February 2008 - Posts
The Atlanta Braves a darkhorse? A team that won 14 division titles in 15 years -- the second-best run (which ended in 2005) in modern baseball history -- can’t be a darkhorse. But that is the word attached to the Braves this spring.
Yes, for the last two seasons they have finished third in their division, but in the balanced or mediocre – depending on your point of view – National League, they wound up only five games behind the NL-East-winning Phillies.
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Do you envy J.P. Ricciardi? He has one of the great jobs in sports – general manger of a major league baseball team, the Blue Jays. He has longevity, entering his seventh season in a business that can chew up its young. He lives in the vibrant city of Toronto with a “national” team, Canada’s only MLB club for the last four years.
But he must compete against the Yankees and Red Sox in the American League East. For eight years, everything Ricciardi and the Blue Jays have done is measured against the two biggest money machines in the game. There have been some positives -- finishing second and ahead of Boston in 2006, the improving strength of the Canadian dollar, and new committed ownership. But still there is living in the same neighborhood as the Yankees and Red Sox and therefore they've gone 13 seasons without making the playoffs.
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For several years I went to spring training in Florida preparing for a season of Mets’ telecasts and I remember thinking each year that the Phillies would finally mesh and produce a brand of baseball over the course of six months that would end the Braves’ annual run as NL East champions.
The Phillies had a stretch where the 3-4-5 combination in their lineup was Bobby Abreu, Jim Thome, and Pat Burrell -- and in a hitters’ paradise, how could that trio fail to hit 150 homers?
But we know the City-of-Brotherly-Love teams with that threesome making up the heart of their order never knocked the Braves from their throne. The Phillies ended up breaking up that title-less trinity and instead it was the Mets of 2006 that ended Atlanta’s remarkable streak of 14 straight division titles, including 11 in a row since its move to the NL East.
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Ryan Dempster stood before cameras and microphones and uttered the words that one Cub seems to speak every spring. They are the words that every Cub fan wants to hear. After all it's been 100 years since the franchise's last World Series.
“Enough of all the bull, the curse this, the curse that, the goat, the black cat…” Dempster declared. This is the year, he said, to forever bury the ghosts of a century of Cubs baseball.
Those interested in details would not hesitate to remind all that Carlos Zambrano made the same comments last spring. And Zambrano is now quiet. But that would derail the story.
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The new season is highly anticipated for a number of reasons and many players have a lot to prove. Today and tomorrow a look at my top-10 list of those who will be feeling the heat from day one of spring training.
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Johan Santana to the Mets. It's done. There are no hurdles left to clear. Santana got his mega deal ($137.5 million over six years), and he passed his physical. After a press conference in New York today, it's on to spring training and on to a new era in his career -- one that he is anticipating as much if not more than the legions of Mets fans, who until last week had an ill feeling about their team's offseason. Ill as in nil or nothing at all, which prior to the acquisition of the two-time Cy Young winner were the terms that could have been used to describe Mets general manager Omar Minaya's winter pursuit of a No. 1 starter for his team's rotation
It’s natural to post a report card on such a prominent trade as the Santana deal, and most score this a huge win for the Mets. Savvy baseball people understand the handcuffs placed on the Twins' new general manager Bill Smith. They also understand how hard it is when your first task on the job is trading a pitcher of ultra elite status.
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