Many of you are aware of a column that I write in conjunction with ESPN.com columnist Rob Neyer. While "Rob & Rany on the Royals" is, at its heart, a discussion of the affairs of that fallen franchise, our comments frequently touch upon all major-league teams. I recently made the following point about the Royals’…
Brett Tomko was the Cincinnati Reds’ first selection (second round, 54th pick overall) in the 1995 draft, out of Florida Southern College. A quick climb up the minor-league ladder landed him in the Reds rotation by late spring of 1997, where he fashioned an 11-7, 3.83 rookie season. After that auspicious debut, his situation deteriorated…
Chris Kahrl will have more to say about yesterday’s big trades, but I want to share with you a great point made by Rany Jazayerli in e-mail, about the Mets/Twins deal: Can you imagine how pissed off Matt Lawton is right now? He came up with the Twins in 1995, he’s suffered through six awful…
I always hated the Rally Monkey. For those of you who haven’t been to an Angels game lately, the Rally Monkey is the Angels’ device for getting the crowd excited when the team is behind. It started about a year ago, and now every time the Angels need runs, they show a clip of this…
NO BLOCKBUSTER DEALS THIS YEAR, THEY SAID "I think anyone would agree that this makes us a better team." —Billy Beane, Athletics general manager, on the three-way trade that brought outfielder Jermaine Dye to the A’s "We’re trying to create a deep, 40-man roster. We have a lot of holes to fill. It’s going to…
Last week’s column about pitch counts, game lengths and run scoring got quite a lot of response, most of it taking me to task for not answering the question properly. Though MLB has backed down after the directive to “hunt for strikes” caused an uproar, it still remains an interesting topic for analysis. Here’s a…
There’s a rather extended thread–actually a series of threads–on the Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.baseball concerning the value of Barry Bonds, and whether he or Luis Gonzalez is the more valuable player this year. Some people are rather staunch in their believe that Bonds isn’t a "clutch" player, pointing to his lackluster postseason performances for the Pirates…
During my first stint living in the Bay Area, I spent a lot of time watching A’s broadcasts on local TV. There was usually one broadcast on a weekday night, and one broadcast on the weekend–usually on Sunday, preceded by Mel Allen on "This Week in Baseball." I remember back to when I was at…