Cool New Site
New baseball blog out there from two talented guys: Richard Lederer (formerly of Rich’s Baseball Beat) and Bryan (with a Y) Smith have teamed up to create baseballanalysts.com. Bryan will continue his Wait ‘Til Next Year posts about up-and-coming players.
No word on whether Rich and Bryan put fists together to activate Wondertwin Powers. But already, they’ve produced a series of interest, polling prominent baseball writers and observers about their favorite players from childhood.
Ever wanted to hear folks from front offices, the blogosphere and the baseball media at large wax nostalgic? Then this three-parter is for you. Some big names responded to the survey, and there is an interesting mix of answers here — from Hall-of-Famers to also-rans, from Willie Mays to Damon Berryhill.
Give it a look. You won’t be disappointed.
Trackbacks shut down
There’s a cool feature of our comment system where links from other blogs showed up as comments. I nuked it tonight.
After our last batch of counter-measures, the spammers began attacking through that method. Essentially, they’d use one of the update services blogs depend on for this stuff to send out fake notifications that an article had been linked, and lo, their spam would appear with a short bit of text from the supposed post (randomly generated) and a link to the post which led to their site. Which would contain not an interesting article for readers but advertising for — quick, guess — that’s right, online poker, the bane of all blogs featuring comments and, if you’ve been following USSM since we cranked up commenting, particularly ours.
So trackbacks become another cool thing destroyed by assbags.
Mariners “make due”
I was going to let this go because I was sure it would be corrected at any time, but this has been grating on me all day. MLB.com has a story up about the M’s and the rain in spring training up, and it’s headlined. “Notes: Mariners make due in rain”
It’s “make do”. “Make due” makes no sense.
To quote my “Garner’s Modern American Usage” (an excellent book I highly recommend if you’re at all into this kind of stuff)
make do is distressingly often written make due, a blunder —
Someone at MLB put this headline up, used it as the text for a link, and no one in the process has noticed that it’s wrong and makes no sense? Arrgghhh.
Also in that story, Snelling’s MRI results are supposed to come out tomorrow.
Snelling nooooooooo
Well, King 5’s subscription site is reporting “Hargrove also said injury-prone outfield Chris Snelling will undergo an MRI exam on a sore knee.”
At this point, if I saw an article that said Snelling burst into flame sitting on the bench, suffering severe burns all over his body and was expected to be out 3-5 months, my first reaction would be “so it’s come to that” and not “spontaneous human combustion? I doubt that.”
Pokey gets owie
I know, I know, that’s terrible.
Pokey Reese sprained his ankle. “Slight sprain” is the word from the team. Reese has a long and storied injury history, and we knew this was part of the package. He’s supposed to be fine.
This week’s PI column
On the 1995 team and lessons from that year.
Also in the PI today — a long human-interest-type story on Yuniesky Betancourt, the Cuban player the M’s signed.
Position Roundtables: Starting Left Field
Dave: Starting Left Field: Randy Winn, Jeremy Reed, or Raul Ibanez
This is the first position where we don’t really have a clear cut
favorite for the position. Winn makes the most sense and goes along
with everything the M’s have said to date, but he’s also the most
likely to be traded. Continuing with the organizations historical
trend, left field is not a position of stability for the 2005
Mariners.
Read more
Sickels on the M’s
John Sickels posted his ranking of the M’s Top 20 prospects over at his new blog. It’s pretty similar to the Future Forty, with a few differences, but there’s also some pretty solid discussion about Felix and Madritsch in the comments below, so I figured I’d link to it for you guys. Enjoy.
Ahh, Snelling
Many people have asked us what happened to Chris Snelling this off-season. He went home for the first time in years to spend time with his family and friends. So on a whim he and his brother he spent two months adventuring in the Outback (the real one, not the steakhouse) and all over the place.
Cameron rumors
From the latest Gammons column on ESPN.com
The Mariners are very eager to bring back Mike Cameron, and Scott Spiezio and Randy Winn are two names being mentioned as trade bait.
We’ve talked about this before (quick summary of the reaction then: Jason sure, Dave enh, me no). But this really doesn’t make sense. Winn’s not too expensive and reasonably good, there’s no reason to move him unless it’s going to be a significant upgrade. The Mets probably want to move Cameron even though I just now read a different story where they reassured him they weren’t trading him.
But why would they want Winn? Cliff Floyd has to play left if he plays, Beltran’s a lock for center, and there’s really no way you want Winn over Cameron as long as you’re forced to stick one of them in right field.
And why would they want Spiezio? They’ve got a stud 3B and a bunch of guys to play first, including Doug Mientkiewicz, who they just got off Boston in trade.
This doesn’t make sense for the Mets or the Mariners. The Mariners, if they’re going to trade Randy, are probably going to look for something they’re going to need down the road, like pitching prospects. Otherwise, they’re better off letting him play and if the right trade emerges later, making it then.
I can’t believe that the Mariners would be “eager” to make a trade that commits them to paying Cameron so much money when his expected performance — and I say this as a huge fan — is far below that, and they have better, cheaper alternatives in hand right now.