Thought I’d give a simple points league a try and what do you know? ESPN has a free and easy setup thing.

Group: Always Room for More
Password: leskanic

http://games.espn.go.com/bbc/group?groupID=4220

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Marvin Miller’s never getting in

Two former managers, one former commissioner and two pioneer owners were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by separate Veterans Committees on Monday.

But to the surprise of many, Marvin Miller, the first major executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, was once again rejected and this time didn’t even come close. Like all Hall elections, a candidate needed 75 percent of the vote to be selected.

For those that don’t know, Miller is one of the most influential forces in baseball history. He was the head of the players’ union for many years and is largely responsible for the advent of free agency… otherwise known as just compensation to the people with the talent instead of the wallets. Go labor!

That he only got 63% of the votes from the old Veterans committee (filled with players) is an embarrassment. That he only got 3 of 12 votes from the new committee is a disgrace.

That the owners representative who was aligned against Miller during Miller’s tenure received 10 of 12 votes tells you all you need to know about the makeup of MLB’s executive veterans committee.

Baseball was, and remains, a fantastic sport with absolute shyte for ownership and management. That it has any fans at all these days is a minor miracle.

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Seriously awesome

Royals To Get A Taste Of Angels’ Colon

This is right up there with my [team] hits Bong Hard headline o’ my deams (Bong was a pitcher with the Braves a couple years back)

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From today’s game-weather report for the KC@MIN contest:

59°F - Mostly cloudy. Refreshingly cool. Wind: 9mph/NE

Now, first, I love that it’s “refreshingly cool.” It’s like a mint patty of a baseball game.

But the even better part is the 9mph wind… inside the Metrodome. Did Gigantaur attack and no one tell us?

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Mariners to get Jose Vidro in exchange for Snelling, Fruto

The Seattle Mariners would acquire second baseman Jose Vidro in a tentative trade that would send outfielder Chris Snelling and pitcher Emiliano Fruto to the Washington Nationals.

Vidro, an immobile, injury-prone, washed up 2B (when you have a young, promising 2B already in the system, so the Vidro-2B will have to DH) who is owed $12M for an injury prone, highly talented OF and a med-high ceiling pitcher? FSM, Bavasi, that’s just embarassingly bad. Horrible. Beyond the pale.

In sum:
Nats got younger, cheaper, and better
M’s got older, more expensive, and worse

I’m glad I’m not a fan of the Mariners or I’d have to go set something on fire right about now.

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With Ramirez, Batista, Washburn, and probably Thomson in the fold… the Seattle Mariners could set the record for fewest K’s in one year in the modern era in 2007.

So at least they’ve got that going for them.

p.s. you stink, Bavasi!
p.p.s. the alternate reference was to K’s being fascist.

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Well, the BoSox are paying $51.1M to talk to the best free agent pitcher available this offseason. Is he worth the 80-90 million he’s going to cost? Quite possibly. When you add together that his translated stats are better than Clemens’ over the past 3 years and the increase in money from Japanese marketing and that he’s only 26 and can still improve… I could see the deal working out. It’s possible that he tanks or gets hurt, of course, but I think from a business standpoint, he’s at least a break even proposition (and that’s not even getting to the marginal monetary value of the wins that he brings to the table).

A Matsuzaka-Schilling-Beckett front three would be pretty impressive (if flyball heavy), especially for a team that has poor OF defense. We don’t know who the Sox are going to put in the corners, but let’s assume Manny and a slugger leaving mediocre+ Crisp in center. That’s… somewhat troublesome, but not overly so for such a K-heavy top three.

Anyway, who cares about that. Let’s see how he pitches!

Slider:

The infamous gyroball:

If you’re in a fantasy league next year, I recommend trash talking and comparing him to Irabu. Then picking him up on the cheap.

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Another trouncing of all opposition…
Inertia Boys:

Scared Hitless:

In the money in every league but one (other finishes were two 2nds, a third, and a fifth). The big two are above, though (Inertia Boys are 3-years running champs now, Scared Hitless 2-years). Logs after the jump. ExCITing.

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In what universe is it acceptable to punish someone for not intentionally assaulting another player?

White Sox rookie pitcher Sean Tracey got into hot water with his manager Ozzie Guillen — for getting an out.

Tracey was summoned to start the seventh inning and got Hank Blalock to ground out, but getting an out might not have been the reason Tracey was brought into the game. White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski was hit by two pitches in the game and a source told the Chicago Sun-Times that Tracey was told to hit Blalock as retaliation. Tracey threw two inside pitches to Blalock before getting him to ground out.

If Guillen sent Tracey up there to plunk Blalock, Guillen should be suspended and fined. Ordering another person to assault another is generally considered criminal, not laudable. Only in the hyper-macho pro sports world is this acceptable, and it’s a damn shame.

In other news, the World Cup rocks.

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MLB suspends Grimsley

Major League Baseball has suspended Jason Grimsley for 50 games under the auspices of its joint drug program, making the former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher the first Major Leaguer to be so punished without failing a drug test. Grimsley is also the first big leaguer to be suspended under the new rules this season.

This decision by MLB is so wrongheaded, it’s astounding. Look, just because a guy said he did something does not mean you can suspend him. No positive test == NO SUSPENSION.

Now the league is going to have a labor dispute over a guy who retired and without any objective evidence that he did anything in violation of any of the league rules. All for some false appearance of “enforcement.”

Here’s how you know this move is ridiculous: using the same reasoning, Barry Bonds should also be suspended. He said he used the Clear! Off with his head!

Another way: how is HGH detrimental to the game, but cortisone shots to enable an injured player to stay on the field OK? With both you get players who shouldn’t be on the field on the field (theoretically in HGH’s case). How is HGH any worse for the body than repeated cortisone injections?

Update: Yet another way to know that your move is both retarded and transparent… the dudes at Baseball Tonight at ESPN can point out the sheer hypocrisy of the move in the first 10 seconds of the segment on the news.

Nice move, Bud.

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Because to cancel mlb.tv, their online-only streaming video package, you have to call their support line. While you’re on hold, they play classical music, but with a constant tinnitus-like ringing as you wait. I’m sure it’s intentional.

mlb.tv is OK, but the video quality is the same as 3 years ago when it first began. There are still too many buffering errors and the archives don’t work all that well. It’s ok, but since I have TV now, mlb.tv had to go.

Great sport, horrible ownership. They’re making boatloads of money on mlb.tv, which makes the owners happy, but it’s really not that great a service. It’s just the only one in town.

Update: 30 minutes of hold time for 30 seconds of talk

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Back before Xmas, a brief mention on the TODAY show, turned me on to a little piece of technology called The Slingbox. The little blurb that I caught at the time mentioned that you could watch your home television on your computer no matter where you were in the world. Since I rather frequently find myself stuck in hotel rooms, many miles from home, and would prefer to watch the local news back home, rather than the local news in the city I’m visiting, this sounded like a cool little gadget to have. My wife was so impressed with it, I had to purchase a second unit since only one person can sign on at a time, and she figured out that she could watch the Food Network on her laptop while she was cooking. I could never sign on to the one I got for the holidays (take that o’reilly) because it was always in use.

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Because I do. Corrupt robber barons who don’t give a shit about anything other than their pocketbook. The worst group of ownership any entertainment outside of the Romans has ever been saddled with. They’re just abysmal.

Now, they want to keep Sling and Orb and the like from placeshifting their broadcasts.

At the heart of the issue is that Sling Media, Orb Networks and similar companies cut out cable and satellite operators who pay great sums for transmission rights in their areas, according to Kliavkoff. Baseball sells transmission rights to specific geographical locations. So, a cable subscriber in San Francisco who watches a Giants baseball game from his or her laptop during a visit to Chicago is stealing from the Chicago cable operator who paid to transmit MLB games in that city.

But we’re not talking Napster here, argues Buchanan. The cable subscriber in such a scenario already purchased the content from a programmer back home and under the law can watch it wherever he or she chooses, he said.

“Your interpretation of the (cable and satellite user agreement) is wrong,” Kliavkoff told Buchanan as the two spoke before some 200 conference attendees. Sling Media users “are violating the scope of their user agreements.”

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And by “execs,” I mean Howard Lincoln.

The #1 (by a mile) baseball talent available in this year’s draft was Andrew Miller. Due to his contract demands (which would probably end up being $6M), he fell from the #1 pick to where the Mariners choose at #5. They passed on him and the Tigers snatched him up at #6.

This is, to put it kindly, fucking moronic. When you’ve got a shot at an ARod or an Upton or a Griffey… you take it.

Passing Miller by because of over slot money demands is the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. Just absolutely embarassingly incompetent. I hate this management and I’m coming to hate the team because of their incompetent executives.

So welcome to the land of the Royals, Pirates, Devil Rays, and Rockies, Mariner fans. That’s the level of your executives. Those are the other teams that passed on Miller. Nice company to be in, isn’t it?

The M’s have more money than Croesus and they refuse to part with only a bit more than they’re paying Jurassic Carl for the best pitching talent since Prior. Gobsmackingly, jawdroppingly stupid. That they took a rather raw hard thrower (but he’s big, and they like big bodies) when there were better pitchers available is just more salt in the wound.

Meanwhile, the Tigers now have Bonderman, Verlander, Zumaya, and Miller. Damn, that’s a good young staff, under control until about 2010.

Meanwhile, the Mariners have this obsession with big bodied pitchers, so their first 5 picks were all 6′2 - 6′7 pitchers. “Projectable bodies” … they can’t throw, but they sure do look good in a uniform.

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Scout who signed Pujols looks back, now stocks shelves at Wal-Mart

Dave Karaff misses the nomadic life of a baseball scout. Instead of sitting behind home plate at dusty ball fields across the Midwest, aiming his stopwatch and speed gun at hot prospects, Karaff spends his days stocking the grocery shelves at a Wal-Mart in Hot Springs Village, Ark.

The St. Louis Cardinals may have dismissed him as an area scout three years ago, but Karaff will forever be linked with one nugget of baseball history.

He’s the scout who signed Albert Pujols.

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