My weekly opinions, observations and rants about some Canadian baseball stories:
If the Yankees can’t sign prize left-hander Cliff Lee, they can always pursue the second-best starting pitcher on the free agent market. That would be Carl Pavano. Wait a second, that didn’t work out very well last time, did it?
I liked the Jays’ Shaun Marcum for Brett Lawrie trade, until I saw the pictures of the 20-year-old Burnaby, B.C. native, on Deadspin. Check out the link here: http://is.gd/ioj4M. Clearly, he has a lot of growing up to do and a lot of explaining to do to his parents. He should also learn to change his Facebook settings.
Esteemed Toronto Sun baseball scribe Bob Elliott is – as the Toronto Star’s Richard Griffin tweeted yesterday – becoming the Susan Lucci of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. In 2010, he was a finalist for the honour for the third consecutive year. This year, he finished second to Bill Conlin. The always classy Elliott was one of the first to congratulate Conlin on Twitter.
Odds are that Victoria, B.C. native Rich Harden will be pitching out of the bullpen next year. If I was a betting man, I would put money on him landing in Seattle on a staff with fellow Canadian Erik Bedard. Seattle is also a rumoured destination for Vancouver-born lefty Jeff Francis.
Yes, I want Alex Anthopoulos to succeed as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. The most scathing e-mails I receive are those from angry Jays fans when I question one of Anthopoulos’s decisions. For the record, I think he’s a doing fine job. He works hard and is very thorough. I’m just not ready to anoint him the next Theo Epstein yet. Anthopoulos stockpiles talent as well as anyone, but I would like to see him concentrate more on addressing team needs (e.g. first base, third base, bullpen).
Reports indicate the Jays have mild interest in ex-Dodgers catcher Russell Martin. The former all-star is one of the most charismatic and likable Canadian ballplayers, but I’m still hoping that J.P. Arencibia will be the Jays’ starting catcher in 2011.
My dad, Ralph Glew, has graciously offered to sell some professionally graded Toronto Blue Jays, Montreal Expos and Canadian major leaguers cards on eBay to raise money to help pay some of the administrative costs of keeping this blog going. Please visit his auctions here and bid often: http://shop.ebay.com/bluejay040777/m.html
That picture of Brett L. does not give me confidence in what he can do as a baseball player–we’ll see. Is that duct tape he has wound around his hand?? Not a good image for a baseball player either. He presents himself as a Me, Me, Me guy–not a team player. Maybe I’ll get to like him, but he better show a different side of himself as a Jays player.
The duct tape is apparently part of some sort of popular drinking game that these crazy kids play today.
Brett is 20, leave him alone. We were all 20 at one time and did something dumb!
Seattle is the smartest team out there if they sign Bedard (already done), Harden and Francis! Very low cost, VERY high possible reward. They should also sign Shawn Hill (15 games started, 1.88ERA in 2010)
Martin would be a good cheap pickup. His hitting is downhill, but his defense and working with pitchers is GREAT!.
Thanks Ralph for helping Kevin.
Scott,
Thanks for the comment.
Agreed. We all did dumb things when we were 20. The dumbest thing that Lawrie did was post these pictures on Facebook and not change his privacy settings. As a 20-year-old star prospect in today’s world, he has to know better. I expect he knows this now. Hopefully, lesson learned.
Seattle could become Canada’s team in 2011.
Kevin
Lawrie has apologized for the Deadspin photos and he says he has learned a lesson from the experience. Here’s a link to a Canadian Press article: http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=344679
I don’t think Yankee fans would give Pavano a very warm welcome.
Great post, Kevin. I’m going to check out the auctions.