Daily Archives: July 23, 2012
2012 Trade Deadline Update #2 7/23: Ichiro in Pinstripes, Anibal and Omar to the Tigers?
Monday July 23rd, 2012
Bernie Olshansky: Over the past few hours, a couple of big trades have gone down. Here’s my take on them:
Ichiro to the Yankees
Wow. What a day. At about seven p.m. EDT, the Mariners and Yankees announced a swap that involved Ichiro for two minor league pitchers and cash. Sure I expected some blockbuster trades, but this? Ichiro was an icon for the Mariners. He broke the all-time hits in a season record for the Mariners and helped them win 116 games in 2001. Ichiro was an excellent player to say the least. He hit .322 over his 12 seasons with the Mariners and will most likely enter the Hall of Fame. But, over the past two years, he’s lost a little bit of luster. He’s slowed down a bit due to his age, and has stopped hitting over .300. Last year he hit .272 and had less than 200 hits for the first time in his career. This season, he’s hit an even worse .261. The Mariners have struggled over the past years and were definitely in need of a move. They acquired Jesus Montero from the Yankees this offseason in a trade for Michael Pineda, but Montero hasn’t exactly caught fire. Read the rest of this entry
2012 MLB Trade Deadline Update 7/23: Dempster, Blue Jays, Astros, and More
Monday July 23rd, 2012
Bernie Olshansky: As the trade deadline looms, teams are scrambling to make a final buy or sell in order to push toward the playoffs. Some teams are trying to get value out of their soon-to-be free agents while other teams are rebuilding. Here are some of the big deals that have gone down in the past few days:
Blue Jays and Astros—10 player deal. Big names: J.A. Happ, Brandon Lyon, David Carpenter, Ben Francisco, Francisco Cordero, Carlos Perez
The Astros are obviously in their rebuilding phase. Last year, they gave up Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn, and the year before they gave up Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman. Earlier this year, Carlos Lee went to the Marlins for top prospect Matt Dominguez and others. More recently Brett Myers went to the White Sox for minor league pitchers and J.A. Happ went to the Blue Jays along with relievers Brandon Lyon and David Carpenter for Ben Francisco, Francisco Cordero, and other prospects in a ten-player trade. With these deals this year, the Astros have removed virtually all big names from the team. Not to say that J.A. Happ was a big name player, but he was a well-regarded pitcher that the Phillies gave up in the Roy Oswalt trade. Also given up by the Astros is former closer Brandon Lyon. He gave up the closer role to Brett Myers this year, but he does have the capability to serve in the back-end of a bullpen. Read the rest of this entry
Top Ten Stat of The Week: Team Wins Since The Start of the 2003 Season
Monday July 23, 2012
With only one World Series Win and a 2003 Loss to the Florida Marlins, it hasn’t stopped the Yankees from raking in wins every year. They have averaged 95 wins a season since 2003.
Chuck Booth (Lead Baseball Writer and @chuckbooth3024)- This weeks installment is actually a top 11. I bent the rules a little to accommodate the A’s. It is hard to maintain a great franchise in today’s Major Leagues. Sure the heavy hitters like New York and Boston will always be sniffing around the top of the league with their huge payrolls, but most teams don’t have the luxury to spend like these two teams do because of their limited revenue streams. In the last few years, the Phillies, Angels and Tigers have entered the echelon of top spenders. Spending money doesn’t always equal great results. The Texas Rangers have only had success lately and were often victim to heavy payrolls and not great results. How many years did Peter Angelos try to buy a contender with Baltimore? He has dedicated himself back to the right way of building a team the last couple of years and it has worked through player development.
Minnesota and Oakland have been run incredibly well for a long time. If this list was for a five-year stretch, you would have seen the Tampa Bay Rays as part of the top 10. These are the small market teams that have been consistently playing well against the big boys. The Twins have only faded back in the standings in the last couple of seasons. The Atlanta Braves finally had their consecutive playoff years stopped in 2005 and they were only mediocre for a few seasons. Right now, they might be the best team in the National League. The Angels, Twins, Dodgers, Athletics, Dodgers and Braves did not make any World Series appearances since 2003. Out of these teams, the Angels have the most wins.
According to the movie ‘The Natural,’ losing is a disease, and like other diseases, (insert disease here) it is curable. Most of these teams have not even struggled in the last 10 years. The Yankees have only won one World Series in this time frame, despite dominating the win total every year. In fact, the last time the Yankees has a losing season was 1991. The Cardinals and the Red Sox both have won 2 World Series, and the Cardinals are the only team to have appeared in the Fall Classic 3 times during this stretch. Read the rest of this entry
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