It’s catch up with bookmarked articles night, and I wanted to bring up another one. This article is one by SI writer Tom Verducci, and is his take on how to fix the baseball draft. I have to say I agree with his points. Especially the first one. Here’s his bullet points:
1) Television
2) Make it a World Draft
3) Make picks tradeable
4) End the draft at 20 rounds
It’s a good read, go check it out.

I know Kenny Rogers was ridden out of town on a Channel 4 camera truss more or less, but I do miss the guy. So it was nice to see an article talking about Kenny in Detroit. I had this bookmarked, but never found the time to read it now. So head over to ESPN for this article by Jayson Stark on Kenny’s year in Detroit.
For the record, this season (as I write this), Kenny’s record is 10-3 with a 3.17 ERA in 15 games. He’s tossed 99.1 innings, given up 87 hits, on 22 walks and 57 stikeouts. And we’re not to the All Star break yet. So he’s having a great year. Good for him. That 2yr/$16 mil contract he got from Detroit doesn’t seem so dumb now. There is a cool quote from the Stark article which I didn’t realize.

The ace of the Detroit Tigers has virtually an identical career record (198-134) to Curt Schilling (201-133). But who out there has noticed that, either?

I’m sure Tex feels the same way.

AS you’ve noticed I haven’t updated much the last few games. The reason for this is some personal health issues with an immediate family member that’s taken a lot of my thought processes lately.
Additionally, my company is getting ready to release a product, which means a boatload of extra work for me this week. I will try and do small updates if I can find the time, but don’t be too surprised if you don’t hear from me for a week.
Thanks for visiting. :)

Check it out. :)

That’s not really what’s happening, but it is a scenario proposed by Ben Kabak over on Double Play Depth. It equates the drug testing fiascos of steroids, and now HGH to something that is so damaging, the two should step down for the good of the game.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. After the way the comissioners before Selig were treated by the owners, I seriously doubt they will ever allow again an independant commish who has some real authority to say no. They don’t want that, they want someone who if they can’t at least push around, someone who will think and act they way that they do.
I try not to think too hard about these doom & gloom issues with baseball, but they’re becoming more and more evident as time goes by, and makes me wonder what my daughter is going to remember. After the NHL lockout, they had one of the big two like this step down. Unfortunately the “We’re the player union – we don’t do that” will prevail. Actually I feel that’s more Fehr than the actual UNION, but hey…
I’m sure we’ll hear some remark from Marvin Miller too soon. I wonder when the government will open up a can of whoop ass on these guys – I see it coming. Actually, I saw the HGH issue in every attempt to make the steroid testing stronger. They never addressed all these other issues, you know it was coming. You just knew it.

After reading various blogs and news reports this morning on the DFA’ing of Antonio Alfonseca, I must have totally missed how he wasn’t pitching good or something. Must have been some of the games I’ve fallen asleep on, or just missed totally.
Shame, as he seemed like a fun guy from what I could read.

If you’re reading my site, then I’m sure you know this already. Former Ft Worth Star Telegram reporter TR Sullivan is the beat writer now for texasrangers.com/mlb.com on the Rangers. Anyway, the weekly mailbag feature has been pretty much a useless one, as it used to be filled with questions like “When will the Rangers get some hitting?” and “When will Hicks spend some money?” – real hard hitting questions there.
Anyway, since TR took over the quality of the questions has gone up. I’ve read them all the time, but never said much about it. However, in the issue sent out this past Monday, TR used a question I sent. Here’s what I asked:

I have a question about tying the All Star Game to the World Series home-field advantage. When it was first implemented, there were quite a few statements made about it being a “two-year experiment”, and that the idea would have to be voted on again by the player’s union after those two seasons were up. I know we’re a year or two past that now, and haven’t seen any formal announcement of it being extended, how long, etc. What is the actual formal status of the “This one counts” All-Star Game stuff? Was it approved indefinitely? Is there a chance it will be revoked/changed/altered? I’d really like to find out this information.

TR replied with this:

The Players Association has approved of its use through the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which runs through this year. It will likely be an issue — albeit a minor one — in the upcoming negotiations. The owners want it, but there are players who have been vocally opposed to it.

My response is good. I doubt it will much change, but I really would much rather home field be tied to something more concrete like which league has the better record in the regular season. Not the All Star game win. I understand the owners wanting the All Star game to count for something. I’m not against that, but I’m not for tying the World Series to that. Tie it to something else; although I don’t know what to tie it to at the moment.
What would you do?

Quite a bizarre trade scenario. Would you do it? Yeah, I probably would. Especially if the Cubs picked up some of his salary. Check this out.

Have any of you ever tried MLB.tv? I did for a month a year ago or so, but found it to be slow and the selection of games has the same limting feeling that the MLB Extra Innings Package does. These things might be more interesting if they allowed you to watch ANY game by ANY team with ANY feed you wanted.
There’s a great article about MLB.TV online today here; you should go check it out.
I’ve been a subscriber to Gameday Audio for as long as they’ve had it on MLB.Com now (about 5, maybe 6 years I think?) Anyway, it’s a great value – $15 for the whole season, all games, all feeds, plus archives. Yes, it’s audio only, but I have to recommend it over the TV option.
UPDATE Monday evening: Since I posted that article, this really cool article turned up on Baseball Prospectus, it’s about the future of MLB.TV. If they could solve the streaming problem, this could be really cool. It’d be perfect if there were no restrictions on what games I could watch. I understand local blackouts, but non local games? I should be able to see whatever I want – and I’m talking to you Peter Angelos and Comcast. Shame on you.