I’m giving the award to Commissioner Bud Selig this week, and I’m sure it won’t be his last, in fact I’m thinking about giving it to him by default when there are no other good nominations. I dislike him that much. He see’s “no reason” why he should take Charlie Hustle off the banned listed allowing him into the Hall of Fame, where he should belong. He unbanned Mr. Steinbrenner for hiring a P.I. to dig up dirt on a player so he could get rid of him. That’s a big reason why I have a sour taste in my mouth towards him. Yes, he helped the World Baseball Classic become a reality. He’s also really not done a whole lot in the fight against steroids. If I were him, I would make it mandatory at the beginning of the season that EVERY player take a drug test in order for them to make the 25 man rosters. Then during the season subject players to random tests, but hey I’m not the commissioner so I don’t know anything.

For those of you that don’t know there was a package offered by satellite and cable companies over the past years called “MLB…

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With the end of spring training, there were few players got the preverbal axe to make room for other players, and top prospects, to grab extra players to fill in for other players on the disabled list.

One big surprise is Jorge Cantu of the Tampa Bay DRays was optioned to AAA-Durham and the contract for Elijah Dukes was picked up from AAA. Cantu was a key member of the Mexican World Baseball Classic baseball last spring. After the WBC, he had a slow start, and had time on the DL, never came back to his 2005 form. This is another move to probably help him regain some confidence. He’s still a young player, only at the age of 25, so he’s got plenty of time to work his way back up to the big leagues.

Also, I had mentioned earlier that Todd Walker, formerly of the San Diego Padres was release due to his poor spring, and loosing his third base position to highly touted prospected, and project Rookie of the Year contender, Kevin Kouzmanoff. He signed a Minor League contract with the Oakland A’s, while Dan Johnson was put on the DL for three months while he’s nursing a hip…

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Man, I’ve had this thing written up for about 5 days now, I’m just know getting it published. How horrible is that? I had an extremely busy weekend, getting some shopping done, working and starting on some home projects, playing volleyball, and other various things. I wanted to get this out by Opening Day, and I basically have minus the one game played last night. I also wanted to get out my Carlos Zambrano prediction before it became a truth most likely this week or possibly next. Enjoy my predictions, and give me your thoughts.

I saw an article over on yahoo with some player related predictions, so I thought I’d throw my own predictions in the mix. You can view the article here. The article also included their predictions for the playoffs and The World Series. I’m going to wait for till after the first week of the season to give my full predications on that.

The darkhorse is a player who puts up the stats to be considered for the award but likely their team will take them out of the real running. Take a few years ago when Derrek Lee had his career year. He didn’t win…

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With the end of Spring Training closely approaching and teams trimming their roster down to 25 members for the regular season, there were quite a few surprising roster moves.

One of the biggest, but I suspected to happen, was the move the Cubs completed last night after their Cactus League Game. They sent one time Ace and 18 game winner Mark Prior down to the minors. Personally I think it’s a good move for the Cubs. Wade Miller, who was named the fifth starter last week, has had a really good spring, especially for a pitcher. The move to AAA for Prior will help him regain some confidence by pitching to minor league players that are major league ready or have major league experience. It’s not like he’ll be pitching to Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard. It will be good for him to keep on a pitching in a game every five days (assuming he doesn’t “hurt” himself). This should help him bring up his velocity, and help him with is command, which needs a huge boost.

In other surprising moves high touted prospect Matt Garza was optioned to the minors. I sort of figured he would be a shoe in for…

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I was just reading Sports Illustrated’s MLB Truth and Rumors section on their site (Found Here), and it’s saying that there is a little bit of buzz that BoSox are considering seeing if a Manny for Ichiro trade will work.

Here is the excerpt from the New York Post:

There is a lot of July talk again about the Red Sox trading Manny Ramirez, and the buzz becomes louder with Seattle considering moving free-agent-to-be Ichiro Suzuki.
– New York Post

Thinking about this trade, if I we’re in the Red Sox organization, I think it would be a no-brainer to try to get his trade to go through. It’s pretty obvious that the Mariners won’t resign him because either A) they can’t afford Ichiro, or B) they could get top notch prospects for him, or bring back another big name player. I think option A is the likely option. The Mariners haven’t have any real big money players in town, and their last big expenditures were flops in Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre. Although Ichiro is one of the better leadoffs in the league, I’m not sure they would invest huge money in him.

On the flipside for the Sox, you…

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I was having a good time deciding between Manny Ramirez and Tony LaRussa for this past week’s Tool of the Week. I did a little bit more research into both stories. It turns out that Manny Rameriz’s “grill” actually wasn’t his, and he was doing a neighbor a favor. Naturally, there were tons of bogus bids and EBay closed out the auction because “it couldn’t authenicate if it was actually Manny Rameriz’s grill or not”. It’s not like Manny needs the extra money anyway. He’s probably one of the most overpaid players in the league. I was reading or heard something about Manny being the worst left fielder in the league.

On the flipside of things, this time the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals was arrested for DUI while he was asleep in his vehicle, while it was running. I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact he was arrested for DUI, or he was passed out in his vehicle. If it hadn’t been running he they probably wouldn’t had cared so much, but just because it was started, he was Driving Under the Influence. Naturally this mugshot showed up on TheSmokingGun.com. I think this is what won it…

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*EDIT* Just to let you know the permalinks have been updated, so you might need to update any entry specific bookmarks you might have. Thanks! *EDIT*

Just to let you folks know starting next week we’re going to be updating our permalinks, so the URLs make a little bit more sense. If you have any of the posts book marked, you’ll have to re-bookmark them. We’re also going to be tweaking some of the plugins, so you may notice a little bit of weirdness for a little while.

As always if you have any suggestions to make the site better, just let us know!

Don’t forget to nominate your Tool of the Week to me by the end of the week (Saturday Night). The Tool of the Week entry will be every Morning for the prior week.

This Current Nominations:
Manny Ramirez and the whole “Manny Grill” EBay Fiasco.
Tony La Russa was just arrested while asleep at the wheel, and DUI.

The more nominations the better!

It’s time to start my “Tool of the Week” entries again. The offseason we a pretty uneventful one in regards to players acting like idiots. Manny had his usual controversy at the beginning of spring training, but as I was concentrating at getting the website back-end up dated, I didn’t have time to write an entry about it. D-Train had a pretty stupid incident during the offseason as well. But from here on out I’ll try to make as my Tool of the Week entries, as people in the baseball industry allow me to do. Heck, I’ll make co-Tools of the Week if I need to!

With out further ado, the first Tool of the Week to open the 2007 season is 4th year pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, Gustavo Chacin. He was arrested early Friday morning, March 16th. He blew blood-alcohol content of .150 and .152 with the legal limit is .08, nearly two times the legal limit.

“It’s a serious mistake and we all make mistakes,” manager John Gibbons said. No Kidding? There’s the best manager statement of the century. Is it just me that professional athletes are making more of these “mistakes” these days. Maybe it’s the fact…

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I don’t see how people can still think that Pete Rose still needs to be barred from the Baseball Hall of Fame. In a recent ESPN article, it says that Rose bet on his team every night while he was the coach of the Reds from 1984 to 1989. Because of this betting he has been permanently been banned from the game of Major League Baseball and the Baseball Hall of Fame (in separate votes). He’s asked to be re-instated but has been denied.

Earlier this week on The Dan Patrick Show, the Former Charlie Hustle admitted that he bet on his team everyday, and not four days a week. He did this because “I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game.” He took his love and belief of his team a little too far by bringing them into his gambling addiction. Unlike “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who actually threw a games in the 1919 World Series, Rose never threw games. Like Rose, Jackson belongs on the same list of players that have “banned for life”. As he has said, that he did everything in his power to win…

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