- Happy birthday, Roberto Clemente. The Great One would have been 77 today. His legacy is still strong among Latino players. Check out Rob Biertempfel's story in the Tribune Review about Jose Tabata's admiration for Arriba.
- RHP Tim Wood, the Indy closer who the Bucs DFA'ed recently, has been traded to the Texas Rangers for cash or the ever popular PTBNL.
- Chris Snyder hasn't done any sort of baseball activity since his back surgery, and probably won't until September. This is his option year, and that awkward slide in early June may have been the last we'll see of him in a Bucco uni.
- Jim Callis of Baseball America reports that Gerritt Cole was offered an $8.5M major league deal by the Bucs, and turned it down for the $8M minor league deal. The major league money would have to be paid over five years while the minor league bonus will be anted up by the end of next year. He added that Josh Bell's $5M sugar wasn't a stunner; in fact, "industry insiders expressed surprise that his bonus wasn't higher."
- BTW, did you know that the much maligned ump Jerry Meals was born in Butler?
"Somehow we have developed this large contingent of know-it-all baseball fans who bay like wounded coyotes at any mention of wins, losses, RBI or batting average. I never know whether I should blame myself for this or not.." (Bill James)
Hmmm. Wonder why Cole was so keen on getting his money up front? Or maybe that was Boras getting HIS money up front, in the shadows.
ReplyDeleteDunno, Ron. I liked Cole's teammate, Trevor Bauer, a lot better, even though Bauer doesn't have the so-called "classic pitcher's build" and Cole does. This is another area where I differ from the current sabremetric-infected generation of baseball observers and executives. To me, a player is a player. Either they produce excellent results in real world, live, on-field action, or they don't. While I might take the occasional flyer on the stereotypical "athlete playing baseball who might become a great baseball player" instead of "a guy who is a great player right now", still and all if you're not getting it done against organized competition---even if it is amateur competition---in the here and now, it's unlikely, though not impossible, that you'll get it done later on, in the big leagues against the best competition in the world.