Month: June 2010 (Page 11 of 58)

Jeremiah Masoli and the NFL supplemental draft

If I were a NFL GM (and God willing someday I will be, thanks to my extensive sports blogging experience) there isn’t enough booze in an Irish pub to get me drunk enough to select former Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli in July’s supplemental draft.

Despite having one year of eligibility remaining, The Oregonian reported earlier this week that Masoli is expected to enter the supplemental draft. This news comes three weeks after the University of Oregon football program booted him off the team following his second legal incident in six months.

In March, Masoli and fellow genius Garrett Embry pled guilty to second-degree burglary after they robbed a campus frat house for two laptop computers and a guitar in late January. Oregon suspended Masoli for the entire 2010 season, although stated that if stayed out of trouble, he could return to the football team for his final year of eligibility in 2011.

But in early June, Masoli was charged with possession of marijuana, driving with a suspended license and failure to stop at a driveway or a sidewalk. Head coach Chip Kelly had no choice but to kick him off the team entirely following that incident, which brings us to our current situation.

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Report: Marlins to offer manager job to Bobby Valentine

The Marlins have apparently already found their replacement for Fredi Gonzalez.

From the Miami Herald:

Bobby Valentine is expected to be offered the job as the Florida Marlins’ next manager.

Valentine, an analyst for ESPN, confirmed through an e-mail he was flying to South Florida to meet with close friend and Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and several team executives.

That’s when Loria is expected to offer the 60-year-old former Rangers and Mets skipper a four-year contract to become the organization’s 11th manager, ESPN reported Thursday night.

Team president David Samson confirmed he called Valentine moments after the team fired its winningest manager, Fredi Gonzalez, Wednesday morning. Samson said Thursday that Valentine’s interview Friday would be the first in a series with “several” candidates.

It was a little strange that the Marlins decided to fire Gonzalez after winning two straight games. (Usually owners wait until the team is on a downslide to fire the manager.) But if they already had Valentine lined up as a candidate and felt good that he would agree to come aboard, then their timing with Gonzalez makes more sense.

Valentine last managed in the big leagues from 1996 to 2002 with the Mets. He was with the Chiba Lotte Marines from 2004 until he was fired in 2009 and has spent the last year with ESPN.

I’m dying to see how he and Hanley Ramirez will get along.

LenDale White sounds off about Pete Carroll

While appearing on Clay Travis’ radio show on 104-5 The Zone in Nashville, former Titans and Seahawks’ running back LenDale White had some unflattering things to say about Pete Carroll and his former coach’s involvement in the USC scandal surrounding Reggie Bush.

On USC (from Larry Brown Sports):

“I don’t want to bad mouth nobody, but as big as this scale is and as much as they (the NCAA) saying somebody took, for you not to know anything is kind of unbelievable to me. I don’t know. If you’re the athletic director I’m pretty sure you get wind of something, that somebody’s put something in your ear. When I was going to school there, and we were partying too much on campus, coaches could show up at our dorm room and tell us to calm the partying down. But you can’t tell if somebody took a $750,000 home? I don’t know. It’s weird to me.”

On his release from the Seahawks:

“I was shocked. I’m still shocked. I would figure if there was a problem or anything needed to be said or done, that my old coach would grab me to the side and whisper something in my ear and tell me step it up or do something different. I would figure that.”

“Thursday (the day before the release) when I was leaving practice, Pete Carroll hugged me and told me everything was going well. I thought everything was fine. I went to Vegas, just having fun for Memorial Day weekend and then I get a call Friday morning telling me they’re going in another (direction). I never really got an explanation.”

“I actually called Pete and asked Pete what was going on. Pete never knows why anything, right? Pete, he beat around the bush. He just said it wasn’t going to work out. He didn’t really give me an answer. He didn’t give me a clear explanation.”

When he showed up to the NFL scouting combine in 2006, White was so out of shape that one GM was actually quoted as saying that he “needed a bra.”

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Baker: Mariners can’t keep Cliff Lee

Despite their recent hot streak, Seattle Times columnist Geoff Baker writes that it’s too late for the Mariners to keep starter Cliff Lee.

Recent play aside, Cliff Lee is likely to be shopped. The Mariners need to start filling holes for next year and beyond and the Lee trade is the best place to start since there is no way he will sign here beyond 2010. He’s in line for a $100-million contract, which he probably has a better shot at getting now than he did last off-season, and is not going to take the massive (try 50 percent) discount the M’s would need to get to keep him. Why would he give them that? He’s been here only two months. … We can dream and dream about a 1-2 punch in the post-season, but this lineup is not good enough to get the M’s there.

Coming into the 2010 season, the Mariners believed that if they pitched well enough and played good defense that they could mask their deficiencies on offense. But seeing as how they’re 13 games back in the AL West and have scored the third fewest runs in baseball, that game plan is shot to hell. Not even Lee and Felix Hernandez can save them.

Baker’s right: at some point, the M’s are going to have to go out and get a big popper for the middle of their lineup. What good is it to have Ichiro on base all the time if he has nobody behind him to knock him in? It’s hard to fault Jack Zduriencik for building the roster around pitching and defense based on the park they play in, but clearly the M’s don’t even have enough offense to be a .500 team.

They need to get a bat in exchange for Lee – that should be Zdurienkcik’s main priority as the trade deadline approaches.


Photo from fOTOGLIF

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