Grumpasaurus.com

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.

Baseball

Mariners GM Bill Bavasi confirmed Wednesday that the team won’t be a part of the bidding war for Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.

You’re going to skip the best free agent pitcher on the market in order to pursue an obviously decline-phase Schmidt and a never-was mediocrity in Eaton?

OK, then.

Update: it’s official.

Idiots. The M’s need an ace, it’s their biggest glaring weakness. The best FA pitcher on the market is Matsuzaka. ergo… let’s go for Eaton!

Baseball

Say you’re the best team, by far, in the NL all season long.

How then, do you get to the point, where your year is going to be determined by one start from Ollie Perez?

That’s got to sting a bit.

Baseball

Sorry, Brad

Yeah, I know. It’s like they’ve learned nothing from the past six years. Rooting for the Democrats is like being a pre-2004 Red Sox fan. But wait, there’s some hope.

Sadly, No! Rooting for the Democrats is like being a Chicago Cubs fan, with trend lines towards Kansas City Royals.

Baseball

John Patterson, the talented but increasingly “rarely healthy”-labelled starting pitcher for the Nationals is likely done for the season. How does he feel about it? Let’s listen to John…

“This is not career-ending,” Patterson said. “Is it disappointing? Yeah. Does it mess up my season? Yeah. Did I have better hopes for this season? Absolutely. So did everybody. It just didn’t happen this year.

Maybe living in proximity to the Pentagon does this to people? I’ll bet you he knows exactly where his UCL is, it’s in the area of his elbow and east, west, south, and north somewhat.

Baseball

The Mick.

In June 2006 we began receiving purported reproductions of a correspondence between a New York Yankees club official and former Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle. It consisted of a form letter (linked above) sent by the Yankees to a number of former players in
1972, requesting that each recipient — in anticipation of a 1973 oldtimers game that would mark the 50th anniversary of Yankee Stadium — indicate what he considered his “outstanding event” at that ballpark…

Here’s the letter. You really have to read it to fully appreciate it’s awesomeness.

And, no, I don’t care if it’s later determined to be apocryphal.[fn1] Also, I’m totally stealing his closing line when someone asks me a question to which I don’t know the answer.

[fn1] I think it’s apocryphal. The size of the story is too perfect and too perfectly sized, with too zinger-y of a punchline to be real. Still, good joke. If they’d have said Earl Weaver, I would have believed them.

Awesome, Baseball, Sex

Brett Myers will take a leave of absence from the Phillies through the All-Star break to focus on personal matters following his arrest on assault charges against his wife.

On top of injuries to Sheffield, Crisp, Sheets, Gagne, Encarnacion, Edmonds, and did I mention Sheffield?… you get a wifebeater who needs a leave of absence? YARG!

Baseball