October 6, 2008
Preorder the 2009 Annual The 2009 Hardball Times Annual, to be shipped in early November, is ready for preorder. This year's Annual will, once again, be the best yet. We're beefing up our articles to include 40 prominent writers, such as Craig Wright, Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, Don Malcolm, Tangotiger, MGL, and many others. Please support THT and order it directly from ACTA today. 
Rich Barbieri John Barten Sal Baxamusa John Beamer Brian Borawski John Brattain Craig Brown Matthew Carruth Derek Carty Alex Eisenberg Mike Fast David Gassko
Brandon Isleib
Chris Jaffe Josh Kalk Chris Neault Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! John Walsh Geoff Young And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
THT's ToolboxStubHub is where fans buy and sell Yankees Tickets, Red Sox Tickets, White Sox Tickets, Mets Tickets and all other baseball tickets. If you are looking for World Series Tickets, ALCS Tickets or NLCS Tickets, you can find them at StubHub! More hot selling tickets include: Cubs Tickets, Astros Tickets, Dodgers Tickets, Angels Tickets and Detroit Tigers Tickets. Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. 
All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a
Creative Commons
License.
|
News, Notes and Quotes (March 22, 2004)by Aaron GleemanMarch 22, 2004 "Enjoy my jacket, which you stole from me" I know I'm probably one of the last people in the country who can say this, and I feel sort of ashamed of myself, but I saw Lost in Translation for the first time this weekend. It's obviously a phenomenal movie. Magnificently unique and compelling, with two of the best acting performances I've ever seen. It is simply more evidence of Bill Murray's genius (as if we needed more) and I think I'm in love with Scarlett Johansson. I was so infatuated with her after watching the movie that I went over to IMDB.com to After spending about 20 years of my life figuring that I was much too young for all these actresses I frequently fall in love with, I was sort of depressed to find out that Ms. Johansson is nearly two years younger than I am. Somewhere along the line I skipped the "we are just the right age for each other" period and went from "I'm too young for her" to "she's younger than me" without even knowing it. It's sad really, because I'm sure if we didn't have the whole age gap between us, I'd have a real shot. Rey-Rey Quits-Quits Khalil Greene (my #32 prospect) and Rey Ordonez had been competing for San Diego's starting shortstop job this spring. It was one of those things that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I had sort of assumed that Ordonez was just along for the ride as a way to motivate Greene heading into his rookie season. Well, apparently Ordonez started thinking along those same lines, because he up and left the team over the weekend. Here's a fun quote from San Diego GM Kevin Towers: "What I more or less got from his agent is that this is the first time in his career that he had to battle for a job, and I think he looked at his competition and he thought [Greene] was playing very well." Couple things... First, that's one hell of an attitude Ordonez has. "Man, they're actually making me work for this job and this rookie is actually kind of good. I'm outta here!" Second, and perhaps most disturbingly, this is the first time in Rey Ordonez's career that he's had to battle for a job?! I'm not disagreeing with that statement, but how sad is that? In 3,340 career plate appearances, spread over eight seasons, Rey Ordonez has the following numbers: AVG OBP SLG OPS GPA OPS+ .248 .291 .311 .602 .209 61That is beyond awful. And I don't want to hear any comparisons to Ozzie Smith because of Ordonez's defense. For one thing, Ozzie Smith is perhaps the greatest defensive player in the history of baseball and Rey Ordonez's defense, while good, has been vastly overrated. For another thing, Ozzie Smith looks like Babe Ruth compared to Rey Ordonez. Well, okay, not quite Babe Ruth. Ozzie's career OPS+ is 87, which is nearly 30% higher than Ordonez's OPS+ of 61. To put that difference into some context, if you add 30% to Ozzie's career OPS+ you get 113, which is right around where guys like Cal Ripken Jr., Greg Vaughn, Tino Martinez and Matt Williams are at. Ordonez has played 950 games in his major league career. According to Lee Sinins' Runs Created Above Average (RCAA), among players with fewer than 1,000 career games since 1900, only two have been worse offensively than Rey Ordonez. RCAA Bill Bergen -312 Neifi Perez -279 Rey Ordonez -199I've thought about this long and hard and I think there is but one solution to this problem. Rey Ordonez must sign with the San Francisco Giants and he and Neifi Perez must have a battle to the death (of San Francisco's offense). They could dig up Bill Bergen if they want to make it a three-way fight, although I heard he's learned some plate discipline in the afterworld. Rick Helling broke his leg! I mean [sad voice], Rick Helling broke his leg... Rick Helling took a Shawn Wooten line drive off the leg on Saturday and an X-ray revealed that he had a fractured right fibula. The Twins have said he is likely out at least a month. For those of you unfamiliar with me, I am a Minnesota Twins fan. Because of that, Rick Helling fracturing his leg is actually somewhat important news to me. Helling was slated to be Minnesota's #5 starter this season, a job I have opined would be much better filled by a younger, less horrible option. In fact, just the other day, I said the following on my blog about someone like Grant Balfour deserving a chance ahead of Helling: Helling has proven he is mediocre (5.17 ERA last year, 4.77 ERA career), whereas Balfour has been great in the minors and may actually be good if you give him a chance. Well, now Balfour (or perhaps Brad Thomas or Sean Douglass) gets that opportunity. I am going to make a pledge right now: If Ron Gardenhire gives Grant Balfour the #5 spot in the rotation, I promise not to complain when Jose Offerman steals Lew Ford's bench spot. That seems like a fair deal, right? Minnesota GM Terry Ryan seems to be saying that at least the Twins won't go shopping for another "veteran" like Helling: "This is an opportunity for someone inside to take this. I'd like to think some of these guys will step forward, take the opportunity and do something with it. We always have a preference to fill from inside." And Balfour certainly seems up for the challenge: "If I get the chance, I'll take the opportunity for sure. I'd definitely like to do it." Oh, for those of you wondering, here's what Balfour did at Triple-A last year: IP ERA SO BB HR OAVG 71.0 2.41 87 16 6 .188I'm not saying anyone breaking their leg is a positive thing, but... Aaron Gleeman is a freelance writer whose work can also be found regularly at AaronGleeman.com, Fox Sports, Rotoworld, and Insider Baseball. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions via e-mail. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one?>> <<Previous Article: Fantasy Rankings: Starting Pitcher (Part One) |
