Something to watch over the final six weeks of the season is how the Giants use Tim Lincecum.
CONTINUED >>
After seven and a half years of nonsense from Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox finally had enough. Now that the shock of the trade has passed, here are some reflections on Boston management's making the move now, and why
CONTINUED >>
Here are the reasons why the Mets are finally the team to beat in the NL East:
CARLOS DELGADO: His bat looked dreadfully slow in the first three months but July has seen a rebirth of his swing -- .374 batting average with eight home runs and 22 RBIs. Now he hits cleanup and is the left-handed slugger the Mets need.
DAVID WRIGHT: He has always been the team’s foundation player despite the money paid to Carlos Beltran. Wright is this team’s rock and although he isn’t a vocal leader, he plays every day with indisputable energy and the proper approach. And it doesn’t hurt when he put together a month like July, with a .330 batting average, three home runs and 18 RBIs.
CONTINUED >>
Two weeks after the All-Star break here are some names making news around the majors.
TIM LINCECUM: He went head-to-head with Brandon Webb last Saturday. Lincecum allowed two runs over seven innings in which he struck out 13 and walked none. This slender right-hander with the slacker look is pure man on the mound. He is 11-3 for a horrid team, has struck out better than one batter per inning (156 strikeouts in 142 innings pitched) and is simply the premier young NL pitcher in the National League. Question: Will the Giants shut him down as he approaches 200 innings?
MIKE PELFREY: Want a shock? The Mets' best pitcher in the last two months has been Pelfrey. The Mets are undefeated in his last nine starts. Pelfrey is 7-0 with a 2.67 ERA over that stretch. Suddenly the Mets are not pitching-poor and they have developed young starters (Pelfrey, John Maine and Oliver Perez) rather than relying on the fading Pedro Martinez and broken-down Orlando Hernandez.
More ...
CONTINUED >>
Less than a week to the trade deadline and we know one thing: Milwaukee is the winner.
Credit to Brewers general manager Doug Melvin for striking first and fast. Acquiring CC Sabathia early in July may prove a masterstroke and a new trend in midseason trades.
CONTINUED >>
Allow me to share a moment in the life of instant replay: Stanford hosts Notre Dame last November. It’s the third quarter and Notre Dame throws a pass on which the receiver makes a diving fingertip catch, curling his hands just underneath the ball at the moment of impact with the ground. The game officials immediately signal touchdown. There is little objection from Stanford. Next comes a replay that is shown on the stadium scoreboard and most agree it is a touchdown.
But then the dreaded moment that too often brings college football games to a grinding halt struck. The referee was buzzed from above and the play was subject to booth review.
CONTINUED >>
A major Hall of Fame injustice will be righted Sunday with the induction of Rich Gossage. Sixteen years after Rollie Fingers, four years after Dennis Eckersley and two years after Bruce Sutter, Goose will stand alongside his peers in Cooperstown.
Like Fingers and Sutter, Goose helped define the original art of closing. Two stats stand out: In one of baseball’s most famous games, Gossage retired the last eight Red Sox batters to clinch the 1978 AL East title and 52 of Gossage’s saves were of at least seven outs or more.
With his kind of credentials why did he have to wait nine years to make the Hall of Fame after his name first appeared on the ballot? Was the last act of his career, a half dozen years of slow fade into his mid-40s, held against him?
CONTINUED >>
What the heck has happened in the NL West? Last fall it was the division of youth, the division that sent two teams to the playoffs and both made it to the NLCS. It was the division that highlighted baseball’s new era of youth over age, development over open-market spending and sound judgments over rash decisions.
And now the second half of the season started without a team over .500 in the NL West. The team that was unanimously picked to finish last, San Francisco, and was uniformly derided as being painfully slow in adapting to the aforementioned formula, has the best record over the last seven weeks and is in third place.
CONTINUED >>
Page 219 of the Mitchell Report buries Eric Gagne. One passage lifted from the report of a Red Sox scout acknowledged that steroid rumors had dogged Gagne from his glory days in Los Angeles and would always make him a risky acquisition.
So how is it that the Red Sox traded for Gagne last July and then Milwaukee bestowed a $10 million contract upon Gagne this winter?
How is it that anyone would expect Gagne to repeat his three-year brilliance (2002-2004) -- a run unlike any ever produced by a closer, 152 saves and a sick 0.69 WHIP in 2003?
Then again, how did Gagne demonstrate a passing resemblance to that pitcher in the first half of 2007?
CONTINUED >>
THE NATIONAL LEAGUE – NOTHING’S CHANGED: Just as in 2007 -- when one torrid three-week streak enabled an average team, the Rockies, to represent the NL in the World Series -- the NL is again stuck in “parity.”
There’s one real good team (Cubs), several weak sisters and everyone else is jumbled in the middle. Some clubs may play well for a week or so and thrust themselves into contention (see the Mets) but the only the test of time will determine whether the NL can produce a legitimate World Series contender.
CONTINUED >>
