I went to a coaches clinic for my son's Little League last night. If you can imagine 50 guys in a gym pretending to field balls, pretending to throw balls, pretending to make tags and pretending to swing at pretend pitches. After throwing likely 50 pretend throws and then almost the same number of pretend pitches (off a pretend rubber) I had a real pain in my real shoulder. I am sure throwing a real ball would have been easier on it.
Watching all these guys (and a couple of woman) doing these things without a ball in sight, reminded me of one of those truisms: Even if a lot of people are doing something silly, it is still silly.
Anyway some links for your off-day entertainment:
- Beyond the Boxscore has an early season look at the Worst Players in Baseball. Now it isn't really a fair title because these guys aren't the worst players, but the players doing worst, so far. Anyway, our Lyle makes the list. A line taken out:
At this pace, even if the Jays don't want to bring up Wallace yet, Randy Ruiz or Edwin Encarnacioncould end up manning first before long.
From their keyboard to Cito's ear, we can only hope.
- MLB Trade Rumors has a Free Agent Compensation All-Star team. After an incredibly silly argument here about the value of compensation picks, this is an interesting list. The one Jay on the list is Adam Lind, who we got in the 2004 draft as compensation when the Angels signed Kelvim Escobar.
- Tao of Stieb is more than a little happy Brett Cecil is being called up to pitch Friday. Slightly scary happy, Brett should maybe get a restraining order.
- The Southpaw is happy too, but is feeling a little bad about being happy that Tallet is injured, especially after Dirk Hayhurst has reminded us that players are people too.
- Ghost Runner has a look at how teams are pitching Travis Snider. Link Fixed.
- The National Post's Bruce Arthur did a column on the Jay's attendance troubles, I'm sure he didn't get the idea form Aagoodfellow's fanpost. Like Arthur says, it will take winning before the fans come back.
- No news to anyone here but Roy Halladay is good.
- I'd imagine you have all seen this 'slide' before but if you haven't, this is just amazing.
- I was told this, last night, that pitchers don't throw any harder from the windup than from the stretch. I wasn't sure I believed but I guess it is true.
- And Kevin Millar has a new job. Actually MLB Network sent me an email about this the other day, I think I mentioned it in a game thread. Not sure why they figured I would want to know, but it is reassuring that he won't be sniffing around Toronto for a playing type job.