Daily Archives: December 2, 2003

Jon Weisman, over at Dodger Thoughts, thinks swapping Kevin Brown for Jeff Weaver makes sense for L.A.:

Brown is a significant injury risk with a huge salary on a pitching-rich team. Especially with the ownership in transition, they would be eager to add flexibility to the payroll. Moreover, he is the symbol of the misguided excess of the failed Kevin Malone “Bring ’em on” era. If the team can trade the other symbol of the Fox era, Gary Sheffield – which they did fairly easily – they could and should absolutely trade Brown. He is Cisco stock purchased at $80 a share.

Of course, Jon would be love to see Nick Johnson thrown in the deal too, but he’ll settle for Jeff Weaver. I don’t see how a one-for-one deal would go through. Right now, it seems like a whole lot of wishful thinking. But it’s good to know that Yankee fans aren’t alone in wanting to see this trade made.

There is no question as to who is running the Hot Stove Show in New York, reports Buster Olney. That’s right, the Boss of Bluster himself, George M. Steinbrenner. Olney thinks this is a bad sign for Yankee fans.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ ace pitcher, Matt Morris has a letter-to-the-editor today in the St. Louis Dispatch, defending the character of Tino Martinez, who was recently traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. There was noise out of St. Louis this past season that Martinez was a disruptive force in the clubhouse. Morris calls out a Novembeer 23rd article written Bryan Burwell–and if anyone has a link to the piece, please send it along–and basically goes on to say what a stand-up guy Martinez is:

I have a hard time believing that anyone who has ever stepped between the white lines with Tino believes his desire is anything less than a champion. He wanted to play every day and was angry when he didn’t. That is and always will be the kind of player I want behind me when it’s my turn to take the ball. We should all have the same attitude. If you can find one player, coach, manager or front office executive who believes Tino’s so-called attitude was part of our problem, then this club isn’t going in a championship direction.

When he played for the Yanks I found Tino to be a high-strung guy, even a bit of a red ass, but not a jerk. It says something about him that one of his former teammates would be willing to defend him in print.

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Tom Boswell weighs in on the Yankee-Sox rivalry, which seems to get hotter with each passing season.

I hit a couple of used bookstores in Middlebury, Vermont last weekend and came away with a few good items. The first shop must not have recovered from when I was there last spring, because they had zilch in the baseball section. Vexed, I found another shop that had three shelves full of just baseball books. Ohhhh, bacon. I didn’t end up buying much on the count of I didn’t have too much money to spend and I’ve already got a stack of books at home I haven’t read yet.

Of course, I did pick up inexpensive copies of books I already have and love, so I can give them away as gifts. They include, “Here Me Talking to Ya,” an incredible collection of interviews with jazz musicians compiled by Nat Hentoff, and “Life On The Run,” Bill Bradley’s fine account of a year-in-the-life of a professional basketball player.

But I did get a few baseball books of interest, including, “All Those Mornings,” an autobiography by Washington Post scribe Shirely Povich; “Charlie O and The Angry A’s,” by Bill Libby; a nice, first edition copy of Curt Flood’s autobiography (written with Richard Carter), “The Way It Is,” and Maury Wills’ autobiography, “On the Run,” (written with Mike Celizic).

There was a book of letters exchanged by Joe and Phil Neikro during the 1987 season, that looked like fun and a couple of books by Charles Einstein on Willie Mays that I’d like to get to at some point too. But I chose the Wills book because I remember Bill James commenting on it in one of his books. So far, it hasn’t been a disapointment. In the first fifty pages, Wills comes across as a true son-of-a-bitch. He tells the reader that he is a drug addict. One of thirteen children, and went on to have seven of his own. He was married while he was still in high school and he and his wife never got along. (He claims to have never seen his wife naked either.) Wills writes about what a lousy father he was, and how the woman he loved after he left his wife, slept with his son Bump. A loner on the Dodgers, he talks about being a bed-wetter until he was in his early ’30s. Oh yeah, he also mentions that he single-handedly revolutionized the game of baseball. A sombitch, yes. Boring? No.

Gary Sheffield is not a Yankee…yet. The Daily News reports that negoitations have hit a snag, with the two sides divided by…you guessed it, dollars. But Kevin Kernan thinks the deal will eventually happen, and that Sheffield is a perfect fit for the Yankees. Rob Neyer also thinks that signing Sheffield (as well as Boston inking Schilling) is a risk well worth taking:

Sure, Sheffield might pull something or strain something, and wind up playing 120 games instead of 145 (which is roughly his norm). But if not Gary Sheffield, then who? If you can afford to pay him what he’s asking, he’s worth the risk, and the same goes for Schilling. The Yankees and the Red Sox are essentially playing a different game than all the other teams, and spending big money on great players who might be slightly more likely to get hurt is just a part of that different game.

While Yankee fans wait for Sheffield, the Bombers are involved in a series of other moves. There is talk that Kenny Lofton will come to New York to play center field. (If that happens, we can kiss our boy Nick Johnson goodbye, don’t you think?) Yesterday, the much-maligned third baseman, Aaron Boone agreed to a one-year deal; the Yanks resigned weeble-wobble utility infielder Enrique Wilson to a one-year contract too.

The bullpen is also changing. It’s improving, aging and getting more expensive as Tom “Flash” Gordon has reportedly inked a two-year deal worth $7.5 million to set up Mo Rivera. Paul Quantrill, a right-handed sinkerball specialist could join the Yankees soon too. Fianlly, Brian Cashman is close to resigning left handed relievers Felix Heredia and Gabe White.

Whew. If that’s not enough for you, Newsday is reporting that the Yankees and Dodgers are talking about a Jeff Weaver-for-Kevin Brown swap:

The Dodgers haven’t agreed to take Weaver, of course, and they may very well never agree to do so. Yet the trade would bring some positives to Los Angeles, as well. It would give the Dodgers some payroll relief, and they could reinvest the money they saved to improve their ailing offense.

…Money is the primary reason the Dodgers would consider such a trade, but it isn’t the only one. While Brown put together an excellent 2003, it came in the wake of two injury-plagued seasons. He made just 10 starts in 2002, when he sprained his right elbow and underwent lower back surgery, and 19 starts in 2001, when he tore a flexor muscle in his right elbow and required surgery. Including a 17-day stay on the disabled list this past season because of an abdominal strain, he has made 11 trips to the DL since 1990.

Chew on that one. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are still after Keith Foulke, and Pedro Martinez is interesting in working out a contract extension. This just in from the pundits at ESPN: The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry never sleeps.