Letters to the Editor
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Nicely done
I think this whole Soriano situation is like watching Confederacy of Dunces played out in Washington DC (excluding our federal government). Bowden for trading Wilkerson for Soriano in the first place (while Wilkerson did have a pretty bad year last year, he is a popular player), knowing that Soriano was dedicated to playing second base. Then their is Soriano for how he has handled this whole situation. I think it's important to note, Soriano has been decreasing in batting average the past few years. And his slugging percentage will surely fall if he plays, because RFK is beyond pitcher-friendly.
Let us not forget the bumbling of the DC Council, which almost blew the whole DC-MLB agreement but finally agreed to build a stadium! Basically, we should all feel amazed that baseball is being played in Washington, even if it turns into last place baseball.
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Soriano etc
rickpaulus: Perennial sleeper Toby Hall AND John Buck behind the dish? How are you ever going to be able to decide from that stellar platoon? What is this, a 2-person league?
Thanks for the vote of confidence. My goal in a fantasy sim league with a bunch of Baseball Prospectus guys and others like Rob Neyer is to not lose 120 games. If I can stay ahead of the '62 Mets and '03 Tigers, I'll be happy.
About the catcher thing, it's a 12-team league, so SOMEBODY's going to have a catcher who's no better than 12th in the league, right? I've got one of the worst starting catchers in the league, but also one of the best backups. Plus I have Sean Burroughs! (It's amazing who you get excited about around Round 27 of a 12-team, one league draft.)
jackburden: When you look at what Bowden has done to this team (see: Guzman, Cristian and Castilla, Vinny) is there really any doubt that this is the worst executive in the history of baseball?
Without even thinking about specifics, I'd say yes, there's doubt.
Stephen Rifkin: You can tell how important we find the WBC
By noting how little attention the pussies at ESPN paid to steroids at the event. No steroids trash talk = No legitimacy in the eyes of sports/entertainment.
Also by the fact that the start of the broadcast was delayed about a half hour by an early-round NIT game.
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Lost In the Fuss
What isn't being said here is that Soriano is a terrible second baseman. He has horrible range and makes too many errors. It isn't like the Nationals are trying to move Orlando Hudson to left field.
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WBC was great but needs work.
I loved the WBC, but it needs a lot of work. Someday I hope it is the premiere event in all of baseball, but it has a long way to go. One simply cannot compare winning a single tournament to winning an MLB World Series. A baseball team's greatness cannot be measured over a span of weeks. It requires an entire season. For the WBC to rise to the level of the Football World Cup, it will have to be expanded with better tie-breaking rules. The semi-finals and finals will have to be at least three game series, if not five and seven. Expansion will not be possible until everyone recognizes that it has to take precedence over playing in both the Japanese league and the MLB. This will only happen when players understand that they can make more money on endorsmeents etc. playing int he WBC than the MLB. I think this is all at least a generation away, but something to look forward to.
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Let him fail, by all means
I don't follow baseball but the botch-job that is the Soriano trade and subsequent refusal to move, well that's entertainment.
I live in DC and am one of the many people that was surprised to find the mayor and like-minded half-wits on the City Council were dumb enough to agree to subsidize MLB's ownership cartel by building a stadium to offset the costs they incurred in buying the Expos in the first place... because a city of 500,000 people with crumbling infrastructure really needs to take on $600 million in debts.
So flail away, Soriano, and maybe you'll help the Nationals suck enough that they'll fade away before we incur any other liabilities that aren't really taxes...
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Loved the WBC
My first instinct was slight disappointment at not getting to watch America or the Dominicans in the final, but I realized that I really would not have enjoyed the final more had it been any other teams but Japan and Cuba.
The teams with all of the MLB players I don't need to see as much because I'll see all those players play in the MLB this season. But Japan and Cuba were a great look at the two teams with the most talented and developed players in the world outside of the MLB because both countries are insanely passionate about the sport but also players from both countries both have big artificial obstacles from getting to play in the US -- overly restrictive contracts in Japan and antiquated cold war politics against Cuba.
So the WBC final was literally the best baseball players you would probably otherwise not get a chance to see play. And that's pretty neat.
The only thing that wasn't successful were the immediately tired storylines. Cliches about the different way the game is played (the Red Sox and the White Sox and the A's all play pretty differently too), or constant negging the event for not being as big as the World Series or the NCAA tournement, or complaints that it's not the best test of the best team.
I think it's a wonderful thing that baseball has always been a big communal thing, that there are minor leagues, and that the MLB is trying to open things up and get people to look beyond the monopolistic "one season, one playoffs, one way of doing things" approach. I'm starting to love other sports like soccer, where you've got different leagues and tournaments going on all the time, where players are sometimes playing for a club and other times playing for their country, where you never really get the two most polished teams practiced together and ready for an ultimate deciding test. And that's a sport where playing time with your team actually matters, since it's not just the sum of everyone's individual performance!
Baseball, with the growing international interest, the ease with which you can throw together a team and get it to play well together, and how really safe and not too hard on the body it is to play lots and lots of games, should be all over this sort of thing.