Archives › Craig Calcaterra
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UPDATE: Dodgers GM Ned Colletti says Don Mattingly is “doing fine”
May 20, 2013, 8:00 PM EDT
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UPDATE: Just a quick follow-up from this morning, Dodgers general maanger Ned Colletti told the Associated Press earlier this evening that manager Don Mattingly is “doing fine.” Asked if it was false to say Mattingly would be fired this week, Colletti simply said: “My perspective hasn’t changed. I’m done talking about it.” 8:52 AM ET:…
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I actually don’t believe in teams of destiny. At least not in May. I’ve seen too many teams suck for five months, get hot in September and October and then win it all or at least come close. My 1993 Braves made a giant trade in 1993, heralded by literal flames, and then went on…
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Joe Maddon shows us why limited instant replay and manager challenges are bad ideas
May 20, 2013, 3:41 PM EDT
In yesterday’s Rays-Orioles game, Matt Joyce hit a ball that maybe was a homer or maybe a double or maybe a foul ball. Hard to say on live viewing! It was initially ruled in play and Joyce made it to second for a double. Buck Showalter came out of the dugout and argued that the…
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I’m sure it has zero to do with their play, but Pete Abraham of the Globe reports that, unlike in years past, the Red Sox are puttin’ on the ritz this year for road trips: Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, and Jon Lester now dress like hedge fund managers on road trips. Ryan Dempster has custom-made…
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In response to Ken Rosenthal’s column on the possible imminent end to Don Mattingly’s career in Los Angeles, Bill Shaikin reports thusly: The Dodgers have “no plans” to fire Manager Don Mattingly when the team returns home Thursday or any time before then, a club official said late Sunday night. So he’s safe. That is, unless the Dodgers are…
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That state being one in which the team has a lot of injuries but not a lot of help on the farm. Also: how does Cabrera’s prime match up to others’, historically speaking?
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A pretty depressing take on Albert Pujols from Posnanski today: Each of the last two seasons, he hit well enough the last four-plus months of the season to end up with strong numbers. Last year, for instance, after May 14 he hit .312/.374/.589 with 42 doubles and 29 homers. You have to believe that he…
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Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times asked the M’s manager to explain something. Here’s his answer without context. It’s different. If I have to explain it to you, then you don’t understand. I can’t. I don’t have enough time to explain it to you, because if you don’t know, then you don’t know. And you’re never…
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Is there some friction between Mike Rizzo and the Nats’ owner?
May 20, 2013, 11:32 AM EDT
Adam Kilgore has an interesting article up about the job status of Nationals GM Mike Rizzo. The Nats just extended him per the terms of his current deal, so sure, that’s a vote of confidence. But there is some weirdness afoot too: In April, Mark Lerner, the Nationals’ principal owner, told the Washington Times that…
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Posnanski hits the nail on the head: What player in baseball do you think has the most ANT — Announcer Nonsense Talk — spoken about them? By ANT, I’m not just referring to stuff announcers say. I’m referring to a sort of universal praise that does not tie to logic or anything tangible but instead…
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Watch Robinson Cano play wiffleball in the street with a boy fighting leukemia
May 20, 2013, 10:32 AM EDT
Headline says it all. But this from the MLB Fan Cave is cool, dudes.
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The Yankees are ruled by different expectations than everyone else
May 20, 2013, 9:45 AM EDT
The Yankees average over 37,000 a game, yet get stuff written about how they are having attendance issues. If you’re savvy and go to the secondary market, you can still get tickets for a relatively decent price to most Yankees games, even if they’re not the best seats in the world. Compare this to basketball…
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Apparently Miguel Cabrera’s 2013 has made his 2012 better somehow
May 20, 2013, 9:18 AM EDT
Bill posted about Cabrera’s big night last night, and this morning Twitter is dominated by folks noting just how utterly ridiculous Cabrera has been so far this year. And make no mistake, he has been. He’s hitting .387/.457/.659 and leads the AL in runs, hits, RBI, batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, and total bases. Just…
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I saw “The Great Gatsby” yesterday. Gatsby is my favorite novel of all time. The movie was not the book and if your basis for slamming it is that it’s not the book, well, your standards and expectations probably need to be checked. Deciding beforehand that I’d not make my judgment of it dependent upon…
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Phillies 3, Reds 2: Aroldis Chapman is usually automatic. But he surrendered back-to-back bombs to the murderers row that is Erik Kratz and Freddy Galvis as the Philly walked off Cincinnati. Heck, the inning started with Chapman walking Delmon Young on four straight pitches, so you know he wasn’t on it yesterday. And Cliff Lee…
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This doesn’t narrow it down too much. Maybe it eliminates the idea of “skip a start and wait and see,” but it’s still unclear if Pettitte will take his next turn: The team hasn’t decided what to do with Andy Pettitte. Girardi said he would likely either make his next start or hit DL. —…
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Hail to the chief: Reid Ryan’s tenure as president of the Astros began Friday, when Houston announced that the son of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan would take over the role vacated by George Postolos … Ryan, previously the president and CEO of Ryan-Sanders Baseball, had been running the Triple-A Round Rock Express (Rangers) and…
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Baseball’s head of replay and umpiring went on the Dan Patrick show and makes it clear: he doesn’t want the adequate to be the enemy of the low-end-of-mediocre. But he is for expanded replay because, he says, that it’s bad when people pay more attention to the missed calls than the game. Which is fine,…
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It’s hard to remember a time when someone running out onto the playing field at a sporting event would not be chased, pummeled or tased. Or that we, as a society, wouldn’t find it uncomfortable and problematic for someone to run up to another person and give them an unsolicited kiss. But the 1960s-80s were…
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HBT Daily: Who will the Phillies trade if they fall out of contention?
May 17, 2013, 11:32 AM EDT
That and some other Twitter questions are answered in today’s HBT Daily:
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When Tim Wakefield was winding down I was worried that we’d not have any knuckleballers. Then R.A. Dickey emerged from years of obscurity. Dickey, of course, will not last forever, so we’re faced again with the possible extinction of knuckleballers. Thank goodness there are two of them on Dagobah right now, learning from the knuckleball…
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Johnny Manziel threw out the first pitch at the Padres-Nats game in interesting fashion
May 17, 2013, 10:32 AM EDT
At least I think it was for last night’s game. May have been another night, but I didn’t notice it before. This via The Big Lead. Kinda cute, I guess, but I say that as a guy who has kinda checked out of college football in the past year or two so if Manziel is…
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Is it a problem that fewer elite players are hitting free agency?
May 17, 2013, 9:48 AM EDT
Ken Rosenthal has a thoughtful piece up today about how fewer elite players are reaching free agency due to the trend of teams offering big extensions. He talked to one unnamed player who was concerned about it: The player’s point was this: Free agency helped make the players union into a powerhouse. But now, with…
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Paul Sullivan of the Tribune makes a great point when he says this year’s Cubs team is “not good enough to capture our attention completely, and not bad enough to ignore totally.” Such is life for most rebuilding teams. But he provides a fantastic service today in telling Cubs fans what they should pay attention…
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Shane Victorino: “I got to have these, man. My addiction’s getting so bad.”
May 17, 2013, 9:00 AM EDT
Sad. Shane has so many friends and teammates looking out for him, yet he is still spiraling into addiction. And he doesn’t seem to care about it. And because he makes good money, the fact that each hit costs hundreds of dollars doesn’t work as a deterrent for him like it would most people. No, it’s…
