But can he get along with anyone well enough to communicate it?
Mark McGwire is now the bench coach on the Padres.
With Price and Zimmerman off the boards, I wonder what the Cubs do. Peter Gammons thinks they sign Lackey, then trade Soler to Atlanta for Shelby Miller.
Sounds reasonable, and I can live with that. But Gammons is about as accurate with Hot Stove rumors as adaher is with politics and elections.
Now Toronto has hired another Indians buddy of Mark Shapiro to be GM. The Indians tradition of excellence and victory is something we all wanted way more than David Price.
Reliable reports today that Price and Anthopolous had been working on a deal since August. Once he took control, Shapiro told Price he wasn’t wanted. Woo. We have Jesse Chavez.
I’d like to see my Cubs sign Cliff Lee to a one year, incentive-laden contract. He could be a low-risk, high reward pitcher who might in after Lester and Arietta.
Funny you mention Cliff Lee. I just read an article about how the Red Sox would be interested in his potential but have no place to put a guy like Cliff Lee. Um, what? Last I checked their rotation sucks. Price and Ed Rodriguez are the only guys who can write their name in pen. Buchholz, Miley and Porcello were nothing special.
Buchholz is high ceiling though.
Right now - granting a lot will happen betwene now and Opening Day - I’d say Boston is as good a bet as anyone to win the AL East in 2016, and not just because of David Price. The thing is they have a number of guys who will improve just because *they can’t be that bad again. * Pablo Sandoval isn’t THAT bad. Hanley Ramirez isn’t THAT bad. And Clay Buchholz isn’t that bad, either. If those three guys are just OK in 2016, that’s gotta be 6, 7 wins right there. Now have a better first baseman than Mike Napoli, add David Price, a bit less Rusney Castillo, and the team as it is can win 90 games.
Buchholz isn’t bad, he just can’t stay healthy. Hanley is supposedly being shopped around, doubt anyone wants him, but I’d agree he’s better than his last season. Maybe not by much, though. Sandoval, on the other hand, I actually do think really is *that *bad. I hated that signing. Hated!
I’m not quite convinced that the addition of Price and Kimbrell and the hope of better offense from the same guys is enough to take the Sox from last to first.
Just no no no! Baseball does not need to follow college football with a new uniform for every game. The Diamondbacks plan to use 8 different uniforms next season. At this point, they’re no longer uniforms , they’re costumes.
The Diamondbacks have used like a hundred different uniforms already and they haven’t been in the league for twenty years yet. Honestly I could not tell you for sure, without looking it up, what their team colors are anymore.
I hated it when Toronto changed their uniforms in 1996, including a spectacularly ugly new team logo. (Previously there had been some minor changes, like getting rid of powder blues and going to grey road uniforms, but the changes were always little things so the basic overall scheme never changed much. ) I’ve no idea why they did it. Then they changed them again in 2003 but they were so awful, especially the logo, they changed them again in 2004 to uniforms that hardly had any blue in them. In 2011 they changed to the uniforms they wear now, but instead of an all new set of hideous things, they changed them to an updated version of what they’d originally worn from 1977 to 1995.
What was fascinating is that while the 1996, 2003 and 2004 “Look, new uniforms!” changes had resulted in very little uptick in merchandising sales, the 2011 return of the uniforms that looked like the old ones resulted in a HUGE splurge in sales. People wanted Blue Jay apparel that looked like the way Blue Jay apparel had looked for two decades. They had never wanted it to change.
I don’t know any fans who want uniforms to change, unless it’s something super ugly. Do Dodgers fans want new uniforms? Hell no, of course not. They want the same basic Dodger uniforms, with just technical updates, so that when you get a Clayton Kershaw jersey it looks a lot like the Fernando Valenzuela jersey that other guy’s wearing, and hell, will even look like a Sandy Koufax jersey. A Mickey Mantle #7 jersey looks quite a bit like a Derek Jeter #2 jersey, just a different number. Stan Musial and Albert Pujols jerseys have the same two cardinals sitting on a bat. Baseball fans eat that shit up. All fans do. What Cowboys fan is demanding a new uniform? None. Do you see Bruins fans asking for the gold and black to be changed to teal and purple? Hell no.
Lackey reportedly signs 2yr 32mm contract with Cubs.
Cubs acquire Lackey to do their bidding.
Diamondbacks sign Greinke according to MLBTR…didnt see that coming
Those new uniforms SUCK.
I liked the uniforms they started with - the teal ones. Too many teams seem to think that red/while is a good combo, and it isn’t. If your team isn’t named after something red, don’t use the color, dammit!
Greinke as a Diamondback is hysterical. Hope he enjoys playing on a last-place team that will still be in last place even with him.
IIRC, Greinke came out and said that he was going to play for whoever paid him the most. Points for honesty there.
(apparently that was in 2012, but anyway).
They think Arizona were a sleeper in the NL West before they signed him.
If Greinke is a Diamondback and not a Dodger in 2015 it’s quite possible Arizona wins the division. How many wins was he worth, you think? Take them away from LA , give them to Arizona, and tell me what the standings say.
Greinke has always been about the money. Fair enough.
That would flip arizona and the dodgers. The interesting thing is that the Dodgers only need to replace him with a 2 war pitcher to move a head of the giants into second.
That being said the dodgers rotation and bullpen needs a ton of help maybe they could drop to a three man rotation if they beefed up the bullpen and had kershaw only face 18 batters per game. There doesn’t seem to beenough talent on the market to pick up a reliable number 2 but if you get 5-6 innings from your starter and then run 4 releivers per night they should hold up for a season.
With the Dodgers, I don’t see why they couldn’t beef up the rotation by signing, say, Mike Leake, then trading for someone like Travis Wood. Wood can be a decent end-of-rotation lefty who could also be used in the bullpen and brought in to spot-start. He’s pretty durable, not to mention versatile. And Dodger Stadium seems like a pretty good pitcher’s park, so he should post decent numbers. He can also be used as a pinch-runner.