Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
It’s that time of the year where baseball starts to lead the back pages because there’s nothing else worth noting in New York, thanks to the area’s winter sports teams hovering between anonymity (Devils), mediocrity (Rangers and Islanders), or suckdom (Knicks and Nets). So with snow on the ground, it’s the media’s function to get fans even more excited about the baseball season, which is now five weeks away.
The two weeks before the Grapefruit League schedule starts can be a hit or miss in terms of feature writing. At times, it appears as if writers are trying to create stories that aren’t really there. Sometimes, there’s value in the features.
Of all the papers, the Post, in my opinion, had the best combination of team or roster related stories and human interest features. The two primary guys, George King and Joel Sherman, arguably do the most digging and find the most creative angles for their stories. The Times does a good job of this also. The big reason: they throw in minor league stories and look beyond the obvious. For example, Sherman’s story on Mark Melancon, who the Yankees drafted in 2006 along with Joba Chamberlain, gives us one of those “who to watch for” pieces at the perfect time of year. Great, we’ll file the name Mark Melancon. Keeping with the Chamberlain theme, Joe Lapointe’s feature on Joba’s role in enlivening the clubhouse is the ever-popular clubhouse chemistry feature, yet cleverly, he never mentions the two words consecutively in the piece. Lapointe’s story on how Joe Girardi plans to rotate Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon is one that will be monitored for the entire year.
When games start, you’ll see the gamut of stories about players in the system and any potential surprises that arise, such as Bubba Crosby and Enrique Wilson in 2004.
What I’ve found interesting to date is that Chien-Ming Wang is already being touted as the Opening Day starter. A done deal before we even reach March. Joe Torre was always coy about this announcement, even if he knew how he was going to line up his arms. He typically would not divulge this information until the second or third week in March, and only then would he arrange the starters toward the season opener.
The other game that’s fun to play: read as many of the papers as you can and see who has stories different than their competitors. There’s a lot of that to go around in the Spring, because there's just so much to cover, and only so much space to devote to full-length features.
OH THAT A-ROD
For every article praising Alex Rodriguez's talent, there are another three that give the impression that the press is out to tear him down. Rodriguez exaggerated last week about how many drug tests he was administered during the 2007 season, which hurts his credibility. Today, the big news, at least in the Post (I consider this story interesting, but not lead-worthy), is the note that A-Rod’s mental toughness could slip without Larry Bowa and Mike Borzello in the clubhouse to kick his butt. Is he that co-dependent? Is that a story that could have waited until mid-April or May, if he got off to a slow start and the writers then clamored for reasons why? What do you think?
AND ABOUT THOSE DRUG TESTS …
Kudos to Derek Jeter for taking a stand on HGH testing and saying that blood tests, despite it having to be collectively bargained, is the best and preferred way for the league to operate its drug testing platform. Jeter’s position differs from many of his teammates, according to Mark Feinsand of the Daily News. It’ll be interesting to see how the philosophical differences play out as this story progresses, because as we all know, it’s not going away.
Until next week …
As for the drug testing, it doesn't bother me one way or the other, but I'd like to point out that AFAIK the game hasn't been "clean" since the '60. We need more people to read Bouton's "Ball Four" before they start gnashing teeth & rendering garments...
Here's an article about him before the draft:
http://tinyurl.com/24c678
"THERE SHOULD BE BLOOD"
Nice. Why can't they think like that more often?
"SOMEONE ELSE'S DARLING NOW"
Kepner: http://tinyurl.com/25swt7
Fiensand: http://tinyurl.com/yt5y6t
Hawkins has committed himself to the goal of only issuing 20 walks in all of 2008. Now that would be a refreshing change for the Yankees bullpen.
FWIW, Hawkins' walk numbers as a reliever:
2000: 87.7 IP, 32 BB
2001: 51.3 IP, 39 BB
2002: 80.3 IP, 15 BB
2003: 77.3 IP, 15 BB
2004: 82.0 IP, 14 BB
2005: 56.3 IP, 24 BB
2006: 60.3 IP, 15 BB
2007: 55.3 IP, 16 BB
That's a surprise. I would have expected Matsui at least to say that he wasn't interested in being traded.
http://tinyurl.com/2cfh7z
While Baltimore has a terrible team, it seems as if the rest of the division is pretty strong. I think the Rays can certainly be a .500 team. With Bonds on board, the will certainly give us a good fight when we play them.
As a homegrown Yankee with talent, Hughes was bound to be popular. But his blog has forged an uncommon connection. A young medium has further endeared a young player to the fans.
"I think his blog is a success because it makes Hughes more than a number or a grouping of statistics, it makes him not only human, but approachable," Alex Belth, who has run the blog Bronx Banter since 2002, wrote in an e-mail message. "It makes him seem not so very different from his readers, no small deal in an era when fans feel the distance between themselves and the players more than ever."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/sports/baseball/26yanks.html
Any referral from the committee is primarily a symbolic gesture. The Justice Department can decide on its own to investigate a Congressional perjury case, and indeed, several federal agents were present during the hearing Feb. 13.
...
A referral by Congress is like an extra push to the Justice Department, said Todd D. Peterson, a law professor at the George Washington University School of Law who worked in the department's Office of Legal Counsel during the 1980s and 1990s.
"It simply puts informal public pressure on the Department of Justice to take a look at it and respond in some way to Congress's action," he said.
In addition, a referral also sends a message about "Congress's own view as to which testimony seems not plausible to them," Peterson said.
____
This came up earlier. Congress cannot force OR stop a JD investigation. It can add to pressure and (last paragraph) offer a hint as to what the committee felt. Given the hugely partisan process involved, it would seem a lot better if they left it alone or simply asked Justice to look into it without targeting Roger only.
But note they did specifically ask Justice to look into Tejada by name for perjury. I stand by my view: rightly or wrongly, part of Clemens' trouble here is Tejada/Bonds and the optics of a white guy getting a phone call from an ex-President. While duck-hunting yet. And maybe the optics (pun alert) of an 11 year old's photo of him at Canseco's. That party should never have mattered, but Rusty Hardin (malpractice suit coming?) made it a BIG one.
I'm pretty happy with Joe G. so far. Boring is good.
:)
We'll see what you have to say when he sacrifices in the first or second, though.
:)
Say it ain't so, Graig!
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