The hot rumor is Jeff Weaver to the Dodgers for Kevin Brown, which seems to make sense for both sides — the Yankees get the better pitcher, while LA unloads a big salary. Watch out for Weaver if this deal goes down… he never seemed comfortable in New York, but could put up some very nice numbers in Los Angeles.
In any event, that’s quite a bit of rotation turnover for the Yankees. Last season they opened with a rotation of Mussina, Clemens, Pettitte, Wells and Weaver. So far, next season looks like Mussina and Vasquez for sure, with Contreras, Wells (who signed a minor league deal recently) and perhaps Brown if the deal goes down. There’s also potentially Jon Lieber, who missed almost all of last season after Tommy John surgery.
Pettitte to the Astros. The Yankees are said to be in new discussions to get Kevin Brown from the Dodgers, but I think we’re all hoping that Gillvasi’s going to unload Garcia on them for something shiny and Drew Henson (don’t ask). I’d love to see the Yankees trade for Tom Glavine or someone equally silly with a huge contract, though.
I’ll be even more specific: Ibanez was a pursuit in progress when Bavasi was brought on, and much of this off-season is stuff that’s all Gillick’s doing. It’s my contention that for all practical purposes, Gillick remains the head of the baseball side of the front office.
I find it amusing when I come across the sentiment that it’s unfair to criticize if we’re not three major league GMs ourselves. Doesn’t that mean no one should be able to criticize us unless they’re also putting their work out in public for people to kick? I don’t understand. But to quote Ivan “Official Teamster of the U.S.S. Mariner” Weiss: “I never laid an egg, either, but I know a rotten one when I smell it.”
And yeah, I know, I shouldn’t care. But look at this from the National Weather Service:
TODAY…CLOUDY WITH A FEW SPRINKLES. HIGHS IN THE MID 40S. SOUTHEAST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH.
FRIDAY…SHOWERS LIKELY…DECREASING IN THE AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE MID AND UPPER 40S. SOUTH WIND 15 TO 20 MPH.
SATURDAY…RAIN DEVELOPING BY NOON. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 40S. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 TO 15 MPH BECOMING SOUTHWEST.
SUNDAY…SHOWERS LIKELY. HIGHS IN THE MID 40S.
MONDAY…MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 40S.
It’s a wonder anyone manages to be optimistic about anything in these conditions.
Dave’s chat transcript from yesterday @ Baseball Prospectus is up, if you missed him live. Check it out.
Pocket Lint reports in the Seattle Times that the M’s may go after Guerrero if talks with Tejeda fail. I’d like to say “Oooooh yeah,” even though really the M’s told him “well, if Tejeda didn’t come through and the planets aligned and we found $50m on the street, sure, we might go that way….”
The interesting bit is this: “Pat Gillick, the former Seattle general manager whom the club is using as a point man on several free agents, met with Guerrero as well as Miguel Tejada when he visited the Dominican Republic last month.”
This is why I refered to Gillick’s off-season yesterday, and why I’m still looking for a good nickname for our double-headed GM… Gillvasi’s the best I came up with. Gillick’s still our GM, like it or not. At best you might say Bavasi’s a particularly prominent assistant GM that’s taken on a lot of the team’s duties.
Over at the PI, they’re reporting that Franklin and Winn have both agreed to deals that will avoid arb, signings to be announced today. We’ve pointed this out before, but as much as I like Franklin, he’s a guy who leans heavily on his outfield defense, got really lucky last year, and seeing Cameron flipped for Winn is going to make him look really bad. I’d flip him for something interesting if I was Gillvasi. And Winn might be okay in center field, but adequecy isn’t what gets a team to the playoffs.
And a totally off-topic note on the breakdown of society related to my inability to post last night: Many of the problems the country (the world!) has is due entirely to the failure of people to think about things from other perspectives and to at least consider that they’re wrong. For instance, let’s say you’re a software company (say, Apple) and you manufacture WidgetX. You’re so sure WidgetX is the most useful thing ever that you want it thrown in the system tray, running all the time, and even though you make a couple tweaks to the networking stuff, you know that because WidgetX is so great, and your programmers so awesome, no one will ever object. If you don’t stop to consider the other side — that there’s me out there, and I’ve finally had a month where, more or less, my Linksys stuff held a connection without too much trouble, a delicate balancing act of drivers and settings — you (as this software company) might go ahead with your plans and totally screw over some poor sucker and make it so he can’t uninstall your stupid software without using some deep, nasty, rusty system tools, and mess up his internet connection so writing about the M’s becomes really, really hard.
I don’t understand why software companies (like Intuit!) all install their crap all over the desktop, the system tray, utterly without regard to user needs. If you ordered a subscription to the paper and the paperboy came to live with you, eating your food, running up the utility bills, couldn’t be removed from the house, and when you called the paper they told you “oh, you’ll love him, and he has to be in the house to deliver the paper” you’d go insane and hurt someone — and you’d probably be acquited. Why do people at software companies think it’s ethical to make these same kind of loony decisions because they want to ensure their product’s running at all times? Do they really not consider that on the other end, people are getting screwed?
So.. um… sorry.