1. Friends over at Inside Dodgers Baseball think the blue are out of the running for Bedard and Johan Santana. To me, this makes perfect sense. Dodgers need a bat with their lineup stacked with slap and run hitters.
I love Manny. I’m a lifelong Yankees fan and I love Manny. He’s totally gootarded (goofy and retarded). I can’t wait for Manny’s Hall of Fame speech, “Manny is very happy to have plaque, but my dentist is not.” Only Rickey Henderson’s Hall of Fame speech has a chance to equal it on the unintentional comedy scale. Today, however, we’re concerned with what Manny Ramirez will do in 2008, not 2015 when undoubtedly there will be flying cars.
In the last two years, Manny has missed 61 games, maybe twenty of them were from Manny being hurt rather than Manny being Manny. Last year his numbers were actually bad for where you had to draft him: 84/20/88/.296. Carlos Pena did this by June. Manny hits in a tremendous lineup and he has amazing strike-zone discipline. He should be able to post similar numbers to 2007 with his eyes closed. Unfortunately, Manny seems like he decided to get some shut-eye about two years ago. He’s the kid working the summer job at Friendly’s over Labor Day weekend. Tuesday’s back to school, and the kid just doesn’t care if you said Jimmies on the Happy Ending Sundae, you’re not getting Jimmies. Well, Manny just doesn’t care anymore. The sundae will still be good, but you’re not getting the Jimmies. For where you have to draft Manny, I say reject.
BTW, this picture reminded me of Manny being Manny:
Many of you would have preferred to have the “taco burns” than to have owned Jason Bay last year. He flailed at every inside pitch he was thrown, desperately trying to get something going. He managed to make people envious of Xavier Nady’s numbers.
People have long predicted Bay was nothing but a skinnier Bobby Higginson. If you look at Higginson’s career stats, he was also very useful early in his career. Now Higginson’s age 29 season is particularly interesting (the same one Bay will be entering), Higgy just came off an egregious season (just like Bay did) and he bounced back for a very productive season. So the same might be expected of Bay. But this is misinterpreting the facts. The facts:
His lineup is not getting better in 2008. In this off-season, a physician did not tend to the knee that hindered his running in 2007. Bay, instead, opted to let time heal all wounds. This does not bode well for a return to 10 or 15 steals. His BABIP for 2004, 2005 and 2006 were .352, .355 and .338 respectively. When he stopped getting so lucky in 2007, his average plummeted to .247. In 2007, Bay couldn’t catch up to any inside pitches as you can see from this graphic:
This is usually a sign that a player’s bat is slowing.
A slowing bat at 28, a horrible lineup around him and a player that had some good fortune with BABIP in the past does not equal a candidate for a rebound. So I might have suggested you draft Higginson in 2000, but I can’t do the same for Bay in 2008. Stamped: Rejected.
