Archives › Craig Calcaterra

We’ve seen this coming for a while, but the Mariners and Russell Branyan have said goodbye to each other for good. Unlike Brett Myers and the Phillies this is all amicable with Branyan thanking Jack Zduriencik. He’s a Four True Outcome player: home runs, strikeouts, walks and the nicest manners. Branyan says he has been…

I know you don’t care about this, but (a) there are a couple dozen substantive posts a day here so I’m entitled to a little fluff time and again; and (b) since it validates my source, I’m gonna post it anyway. Derek Jeter is not getting married, and yes — as you heard EXCLUSIVELY from…

Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times tweets it.  Here are some more details. It’s two years, but we don’t know terms yet. The sense before was that Kemp may want to go year to year with the Dodgers given the fact that (a) he’s a stud centerfielder; and (b) the Dodgers could be in the…

Yesterday’s report that Carlos Delgado wasn’t getting around very well led FanHouse’s Ed Price to speculate that Toronto could be a possible landing pad for him. Not gonna happen, says MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian.  The Blue Jays are not interested. If the guy can’t play defense, there aren’t many other options for him. Could this be…

Remember how Pablo Sandoval was embarking on that uber-workout regimen and was gonna be all lean and mean next season? Yeah, well about that . . . Pablo Sandoval has gained weight while playing in Venezuela, Sabean acknowledged. “But not enough to worry about,” he sid. Sabean had a long conversation with trainer Dave Groeschner…

So earlier I asked if someone had Rich Gossage’s cell. Seems someone did, and I just got off the phone with the Goose.  Nicest guy in the world, by the way. If you’re going to talk to a Hall of Fame reliever today, I highly recommend that you make it Gossage. Anyway, the reason I…

Three players were inducted into Japan’s baseball hall of fame.  One player who didn’t make it: Chunichi manager Hiromitsu Ochiai, a three-time batting Triple Crown winner, missed by one vote for the second year in a row. In addition to winning the triple crown thrice, Ochiai won two additional batting titles in non-Triple Crown years,…

You don’t hear too much of this kind of sentiment in today’s age of constant player movement and polished p.r., but thank goodness for Brett Myers for keeping things interesting: “I wanted to go back to Philadelphia, but they didn’t show an interest, they had other obligations, which is fine with me,” Myers said. He…

UPDATE: I just interviewed Goose Gossage about this. He was pretty damn cool about. Here’s the story. As is pretty clear by now, I have no problem putting players associated with steroids into the Hall of Fame. Adjust downward for era, use your horse sense and as much statistical evidence you can to figure out…

Pop quiz, hotshot: You have no money, no DH rule, and the most spacious outfield in all of baseball. Why on Earth are you interested in a veteran defensive liability Jermaine Dye? I can’t think of any team in baseball that would be a worse fit for Dye, can you? I mean maybe if he’s…

St. Lucie County, Florida has not been paid for the naming rights they sold to the Mets’ spring training facility. The rights were purchased by a development company called Core Communities, but the county is going to meet with the Mets about it, so presumably it’s somehow the Mets’ responsibility to collect and pay the…

This morning Dan Shaughnessy compared steroids to the Third Reich in the Sudetenland. Now Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Daily News compares them to Apartheid: It is time for Major League Baseball to rent a ballroom, set up television cameras, and invite all the players from the 1980s and ’90s to tell their steroid stories.…

You don’t have to search hard in my archives to find effusive praise of Joe Posnanski. I tend to agree with him on most things, he’s the best sports writer going in my view, and someone would have to write an awful lot of gold to even begin to get into the conversation as his…

Former Blue Jays’ GM J.P. Ricciardi never really got the hang of the public relations aspects of being a general manager. He’d rip players in the media.  He’s famous for lying about things too, once having said, after being caught lying about B.J. Ryan’s injury, “they’re not lies if we know the truth.”  Simply put,…

Dejan tweets that the physical is done and the ink has been applied to the contract between Church and the Pirates. The deal is a one-year, $1.5MM agreement with up to $1.32MM in plate appearance-based incentives, with 600 plate appearances meaning he’ll have realized a raise from last year.  Given that the Pirates have said that…

This is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but I’ve been thinking a bit about the timing of Mark McGwire’s little coming out party. Obviously his hiring meant that he had to talk about all of this, but when was the best time? He was hired in October.  Major League Baseball probably would…

Thank God we finally have Dan “the voice of reason” Shaughnessy’s take on the McGwire business.  Take it away, Dan: Why wouldn’t a guy cheat? Steroids made McGwire rich and famous. The performance-enhancing drugs probably will cost him Cooperstown, but ‘roids got McGwire where he wanted to go. Is there a Triple A ballplayer who’d…

For those who missed it due to all of the McGwire hoopla, the Marlins were taken to the woodshed yesterday over pocketing revenue sharing money instead of using it for its intended purpose. The upshot: the Union had the Marlins dead to rights on violating Article XXIV(B)(5)(a)of the Basic Agreement, which commits teams to spending…

Prepare yourself for the best ten minutes you’ll have today. Highlights from (roughly) 1909-1920.  Oh, and ask yourself at the 1:32 mark of the video: how much deader would the Deadball Era have been if they, you know, actually had a pitcher’s mound?

MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon has a story on the Reds’ efforts to get Aroldis Chapman, dating back to his appearances in the World Baseball Classic.  They scouted him pretty heavily, stayed out of the hot stove reports, had a private workout for him no one reported, made an offer, went back and forth with the Hendricks…

The New York Time’s Richard Sandomir has the backstory on how Mark McGwire’s confession came to be. In blog years this is very old — it came out last night for cryin’ out loud — but it’s definitely worth a read: The one-day plan — coordinated over the past month by Ari Fleischer, a former…

Ramon Castro, who first was a Blue Jay and then wasn’t a Blue Jay is now a White Sox. It’s a one year, $1 million deal. He hit .219/.292/.406 in 171 plate appearances on the season, catching about 400 innings. That means that he is yet another catcher who is demonstrably superior to Jason Kendall, yet…

We know that Scott Boras has complained about teams like the Marlins pocketing revenue sharing money instead of using it on players. We know that John Henry has complained too.  Now, with the release of separate statements from the league, the Marlins and the Players’ Association, that the Marlins are on double secret probation. Her’s…

I’m surprised it took him a day to find a microphone.  Anyway, you’ve been right more than you’ve been wrong about this Jose, so you’re probably entitled to a few minutes of the floor: “I’ve got no problems with a few of the things he’s saying, but again, it’s ironic and strange that Mark McGwire…

FOX’s Jon Paul Morosi reports that Bengie Molina as lowered his asking price and that, as a result, he may be a step closer to joining the Mets. The holdup all along has been years, not money, so it’s unclear whether the Molina is now willing to deal with a single year and an option…