The big news around baseball right now seems to be Joe Torre's new book, "The Yankee Years" which was actually written by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci. The book supposedly exposes lots of juicy gossip and jealousies. But the major story points picked up by the New York Post were based around Torre supposedly trashing Alex Rodriguez and Brian Cashman. There are no direct quotes of Torre doing this in the book according to recent articles. Bronx Banter picks up most of the links if you want to follow the story.
My Twitter Buddy and RotoExperts boss, RotoTommy is asking for the biggest fantasy baseball disappointment predictions. I'm going with Brad Lidge who has had some serious bouts with disaster the last few years.
If you are like me and can't afford to subscribe to those big prospect sites you are in luck. Keith Law has been prospect crazy lately and has put together all sorts of great lists. He has a ranking of the Top 10 Farm Systems. The Rangers come out on top and I'm not surprised. If you are an insider you can see how he ranks all of the teams. You would think that with the amount of advertising on ESPN.com that they would make the content free. Law also has prospect rankings by teams this week.
It could be that the guys at Chop-N-Change (MVN's Braves Blog) are onto something with their placement of Brian Cashman in the second tier of General Managers in their article : Best GMs in baseball? If Cashman were truly taking advantage of all his resources the Yankees would have one of the top ten farm systems and Keith Law would have given us a complete top ten list. Fortunately it seems to be prospect season. Baseball-Intellect has posted their top 15 Yankees Prospects - albeit in two parts. Part One: 6-15, and Part Two: 1-5.
I love that they place my favorite Yankees prospect at number two on their list, which has not happened on any other list that I've seen. River Ave Blues profiles that same prospect. His name is Dellin Betances and he dominated with a 10.59 K9 in the second half of last season. Though Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts has an article suggesting that K per 100 pitches may be a far more relevant statistic.
Is this too much Yankees talk? If you're a Yankees hater you may enjoy this article by Bert Blyleven that suggests the Yankees are an incomplete team despite their heavy spending this off-season.
Alan Horne who turned himself into a prospect a couple of years ago is looking to make a comeback from a tear in his rotator cuff.
“The tear was causing my shoulder to bind up really bad, so he cleaned it up so it would work a little better,” he said. “It feels good so far.”Speaking of New York general managers. Steve Phillips is joining Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN this coming season. I know its an unpopular feeling among sabermetrically inclined baseball fans, but I actually like listening to Jim Miller and Joe Morgan. Yes, I cringe sometimes but they are fairly entertaining if you can get around that. Having more studio time from Peter Gammons is good for me too.
Horne couldn’t throw for three months following the surgery, but since resuming his workouts in early December, he has had no complaints.
“I feel great so far. I’ve been real pleased with how the rehab’s gone,” he said. “I feel no pain so far. I feel like I’ve got the problem fixed and I can continue to move forward toward my ultimate goal, which is pitching in the big leagues.”
It was a struggle for Horne last season, starting off by losing three of five decisions in the International League, then dropping his only decision in three starts in Tampa.
For the year, Horne was 2-4 with an 8.77 ERA, a far cry from his 2007 success.
In retrospect, Horne said it’s obvious why the struggles were so great.
“(The injury) was a big struggle for me,” he said. “It wasn’t a huge pain, it was just pretty uncomfortable. My arm wasn’t working like it was supposed to work and it just wasn’t allowing me to extend a long way.
“It took more effort to be able to throw. I was having to work a lot harder to do things I normally do without a problem. Towards the end of the season, my stuff started deteriorating.”
Non-Fantasy, Non-Baseball Links: (just cuz I can)
There is a new version of Ad-Aware available. A really cool free option for fighting spyware.
Do you love web comics? I do and one of my favorite artists has a new one out. The Flobots.
My friend's father trashes Obama. Peter David opines.
Joe Posnanski picks the most Iconic songs of the Rock 'n Roll Era. And gets a lot of it wrong!
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