Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Three Cheers for IIATMS!


Jason, hitting the bigtime:

It's About The Money, Stupid has been selected by Rob Neyer and ESPN to be a charter member of what will be a new blog network on ESPN.com known as ESPN.com's SweetSpot Blog Network! IIATMS has the distinct honor of being the sole blog representing the New York Yankees in this network throughout the 2009 Playoffs, and hopefully into 2010 and beyond.

There are still some technical things to be worked out as far as look and feel (I think he's going to be available via a pulldown menu at ESPN, but he'll correct me if I'm wrong). The network is set to officially launch on Monday, October 5th.

Congrats, Jason!
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:32am

My Morning in Exile


I don't know what to think about Chicago not getting the Olympics. Is it that Chicagoans don't bribe people anymore or that they're simply not good at it anymore? And to be honest, I'm not sure which of those two things would make me more sad:

  • Hatin': you're doing it wrong.


  • Somebody wake up Cito Gaston and tell him that he's lost the confidence of his team. Wait, forget it. He looks so peaceful like that.


  • When people ask me why I don't believe in God, I tell them "because if there was a God, he wouldn't ensure lifetime employment to Brian Sabean while really good GMs like Kevin Towers are left to dangle."


  • I tend not to put a lot of faith in "OMG, baseball is teh broken!" arguments, but when the Nats are among the most profitable teams going, some things should probably be changed.


  • The Mets aren't hitting a lot of home runs at home, so someone has the idea to move the plate forward ten feet. They're not hitting a lot of home runs on the road either, so whaddaya gonna do about that?

  • If you read only one article that contains the phrase "spraying tiny pieces of frozen head around the room" today, make sure it's this one!


    • If the experts are right, the U.S. TV rights for the 2016 games just got cheaper, which means NBC will have more money on hand than it had planned to have. If you'll excuse me, I have to go ask someone for a raise.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:20pm

    Shawn Chacon: a gambler on the lam!


    Ed Wade chuckles:

    Authorities now have an arrest warrant for former major league pitcher Shawn Chacon as a result of his alleged failure to pay Caesars Palace $150,000 in gambling markers.

    The 31-year-old Chacon — a onetime All-Star whose up-and-down career as a big league pitcher ended abruptly last year following a physical confrontation with the general manager of the Houston Astros — is facing a felony charge of passing three bad $50,000 checks in March, according to a copy of a criminal complaint obtained by the Sun . . . Gary Thompson, a spokesman for Harrah’s Entertainment, which owns Caesars Palace, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

    Pending litigation? Jesus, first Chicago can't bribe anyone anymore, and now Vegas casinos are litigating this kind of business instead of breaking legs in private like God and Meyer Lansky intended. The whole damn world is going to hell in a handbasket if you ask me.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:10pm

    Dick Pole gets the shaft


    Really, he did. The Reds pitching staff wasn't that bad.

    (hat tip to Mrs. Shyster for the headline. Seriously)
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 8:49pm

    Saturday, October 03, 2009

    Who will be Towers’ successor?


    I don't necessarily agree with the Kevin Towers firing -- I think he's always been a good GM -- but you never know what happens behind the scenes. Maybe it was someone else who was the driver behind the Jake Peavy trade and other good deals, and thus Towers shouldn't get the credit. Maybe he and Moorad simply don't get along. Whatever the case, I would be shocked if someone doesn't give Towers a job sometime soon. Of course, he's owed $2 million for 2010, so he can take his time and wait for the right opportunity. In the meantime, it seems like the Padres could make a really really good decision or a really really bad decision with his replacement:

    Early speculation on a successor centered around Paul DePodesta, the former Dodgers GM who has been with the Padres since July 2006. He is in the first year of a three-year contract believed to be worth $800,000 per season.

    Another possible candidate is Randy Smith, a former GM with the Padres and Detroit Tigers who is the Padres' director of international scouting.

    If they go with DePodesta, they've made a wise move. If they go with Smith, Padres fans have permission to defect to the Angels.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 9:35am

    Ricciardi gets fired


    Not a surprise. Even if he had made the Jays more competitive with the Sox and Yankees, his utter inability to communicate with people, including the press and his underlings should have doomed him. When J.P. started, he had a good team of people around him, including our buddy Keith Law. Slowly but surely he began to alienate and drive away people like Law and others within the organization. In the past few years he has routinely thrown Jays' players and personnel under the bus as the team came crashing down around him.

    People will cite the Yankees and Red Sox as the Jays' biggest hurdle, but the fact of the matter is that the Jays are worse off in 2009 on their own terms than they were in 2001 when Ricciardi was hired.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:27am

    Sunday, October 04, 2009

    Great Moments in awful opening sentences


    Wow. Bill Plaschke gets paid for writing sentences like this:

    Sick of staring at it, the Dodgers became it, pouring themselves across Chavez Ravine on Saturday night like the champagne that has haunted them. Clayton Kershaw popped. Casey Blake bubbled. Mark Loretta sprayed. An entire dugout of bouncing blue poured into the cool night awash in intoxicating relief.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:10am

    Dick Pole: Going Deeper


    In my rush to make an immature joke the other night in the wake of Dick Pole's firing, I neglected to think hard about the possible reasons for his dismissal despite a more or less decent Reds' pitching staff. Viva El Birdos is speculating a bit, however:

    Isn't it curious that the Reds fired pitching coach Dick Pole one day after the pine tar fiasco involving Bronson Arroyo? They chose now, w/ three games left in the season, to fire him? Interesting.

    So, was Dick Pole involved in the ball-rubbing scandal? We'll probably never know unless someone offers up a tip.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 9:12am

    Monday, October 05, 2009

    And That Happened: 2009 Finale edition


    Tigers 5, White Sox 3; Twins 13, Royals 4: 162 games and nothing is decided. Before Saturday night the Twins hadn't smelled first place since May. They were seven games out in early September. Now it all comes down to Tuesday. I love me these 163-game seasons we've been having the past couple of years, but then again, it hasn't been my team in the nerve racking playoff game. Moment of shallowness: does the fact that Jason Kubel and Delmon Young came up bigger than Mauer did over the weekend somehow cost Joe MVP votes? Obviously that shouldn't be the case -- and really, the stathead paranoia that Mauer won't win the MVP is getting pretty tired by now -- but if I let my imagination run wild, I can feature someone thinking "you know, in the end, Mauer needed help!"

    Yankees 10, Rays 2: The fact that Alex Rodriguez's 2 HR, 7 RBI inning put him exactly on 30 homers and exactly on 100 RBI will cause someone somewhere to count it against him as some personal stats-inspired performance. Really, unless he bats .500/.750/1.750 in the playoffs, there will be a hatchet job article about me-first A-Rod referencing this game before spring training starts.

    Dodgers 5, Rockies 3: Vicente Padilla shuts down a skeleton-crew Rockies lineup in a meaningless game. And as per his tradition in meaningless season finales, Joe Torre let the players take over. He chose Brad Ausmus as manager, named Mark Loretta bench coach, Jim Thome was the hitting coach and Jeff Weaver was the bullpen coach. I suppose he could have given those responsibilities to more boring guys if he tried, but the Dodgers probably would have had to make some roster moves first. I know P.R. considerations wouldn't let him name Manny manager for a day, but a boy can dream, can't he? Ausmus on his future as a manager: "There are times when I think I'd like to do it, and there's times when I think I'd like to walk away from a baseball stadium and never come back. But those are usually the days when I'm 0 for 4 with three strikeouts." So what he's saying is that the days he wants to walk away and never come back far outnumber the "I want to be a manager" days.

    Mariners 4, Rangers 3: Griffey singled in his last at bat, cried a bit, tipped his cap and was carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders to wild ovations from the Seattle crowd. I don't believe in fate or magic or most other metaphysical baloney, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the universe was telling you something, Junior. There's no way you'll ever have a better way to go out and you have absolutely zero to prove. So, unless the idea of retirement is positively poison to you, call a press conference, fly back to Seattle next opening day for the number retirement, and take your well-earned place in Valhalla.

    And yes, that advice for Griffey is 100% calculated to make life easier for me to deal with the end of his career. He probably does not -- and probably should not -- give a crap.

    Giants 4, Padres 3: Not that anyone listens to me when it comes to end-of-career advice anyway. The other day I thought that the Unit should take the weekend off, having his career end at his home park with a high five, a victory, and the cheer of hometown fans. Instead he pitches an inning on the road, blows a lead and has his bacon saved by Jeremy Affeldt, Brian Wilson and Pablo Sandoval. Oh well, everything ends badly, or else it would never end.

    Angels 5, Athletics 3: Has a team ever bounced back from as horrible an April as the Angels? We can't know because the reasons for the horribleness are partially unquantifiable, but hats off to Anaheim for a great season regardless. I have no rooting interests in this year's playoffs, and when that happens I tend to adopt a team. The Yankees and Red Sox are never going to be that team because they don't need me and I don't much like them. I have some historical issues with the Twins, and even if I didn't, if they pull it out on Tuesday, their bandwagon is going to be pretty full. The Tigers are an old flame, but I can't see myself getting involved with someone who doesn't have their stuff together. The Phillies are my team's division rival, and I can't bring myself to root for them at any time before the World Series, and maybe not at all. The Cardinals and Dodgers made that list of teams to whom I could conceivably sell my allegiance and I am an NL guy at heart, but the Angels are at least shaping up to be the team I'd like to see come out of the AL.

    Diamondbacks 5, Cubs 2: The regular season ends for Chicago. And the what-in-tarnation-are-we-going-to-do-about-Milton Bradley season begins.

    Brewers 9, Cardinals 7: The stumble-to-the-finish-line Cardinals are set to face the stumble-to-the-finish-line Dodgers. It's been nearly 20 years since I took a physics class, so someone is going to have to tell me what it is that happens when an eminently resistible force meets a totally movable object.

    Phillies 7, Marlins 6: I'm not going to say that Philadelphia was thinking more about Colorado than Florida in this game, but they used eight pitchers and thirteen position players, none of whom were named Howard, Rollins or Utley. For what it's worth, Hanley Ramirez wins the batting title, though that was decided a while ago.

    Red Sox 12, Indians 7: Clay Buchholz gives up 13 runs in eight innings over his last two starts. In light of that, if you're the Angels, you gotta be thinking "split at home, and we're sitting pretty." Game story: "Jason Bay did not make an error this season, becoming the fourth qualifying Red Sox outfielder with a 1.000 fielding percentage." If Jason Bay finishing with a 1.000 fielding percentage does not make every last person finally reject fielding percentage as a legitimate measure of defensive prowess, nothing will.

    Nationals 2, Braves 1: What an up and down year for the Braves. At least they enter an offseason with the good kinds of question marks (which of the six good starters we have will we keep? When will we call up our stud corner outfielder?) instead of the bad ones (is this the year Francoeur figures it out? Can anyone besides Chipper hit the ball?).

    Reds 6, Pirates 4: The Pirates got shut out 17 times this sason. But you probably didn't need me to tell you that it wasn't their year.

    Mets 4, Astros 0: Mercifully, 2009 ends for the Mets. Even more mercifully, no one threw their back out or pulled their hamstring while cleaning out their locker.

    Orioles 5, Blue Jays 4: For finishing the season with four straight wins and for avoiding 100 losses, the Orioles don't get a "Homicide" quote: "You better calm yourself down before I haul off and smack you upside your wide, wide head. We killed your husband. And I ain't your maid anymore b*tch. I'm your sister in crime!" I apologize if you haven't seen that movie. I apologize even more if you have.

    An so our revels now are ended. Oh, I'll recap game 163 between the Twins and Tigers, and I'll recap the playoff games too, but it's just not the same. The playoffs bring a bothersome importance to everything. The kid of importance that saps this unimportant little feature of all of its fun.

    Beginnings are nice. We get them every April. Endings are glorious. We'll have one in a few weeks. Personally, however, I prefer the middles. A full slate of near-meaningless late-July Wednesday night games. The day-in-day out of it all. Broadcasts without extreme closeups and storylines. People doing things both heroic and ignominious every night that are basically forgotten by noon the next day because, hell, there's another ballgame in a few hours. The playoffs are great in their own way, but nothing beats everyday baseball, and I am once again sad to see it go.

    Thanks for checking in every morning, folks. We'll have plenty to talk about all fall and winter, but really, it's all about counting down until we get that slate of near-meaningless 15 games again next April 5th for which we can once again say: And That Happened.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:02am

    My Morning in Exile


    Thanks for all of the kind words in the ATH thread, folks. It makes the three or four years I'll be losing at the end of my life due to chronic sleep-deprivation all worthwhile.

  • A preview of the Cardinals-Dodgers NLDS. This smells like conventional baseball writing. I don't do conventional baseball writing very well, so please, don't hesitate to correct my many mistakes.


  • Drunk, violent and 0 for 7 over the last two games of the White Sox series is no way to go through life, Miguel.


  • Kent Hrbek: "We've got to come back here on Tuesday and drink some more beer!'' Not you Miguel.


  • Ken Macha and Trevor Hoffman will be back in Milwaukee next year. That's probably the right thing to do on both counts.


  • Bobby Valentine is talking to the Marlins. It will be hilarious when Joe Girardi wins the 2009 World Series as Yankees manager and Fredi Gonzalez wins the 2010 and 2011 World Series as the Braves' bench coach and manager, respectively.


    • There is no baseball tonight. Do your best to interact with your family. But don't get too invested, because you'll have to bag out on those guys again starting tomorrow.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:01pm

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