Apparently, the Pittsburgh Pirates may try to shop Paul Maholm in the hopes someone may find his ~$10M club option worthy of throwing a prospect Pitt-town’s way, but if not, he could make an interesting free agent target. Maholm has consistently beat his xFIP for the last three years and could potentially blossom with a strong defense and legitimate team around him. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/free-agent-market-starting-pitcher

As far as the comments about Theo, Josh, Hoyer all going with the Cubs, all we know is the Cubs have Theo and rumors are rampant that his loyal preppie followers will follow him. And why wouldn’t they? Just because someone has a nice resume and internship and kiss tail up the ladder, doesn’t qualify them to run an organization. Why would the Cubs resign two of their admin guys if the leader was not retained? Doesn’t make sense to me and now Theo has them all under contract to build with? That’s a lot of faith in Mr. Ricketts’ and his family to have don’t ya’ll think? I worked for the Ricketts’ one summer in Omaha at Ameritrade, so I know they like loyalty and they also are very naive and want to put the Cubs back on the map as a contender, or is it just a large tax write off for them? Who knows!!?? http://xmlbscout.angelfire.com

For instance, I have now heard FOX announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver repeatedly refer to the Rangers comeback in Game 2 as the inning where “Josh Hamilton and Michael Young hit sacrifice fly balls.”* I know that baseball announcers have a long history of loving the RBI, praising the RBI, worshiping the RBI, I get that, but how do you make Hamilton and Young the heroes of that inning? Ian Kinsler hit that pop-up single and stole second base on the great-throwing Yadi Molina. Elvis Andrus cracked a single — the only really solid hit that entire inning — and then took second on a brilliant bit of base-running that for some reason was reduced in narrative to an Albert Pujols gaffe. He then took THIRD on the Hamilton fly ball. The point is that the sacrifice flies, while functional at-bats, were not the story of the inning. They were fly balls. The hard work had already been done. To me, crediting Hamilton and Young for that inning is a bit like crediting the guys who drove in the golden spike at Promontory Summit with building the railroad. http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/joe_posnanski_baseball_on_fox

Many baseball fans have clamored for some type of instant-replay system to be used for controversial calls, but the league has limited using it to just on home runs. Even after a blown call in Game 3 of the World Series that helped contribute to a big inning for St. Louis, MLB vice president Joe Torre said he was still opposed to expanding instant replay. Torre said it would disrupt the flow of the game too much. - http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2011/10/your_world_series_comments_joe.html

At baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, I was told that the best person to ask about the managers-in-uniform tradition was a fellow named Paul Lukas, who runs a website (Uni-watch.com) dedicated to the aesthetics of sports, and who writes about the subject for ESPN.com. "I don't want to say that it's just one of those things," Lukas told me. "But it's just one of those things. "Personally, I think it's sort of fun that these guys still like to suit up, and, just like their players, decide whether to hike up their pants cuffs or not. Jack McKeon, the manager of the Florida Marlins this past season, is 80 years old, and I like the idea that he sat in his office in his uniform before each game making the pants-cuff decision."  http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/opinion/greene-baseball-manager-uniforms/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

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