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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Marlins Sign Dallas McPherson To 1-Year Deal

Rotoworld is reporting that the Marlins haven't collected enough ex-Angels, and signed Dallas McPherson to a one-year deal, dollars unknown but I bet it's major league minimum. The M's DFA'd reliever Chris Seddon to make room on the 40-man.

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Rosenthal: Marlins Sign Luis Gonzalez

The Marlins have signed Luis Gonzalez to a one-year deal according to Ken Rosenthal, with an estimated salary of $2M.

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If They Held The Apocalypse And Nobody Showed Up, Would The Angels Vs. Dodgers Thing Be Any Less Lame?

Tim Kurkjian's Angels vs. Dodgers smackdown chat seems engineered to rouse as much rabble as possible, but as you know, the official position of this here blog is that the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area is plenty big enough for both the above; it's also possible that the Angels and Dodgers are both on an upswing. That, of course, isn't to say each organization has its downsides; oddly, they're becoming more alike over the course of time. Both have a tendency to hire over-the-hill veterans for too long on contracts too dear, both have problems figuring out when to properly deploy the kids when there's a vetruhn potentially blocking him, and both have made brief first-and-done postseason appearances recently (though in the Angels' defense, there's those World Series rings in 2002 and the ALCS appearance in 2005). Anyway, something for a slow news day. (The Kamenetzky's bugged me about this yesterday, so's I figured I should at least mention it in passing.)

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Twins, Mets Reach Deal For Johan Santana

The Mets and Twins have agreed in principle to a trade of Cy Young winner Johan Santana, for OF Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey. The Mets are believed to have a 72-hour window to negotiate an extension to Santana's contract; Santana is expected to ask for a $100M/5-year deal.

Also via Ken Rosenthal.

Update: If you can tolerate the slow load time, Metsblog claims Santana rejected a 5-year, $20M/per deal from the Twins, holding out for $140M over the same span.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

BA Ranks Angels Top 10 Prospects

Baseball America has published their annual Angels top 10 prospects list:
  1. Brandon Wood, 3b
  2. Nick Adenhart, rhp
  3. Jordan Walden, rhp
  4. Hank Conger, c
  5. Sean O'Sullivan, rhp
  6. Stephen Marek, rhp
  7. Sean Rodriguez, ss
  8. Nick Green, rhp
  9. Peter Bourjos, of
  10. Anel de los Santos, c
There's also the inevitable chat, this time hosted by Jim Callis, after Alan Matthews bailed for a gig with the Rockies.

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Mariners Trade Adam Jones For Erik Bedard

Both the Baltimore Sun and Seattle Times report Adam Jones is headed to the O's for Erik Bedard. USS Mariner grouses
It is confusing and distressing to witness a team that claims to be interested in fielding a competitive team over the long term trade a player of Jones’ talent and value, along what we reasonably expect to be highly valuable pieces, to the Orioles for a pitcher determined to test free agency at the end of his contract.
And there, in a nutshell, you understand the problem with this deal. More: "Two great pitchers and mediocre everything else is not a formula for consistent success."

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Angels Go To Arbitration With K-Rod, Other Notes

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Dodgers Sign Mike Myers, Tom Martin To Minor League Deals

The Dodgers signed Mike Myers and Tom Martin to minor league deals with invitations to spring training.

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OT: Up On My Roof

While waiting for pitchers and catchers to report (heck, while waiting for Long Beach State's season to start — thanks to the new, dumb NCAA rules, they won't be in gear until February) here's a shot of the San Gabriels taken from the peak of our roof. Southern California is getting a good, well-needed drenching, and the mountains have more snow than I've seen in years. How glorious!

Sadly, with the dogs' health so precarious (Foley started bleeding out his nose again this week, and Hannah developed a lung tumor the surgeon doesn't feel comfortable operating on because of her age), kenneling them for a week was out of the question. We're going to enjoy our time with them while they're alive; much as we may miss spring training, there's always next year.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Don Mattingly Steps Down As Hitting Coach

Via Jon and ITD, Don Mattingly is stepping down as the Dodgers' hitting coach to become a special assignment coach; the new hitting coach will be Don Easler:
Easler, 57, was the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach from 1999-2001 and served in the same capacity for the Brewers (1992) and Red Sox (1993-94). He spent the last two seasons as a hitting coach in the Dodgers’ minor league system, first with Double-A Jacksonville in 2006 before being promoted to Triple-A Las Vegas prior to last season. In that role, he worked extensively with Matt Kemp, James Loney, Andy LaRoche, Tony Abreu, Delwyn Young and Chin-lung Hu, among other Dodger prospects.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Dodgers, 66ers Run 3-For-1 Promotion

The Dodgers and their high-A Cal League Inland Empire 66ers farm team are running a two-for-one promotion: buy six 66ers games and get two Dodger tickets for free. (Make sure you're running Adblock Plus when you follow that link, as that website is littered with annoying interstitial ads.)

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Roster Notes

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Friday, January 18, 2008

Best Award Title Ever

For Chris Dial's Calphalon Awards, i.e. guys whose gloves suck so bad they may as well be using a skillet out there.

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Top 40 Angels, 2008 Edition

Before I go into the annual list (see the 2007 and 2006 editions before for reference), I should note that Dave Studeman has tinkered with his Win Shares formula again, so there will be year-to-year discrepancies; this will mainly affect active players, so guys like Tim Salmon whose careers are done won't change. Or at least, I hope they haven't changed. If you see such a discrepancy, please let me know.

Forthwith, the list:

1.Tim Salmon231.0
2.Brian Downing225.0
3.Jim Fregosi222.8
4.Garret Anderson207.9
5.Chuck Finley184.0
6.Bobby Grich183.8
7.Nolan Ryan147.5
8.Darin Erstad146.8
9.Wally Joyner121.0
10.Chili Davis114.6
11.Frank Tanana113.9
12.Vladimir Guerrero113.0
13.Mike Witt110.1
14.Troy Percival110.0
15.Troy Glaus104.9
16.Rod Carew102.8
17.Jim Edmonds94.5
18.Don Baylor94.0
19.Adam Kennedy93.9
20.Dick Schofield90.8
21.Mark Langston90.7
22.Chone Figgins88.6
23.Dean Chance87.7
24.Doug DeCinces85.2
25.Albie Pearson84.7
26.John Lackey80.8
27.Clyde Wright80.7
28.Jarrod Washburn80.1
29.Bob Boone78.7
30.Bobby Knoop77.9
31.Andy Messersmith74.3
32.Bengie Molina74.2
33.Rick Reichardt70.4
34.Kirk McCaskill69.3
35.Jack Howell69.1
36.Buck Rodgers68.3
37.Reggie Jackson67.4
38.Gary DiSarcina65.1
39.Fred Lynn63.7
40.Francisco Rodriguez62.5

Changes from 2007:

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Writers Strike At Dodger Stadium? 2008 In Reruns

You'd think there was a writers strike affecting baseball. Some of some of the crazy things that Joe Torre is saying already make it sound like 2008 will just be reruns from 2007:
Torre said his conversation with Pierre was similar to one he had with Bernie Williams as manager of the New York Yankees.

"I just basically said to him what I said to Bernie Williams when we signed Kenny Lofton: 'We're going to do what's best for the team and when we leave spring training, it's going to be with the three guys playing the outfield that we all agree will give us the best shot,' " Torre said.

Pierre has played in 434 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the major leagues. Whether that will be a consideration when drawing up the lineup, Torre said, will depend on a combination of what's best for the team and how much the streak means to Pierre.

Torre said that if Pierre is in the lineup, he and Rafael Furcal would probably hit in the first two spots -- not necessarily in that order -- because their speed would distract opposing pitchers.

This of course means Pierre's noodle arm will make regular appearances in left, and he'll get plenty of opportunities to exhibit his gross incompetence there, at least compared to his peers (especially his offensive peers). If the "streak" becomes an excuse to leave him start in left, the Dodgers decision-making process has gotten no better than it was under Grady Little. I like to take into consideration the possibility that managers get perverse pleasure from showing up the GM by making bad but expensive players run out there every day, but that seems too self-destructive to be true.

These days, the good things about the Dodgers -- Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Russell Martin, Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton -- generally outweigh the bad things, so I shouldn't complain too much. They've got a good young core, so long as management is willing to let them grow into the starting jobs they seem destined for. Some of them will not make it, it's true, but that should never be an excuse to keep known boat anchors like Pierre from gumming up the process.

Update: SOSG points us to ESPN fantasy columnist Eric Karabell's doleful prediction that exactly this will happen:

Matt Kemp, Dodgers: His minor league stats scream emerging superstar, and I think Kemp will likely get there. How can Joe Torre keep him out of the lineup? Well, he can. Kemp needs to have a good spring and produce like a middle-of-the-order hitter, or else Andre Ethier will steal at-bats. What about Juan Pierre, you ask? Look, the guy has a monster contract and while he isn't a good fielder or, for that matter, much of a hitter, what he does he does well, and I don't see Torre benching Pierre. He's going to bat second and steal his normal 50 bases. Andruw Jones is a nice comeback candidate, and starts regularly for his run production and defense. Kemp should beat out Ethier, or a trade will solve this situation, but the bottom line is unless I can project more than 500 plate appearances for Kemp, and right now I can't, I can't project the 25-90-15 season we'd all love.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Tampa Bay Picks Up Troubled Ex-Dodger Willy Aybar

The Tampa Bay Rays acquired Willy Aybar from Atlanta, along with INF Chase Fontaine, for RHP Jeff Ridgway. Good luck, Willy.

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Astros Sign Nick Gorneault To Minor League Deal

The Houston Astros have signed former Angels outfield prospect Nick Gorneault to a minor league deal. The team also announced it signed former Royal RHP Runelvys Hernandez to a minor league contract.

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Bud Selig's In For Three More Years

I wish I had some real news to report, but for the moment all I have is that Bud Selig has been re-signed through 2012 as baseball's commissioner. He's done the job the owners paid him to do, namely expand the game and make it appear as though drug use was a players-only affair. Apres moi, le deluge, indeed.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Dodgers Sign Brazoban

In the current Dodgers department, one I missed yesterday: the Dodgers signed Yhency Brazoban to a one-year, $540,000 deal with $120k in incentives.

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Marlins Sign Mark Hendrickson, Dodger Fans Relieved

The Marlins signed Mark Hendrickson to a one-year, $1.5M deal. Will the Fish be the worst team in the National League this year? It's a three-way race between them, the Pirates, and the Giants, and maybe four if you count the Nats.

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OT: The Disintegrator

You just have to love the kind of red-blooded anarchy that concluded this weapon had to be built:

Here's how he did it.

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Monday, January 14, 2008

It's Official: A's Send Mark Kotsay To Atlanta For Reliever Joey Devine And Minor Leaguer

The A's traded Mark Kotsay to Atlanta for RHP reliever Joey Devine and a minor league pitcher, Jamie Richmond. Devine was a first-round pick in 2005 out of North Carolina State, where he set a single-season record for saves at that school. He's been up several times in brief stints with the big club with generally terrible results, despite being the closer for the AAA Richmond Braves. Devine stuck around on Baseball America's top ten lists in 2005 and 2006, only to fall off in 2007 ($ for all those BA links). He's got a track record of back injuries that causes an inconsistent delivery; in Bill Bailew recently tagged him as a ROOGY setup man who can't get lefties out reliably (yet?).

As for Mark Kotsay, his back injuries were well-known to readers of this blog; he went down in August and never came back. The Braves are looking for a hole-filler for Andruw Jones, and while I'm not a competent judge of the NL East, from memory their offense looks pretty tattered without Jones in the lineup. Atlanta can't be counting on Kotsay to deliver too many games, nor to bat leadoff, because he's really suited to neither capacity.

The final piece in the puzzle is Richmond, essentially a 31st-round throw-in. He's no great shakes, but like Joe Saunders, he lives by controlling the longball. He's worked out of the pen and as a starter, so there's some flexibility built-in. On the other hand, he played out his age 21 season for Rookie-A Rome last year.

Overall, this looks like a swap for immediate needs, and maybe for the A's it works out in the longer term. Devine's value had sunk so far so fast that the Braves decided to turn him into a trade chit, and the A's ended up eating some of Kotsay's contract to get rid of him. Call it a wash with some mild upside for Oakland.

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Justice Is Served: Dodgers Cleared In Parking Lot Brawl

Good thing, too. I really don't see the Dodgers' culpability here.

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Whatever Happened To Richard (And Josh)?

Well?

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Slow, Slower, And Slowest

Preface: Things To Come

The moments are idle and slow, time to read good books and wonder between times whether we'll make it to spring training, what with the dogs and all.

Roster Notes

Johnny Podres Passes

Of unknown causes; he was 75. Podres was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, the only one that the Brooklyn Dodgers ever won. Hat tip: Jon.

OT: Mike Carona Resigns

Good riddance.

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Friday, January 11, 2008

A's Ready Deal To Send Mark Kotsay To Atlanta

Reports from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and mlb.com say Oakland is finalizing a deal to send outfielder Mark Kotsay to the Braves for a "high- to mid-level prospect" and cash. "The A’s would likely also pay a significant portion of Kotsay’s $8 million salary in 2008." The deal is not expected to be completed until Monday.

Update 1/12: Forgot to mention that the A's signed OF Emil Brown to a one-year deal. Ouch.

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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Billy Beane's Role In The A's Farm System Collapse

From yesterday's Jim Callis chat ($):
Both Haren and Swisher are young and productive, and they're signed to easily affordable long-term contracts that lock them up for at least the next three seasons. In short, they're exactly the type of cornerstones a rebuilding club would want to rebuild around. But Oakland's farm system had fallen into such a state of disrepair that the A's decided they had to shed Haren and Swisher to bring in some minor league talent for the future.

Billy Beane has proven himself to be one of the game's best general managers, but how he escapes blame for the collapse of his farm system is beyond me. Yes, big league promotions have thinned out Oakland's store of minor league talent, but with 19 first-round or supplemental first-round picks in the last six drafts, there's no excuse. Funny, I seem to remember reading a book a few years ago about how the A's were revolutionizing the draft.

Secondly, there's no guarantee that prospects will pan out. I love prospects as much as the next guy, but unless the three best pitchers Oakland acquired (Brett Anderson from the Diamondbacks, Gio Gonzalez and Fautino de los Santos) all pan out, I don't think the trades will significantly upgrade the A's in the long run. And we all know what injuries and attrition can do to pitching prospects.

I think this is probably too strong a position; I like their recent trades. Further, the A's had hit a hard limit on what they could reasonably do in the scope of their budget while in their final year(s?) at Oakland Coliseum, so they cut bait on 2008 and reloaded an admittedly thin farm system. This was not a surprise, especially considering how many seasons they spent at the top of the division early in the decade, and Beane's preferred use of prospects in that era.

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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Nothing Major, Almost: Coupla Deals

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HoF Voters Speak (In Tongues?), Gossage In, Blyleven Still Outside

Reliever Goose Gossage is the sole 2007 inductee at Cooperstown this year. Bert Blyleven missed again, but the good news is that he's up to 61.9% of the vote. That's up from 47.7% in 2007, and the first time he's polled over 60%. Jim Rice barely missed, garnering 72.2%.

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Woman Sues Dodgers For $1M Citing Lax Security

A woman who ended up being hit by another woman blames Dodgers security and is suing for $1M:
The central issue in the Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit is whether the Dodgers provided enough security at the ballpark in Chavez Ravine. Marta Parra Helenius, a 31-year-old nurse, claims the team didn't follow its own rules on how to handle unruly fans, leading to the assault and making her legally blind in one eye.

Helenius was punched in the parking lot after the San Francisco Giants pulled out a dramatic, ninth-inning victory on July 17, 2005, before 47,000 spectators. Denise Ordaz was charged with hitting Helenius, pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 270 days in jail last year.

"The Dodgers failed to follow their own fan code of conduct and their written security procedures, and negligently allowed this assault and battery to happen," according to Helenius' lawyer, David R. Glickman.

The trial began today before Judge Richard L. Fruin Jr.

The assault followed hours of verbal sparring during the game, much of it profane and loud. Helenius, though wearing a Dodger T-shirt, came with friends who were Giants fans. Seated nearby along the right field line were Ordaz and a group of Dodger fans.

In pretrial statements, Helenius said Ordaz was loud, abusive and insulting to the group of San Francisco fans with her.

Helenius complained to security guards, who moved Ordaz and her party 45 feet away. Ordaz said guards also detained her momentarily after the game, apparently in an attempt to keep the two groups separated.

When Helenius had walked about 400 yards from the stadium, Ordaz ran up screaming, punched Helenius once and fled, according to the police report. Security guards were flagged down, and Ordaz was detained, according to the lawsuit.

Ordaz said she acted in self-defense and that Helenius was about to hit her. She said she entered the plea last year not because she is guilty, but because her lawyer advised her to.

At first I thought this was just another silly lawsuit, but it looks like the woman involved has suffered serious physical injury. Since the assault seems to have taken place on the Dodger Stadium grounds, there's at least a whiff of culpability, though honestly it's not clear what Dodgers security could have done differently.

My reaction is to avoid going to Giants games altogether. It seems to draw the worst kind of morons into the stadium.

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OT: Roll-Your-Own Vacuum Tube Triodes!

Some folks of a certain age may fondly recall "Dusty's Treehouse", a local TV show that featured Dusty (Stu Rosen) and a number of his puppet friends. They all lived happily in Dusty's spacious (if dusty) treehouse, but my favorite part of those shows was their segments on how things got made. We watched Dusty on an old Zenith tube TV, which is my clumsy way of introducing this fascinating, long (17 min) French video (presented only with segment cards) presenting an amateur who rolls his own vacuum tube triodes. (Via Makezine.com; you can see more of this very talented amateur's website, in French, of course, here.)

Even when I was a kid, I had no idea how these were made; I have fond memories of going to the Sav-On drug store and using the tube tester there (you used to be able to service your own TV!) every so often. Of course, since Dad also had his General amateur radio license, he had a Yaesu rig that was far more romantic. I used to tune in for hours listening to the steady beat of radio station WWV, Fort Collins, Colorado at 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz... at the tone 15 hours, 28 minutes coordinated universal time. The voice never changed, stentorian and ever-present amid the faint yellow glow and hot breath of Dad's receiver. You can still hear that voice at 303-499-7111.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the telephone company lady you got when you called 853-1212, the old local time service. Callers to that number will find her replaced by a recording saying the time service was discontinued last September. These days, we have NTP to keep our computers synchronized, and cellphones use GPS to keep their clocks aligned properly; both connect to atomic clocks for timekeeping far beyond the ken of the invisible man. We're better off in some ways, but the romance steadily drains out of our lives.

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Monday, January 07, 2008

Rumors, Rumors, Everywhere, Rumors

Not to be taken internally, or seriously!

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Saturday, January 05, 2008

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Rumor: More Paul Konerko Silliness

Pick from the Chinese menu of Howie Kendrick, Ervin Santana, and Chone Figgins for Paul Konerko. I try not to get too upset when reading these things, because "a source" could just as easily be Doug Padilla's terrier as Tony Reagins.

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Friday, January 04, 2008

But I Repeat Myself

For 2007:

Juan Pierre: .293/.331/.353, 4.4 RC/G (668 AB), signed through 2011 with $36.5M remaining
John Rodriguez: .301/.374/.432, 5.5 RC/G (183 AB), signed today by the Devil Rays to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

And did I mention that Pierre is 29 while Rodriguez is 29? No? (Rodriguez will be 30 on Jan. 20.)

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Chris Jaffe Shortchanges (A Little) The Angels' 2002 Game 6

Chris Jaffe has been publishing a series on best World Series Games in history (apparently with some help from Eric Enders), and today reaches Game 6. He placed the Angels' 2002 Game 6 at fourth, which is impressive (and I agree with it nebulously):
4. 2002: Angels 6, Giants 5. Rarely has such a large gap been surmounted with so much at stake.

The Angels needed to win to stay alive. For four innings, no serious scoring threats occurred.

In the fifth, the Giants broke the ice, and poured it on from there, taking a 5-0 lead at the seventh-inning stretch. Only nine outs separated the Giants from their first title since moving to San Fran almost a half-century before.

The seventh began with a ground out against Giants starter Russ Ortiz. Eight outs. However, the Angels got back-to-back singles for their first rally of the day. Relief pitcher Felix Rodriguez came in to face Scott Spiezio. In a key battle, Spiezio fouled off numerous pitches to work the count full, then smashed a home run to make it a 5-3 game.

The Giants escaped without further damage, but the Angels began the eighth inning energized. The first four batters combined for a homer, two singles, and a double for a 6-5 lead with none out. Anaheim held on to win the game, and its first title the next night.
The drama was actually a bit more than he let on here, because he overlooked as denoument Robb Nen's last professional pitch. Troy Glaus's RBI double to left-center was the story, according to Eric Neel:
His first pitch is a cut fastball tailing out and away for ball one. His second is a slider, also outside, but Glaus hacks at it anxiously and the count is even at 1-1. The third pitch, another slider, cuts two feet outside, and Glaus, chastened by the last swing, holds back.

Two-one. Hitter's count. Enough with the slider; Nen is coming in and going all-out.

"I knew Glaus was sitting dead-red, but I had to throw the inside fastball," he says. "I couldn't stand the idea that later I'd think maybe I hadn't thrown as hard as I could in that situation." He fires. The ball starts off inside, but it fades when it should bite. It comes out over the plate.

Nen sees the flight of the ball and winces.

Glaus tracks it and tattoos it.

"He wasn't right out there that night," Neel continued. "Check that. He had nothing … nothing but a pitching shoulder full of torn labrum, torn rotator cuff and a whole lot of want-to." Nen never pitched in the majors again, his World Series saves erased by one blown, one that continued the heartache for Giants fans.

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Roster Notes

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

And No, Wilson, We Didn't Forget About You: Valdez Sold To Koreans

Wilson Valdez was sold to a Korean team.

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Nope. Heart still not broken.

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OT: Attention, Surfers!

From a friend at work: Spitcast claims they are the first website with accurate seven-day surf forecasts. I don't know if that's true or not, but it is interesting, and their site sure is uncluttered.

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Oakland Pushes Contention Further Away, Deals Nick Swisher For Prospects

I just got to this (and thanks, by the way, Andrew, for the word) after chasing around this morning for a body shop to fix my wife's car (scratched it up Christmas Eve after I missed a post in a Long Beach parking garage)... looks like the A's have traded Nick Swisher to the White Sox for three prospects, LHP Gio Gonzalez, RHP Fautino De Los Santos, and OF Ryan Sweeney.

My initial reaction to this is that Billy Beane has determined that the club wasn't going to contend for even the division in 2008, and so he's rebuilding for 2009 and 2010. Swisher would have been a big part of the team's 2008, so they're throwing in the towel early, at least as far as I can (without too much digging) tell. But let's look closer at what Oakland's getting in return:

Oakland has made some very shrewd trades lately to restock a badly depleted farm team; Billy Beane has done well to get the players he's received. In an Athletics Nation chat with John Sickels, Sickels said of the players
I had Gonzalez as my number one White Sox prospect, and De Los Santos as number two, both Grade B+, both among the best pitching prospects in baseball. ... I must admit that I am not sanguine on Sweeney. He strikes me as an outfield version of Sean Burroughs, in the sense that his power is just not developing the way it was supposed to. I don't think he will just disappear like Burroughs, but I think he's going to be just a platoon player, not an impact bat.
I really like this deal for the A's considering where they were and where they intend to go. One year isn't much to give up for what looks to be a really strong team in 2009. Here's the BTF chatter, if you're so inclined (I always am).

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Another Feather In Bert's Cap: Blyleven 17th All-Time JAWS Score

Jay Jaffe finally (and by his own admission, a tad belatedly, as the deadline for Hall of Fame ballots was December 31) runs the JAWS numbers and finds Bert Blyleven is 17th all-time in his eponymous JAWS system for measuring Cooperstown stature.
Hall of Fame voters perform Olympic-level gymnastics in attempting to justify why Blyleven doesn't get their vote, most fixating on his relatively unimpressive winning percentage (.534), his 250 losses, a win total on the wrong side of 300, and his failure to garner a Cy Young Award or top 20 wins more than once--all of those related to the level of support he received from his teammates (not to mention unenlightened voters). His career totals place him in elite company: fifth all-time in strikeouts (only Ryan, Carlton, Clemens, and Randy Johnson are ahead), ninth in shutouts, 11th in games started, 13th in innings, and 26th in wins, with virtually everybody around him on those lists either in the Hall of Fame or headed there. The Davenport numbers tell a similar story. Only 12 Hall of Famers have higher PRAA than Blyleven, only five have higher PRAR, and just 10 have higher WARP totals.

The first time I tackled the Hall of Fame ballot for BP, Blyleven polled at just 35.4 percent in his seventh year on the ballot. Thanks to an Internet blitz that's centered around Rich Lederer's campaign at The Baseball Analysts website (one that's even swayed actual BBWAA voters, including 2005 Spink Award recipient Tracy Ringolsby), he crossed the 50 percent threshold two years ago, attaining 53.3 percent of the vote in his ninth go-round. He fell back a bit last year, as did practically every holdover candidate in the presence of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn, but the advocacy efforts continue, and his eventual enshrinement is hardly the ballot's most farfetched proposition.

Just to recap Rich Lederer's basic argument for Blyleven's inclusion (all numbers are career total rankings):
  1. Fifth in strikeouts.
  2. Ninth in shutouts.
  3. 24th in wins.
  4. 14th in run-support-neutral wins.
  5. 17th in runs saved above average (RSAA).
  6. 19th in career ERA for pitchers with 4,000 or more innings pitched.
Bert belongs!

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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

OT: Dick Clark, Please Retire Before You Die On Camera

Slurred every word, and he looked like he couldn't finish two sentences without coughing up a lung. I'll be shocked if he makes 2010.

Update:

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