Category: MLB (Page 379 of 448)

A New York team landed Johan Santana, but it wasn’t that New York team. Santana is heading to the Metropolitans.

At a seemingly reasonable price — swift outfielder Carlos Gomez and young pitchers Philip Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra — the Mets have satisfied the Twins. Now they have three days, beginning Tuesday, to satisfy Santana who, armed with a no-trade clause that can be as effective in these circumstances as his world class changeup, can veto the trade if the Mets don’t make him happy.

Wow. The Mets landed Santana by only giving up one of their top prospects (Humber), a very good prospect (Gomez) and two very average prospects (Mulvey and Guerra). Seems like the Twins might have settled a bit here, which is a surprising considering how long they wanted to make a deal. Give the Mets credit – they improved their starting rotation tenfold and didn’t mortgage their future too much in the process.

Here’s Peter Gammons’ take:

Roger Clemens’ agent released an 18,000-word report Monday to refute allegations that his client’s career rebounded around the same time he was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.

“Clemens’ longevity was due to his ability to adjust his style of pitching as he got older, incorporating his very effective split-finger fastball to offset the decrease in the speed of his regular fastball caused by aging,” said the report, created by Randy Hendricks and two associates at his firm.

Clemens’ former trainer, Brian McNamee, claimed in last month’s Mitchell Report on drugs in baseball that he injected the pitcher with steroids and human growth hormone at least 16 times in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Clemens vehemently denies the allegations, and Clemens and McNamee are among five witnesses scheduled to testify before a House committee on Feb. 13. Clemens also has sued McNamee for defamation.

If Clemens is innocent, this is the right way to approach the situation. Every day there seems to be a report out of the Clemens’ camp trying to prove his innocence. Here’s the thing though, if he is guilty, he’s digging himself a deeper hole. So on one hand it’s almost novel that he’s going to great lengths to say he’s innocent, but if he’s guilty he’s only screwing himself in the end for HOF consideration. Plus, how convenient is it that his agent is saying Clemens started making changes to his pitching style right around the time McNamee supposedly injected him with human growth hormone? Hmm.

Barry Bonds has asked a federal judge to dismiss perjury charges against him, arguing the indictment is “scattershot.”

In the motion filed in San Francisco federal court, the former San Francisco Giant neither admits nor denies taking the drugs, but argues the questions asked by prosecutors during a December 2003 grand jury appearance were vague, ambiguous and confusing.

The lawyers said “the questions posed to him by two different prosecutors were frequently imprecise, redundant, overlapping and frequently compound.”

Such motions to dismiss cases are frequently filed, though rarely granted in federal criminal cases.

The court papers do offer an early glimpse at Bonds’ legal strategy. Legal experts said prosecutors must prove Bonds lied and that their questions before the grand jury were direct and open to little interpretation.

Bonds’ lawyers wrote “some portions of the indictment are so vague that it is simply impossible to be certain what untruths Mr. Bonds is alleged to have uttered.”

I’m sure the judge is just going to say, “Sure Barry – anything you want big guy. Is there anything else I can get for you? Need a soda or a backrub while I’m throwing out these federal perjury charges?”

Does this guy live in reality or does he literally think that the world revolves around him? Why doesn’t he just ask George Bush to name a state after him while he’s at it?

In one of his recent articles, Steve Campbell of the Houston Chronicle made a couple of great points about the Mitchell Report and the daily slam fest that has occurred over the past couple weeks between Roger Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee.

The time, effort and money spent on the Mitchell Report could have gone into cleaning up baseball in the present and future. Instead of destructive wallowing in the past, baseball could have done something constructive.
Right or wrong, this is where we are. We can’t vaporize the report. We can’t pretend it never happened, especially because so few players contested the findings.

Maybe Clemens is an incredibly unlucky man caught in a perfect storm of suspicion and impossible-to-prove-false accusations. Maybe Clemens is an incredibly proud man in the middle of a tragic fall from grace caused by his hubris.

Soon enough, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee will be legally bound to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Clemens has his version, McNamee has his. And if both men stick to their stories, exactly how do we decide whose truth is the truth?

I completely agree. Bud Selig and the rest of MLB needs to recognize that it now has a very flawed time period in their history and create something positive out of it. Don’t pussyfoot around – get a highly effective testing policy in place and make sure you stick to it.

As far as Clemens and McNamee are concerned, Campbell’s right in saying that the truth is about to come on regarding whether or not the Rocket took steroids. And one of these guys will go to jail if they lie to congress.

According to Jon Heyman of SI.com, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is going to be sticking around for a while.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig received a three-year extension through 2012 at the owner’s meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., today. Selig, 73, appeared before Congress this week to testify about the Mitchell Report, which he authorized to examine the history of steroids in baseball.

Details of the contract have not been announced. In 2007, Selig was reported to have earned $14 million.

This isn’t too surprising. The only thing baseball owners care about is making money and clearly, they’ve made money while Selig has been in office. It’s not fair to trash everything Selig has done, however. As the article points out, he did introduce revenue sharing, a wild card playoff round, and the sport is popular again after the ’94 strike ruined the game for a lot of folks. Too bad it took his players using roids to bring fans back to the ballparks, though.