This is supposed to be hush-hush and on the deep down-low, but you know us. It’s time to pop the bubbly because Kevin Youkilis [stats] and Tom Brady [stats]’s sis, Julie, are engaged!
The happy couple, who spent Super Bowl week together with the Brady clan in Indy, got engaged “recently” after dating for at least a year, we’re told from a few F.O.Ys.
From Deadspin and a Tabloid… grain of zaltz.
Also: Who really cares?
“Let us start with the proposition that Dwight Evans is one of the most underrated players in baseball history. There are certain things that make players underrated. The most important of these is that a player who does several things well will always be underrated compared to a specialist, just because of the way the human mind works. We absorb simple concepts more readily than complex ones. If a player hits .325, if he hits 40 homers, if he steals 70 bases, we get that immediately. If a player does many things well but no one thing spectacularly well, he may have equal value but it takes longer for the public to catch on.”
According to MLB Network and NESN analyst Peter Gammons (via twitter), right-hander Rich Harden underwent season-ending surgery to repair his right shoulder. Gammons tweeted: After 5 years of ‘always being hurt’ with a torn capsule, Rich Harden last week had surgery, aiming to come back in 2013–healthy. Finally.
The development offered a reminder of the trade to which the Red Sox and Athletics agreed on July 30 (one day before last year’s trade deadline) only to have the Sox call off the deal upon reviewing Harden’s medical records. The deal would have sent Harden to the Sox for first baseman Lars Anderson and a player to be named (both Raul Alcantara and Brandon Workman were on a list of players from which the A’s could select a player).
Harden, who turned 30 following the season, was 2-1 with a 4.30 ERA, 30 strikeouts and 10 walks in 29 1/3 innings at the time of the almost-trade. Though the Sox thought that he was unlikely to make more than a handful of starts down the stretch, Harden remained healthy enough to make 10 starts over the final two months of the season, albeit with mixed results. He struck out an impressive 61 batters (and walked 21) in 53 1/3 innings, but went just 2-3 with a 5.57 ERA while averaging 5 1/3 innings per start.
Dennis “Oil Can’’ Boyd’s new tell-all book, “They Call Me Oil Can: My Life in Baseball,’’ which hits bookstores in June, should be a blockbuster if the stories are similar to what the former Red Sox pitcher told WBZ’s Jon Miller yesterday at JetBlue Park.
Boyd, who spent eight of his 10 major league seasons with the Red Sox, admitted he was under the influence of cocaine two-thirds of the time he was on the mound.
“Oh yeah, at every ballpark,’’ he said. “There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system. It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.
...Boyd, who will paint a picture of support and disdain for some of his former Red Sox teammates in his book, said, “All of them didn’t rally around me. All of them knew and the ones that cared came to me. The Dwight Evanses and Bill Buckners . . . it was the veteran ballplayers. Some guys lived it; they knew what you were doing, and the only way they knew was they had to have tried it, too.’’
Boyd contends he was blackballed from baseball and his career cut short because he was different. “The reason I caught the deep end to it is because I’m black. The bottom line is the game carries a lot of bigotry, and that was an easy way for them to do it,’’ Boyd said. “If I wasn’t outspoken and a so-called ‘proud black man,’ maybe I would have gotten the empathy and sympathy like other ballplayers got that I didn’t get; like Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe. I can name 50 people that got third and fourth chances all because they weren’t outspoken black individuals.’’
Later that year [2010], McGrath made history when at just sixteen, he was named to the Melbourne Aces roster mid-way through the inaugural Australian Baseball League.
In his League debut in late December, McGrath was called on to close out the game and he proceeded to retire six of the seven hitters that he faced in an impressive outing. He still holds the record for the youngest player to have played in the newly formed ABL.
Most recently, McGrath returned just this week from representing Australia in the recent Oceania AAA Championships held in Guam where Australia won gold and secured their berth in the 2012 IBAF U18 World Championships.
McGrath was superb in his two outings, striking out nine over five innings in the gold medal game against New Zealand, while collecting eight strikouts across four innings in game one versus Guam.
But can he throw a gyroball? No? How about a Geelongball? Whatever, sign him up!
These look more realistic to me than the last set I ran with Marcel. Probably a bit high on the Yankees, but since CAIRO was created to make the Yankees look better than they are that stands to reason.
Hey, I must have missed the internal primer-list on this…because I never got a say!
Jacoby Ellsbury will see and hear a lot of this in the coming weeks, questions about whether he can duplicate his MVP-worthy performance in 2011.
Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory weighed in on the subject on ESPN Insider. Here are his thoughts:
2011 Projected OPS: .733
Actual OPS: .928
...Historically, when players have had these kinds of home run breakouts, their follow-up seasons have been a mixed bag. However, players have generally kept quite a bit of improvement from even the flukiest-looking home run totals. While Ellsbury might not hit 30 again, it’s extremely likely he’ll continue to hit more than the 10 he was hitting just a few years ago. ZiPS projects a decline to 16 home runs, but that’s with only 560 projected plate appearances—if Ellsbury gets 732 plate appearances, he should hit 20 again.
One day, Pedro Martinez could join countryman Juan Marichal in Cooperstown and become the second Dominican-born player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But in the meantime, the retired pitcher said he is concentrating on his foundation and serving as an ambassador of goodwill.
“I am getting excited, and I hope that nothing goes wrong with the [Hall of Fame] voters and they appreciate what I have done in the big leagues,” said Martinez, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Monday night’s Caribbean Series game between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. “Hopefully, I will be there on the first ballot or however.”
...In December, Martinez said he is going to announce his retirement with parties in Boston and the Dominican Republic. What’s certain is that he finished his career with a 219-100 record, a 2.93 ERA, 3,154 strikeouts, eight All-Star selections and a .687 winning percentage, which is second among pitchers with at least 300 games since 1919.
Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent a professional lifetime studying politics, media and biases, and when it comes to big East Coast cities and their sporting teams, there’s little to debate.
“We Arkansans and Oklahomans sometimes call people from Boston or New York ‘Yankees,’ which we mean as a synonym for ‘rude, Northern person,’ ” Groseclose said. “Hank Williams Jr. might have said it best: ‘If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t want to go. . . . You can send me to hell or New York City. It’d be about the same to me.’”
In the oft-times insular world of pro sports, the nation’s attitudes for New York and Boston are no secret. The successes of their teams serve as inspiration for taunts and barbs. Road trips in the NFL are merely sleepovers in a lion’s den. . . .
The successes of the sports teams serve as kindling, while the more potent fuel for many is a perceived overexposure of East Coast teams. And critics point to a singular culprit.
“Ask anyone in Chicago, Detroit, Iowa, Minnesota — it just feels like a large portion of the country gets ignored,” said Steve “Sparky” Fifer, a sports talk radio host for WSSP-AM in Milwaukee. “So it’s not necessarily a hatred or dislike for the team specific teams, it’s the dislike for ESPN and the coverage they provide. From a fan perspective, if you turn on ESPN during the baseball season, good luck seeing Brewers highlights. Right now, regardless of how good the Knicks are, you’ll see Knicks and Celtics every night.”
John Ourand, who covers media and television for the SportsBusiness Journal, said “East Coast bias” is a real phenomenon but not necessarily a true bias. Television’s decision-makers don’t favor particular teams; they favor money, he said.
“There are markets that have teams and people follow that passion whether they like them or hate them,” Ourand said. “Even when you hate them, you’re watching.”
Speaking for the first time this offseason publicly, Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett touched on his view of the team’s September collapse, as well as his New Year’s Day meeting with new manager Bobby Valentine, while appearing on the MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” show.
Regarding the controversy that surrounded the Red Sox’ demise in September, during which the team’s starters went 4-13 with a 7.08 ERA, Beckett explained that the bottom line was that the Sox didn’t perform and everything else should have been kept in-house.
“I think the biggest key is what [Jon] Lester said to the end that, we stunk on the field and that was the bottom line,” he told the show. “If we would have pitched better, none of that stuff would have even been an issue. And it shouldn’t be an issue anyway because what goes on in the clubhouse should stay in the clubhouse. I don’t care who says that or whatever, I’m not saying we don’t make mistakes in the clubhouse [show host and former Red Sox player Kevin Millar] will definitely respond to that because, hell, they were drinking Jack Daniels and they won the World Series [in 2004]. It’s just what goes on in the clubhouse, it’s supposed to stay in the clubhouse.”
...As for the pitcher’s well-publicized meeting with Valentine—who had insinuated that Beckett was “pissed” regarding comments the former ESPN analyst made regarding the righty’s deliberate pace—Beckett said the get-together went off without a hitch.
According to La Prensa newspaper in Nicaragua, pitcher Vicente Padilla—who signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox earlier this month—had an arrest warrant issued for his failure to show up in court for a child support hearing, only to have the arrest order revoked later. That second article suggests that Padilla is facing an order not to leave Nicaragua for spring training until the matter is resolved. According to the reports, Padilla owes approximately US$4,200 in child support.
The Red Sox signed Padilla to a minor league deal that includes a $1.5 million salary if he is added to the major league roster. The 13-year veteran has a career record of 104-90 with a 4.31 ERA.
Yeah, but who would they have to give the Cardinals in retur…WHA?!
Sometimes a baseball source will tell a writer one thing, and then another baseball source will tell the writer a conflicting thing. This might be new. Here we have a baseball source telling a writer one thing, and then the same baseball source later telling the writer a conflicting thing. Gordon Edes:
After indicating late Friday night that pitcher Roy Oswalt was signing with the St. Louis Cardinals “soon,” the same major league source acknowledged Wednesday that Oswalt had not yet made a decision and that the Red Sox still “had a great chance” of signing him.
On the one hand, okay, maybe the baseball source is plugged in to the fluid Oswalt sweepstakes. On the other hand, this baseball source said Oswalt was going to the Cardinals last Friday. This exact same baseball source, just last Friday. Like, no baseball source has told Gordon Edes the wrong thing more recently than this baseball source.
Sooo looking forward to his “Pantsload: Call of Doodie!” roll-plying action game!
Whether Roger Clemens, an early mentor to him, should be in the Hall of Fame: “No, he shouldn’t. I don’t believe any of those who cheated should get votes. You never know when they did and when they didn’t. I don’t know how much was real. That’s just me. I don’t think anybody who did it should get in.
“Wait, you said [for years] that you never did it? Now [you say] you did? It’s the Pete Rose defense. And you got caught the first time you did it? And how about when you [actually] started? That’s a whole other conversation. It’s just very black and white: They got caught doing it, they’re out. Unfortunately, some of my friends and teammates are on that list and it makes me disappointed they made that decision. It doesn’t make me like them less. Now, Barry Bonds? How can you even remotely consider that guy a nice guy?”
Giving steroid users a pass because not all users have been identified: “No. You can’t unlearn what you’ve learned.”
The advantages of steroids: “My biggest problem, and I’m so sick of hearing it from hitters or anybody else, is that steroids didn’t help you hit. That’s the most bald-faced lie ever. When I’m facing Barry Bonds Sept. 1 and Barry Bonds feels super fresh and I’m dragging ass, don’t tell me that. It was as much about being fresh and keeping your body fresh.
“Talk to [former NFL and MLB players] Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan. They’ll tell you the grind of a baseball is way harder [than football] because of the grind of the season. So yes, [a steroid regimen] did help you produce.”
The 2011 Red Sox: “It was clearly a group of kids that took a swift kick in the ass. What they did last year was embarrassing and shameful. I’m shocked that a good kid like Jon Lester got caught up in that. [Former manager] Terry [Francona] got fired for being the same guy he was years before that. I ran off at the mouth, but Terry will always tell you that I was as coachable as anybody. It was shocking that some people in this clubhouse allowed those stories to come out, but it was embarrassing, as if that wasn’t enough, that nobody had enough guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’”
This is current through Francisco Cordero signing with Toronto, and assumes Prince Fielder at 1B and Miguel Cabrera playing a terrible version of 3B for Detroit in 70% of their games, and DHing in 25% of them.
Special Valentine’s Surprise encourages you to celebrate all the sweet blabbering that is Valentine’s Day!
Seeing the Yankees trade their young catcher, Jesus Montero, didn’t come as a surprise to new Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine.
“I thought that was kind of in their plans,” Valentine said on Sunday at Rippowam Middle School in his hometown of Stamford, Conn. “He helped their plans come to fruition by the way he played that last month of the season. I didn’t really ever think he was going to be their catcher of the future but maybe.”
...While Valentine said the trade didn’t surprise him, he did not elaborate on why. The Yankees also traded away reliever Hector Noesi in the deal and received a minor league pitcher.
“I don’t know,” Valentine said when asked if he thought Montero was going to be used as a trade chip in the future. “I don’t know what the Yankees are doing, I think Brian (Cashman) is a real smart guy, one of the great managers in the game of baseball, and I don’t know what his plan was.”
Tim Wakefield told Florida Today that while he would consider retiring, his preference is to pitch in 2012 for the Red Sox.
“I just saw that [Yankees catcher Jorge Posada] retired, you know it’s something that my wife and I need to talk about,” told the paper last week. “I’d probably need to talk about it with my kids, too. Ultimately, I would like to obviously play for the Boston Red Sox for one more year and see where it goes.”
...From the article:
“There have been a number of clubs who have called, who have an interest in signing me but I’m kind of just weighing my options right now,” he said, obviously waiting and hoping that Boston will make an offer. “I think I can be a valuable asset to them as an insurance policy, you know a fifth or sixth starter or if something doesn’t pan out for some of the guys they have already penciled in to the rotation. You know that’s kind of been my job these last two years; I don’t have a problem doing that.”
Wakefield didn’t say whether he would sign with a team other than Boston, but he didn’t rule it out, either.
“Hopefully, it doesn’t come down to the last hour,” he said. “But I’m not closing any doors.”
This has everything except a “Joe Batters” Accardo appearance! Oh, wait…
As I said Ted’s name he looked at me and motioned for me to call him in his room after the dinner. I did so and came up to visit with him. While we were talking he told me that he has always been a huge fan of Frank Sinatra since I knew him well.
“Why don’t you tell him yourself,” I said.
I looked at my watch and it was 3:00 a.m. in Toronto, but I knew Frank was at home in Palm Springs and certainly wasn’t sleeping at midnight. I picked up the phone and called Frank.
“Francis,” I said. “I have someone who wants to say hello to you.”
I gave the phone to Ted and he went on and on to Frank about what a huge fan he was, how much he admired him and how I always spoke so highly of him. As it turns out, frank was telling Ted the same thing. Talk about the mutual admiration society; I had the greatest singer of all time talking to the greatest hitter of all time, and everybody was happy.
Both Frank and Ted were truly amazing men. I am so fortunate to have been friends with both of them. As an Italian, or just a music lover, Frank was more than just an entertainer; he was special. He had more than a great voice; he had stage presence that made you feel like he was singing just to you.
As a baseball lover, Ted was best hitter who ever lived. He hit for power, and he hit for average. And believe it or not, he hit .406 in 1941 and didn’t win the MVP. Of course 1941 was also the year DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games. Joe of course was a hero too for baseball fans and Italians….
The Boston Red Sox are going to a new digital ticketing system for the cheapest seats at Fenway Park to keep them out of the hands of scalpers.
Fans with seats in the $12 upper bleacher section for high-demand games will receive only digital tickets. They will be required to swipe the credit card used to purchase them at the gate.
Fenway Park is the oldest ballpark in baseball, and it is also among the most expensive. The Red Sox say they’ve left the upper bleacher seats below market price to help families get into the ballpark. But that also makes it a lucrative option for the resale market.
He said on Thursday he was surprised by some of the stories that came out and called it a “witch hunt.”
“We’re a team and we lose as a team and we all failed,” Youkilis said. “There wasn’t one player that didn’t fail because we lost. We all failed. We’re going to make a difference this year and that difference is going to be winning. We’re going to go out there and win and hopefully start out winning a lot earlier this year. Last year was a little tough at the beginning.”
A major talking point and concern was the notion the clubhouse culture ultimately led to the team’s debacle in September, in which the Sox missed the postseason for the second consecutive season.
“I definitely didn’t think we had the best vibe in the clubhouse,” he said. “It was very different. It was noticeable early, but when you win, winning heals all the wounds. We definitely didn’t have the right attitude in a lot of ways, but when you’re winning, and everyone always refers to, and I didn’t live through that era, but with the Oakland A’s and things weren’t always right but they went out there and played the game.
“Sometimes it snowballed out of control where we were worrying about things we shouldn’t have been worrying about and not playing the game of baseball.
The player, Dustin Richardson, is a 26-year-old left-handed relief pitcher who played for the Boston Red Sox in 2009 and 2010 before spending all of 2011 in Class AAA with farm teams of the Florida Marlins and Atlanta Braves.
Richardson received a 50-game suspension this week after testing positive. Generally, players who test positive are linked to one banned substance. Richardson tested positive for five.
“I’ve never seen a case like this, and we’re talking about 30 years I’ve been doing this kind of work,” said Don Catlin, an antidoping expert and former director of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory.
“I’ve had doublets and triplets, but to have five, and have it cover three different subclasses of drugs, is unique, as far as I can tell.”
To start, Richardson tested positive for three anabolic steroids — Methandienone, Methenelone and Trenbolone — that are fairly common on their own, according to doping experts, but unusual in tandem.
So far this offseason, the Yankees have found a way to stash more of that cash, while also filling their biggest holes. The Red Sox have not.
Maybe this means Boston’s not done, that the pipe dreams of Hanley Ramirez, Gavin Floyd, and Izzy Alcantara martial arts lessons will all come true for the 2012 Red Sox. But right now, it’s tough to see beyond an owner who dropped £35 million for a colossal bust in one sport, $82.5 million for another in another, and $400-plus million for players ranging from so far, so good to good for a short while to oh no, what have I done, and finally decided, enough is enough.
And here’s the thing: Boston’s thrifty offseason plan, taken as a whole, might end up making at least a little baseball sense. The Rangers added Yu Darvish to a stacked roster. The Angels got Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson. The Yankees finally have the pitching depth to match their terrifying lineup. The Rays might have their best offense in franchise history. And the Tigers just signed Prince Fielder. If baseball waits a year to add a second wild-card team, two or more very good teams will be going home early, and Boston may well be one of them. Maybe the answer is for the Sox to grab Oswalt, then stand pat from here, knowing Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, and other prizes could await in the next free-agent class.
For Red Sox fans, it might be $170 million worth of wait ‘til next year.
Former Nationals utility infielder Alex Cora played winter ball and was the Captain of the Caguas Criollos of Puerto Rico. After the Criollos final game of the season tonight, he announced his retirement from baseball.
Alex Cora, 36, was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the third round of the 1996 draft. Cora has played all over the infield for seven MLB teams: Dodgers, Blue Jays, Indians, Red Sox, Mets, Rangers and Nationals Maybe he’ll follow in his big brother Joey’s footsteps and coach.
...(Translated by Bing):
MESSAGE from our captain ALEX CORA announcing his retirement: thank you all for the support they gave me for 16 seasons. We enjoy and we suffer, we won and we lost but heart I can tell you that being Creole is the best there is. Now close a chapter in my career and in the bottom of my heart I say that I do with the high front because I am and always will be pure strain Creole! Thank you all.
(confuded) Maybe the Red Sox still have a shot at him!
If you had to pick one position player to build a team around who do you pick? Asked by: Florko
Answered: 1/25/2012
Jacoby? I dunno; might be Jacoby, Braun, Kemp, Longoria. Brett Lawrie, maybe.
Hi Bill. In Nick Punto’s career he has walked 303 times and struck out 486. However, in his 63 games for the Cardinals last year he walked 25 times and struck out only 21 times and had a very strong half season. Is 63 games enough of a sample size to assume he may be improving as a hitter, or are his previous 824 games a better indication of what type of hitter he will be next year? Asked by: izzy24
Answered: 1/25/2012
It is most likely an aberration. It is most likely that his strikeout/walk ratio will return to historic norms in 2012.
...[Win Shares] as you’ve set them up (3 WS= 1 Win) are MORE meaningful in huge samples (i.e., a player with 200 WS over a career is prefereable to one with only 150) but I still thought that even a single WS in one season means something… Asked by: sgoldleaf
Answered: 1/23/2012
...When we divide one win into three win shares, rather than ten, then each win share has a worth of approximately three runs, and then the distinctions become more reliable, which is not to say ABSOLUTELY reliable, but more reliable. We are less likely to be wrong by 3 runs than we are by one run, and we are much less likely to be wrong by 9 runs than we are by 3 runs.
Still. ..and this is one of those points that a lot of people are just never going to get. . .it is not the main purpose of Win Shares to make distinctions between single seasons. If you’re arguing about, let us say, who to put on an All-Star team, then there are a thousand things you can look at it pursue that argument. Saying that “This player has 27 Win Shares and that one has 25”—OR saying that this player has 6.9 WAR and that player has 6.3—is something of an effort to end the debate, in that these measures SUM UP all of the other measurements. It’s not particularly helpful in that way; it’s not really appropriate to try to end those debates by citing a master statistic that overrules all of the other statistics, and it’s not terribly persuasive. That’s really not the value in Win Shares.
Bill, the 2011 Colorado Rockies got 217 relief appearances from pitchers named “Matt.” Do you happen to know, off the top of your head, whether this is a record for one team getting the most bullpen games out of one first name? Asked by: TJNawrocki
Answered: 1/22/2012
I’m pretty sure Jesse Orosco pitched that many times himself for the 1987 Mets. I can’t believe I put 7 minutes of my life into researching this, but. . .I think it is a record. The 1967 Twins got 162 game appearances (not all of them relief appearances) out of pitchers named “Jim”—Jim Kaat, Jim Perry, Jim Merrit, Jim Roland and Jim Ollom… I don’t find anybody else going over the 200 mark.
Tom, it would have been funny if Bill actually did know that off the top of his head.
Something approaching normalcy from those hitters would make Iglesias that much more palatable if Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine—the man who managed Ordonez over the bulk of his “productive” career with the Mets—takes a shine to Iglesias in camp.
In the meantime, Boston’s fall-back options are fairly reasonable. Like Scutaro, Punto is neither the best or worst defender at short. The difference in their career OBPs (.338 vs. .325) is narrow enough to suggest there won’t be any drop-off with a change to the identity of the ninth-slot hitter in Boston’s lineup, and Punto actually has a higher walk rate for his career (10.2 percent to Scooter’s 9.1). That’s without getting into why Aviles might have been the best right-now option of the three. After getting jerked around by the Royals ever since coming back from the Tommy John surgery that put a dent in his future in 2009, he still profiles as a good bat and playable glove at short.
But it’s Iglesias who represents the team’s long-term future at short. And it’s Rey Ordonez’s old manager who will be helping to decide whether or not he can use the latest slick-fielding Cuban kid at short, sooner or later.
Cody, Cody
And see where else this body’s flown (Detroit, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Florida, San Francisco…)
The Red Sox have apparently added some outfield depth, and it’s going to come in the form of Cody Ross.
FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal reports that the veteran outfielder has agreed to a contract with the Red Sox. He’ll be one of a few options for new manager Bobby Valentine in an overhauled Boston outfield.
The Boston Herald’s Mike Silverman reported that the deal will be a one-year contract.
Ross, 31, broke into the majors for good in 2006. For his career, Ross is a .261 hitter with .323 on-base percentage over eight seasons with five different teams. In 2011 with the San Francisco Giants, Ross hit .240 with 15 home runs and 52 RBIs.
Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, in a session at the World Baseball and Softball Coaches’ Convention at Mohegan Sun Arena, deemed the consumption of beer and fried chicken in the clubhouse during games “inexcusable,” and said (in comments relayed by The Day (New London, Conn.)) that it would not happen during his tenure as manager.
In response to a question about the clubhouse consumption of beer and chicken during games, Valentine initially joked, “We’ve got to go to draft beer and grilled chicken, I think,” before approaching the matter with less levity.
“If that happened it’s inexcusable,” said Valentine. “I apologize for that. The apologies are out there and it will never happen on my watch.”
The Rockies have agreed in principle on a deal to acquire Boston infielder Marco Scutaro for pitcher Clayton Mortensen, according to a source with direct knowledge of the talks.
The Rockies’ earmarked Scutaro as a target when the offseason began, seeing him as a starting second baseman and potential No. 2 hitter in the lineup. The deal went on life support Friday, but was revived today when the Rockies were able to work through some financial issues to take on Scutaro’s $6 million contract.
It will become official shortly as the players involved are notified.
...Mortensen is an extreme groundball pitcher, relying heavily on a sinker. He went 2-4 with a 3.86 ERA, splitting between between the bullpen and rotation.
With Scutaro in the fold, the Rockies will enter spring training with one of their deepest lineups in franchise history. He will join outfielder Michael Cuddyer and catcher Ramon Hernandez as key acquisitions, completely reshaping the lineup around Carlos Gonzalez and all-star cleanup hitter Troy Tulowitzki.
If you heard a loud thumping noise a few minutes ago, that wasn’t your imagination. It was me bashing my head against the desk as I was reading Dan Shaughnessy’s latest opus. Like all Shaughnessy articles, he channels his most emotional nerves to convince us that the Red Sox ownership (or whomever his target du jour might be) is wronging us. That their “cheap” ways are depriving us of a championship that we’re entitled to experiencing. Clearly, he does it for attention and notoriety, and perhaps we should all be immune to his shtick by now. For some reason, I can’t let go.
...Terry Francona, Theo Epstein, Jonathan Papelbon, and Heidi Watney are all gone, and we just learned that Carl Crawford had surgery on his wrist, which isn’t going to make things easier for his big bounce-back season.
I can live with all of the above – even if we won’t have J.D. Drew to kick around anymore – but I can’t stand talk about payroll limits and luxury tax obligations.
While Heidi Watney’s presence will be missed, I’m not sure how this will impact the team’s on field performance. If anything, I think the horny old baseball writers, like Shaughnessy, will be the ones missing her most of all.
Crawford’s wrist injury probably won’t make his bounce back season any easier, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be successful. The good news is that only the cartilege was torn in the wrist. Had he broken a bone, the outlook on his season would’ve been much less rosy. Recovery from such a procedure typically lasts 6-8 weeks, which would put him about 2-4 weeks behind in terms of Spring Training readiness. He seems to be a pretty quick healer, so he could be back even sooner. I don’t see any reason to panic until we’re given an actually reason to do so.
Thus narrowly avoiding the scheduled sessions in the Tub O’ Leeches for players wishing to treat an inflamed saltalamacchia by purging of harmful humors…
“There were areas of our players’ physical maintenance and care that we thought could improve from 2011,’’ general manager Ben Cherington said yesterday.
Some of the changes were made quickly, including the removal of Dr. Thomas Gill as medical director. Cherington also looked deeper in an effort to create what he termed “the best possible environment’’ for players.
The Red Sox created two new positions, hiring Mike Boyle as their strength and conditioning consultant and Dan Dyrek as a clinical consultant.
[...]
[Boyle] will be with the team at spring training and at home games while providing “mentorship’’ to new strength coach Pat Sandora and members of the minor league conditioning staff.
Rick Jameyson, who was with the Indians for 20 seasons, was hired as the head athletic trainer. Brad Pearson was promoted from the minor league staff to be his assistant.
