Friday, March 14, 2008
Friday Notes
You know, I'm not going to claim that my Friday Notes come anywhere near as impressive as Gleeman's Friday Notes, but I am just not creative enough to come up with anything more clever. So, if you have any ideas, let me know.
Big weekend ahead. I have two fantasy baseball drafts on Sunday. The first starts at noon. The second starts at six. Hopefully the first will be done before the second starts! (Note - in the two drafts, I pick 9th and 2nd, respectively... let me know who I should pick!) Also, the minor league portion of the draft in my keeper league began on Thursday morning. I have the ninth pick, but I have already made two trades to take the #5 and #7 picks. I took Rick Porcello with the 5th pick and Josh Vitters with the seventh pick. I love this stuff... and if anyone has participated in a draft yet, please feel free to e-mail me your draft board!! Please! Anyway, my other goal is to finish reviewing the Demographic Surveys (that I said I would have done last weekend) and pick out the winner of the two autographed cards for that and for the Six Minor Leaguers. But for today, I'm just going to post some bullet points for you to peruse. Feel free to leave comments or e-mail me.
If you recall last year at this time, I was asked to participate in The Baseball Analysts' 2007 AL Central Preview. They must not have liked me because this year Rich Lederer and Patrick Sullivan asked Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer (maybe you've heard of them?) instead. They did a great job of previewing the 2008 AL Central. Be sure to pay particular attention to their thoughts on the Twins.
I won't add anything to this... I don't think he was even on the table, but maybe the Twins should have insisted on getting Clay Buchholz from the Red Sox in a Johan Santana deal.
Then interesting quotes from Buchholz's dad including "Last year up in Boston he was dating a Victoria’s Secret model, so he’s moving up the ladder . . . I mean, he’s got pretty good taste"
Jesse Crain was hit below the knee by a line drive yesterday morning. His arm has been feeling good this spring. Hopefully this injury is nothing more than a really sore bruise! By the way, I participated a bunch in the Comments of this LaVelle posting regarding the relative importance of Spring Training statistics.
I'll let this headline speak for itself.
The saga is over!! Former Twins headache, er, starting pitcher Kyle Lohse finally signed a contract yesterday. He agreed to a one year, $4.25 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. He could earn another $400,000 based on number of innings pitched, and he would get $500,000 if he is traded during the season.
Twins pitching prospect Liam Hendricks is in Taiwan right now trying to help Australia qualify for the 2008 Olympics. Yesterday in a loss to South Korea, Hendricks gave up one run in three innings while walking one and striking out five.
More great quotes from Carlos Gomez this week, "(Justin) Morneau, probably this year (he) has better year because (the pitcher) thinks more ‘Gomez, Gomez"
Happy 60th Birthday to Billy Crystal who yesterday got to bat leadoff in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He struck out on six pitches from Paul Maholm. At one point actually, he was ahead 3-1 in the count. Here is the video from someone at the game. I know a lot of holier-than-thou in the media and other places think it is a mockery of the game and such. Baseball is a fun game. It is spring training. Do you think Johnny Damon will be any less ready for the season because Crystal took one of his at bats? I don't think so! I've always liked Billy Crystal. He did a great job with *61, and my favorite movie of his was Mr. Saturday Night! What can you say, He Looks Maaahhhvelous!
He may be worse than Joe Buck in a baseball press box, but we certainly wish Rick Sutcliffe well in his battle against cancer.
I don't subscribe to ESPN Insider (or anything online that you have to pay for), but it appears that the great Peter Gammons has an article on the Twins young players to watch.
Former Pioneer Press Twins beat writer Gordon Wittenmeyer is now with the Chicago Sun-Times and writes about the Cubs. He and his writing sure make a lot of appearances over at Fire Joe Morgan. Apparently he thinks that home runs are bad. He is saying that Felix Pie should not hit home runs. It's reminiscent of all those Twins fans out there that don't want Carlos Gomez to hit homers and just be a slap hitter.
Pat Neshek wrote a couple of new postings on Thursday. He discusses his commercial, his arm, baseball cards and images of himself from MLB 08. In a separate posting, he comments on a Strib article on his decision to become a Vegan. I found it interesting when Pat wrote about it a week ago on his blog and then the Strib came out with an article.
I don't buy into the whole Clubhouse Leadership thing, but if the Twins need one, they have the absolute perfect guy for the job!
Nick Nelson has begun his Positional Analyses... The first he did was the Twins Catchers, and his most recent was the Twins First Basemen. The series should just get better as more competitive positions are discussed. Of course, LF, RF, 3B, SS and DH really aren't competitive situations this year either.
A new season of Mugshot Purgatory is upon us!!
According to The Bleacher Bums, the Twins can compete in 2008 if...
Jason Pridie on Evan Longoria... "I haven’t seen too many people who can just make solid contact and are just pure hitters like him"
Are you interested in music videos? Are there still music videos? Anyway, head over to BrentNet where he is counting down his choices for the Top 100 Music Videos. Here are the postings for 91-100, 81-90 and 71-80. Plus, the links are to the videos on YouTube which creates a fun walk down memory lane!
How about former Twins catcher Chad Moeller's day earlier this week... He was released by the Washington Nationals, which had to be depressing. Later the same day, he was signed by the New York Yankees.
I am pretty certain that the Twins will be sending several more players down to minor league camp sometime over the weekend, if not today. Here are my thoughts for those who will be sent down with this next batch: Tommy Watkins, Chris Basak, Drew Butera, Mariano Gomez, Kevin Mulvey, Bobby Korecky and Matt Macri. There are several others that won't make the Twins roster, but might as well stay around for a little bit longer (such as Eli Whiteside, Matt Tolbert, Brian Bass and Casey Daigle).
I may write a little bit this weekend, so be sure to check back! Have a good weekend!