Fan News

Let's keep this this short and sweet. Where did the Marlins Fans Go?

While watching the game between the hometown Brewers and the Florida Marlins on my raggedy blue couch, a thought swirled around in my mind.

Wasn't it just six years ago that the Fish were in the World Series, and their makeshift baseball field was filled with a capacity crowd, each of the members of the turquoise-clad group on their feet, rooting on their Marlins.

Yes, the stadium they play in is still the same dump as in that glorious title year of 2003, but the fans have not shown up.

The Philadelphia Phillies are looking everywhere for a starting pitcher (as if that's a  surprise to anyone) and they are looking at the top-of-the-rotation to end-of-the-rotation guys.

Names like Erik Bedard, Roy Oswalt, and Jake Peavy have been linked to the Phillies in the last week or so, but the lower-end pitchers have also been somehow linked with the Phillies.

Melky Cabrera once again proved his worth as a situational hitter on Thursday afternoon.

Knotted at six in the bottom of the eighth against the Texas Rangers, Cabrera crushed a two-run homer over the left field wall to propel the Yankees past the Rangers and give them an 8-6 win.  

The 2009 season has not gone at all as planned for the Cleveland Indians.

They have struggled, at one point or another, in every aspect of the game, losing because of starting pitching, the bullpen, blown saves, bad defense, bad managing, a lack of situational hitting, a lack of hitting period, and even some blown calls (when a fan reaches over the fence to snatch a ball away from a fielder it's interference, not a go ahead home run, even for the Yankees, but I digress).

Jayson Stark sucks.

While this is hardly breaking news, it seemed like an appropriate introduction to today’s diatribe about Stark’s lengthy column on ESPN.com this afternoon in which he dedicated nearly 2,000 words to discussing the problems with Major League Baseball’s player-drafting system but failed to include even one mention of the system’s largest flaw: the exclusion of foreign players.

Okay, here's a little insight about me.

Sammy Sosa has been out of the game for almost two years now. He hasn't officially retired, as he is waiting for the phone to ring with the hopes that a team somewhere will give him one more shot. Recently, there have been reports surfacing that Mr. Sosa is going to call it quits.

This begs the question of whether or not Sosa will be elected to the Hall of Fame after being out of baseball for five years. Let's take stock of his numbers.

Major League Baseball suspended A.J. Burnett for six games two days after he threw a fastball that rose up and in on Texas' Nelson Cruz. The pitch did not hit Cruz, but the right-handed batter needed to drop to the ground to avoid being plunked in the head.

Texas tosser Vicente Padilla had already hit Mark Teixeira. Twice. On two consecutive pitches. Both instances appeared to be intentional and Tex was furious after Padilla hit him the second time.

Regardless, Padilla will make his next scheduled start and will only need to pay a fine as a consequence.

With the Oakland A's mired in last place in the AL West, I've begun to wonder: Is manager Bob Geren on the hot seat or not?

Only general manager Billy Beane knows for sure, but if Geren is not close to being replaced, he should be.

Here are five pieces of irrefutable evidence I'll offer in support of this conclusion:

1. Geren Has Ruined the Team's Greatest Strength: Its Bullpen

Ruined might be a bit severe, but blatant overuse from the first week of the season has made a mess of the bullpen.

When superstar Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball for violating the drug policy, pundits and experts stated that the Los Angeles Dodgers would be fine.

As it turned out, they were absolutely right, and then some. 

And it makes this longtime Dodger fan SO glad about the team's performance to date:

Not only have the Dodgers kept the best record in baseball at 37-18 (going into tonight) since Manny's suspension, they have increased their lead in the National League West to 9 1/2 games, and are a threat to run away with that division.