"At Dodger Stadium, it's beginning to look a lot like Boston."

Lowe, Little, Mueller...and now Nomar. Frank McCourt must really miss Beantown. (They should go ahead and sign Damon just to get it over with.) Nomar's new (one-year) contract is reportedly about $6. So far then, his decision to turn down the Sox's offer of 4 years, $64M has cost him $18M...in just the first two years. Yikes.

World Baseball Classic

I am bvery excited about the WBC, but I do think it is silly to call it the World Baseball Classic. Doesn't classic portray that it is a tradition and has been happening for years?

KC

"Mientkiewicz, Grudzielanek join Royals."

The uniform guys in the Royals clubhouse must be thrilled.

Snap, Crackle, Pop

Reported on Boston.com today, "The Sox continue to work on contingency plans, with the team source indicating talks with the Mariners for center fielder Jeremy Reed have intensified. The Sox have proposed trading Matt Clement for Reed; the Mariners have asked for Bronson Arroyo. The Sox have also talked with the Cleveland Indians about switch-hitting outfielder Coco Crisp; the Indians also would like Arroyo."

Earl, please contain your enthusiasm regarding the possibility of screaming "I love Coco Pufss" from the bleachers next year.

Prospects

The prior post on how good Francona had been, brought up some interesting dialogue toward the end. Particularly relative to what is a prospect. Andrew brought up the phrase - "There's No Such Thing As A pitching Prospect, "which now that it is in the mainstream is getting a bit tired, but I always though it was pretty accurate. But is it really limited to pitchers?

Go back 10 years to the first round of the draft. Darrin Estad was picked first overall. Todd Helton was 8th. That year also had Kerry Wood, Roy Halladay, Matt Morris and Mark Redman. There were 10 guys that never made the bigs and the rest of the ones that did were middling at best. of the 13 pitchers that were selected, 9 eventually made the bigs as opposed to 9 of 15 for the position players. Close. But does not give much credence to pitchers being more risky. I checked some other years for the first round of the draft and really didn't see 1995 as an aberation. So, I thought - "is the first round of the draft really the right sample." Probably not since a large population of players, notably the DR, are not subject to the draft and sometimes players get picked in like the 62nd round and become potential HOFers (Mike Piazza).

So I dug up my Baseball America from 2000 to look at the top prospects from 5 years ago.

the top 20:
1. Rick Ankiel, lhp, Cardinals
2. Pat Burrell, 1b/of, Phillies
3. Corey Patterson, of, Cubs
4. Vernon Wells, of, Blue Jays
5. Nick Johnson, 1b, Yankees
6. Ruben Mateo, of, Rangers
7. Sean Burroughs, 3b, Padres
8. Rafael Furcal, ss, Braves
9. Ryan Anderson, lhp, Mariners
10. John Patterson, rhp, Diamondbacks
11. Dee Brown, of, Royals
12. Mark Mulder, lhp, Athletics
13. Josh Hamilton, of, Devil Rays
14. Kip Wells, rhp, White Sox
15. Matt Riley, lhp, Orioles
16. Alfonso Soriano, ss, Yankees
17. Chin-Feng Chen, of, Dodgers
18. Michael Cuddyer, 3b, Twins
19. Josh Beckett, rhp, Marlins
20. A.J. Burnett, rhp, Marlins

Now I don't have time to do very, very thorough analysis here (like win shares or VORP or even all star appearances) but I will say of the 8 pitchers on the list there are 3 that were stars, 2 that were good (with Patterson maybe moving up), 2 busts and one that I'm not sure where to classify (Ankiel). For the position players - I would say (and this can be debated) 3 stars, 4 good players (of which some may move up), 3 low level and 2 busts. Again not seeing strong evidence that pitchers are more of a risk.

I have about 8 other years of BA at my house and in going through the lists, it really is the same equal distribution. For every Rick Ankeil at the top, there is a Josh Hamilton. and I know injury can more likely blow out a pitchers career (Ryan Anderson aka the little unit), but other guys that have been number one in the past include JD Drew and Joe Mauer both of who are injury prone.

Overall I do agree position players project a bit better, but not so much so to the point that the old quote is irrefutable.

Local boy does good

In New York, but whatever.

Dodger blues

Well, another one is moving out here to SoCal. Weird. I just can't get excited about the Dodgers, as close as the stadium is to me and as nice is it to go to their games. And this season could be a particularly bad one. But at least Bill Mueller will be there. (On the other hand, watching Grady Little walk to the mound is sure to give me nightmares for weeks.)

Its that time again

Book Review.

Well it seems like a very long time since I have been able to post a book review. And its not that I have taken a vacation in reading, its just that I don't think most of you would have an interest in this. Or this. Or this. In case it had been missed, that is right. I am a daddy. Thanksgiving morning, Little Kate made her grand enterance to the world.


So, this months entry is Stud. No, its not the story of Kate's creation. Or even the story of Shawn Kemp. Its about horse breeding.

-see comments

Terry Francona, the player

Terry Francona's player page.

Decided to take a look and see what type of player the Sox feerless leader was. Turns out his professional (major league) career was rather uneventful. Although Francona was the winner of the Golden Spikes award at U of A (the BB equivalent of the Heisman).

But two unique things jumped out at me. I guess I can turn this into a trivia question...

One is obvious, the other, not so.

Hothead

So the Sox offered the Orioles Manny for Tejada. The Orioles will ask for a lot more, namely a young pitcher, and I hope the Sox don't give in to that. As nice as it would be to have a hitter like him (and he's no Manny, but the price difference reflects that), I just can't get excited about anything more than a straight up trade, which won't happen.

And quite frankly, I just don't like Tejada. My main impressions of him of course comes from his complaints about Derek Lowe's "obscene" gesture, after Game 5 of the 2003 ALDS. "He's going to pay for that sign he made. I'm a man. I'm a professional. I have my kid up in the stands, dammit. He's going to pay for that." Not only was that an open threat to another player, it also came after 5 games of live TV picking up his screams of "motherFUCKER!" after every one of his crappy at-bats. (And there were a lot of those: he was 2-for-19, with no walks, for a postseason OPS of .217.) And now he's announced that with the O's, "things haven't gone in the direction that we were expecting". I really wish someone would ask him what exactly he was expecting. He forgoed even taking offers from smaller market teams like the A's, and signed with one that everyone knows is run by a miser, who cares only about profits and not about fielding a good team. I really hate it when players sign for the best-paying contract they can find, with no regard for what team they're actually signing with, and then suddenly feel that somehow they have the standing to comment on their teams' "desire to win."

Okay, enough ranting.