Baseball

When the news broke this morning that the Minnesota Twins signed one of their regulars to a contract, I am sure every Twins fan was hoping it was Joe Mauer who was signed to that contract. Unfortunately, for Twins fans it was not Mauer who was signed this morning.

Instead they will have to settle for five more years of Denard Span.

The day Don Mattingly decided to come over to the Los Angeles Dodgers organization following Joe Torre, Hollywood rejoiced, and immediately embraced him. Mattingly, a Hall of Famer with a stellar Major League career as a player, has already had a couple slip ups as an interim manager.

In the short week that Torre and the Dodgers split squad have been in Taiwan stretching the ties of American Baseball overseas, Mattingly has been at the helm of the Glendale squad.

The Minnesota Twins pulled off a miracle last season by winning the AL Central on a tiebreaker game against the Detroit Tigers. They went 87-76 and won their fifth division title in the last eight years. However, they were swept by the eventual World Series Champion New York Yankees in the ALDS.

The Minnesota Twins locked up a talented 26-year-old today, but not the one that fans have been expecting.

While the club still hasn’t finalized a deal with Joe Mauer, they have ensured consistency in the outfield for the foreseeable future.

JD Drew is entering the penultimate year of the five-year, $70 million deal he signed with the Red Sox prior to the 2007 season.

While many members of Red Sox Nation believe that he hasn’t been worth the money, others (myself included) have been converted—at least to the point where we do not consider it to have been an outright mistake.

It is undeniable that he hasn’t put up the kind of sexy numbers you would normally equate with a $14 million players, but he has been very consistent (averaging 429 AB, with a .276 BA, 18 HR, 65 RBI, and 82 R per year).

The prevailing wisdom in Major League Baseball is that umpires are best when they are relatively anonymous. The thinking goes that the more transparent he is in a ballgame, especially the home plate umpire, the better he's doing his job.

Well, they seem to take a similar philosophy to life itself.

How many times have you heard about an umpire doing charitable work in the community? Sure, you hear it when an ump blows a call, but the good work many of these men often gets overlooked.

The Mets already know that they will be without Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes for Opening Day 2010, and that means that once again, David Wright will be last man standing as far as core position players.

Yes, Jason Bay hitting behind him should give him some protection, but is that enough reason for pitchers to not go after hitting Wright or at least backing him off the plate?

Last August, when Wright was already flu-ridden and battling leg injuries, Wright was nailed by a 94 MPH fastball by Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants. 

If you asked 100 baseball fans ranging from casual to knowledgeable to list the 10 or 20 best offensive baseball players from 1997 to 2007, how many would write down Brian Giles? I am guessing not to many.

The reason I posed the above question is because Giles retired this week with very little fanfare. Is Giles a Hall of Famer? Absolutely not. But he was a really, really good player for a span of 10 years and I don’t think many people realize how good he actually was.

Before we begin, a (slightly) brief introduction:

The year ended badly for Detroit Tiger baseball. There was so much hope over the course of the year that when the team began to fall apart in September, there was almost a consensus of disbelief among the fans.

After 12 straight losing seasons, optimism is high in Baltimore that 2010 could be the season the Orioles move back over the .500 mark.

However, considering that they won only 64 games a year ago, even with a plethora of young talent, there is much to be done if the O’s are really going to move to the plus side of the ledger.

This is part two of a three part series about the 2010 Orioles. In part one we looked at keys to the season.