I'm gonna start off by apologizing. I'm sorry.

I'm aware that there are a lot of you complaining about the excess and mediocrity of certain diaries, and to tell you the truth, I have no idea if this is worth a diary of its own.

I personally don't see where the problem is but given that this is a community I'd like to apologize to those who think that this is a waste of their time...and of the site's space.

I spent the past 10 minutes debating whether it was or it wasn't and couldn't come to a conclusion. Bottom line is that I'm curious about this and would like to see what people think about it, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post it. Continue reading if you are interested.

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Discussing Soriano's press conference and his striking resemblance to a certain rapper.

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"Complete" because a diary was already posted with the contract details but it was missing the incentives which I believe we have yet to discuss on this site.

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Good morning all, hope everyone had a pleasant night, I for myself haven't slept one minute. Very happy thanksgiving to all! I'd like to say that the little image on the top left of my screen is brilliant. Ok moving on, apparently Soriano wants to play for his dominican winter ball team and is waiting to get here next week so he can ask our dear Hendry permission. Permission that IMHO will be granted, he's not our big soft mushy Jimbo for nothing. Ahh what a heart. Well anyways, YEY, with our luck he'll break his leg trying to jump out of the dugout to celebrate a teammate's homerun...it's happenned before. Am I the only to think that after signing such a contract YOU STAY PUT?!?

Most of you probably already know this, and to tell you the truth I'm not quite sure why I am posting this except for the fact that I am stunned by it. I had the utmost respect for the guy, comedic genius IMO, but I have completely lost every ounce of it now. To make a long story short, during one of his stand up comedy shows on sunday night, he started yelling racial slurs at a couple of african-americans who were in the crowd that night. As you will imagine the "N" word was thrown around, along with comments such as ""Shut up you n***! Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f------ fork up your a--."
At a loss for words... Here's the link for the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7uKvpzVXI

What an asshole.

Apparently it would only take a couple of prospects and we could have him for 42 mill/3 years. That seems more than reasonable to me given the caliber of such a bat.
I personally have always loved Soriano but I do not want him on our team, and even less for a deal that would be paying him more than 15 mill when he's 38. C-Lee is out of the question in my book: too fat, too slow, too expensive.

Now the question is, and I ask this because I realize I would be, if given the chance, the worst GM possible (I'm a wuss when it comes to giving away prospects), what prospects would you guys be willing to deal? In my book, gallagher, veal, and pawelek are untouchable, but my guess is we would have to give at least one of them... So which one would you be willing to deal, and which other would you add to make the deal final?

This little bit comes from Keith Law's "Top 40 Free agents". Igawa comes only at 31st, behind the likes of Borowski (sigh). I like his "mini-scouting" on the players, especially the pitchers, of the list. Not quite sure he would be the solution, and certainly not as our #3 starter.

Share your thoughts:

"One of the best left-handed starters in Japan, Igawa wasn't expected to come over this winter as a free agent, but his current employer, the Hanshin Tigers, has apparently made an about-face and will post him this week. Igawa is primarily a two-pitch pitcher, with a below-average fastball in the 84-88 mph range with a little run, and a plus 74-79 mph curveball with a late two-plane break. He has a slight stabbing motion at the start of his delivery, but stays on top of the ball well, giving the curve its good depth and creating some downhill plane to his otherwise flat fastball. He also has average command and plus control.

The downside to Igawa is that his fastball may be a little short for MLB hitters, in which case, he'll end up a reliever, and probably a good one with that plus curve as a lefty-killing weapon. (He does throw an occasional changeup, but prefers to use his curve to get righties out as well.) The upside would be if his quick delivery makes the ball hard enough for hitters to pick up that his fastball plays up to average, in which case he could certainly pitch in the back end of an NL rotation. He's also an ideal candidate to learn a splitter, although that's a common pitch in Asia and it would be a surprise if he hadn't already tried one."

I mean, two pitches? And one of them below average?

Shiza Minelli I hope I'm not breaking any laws here...

This is probably the stupidest and pointless post, but I'm so high on this kid that this little bit of endorsement got me giddy electric (I know what I mean)... Praise the future, Hendry don't trade this kid...PLEASE.
Was on the espn gamechat and after flooding Rob with the same question over and over, I finally got an answer (and then apologized for my rude behavior, just thought I'd mention). Here it is:

Nassim (New York)
Your thoughts on Rich Hill?

ROB NEYER
I love him, think if he's healthy he'll be quite good. Solid fastball, wonderful curveball. Love him.

ROB NEYER
Thanks for sticking around through all the precipitation. Hope to see you tomorrow night. And did I mention I love Rich Hill?

BUZZMASTER
All right, fans, that'll wrap up our rain edition of the chat. Thanks to Rob for sticking around to field questions. We'll be here tomorrow night at 8:30 for Game 4. Hopefully we'll have some baseball!

My one minute of fame... Truly enjoyed it, and now I need to get a life.

I just finished up reading a pretty surprising article on CNNSI, and I found it interesting enough to share it with you guys. According to a Major League bullpen coach, not only was it really pine tar that Rogers was using, but his success in the innings that followed him removing the substance from his hand was due to suntan lotion or shaving cream or a combination of both. Again, according to this same coach, the reason La Russa dropped the issue after the game is that "everybody" uses it, and his pitching staff probably got mad at him for bringing the whole deal up in the first place because they themselves do it and feared that umpires would be looking at them the rest of the series....thus not allowing them to use any of the substances, and indulge in that little cheating that apparently most major league pitchers do. Again I point out that the guy basically says that EVERYBODY does it, although he only stated that it helps grip a baseball and gave no indication as to what effect it would have on a towel (so our team is clean for now). I'm a bit skeptical of the whole thing, I'll let you read the article and give me your opinions. Here's the link, warning it's a bad read incredibly redundant....guy takes two pages to say the same sh#t over and over..EnJoY

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/jon_heyman/10/23/scoop.rogers/index.html

Big NasS