Will Brett Favre play for the Vikings in 2009 or will he stay retired? In their latest ‘toon, Bang! Cartoons suggests (via Brett’s agent) that Favre take an, uh, unconventional route to becoming a legend.
If you liked that cartoon, click here to check out more Bang! Cartoons.
Joe Posnanski put together a ranking of who he believes are the top 100 current MLB players at this moment (as in right now – not over the past two years, three years, etc).
Here is his top 10:
1. Albert Pujols, 1B, Cardinals
“Every hitter is human,” says pitcher Zack Greinke (No. 4). “Except Pujols.”2. Joe Mauer, C, Twins
Could win his third batting title this year … no other American League catcher ever has won even one in history.3. Hanley Ramirez, SS, Marlins
Advanced stats suggest he’s better defensively than people think. Offensively, he leads the league in hitting and might have another 30-30 season.4. Zack Greinke, SP, Royals
Throws four plus pitches, all for strikes, leads the league with a 2.08 ERA, and has won 10 games for a team that has scored the fewest runs in the AL.5. Chase Utley, 2B, Phillies
Crushes the ball, plays outstanding defense and, just as a fun side note, has led the league in hit-by-pitch three years running.6. Alex Rodriguez, 3B, Yankees
Disastrous first half splattered with injuries, rumors and a low batting average … and the guy STILL has a 145 OPS+, good for seventh in the AL.7. Tim Lincecum, SP, Giants
The Freak is pitching even better this year (10-2, 2.27 ERA, league-leading 159 K’s) than last year, when he won the Cy Young.8. Dan Haren, SP, Diamondbacks
League is hitting .187 against him and he has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 137-18. Baseball hasn’t seen anything like that since the heyday of Pedro.9. Johan Santana, SP, Mets
He was 2-4 with a 6.19 ERA in six June starts and people screamed that he was done. But Santana is a demon in the second half … and sure enough he has not allowed a run in his last two starts.10. Roy Halladay, SP, Blue Jays
Not sure where he will be pitching … but he will dominate. A handful of the people in the world can throw 93-mph fastballs that sink. A handful of people can pitch with pinpoint control. One man can do both.
It’s hard to argue Pujols being in the top spot and with how good Mauer has been this season (especially considering how there were huge concerns about his back in spring training) I’m not going to debate Posanski about his second slot either.
But I guess I’m a little confused about his ranking system overall. He says that he’s doing a top 100 of players RIGHT NOW (to use his exact phrasing of the words “RIGHT NOW”), but what does that mean? Over the past two weeks? Over the past couple days? Over the entire course of the season – what?
Because if it’s over the entire course of the season, he’s got A-Rod way too high and I don’t think Johan Santana should be ranked ahead of Roy Halladay either. Also, and I know I might catch some flack for this, but I think Lincecum is the best pitcher in baseball right now. Greinke has been absolutely phenomenal, but Lincecum just recently went 29 innings without giving up an earned run and could easily have 13 or 14 wins if it weren’t for the Giants’ pathetic use for an offense.
But hey, as with any ranking, you can debate every slot 1 through 100 and I like the feature on a whole.
Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi has set a July 28 deadline to complete a deal for ace Roy Halladay, but admits that a trade is probably unlikely.
“At this point, it’s probably unlikely that we’ll trade Doc,” Ricciardi said Tuesday.
“No one has really stepped up yet,” Ricciardi said. “We’ve got to be highly motivated to move him. We haven’t been highly motivated yet.”
“In three days, not much is probably going to happen,” Ricciardi said. “It’s such a magnitude, the trade. He’s got to OK the team he’s going to, we’ve got to agree on prospects. That doesn’t happen, traditionally in baseball, in one hour. I think we need a little more time than that.”
If a trade is unlikely, then I have to question Ricciardi’s thinking behind putting Halladay (somewhat) on trade market in the first place. Granted, he’s said all along that he would have to be blown away by any offer, but what was he expecting?
If he believed that some team was just going to swoop in and offer him three top prospects and a bona fide All-Star for Halladay without even attempting to do the negotiation dance, then Ricciardi has been in la-la land the entire time. Halladay is a phenomenal pitcher and could easily make a playoff contender into a World Series favorite, but the Doc is also 32, doesn’t come cheap, and becomes a free agent in a year and a half. That’s a lot to consider for a team even remotely interested in him, nevertheless one seriously entertaining putting a package together.
I think Ricciardi never had serious intentions on trading Halladay in the first place. Putting Halladay on the trade market this year was essentially a practice round for him next year when he will actually have to move the ace before Doc becomes a free agent after the 2010 season. With the Jays freefalling out of first place following a red-hot start, Ricciardi couldn’t risk the backlash he would receive trading away the club’s most popular player.
While there’s still a chance he could be dealt, it appears that Halladay is going to be a Blue Jay until this time next year.
Things are bad for the New York Mets. How bad you ask? Bad to the point where the VP of player development is ripping off his shirt, calling a Double-A player a “part of a woman’s anatomy” and then challenging the entire team to a fight.
The Binghamton Mets clubhouse nearly turned into a scene out of WWE Raw recently, when VP for player development Tony Bernazard removed his shirt and challenged the Double-A players to a fight during a postgame tirade, multiples sources told the Daily News.
Bernazard particularly went after middle infield prospect Jose Coronado, using a slang term associated with a woman’s anatomy, a source indicated. The confrontation happened about 10days before the All-Star break, according to insiders.While the 52-year-old Bernazard’s actions were over-the-top no matter what the motivation, alleged underage drinking on the team apparently was one motivation for the eruption, an organization source said. Still, sending players to counseling rather than challenging them to a rumble might have been a more appropriate course of action.
The shoddy treatment of people in the system has led to mocking of the VP behind his back.
Hey, when you’ve got a bunch of underage players getting all hopped up on the alcohol and playing like a bunch of women’s anatomies, then sometimes the only thing to do is rip off your shirt and challenge them to a fight. I mean, the audacity of some of these players going out drinking after the games; wait until they get to the big leagues – where players go directly home following games and usually cozy up to a nice book.
The entire Mets organization is a freaking mess right now. The big league club can’t keep anyone healthy, the GM is clueless and the VP of player development is ripping off his shirt and challenging the Double-A team to a fight. Ridiculous…but hilarious.
According to a report by NFL.com, commissioner Roger Goodell said that he’s going to look into the sexual assault allegations that have been brought upon Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said he is looking into the allegations against Roethlisberger, one of the biggest names in sports. He has won two Super Bowl titles in his five-year career and is about to report to training camp as the Steelers look to repeat as champions.
“I don’t know enough of the details, but it’s a civil lawsuit, it’s something that we obviously will look into,” Goodell said when asked about it in New York during an unrelated news conference. “I’ve been in touch with the Steelers about it.”
Roethlisberger’s lawyer adamantly denied the allegations Tuesday.
“Ben has never sexually assaulted anyone,” David Cornwell said in a statement. “The timing of the lawsuit and the absence of a criminal complaint and a criminal investigation are the most compelling evidence of the absence of any criminal conduct. If an investigation is commenced, Ben will cooperate fully and Ben will be fully exonerated.”
I’ll say the same thing today as I did yesterday when these allegations first came out: We don’t know enough yet to assume anything. We can speculate all we want but the fact of the matter is that there’s no factual evidence that suggests Big Ben did anything wrong.
One thing is for sure though, Goodell isn’t going to tolerate any player tarnishing the NFL shield. So if Big Ben is found guilty of any wrongdoing, you can rest assure that Goodell is going to make him pay because no individual player is above the league.
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