Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Baseball tonight

Well, this is a little surprising. I'm certainly no huge fan of Harold Reynolds - I always get sort of pissed off at myself whenever I agree with something he says - but he was still among the best of the Baseball Tonight crew. Damn that's a sad comment. And with Gammons out, it's now Karl Ravech (a perfectly serviceable announcer/questioner guy), John Kruk (unable to form a cogent argument to support his strongly-held beliefs), Steve Phillips (put in the "former GM" role, but no one seems to understand he's an ESPN analyst because no one wants him anywhere near their front office), Jeff Brantley (blah), Buster Olney (a smart guy and good reporter who should not be on television - and knows it), and Tino Martinez (terrified of the camera, or never has anything interesting to say, or both). Way to go ESPN.

5 comments:

  1. Coming from the guy who just rediscovered BB, so I am no authority, but I found Reynolds the most interesting and palatable of the bunch (excluding Gammons). What the hell happened? Do you think he wrote "this ship is sinking" on a white board? Did Chris Berman challenge him to a fight?

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  2. WEll, it has to be something pretty damn serious. ESPN didn't fire Michael Irvin when he got arrested for drugs.

    I love how the talk about trading deadline deals the past few nights, everyone makes sure they don't bring up the Kazmir deal. I have heard Jeff Bagwell for Larry Anderson mentioned twice already this week, but no one dares mention Phillips blunder.

    Hey, maybe Phillips traded Harold Reynolds for Cheryl Miller.

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  3. Really, though, why would they avoid it? Phillips drafted Kazmir - Jim Duquette traded him away (crappy trades run in the family, apparently). Maybe it's a sore topic for him, but I doubt it - he brags about the good decisions he made as Mets GM all the time (all three of them). If anything, I'm surprised he doesn't harp on the stupidity of the trade. Maybe he and Duquette are still close?

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  4. I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with historical proportions and while Kazmir is a fine young pitcher, he is not quite ready for Cooperstown.

    So do you think Dan duquette was a bad GM? I found his track record incredibly mixed. In reality it was his personality that got him fired.

    On the plus side - he traded for Pedro. He traded a worthless pile of crap for Derek Lowe and Tek. He traded for Canseco who helped them win the division in 95. when they were out of it in 97 he traded Mike Stanley for Tony Armas JR (who they used to get Pedro). He traded for Mirabelli when ek got hurt.

    On the downside there was the Moyer-Bragg and a series of moves in that brought in bad players like Arrojo, Bichette, and Lansing, but none of them were terrible in that we gave up anyone who went on to great success. Maybe his worst trade was Lew Ford for Hector Carrasco - but Ford was buried on the dpeth chart.

    There are a few that are questionable - Uggie came and was good, but Ohka turned out okay. He got Aguillera but dealt (at the time) the Sox top prospect (Frankie Rodriguez). I think he traded for cliff floyd as well, though I can't recall who he gave up.

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  5. Ryen Russillo is the best baseball guy out there right, in my opinion. He's not a yahoo homer, and knows a ton about just about every player out there. He's on Fox Sports Night or something like that, and fills in for Felger on ESPN Radio Boston. He'll be national sooner or later (if he isn't already).

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