Archives › Craig Calcaterra
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Is there some friction between Mike Rizzo and the Nats’ owner?
May 20, 2013, 11:32 AM EDT
19 Comments
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…
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Darvish vs. Verlander was the draw, but neither of them were all that sharp. As such, this first inning slide from Ian Kinsler, given the GIF treatment by Drew Sheppard, was easily the highlight of last night’s Tigers-Ranger ballgame: If I had the skills I’d insert audio over that with Kinsler saying “My face! My…
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Rangers 10, Tigers 4: So much for pitching porn. Darvish wasn’t exactly sharp early but he ultimately settled down. Meanwhile, who put the benzedrine in Mr. Verlander’s Ovaltine? He was a hot mess. And I do mean hot. He was lighting up the radar gun in the early innings but was overthrowing and seemed to…
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Hope this doesn’t hurt the Marlins competitively … The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball announced today that Miami Marlins Minor League right-handed pitcher Juan Arias has received a 50-game suspension without pay after testing positive for metabolites of Stanozolol, a performance-enhancing substance in violation of the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. He…
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You seem to have a hole in your outfield fence, St. Louis: Then the wall was all like “nom nom nom”
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And — altogether now! — it was successful: Roy Halladay underwent successful arthroscopic surgery in Los Angeles on Wednesday and could begin a throwing program in six to eight weeks, the Phillies announced Thursday. Well-known orthopedist, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, performed the surgery on Halladay. According to team physician Dr. Michael Ciccotti, Halladay could begin a throwing program…
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Q: What did you think of Hideki Matsui’s postseason performance? Would you like to have a player like Matsui on your team? I love the oldies. Q: Went to watch the M’s at Yankees stadium last night and tonight. National Anthem pre-recorded both nights, is this a thing? I wish it were more of one. How…
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What is? You have to watch to find out.
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Fred White, a Royals radio broadcaster for 25 years and team employee since died yesterday due to complications from melanoma. He was 76: White was best known for the 25 years, 1974-98, that he teamed with Denny Matthews in the Royals’ radio booth. “I had great admiration and respect for Fred and even after he…
