What's Haf of $57 million?

So I listened to that Baseball Today thing. The consensus seems to be that the Central belongs to Detroit, and that the Wild Thing is Cleveland's to preserve. I'm not nearly ready to concede this point, but I will say that the first ten games after the break will be extremely important for the top half of the AL, and should serve to sort a lot of things out. The Yankees' entire season quite clearly rests on those games. If they remain 10-12 games out of the wild card after 100 games, it's over. They're simply not going to play 10 games better than anyone over the course of the last 60 games. The same goes for the A's and Twins, though their records are a little better so they have a little more leeway. My instinct tells me that not much will change between Cleveland and Detroit in those ten games. Cleveland has a much easier schedule, so it's likely that they'll even take back the lead for the time being. The Tribe has Kansas City and Chicago at home, followed by Texas on the road, while the Tigers see Seattle and Minnesota on the road before facing KC at home for three. Both the Mariners and Twins will be aggressively out to demonstrate their contender status, and I don't see the Tigers faring any better than .500 in those two series. It'd be a great time for Cleveland to slaughter three clubs that already have little to play for, and get the inside track for the rest of the year. We'll see.

welcome to the buffet

Channing Frye on what he’ll bring to the Blazers: “A little personality, a little leadership, a little shooting, a little defense – I’m a buffet of goodness.”

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summer league is awesome!! you can watch online, but having had league pass last year gives us the games on nba tv... i am getting REALLY serious about rodney stuckey. wow, the pistons really "stole" him at 15th. the guy looks better than almost anyone on the pistons. i'm serious. he could make chauncey billups into a 3-point shooting 2-guard, because stuckey can drive to the rim like dwayne wade. like, it doesn't matter how you guard him, he's getting to the rim and that's it. chauncey just doesn't even have that anymore. i know that summer league is about as informative as a horoscope, but stuckey looks like a real nba player. against mike conley, the #4 pick, he looked like the only real player on the floor. and afflalo looks horrible shooting the ball but apparently has a real passion for defense, so he will replace lindsay hunter as the lock-down guy off of the bench. also, let me just say, BELLI-NELLI!!!!!!!!!!! listen to this amazing german annoucer sing the praises of up-tempo basketball and....???? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH_t8aq-UcU

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a really edgy comment from carlos guillen after the tigers SWEPT the red sox (admittedly the back of their rotation plus daiSUCK-e): "We are the two best teams, maybe with Anaheim" . . . whoah -- that is some hard-dogging of the tribe. i wouldn't have gone there, but that's that, i guess.

Way to go Dan! Too bad it lacked the self promotion of a true sports blogger ("if you come to blasketball.blogspot.com you will see these and similar opinions").

Me - I am just excited for Ryno managing the cubbies in 2009. I feel like I am 10 years old again.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2916921

Why do baseball players need so bad for their managers to argue all of the time? Apparently, sometimes managers go out and use a lot of positive "f" works (that was a FANTASTIC call) in a really angry way just to get their players feeling like someone is arguing for them.

"Baseball Today" Podcast

Does anybody listen to ESPN's daily baseball podcast, "Baseball Today"? If you don't, you should. It's a great source for daily news, gossip, and interesting guests.

You should also listen because today, July 5th, an e-mail of mine was read by host Peter Pascarelli. Check it out and hear him answer a couple of my questions. It can be found at ESPN.com. Click on Podcenter along the top banner. It will probably be up on iTunes today or Friday as well.

Are the Yankees uninspired or just overmatched? Today they wilted before arguably the best 1-2-3 punch in the AL - Santana, Neshek, and Nathan. It was tough to tell whether they were more immobilized by the pitching or their own apathy. I guess they've gotten by over the past five or so seasons with a good but not great staff and an outstanding lineup, and this year is no different, except they're losing. A couple years ago this game might have gone differently - Mussina and Santana would have battled to a 2-2 tie through 7, at which point Tom Gordon would have pitched a lights-out 8th and then in the bottom half they would have figured out a way to score.

More and more I feel like it's everyone else making the Yankees look bad. The pitching they faced today is pretty common in the AL right now. Look at A-Rod lighting up Joe Kennedy last week, and then going 0-for-19 in his last five games against Gaudin, Haren, Bonser, Silva, and Santana. Three out of five of those guys have ERAs under 3.00, and neither team is in contention right now. It only gets worse against the 45+ win teams.

It's pretty clear, actually, that A-Rod's sparkling numbers have come almost entirely from beating the shit out of bad NL staffs and the dredges of the AL, including Chicago and Texas. Of course everyone gets the same opportunities and everyone looks better against bad teams, but the vaunted Yankee offense is thus far consistently stagnant against the top AL teams. This is a new situation; I feel like the model on which their team is built has become obsolete.

"I'm 57 years old"

That's a very odd and unconvincing reason to give for quitting your managerial gig with a winning team in the middle of the season. Will it come out that Hargrove was taking performance-enhancing manageroids?

Hot NL West action

Peavy (7IP, 5H, 1R, 6Ks) and Penny (7IP, 5H, 1R, 7Ks) had strangely identical games last night in LA, which was fitting since they're having strangely identical years. Some points of comparison:

IP
Peavy 112.0
Penny 112.2

ERA
Peavy 2.09
Penny 2.00

Record
Peavy 9-2
Penny 10-1

Walks allowed
Peavy 31
Penny 30

HRs allowed
Peavy 2
Penny 2

The game proper was no disappointment. In a savvy at-bat, Nomar hit a dinger off Peavy (who had something like an 80 inning streak going without surrendering one) for the Dodgers' only run, while Josh Bard's ground rule double scored Mike Cameron early on. In a way, this game was a PERFECT TEST CASE for the difference between the two rivals. On the mound were two pitchers who, while stylistically different, get pretty much the exact same results and provided them with uncanny precision on the night. Peavy and Penny were a CONTROL GROUP. The VARIABLE was the bullpen, maybe also the management. Poor Grady Little appeared to make the wrong pitching move by bringing in Saito in the tenth, and then banking on the meat of his lineup to deliver in the bottom half of the inning. The decision to bring in Brett Tomko in the 12th is also baffling, and not just in retrospect, since Tomko is both a starter and ineffective. It took no time for the Padres to get to him, and they were even able to tack on an insurance run. Then Black was able to capitalize on having held off on Hoffman. In a way Little had no choice, since Seanez has been overworked and Billingsley is starting today, but the game made the Padres' pen appear a bit deeper than the Dodgers'. Too bad Peavy and Penny couldn't duel to a decision, still a great game.