Jose Guillen to get suspended for steroid, HGH purchases
Wow. From ESPN:
The Major League Baseball Players Association is negotiating with MLB officials on a possible 10- to 15-day suspension for outfielder Jose Guillen for his reported involvement in the purchase of steroids and human growth hormone, sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney on Wednesday.
If that’s right, you have to wonder how much that affected the Guillen extension talks this year – we know they were all but signed for some time, certainly until the Byrnes contract. Did it play a part in their decision to let Guillen walk?
BTW, I don’t know if this is true:
Seattle declined its $9 million option and Guillen turned down a $5 million player option, receiving a $500,000 buyout.
If I remember, the $9m option was mutual: both the team and Guillen would have had to accept it, and then if the team turned it down, Guillen had an option to extend for one year at $5m, and if he turned that down, he couldn’t get the buyout.
But when I try to look up the details, I’m just finding a lot of conflicting information.
The next Angel shoe to drop?
In the wake of the Cabrera trade, which I thought was kind of baffling, I noted with interest the continuing competition between the Dodgers and Angels to land Miguel Cabrera. From Ken Rosenthal:
The Dodgers stand a better chance of acquiring Cabrera from the Marlins, major-league sources say, if they are willing to part with outfielder Matt Kemp along with third baseman Andy LaRoche and minor-league left-hander Clayton Kershaw.
The teams are in disagreement on only “one piece,” according to a source, who declined to specify what that piece might be. The Marlins are further apart with the Angels, the source said.
The Angels, according to a rival executive, offered a strong package — right-hander Ervin Santana, second baseman Howie Kendrick, right-handed reliever Chris Bootcheck and another player, possibly Class AA right-hander Nick Adenhart. Another source, however, said the Angels did not offer that combination of names.
Oh, those zany sources.
Cabrera to Cabrera! Anyway, that’s a huge, huge haul if it breaks either way — obviously, if you’ve been around here, you’ve heard me rant about Matt Kemp, but wow.
I love this, too —
The Marlins first showed heavy interest in Kemp last spring, but at that time the Dodgers deemed him untouchable. However, the availability of Cabrera — combined with questions about Kemp’s attitude — could lead the Dodgers to alter their stance.
Questions about Kemp’s attitude, fueled about 50-50 from people in the Dodgers clubhouse stabbing him in the back and local media enablers, now mean that he’s going to get punted?
I would, if I were a GM (and I’m not, and should not be) inquire after guys like Kemp every time I could. Jeff Kent sticking knives in the rookie’s back? Allow me to remove the source of the contention… by which I mean the rook, of course.
Doyle reunited with… Pat Gillick? Really?
From the MLB transaction wire:
Acquired OF Chris Snelling from Tampa Bay in exchange for cash considerations.
I wonder if he’s just going to tell his agent “When it’s time to report for spring training, call me and tell me what flight I need to catch and what complex to show up at, because I have better things to do than follow my own transactions at this point.”
Monday reading: MGL on outfield defense
There’s some interesting tangents in there, particularly in the infield positions. Also, it’s cool to see that in working out the fair territory area, it does appear that Seattle (at ~109,000 sq ft) is not that large a field at all.
Assuming that Safeco’s marked fence dimensions are accurate, of course. I haven’t surveyed the field myself.
Congrats, Sox
Demonstrating how a well-built high-revenue team does it.
Game Seven woooo!
Oh man oh man oh man.
Wait, what? There’s no game again?
Despite having whined about it earlier, I totally thought there was a game tonight — I just could not get my head around this being another off day, despite understanding it was 2-3-2 and all. My fault.
Go Tribe
I’m excited for this. And check out that Cabrera guy. He sure came out of nowhere, huh? Beckett v Sabathia. I hope my power stays on tonight.
Oh, and Joe Torre’s available for your managerial needs as of today.
Cleveland v Boston
I know, I’m still bummed out the M’s didn’t squeeze into the playoffs, but as an AI once told me*
but there’s no use crying over every mistake
you just keep on trying ’till you run out of cake
That’s right! We’ll get a bunch of new players together and get ’em next year! No need to be down. In the meantime, there’s a fine game to enjoy. I mean, uhhh, tonight’s playoff game! The Indians/Red Sox series may be the best of the post-season, and I’m looking forward to watching Carmona face up against post season legend Curt Schilling tonight. Go team!
Organizational Rankings
As we talked about in the Seeds of Success post the other day, there are a lot of organizations that are moving forward with efficient, highly successful philosophies and are putting their teams in a great position to win a lot of the games in the future. Which teams are doing this better than others?
Here is my take. This is based on management personnel and organizational cohesion, not on field talent or recent success. Essentially, this is my opinion of which organizations have laid the strongest foundation between their ownership, baseball operations department, and coaching staffs to insert a winning DNA into their baseball teams. I included a grade with the numerical ranking because, in a lot of cases, there’s no real difference between a few spots on the list.
Rank Organization Grade 1 Cleveland A+ 2 Boston A 3 Tampa Bay A 4 Milwaukee B+ 5 Oakland B+ 6 NY Yankees B 7 Detroit B 8 San Diego B 9 Arizona B- 10 Atlanta B- 11 NY Mets B- 12 Anaheim C+ 13 Colorado C+ 14 Minnesota C+ 15 Florida C 16 Chi. Sox C 17 Washington C 18 Toronto C- 19 Chi. Cubs C- 20 Los Angeles C- 21 Texas C- 22 Pittsburgh D 23 Seattle D 24 Philadelphia D 25 Kansas City D 26 St. Louis D 27 San Francisco F 28 Cincinnati F 29 Houston F 30 Baltimore F
No surprise here – I’ve been calling the Indians the best run organization in baseball for about four years, and that hasn’t changed. Boston is perfecting the big market, high salaried bully approach in contrast to Tampa’s load-up-on-cheap-talent philosophy, but both are the correct direction for their organizations to go in, considering their relative financial positions. The Brewers are quietly putting the pieces together to dominate the NL Central for the next decade, Billy Beane keeps doing his thing in Oakland while waiting for a new stadium, and the Yankees have transformed themselves into an organization with foresight, planning, and rationalization to go with their $200 million payroll. Scary.
On the other side of the coin, there’s a couple organizations that are going head first off the cliff at full speed. The Baltimore Orioles have a meddlesome owner, a front office that lacks necessary power, outdated analytical techniques, and, oh yea, they play in the A.L. East. Barring a one season fluke where everything just breaks right, I’m not sure Baltimore makes the playoffs in the next 10-15 years. If you’re raising a child near the nation’s capital, make them a Nationals fan.
Houston’s not a whole lot better, honestly. Meddlesome owner? Check. Retread failure of a GM? Check. Completely ignoring the farm system? Double Check. The Astros spent a mind-boggling $600,000 in signing bonuses in the first 11 rounds of this summer’s draft – combined. Houston spent about as much on the draft as the Mariners did on Matt Mangini. With some aging, overrated players tied up to long term contracts and no help on the way from the farm system, Houston’s poised to be terrible for a long, long time.
The Mariners come in 23rd, buoyed by their strength in amateur scouting and ownership’s commitment to giving the front office a payroll advantage over most of baseball. The front office? Well, we’ve covered their flaws in detail. Under Bill Bavasi, the Mariners have done a good job of resurrecting what was a horrible farm system, but their major league transactions have been brutal, and there isn’t a winning organizational philosophy in place.
So, if you’re a fan of the Indians, Devil Rays, Red Sox, or Brewers, you should be pretty happy with your club. If you’re allegiances lie with Baltimore, Houston, San Francisco, or Cincinnati, well, you might want to find something else to do with your summers for the next ten years or so.