My daily nitpick: From Jim Moore:

I'm sorry, until yesterday, I could not name a single Expo. But now I can -- Chad Bentz, left-handed relief pitcher from Juneau, just the second player from Alaska to make it to the big leagues.

It should surprise no one that Moore (running second to KJR's Mitch Levy in the coveted "local sports media figure who knows the least about sports" award) could not name a single Expo. But he's never heard of Curt Schilling or Josh Phelps?

Not only have more than two Alaskans made the big leagues, there are more than two in the big leagues right now. Besides Schilling and Phelps, there's Shawn Chacon (Anchorage), Cliff Lee (Benton) and a few others.
posted by Jeff link 10:14 AM [edit]

 
The New York Post reports that the Mariners have a scout watching Jose Contreras. Why? What possible interest could we have in him? The mind boggles.
posted by Jeff link 8:29 AM [edit]

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

 
Not sick, dead or in jail, and not even overtaken with disheartenment due to the terrible team -- just really busy preparing for my trip to Okinawa on June 21. Just time for a quick note now:

There is much of interest in this Newsday article from today calling for the Yanks to go get Freddy. Two of the interesting things make Bavasi look really, really foolish in my eyes.

-- The piece quotes Bavasi as saying the selloff won't start for another week or so, as he waits for a team that hasn't scored a run in over 20 innings to crawl back in the race. Um, good luck with that.

-- Bavasi also says of Freddy: "He might be the best pitcher in our league." Fine, give him a pass for this one if you want to believe he's just trying to increase trade value for his hottest commodity. The thing is, he might believe it, which would be the last nail in the coffin of his objective talent evaluation credibility. I like Freddy more than most M's fans. Best pitcher in the league? Last year, he wasn't even the best second-pitcher on his own staff.

But the most intriguing bits to me come where the writer, Jon Heyman, lists players the Mariners might be after. Dioner Navarro, of course, we know about. Please ignore the awful, confusing sentence structure in this excerpt, though, and just take in the info:

While most Yankees minor-league talent is far from the bigs, such as outfielder Rudy Guillen, pitchers Chien-Ming Wang, Sean Henn and Matt DeSalvo and third baseman Eric Duncan, and a Mariners exec called "folly" the reported notion they'd trade for Contreras, that same exec didn't rule them out entirely.

If I'm translating correctly, that means the "M's exec" is laughing off the Contreras rumors -- that's good -- but not ruling out trading for some of these low-grade prospects that aren't within shouting distance of major league baseball -- that's bad.

Of course, one could also interpret that sentence to mean "he called the notion that they're after Contreras 'folly,' but wouldn't rule anything out entirely, including trading for Contreras." Let's hope that's incorrect.

posted by Jeff link 10:30 PM [edit]

Monday, June 07, 2004

 
I've just got one thing to say about last night's win:


posted by Jeff link 8:55 AM [edit]