Slow day today.
-P- I was amused by a line about Jack Wilson in this article:
Ok, I took that out of context, but it's still funny. Wilson is the last (English-speaking) player I'd ever expect to even know what Baseball Prospectus is, much less agree with anything they've written.
Also in that article, Wilson has lost a bunch of weight, as expected.
-P- Some reaction to the Wilson-Jose Castillo dustup:
The Cook piece is kind of silly:
Who cares what Giles' attitude was? He produced from the moment he arrived in Pittsburgh to the moment he left. However much he liked playing in Pittsburgh, he would've been a big part of the team's success if the organization had just surrounded him with good players. One doesn't automatically win by creating a healthy, hungry environment in the locker room.
-P- Ian Snell has been named the Athlete of the Year by the Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association. I mean no disrespect to Snell, who's a good pitcher, but if you know anyone from Delaware, this would be a great way to make fun of them. "Oh yeah? Well, at least my state didn't name Ian Snell its Athlete of the Year." All I'm saying is - and I mean this with the utmost respect - if Ian Snell is your state's best athlete, your state is filled with wusses. It's cool that he won, though.
-P- Did anyone see this AP article, which wonders if the megadeal recently signed by Chase Utley might have anything to do with Freddy Sanchez and his negotiations with the Pirates? Amazingly, the article describes Sanchez as a "better all-around hitter" than Utley. Why is it seem that about 75% of sentences that include the words "all-around" become ridiculous when you drop "all-around"? For example, compare:
to
The first opinion gets past the AP editorial board and is presented as fact in a news article. The second is just absurd. And I love Sanchez.
-P- Salomon Torres expresses excitement about being the Pirates' closer. At an event last weekend in Wheeling, Torres told my dad that being a closer was like getting the "office corner."
-P- Via OnlyBucs, watch out! Lloyd McClendon is working on reducing Curtis Granderson's strikeouts.
-P- This (which comes via Beyond the Box Score isn't directly Pirates-related, but it's interesting. The contracts to which the Indians have signed their young players are just obscenely cheap. It's as if the Pirates signed four different players to contracts similar in value to the one they gave Jason Bay.
-P- This (link via Viva El Birdos) is a really good idea. This blogger decided to do team previews by mocking every team. First up: the Cardinals.
(Actually, though, I'd much rather have Reyes than any of those other guys.)
By the way, via Primer, Preston Wilson has re-signed with the Cards. (This is a message board, but the author is a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)