Story here.  Giants give up Class-A left-hander Scott Barnes (12-3, 2.85 ERA, 99 strikeouts in 18 starts and 98.0 innings), rated 8th in the Giants system by Baseball America.

 

Garko has been linked to Texas for the last few week and the first question that comes to mind is what is the equivalent Rangers prospect.

 

words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words

Not much info here yet, but you can read more at:

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/05/peavy-to-white-sox.html

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9:19am: Jon Heyman says the White Sox and Padres have agreed to a Peavy trade, and await Peavy's approval.  MLB.com's Corey Brock agrees.  Ken Williams, always operating under the radar.  Now we get to see just how much Peavy hates the AL.

...It is apparently a four-player offer, which would presumably gut Chicago's farm system.

...The Padres need pitching and a shortstop. The White Sox's top pitching prospect is Aaron Poreda and top overall prospect is shortstop Gordon Beckham.

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So Peavy now needs to give his a-okay on this trade.  Wonder who would be going the other way and what the Ranger equivalent would be (and yes -- he'd probably be even less likely to agree to a trade here than to Chicago).  I shudder to think of trading Feliz, Holland, etc (I assume Elvis is off the table at this point) but Peavy is obviously very legit.

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I'm taking the GMAT later today.  I've been studying for weeks and I'm going crazy.  I haven't gone to a baseball game this season(!)  This needs to be resolved ASAP.

SO, I'm going to this Sunday's A's/Rangers game in Oakland.  And I've just decided to make an event of it.  This is where YOU, the Bay Area Ranger fan, comes in.

I'm not aware of any previous LSB days in any city, so lets start a new tradition.  We'll take pictures, maybe drink a beer, sit in the sun, and of course rock our Rangers gear.

I plan on buying a couple of extra tickets anyways, so reply and we can meet up outside The Net then watch the game together!  ($24 tickets are just $4 this Sunday because the A's got 20 hits tonight vs. LAA).

Lets do this!!

UPDATE: thanks for the great response -- looks like this is a topic that's important to a lot of us. Many people keep their phone and keys in the same pocket, which I've never wanted to do because of the scratching risk (especially now that I own an iPhone!).

Also, wow -- I'm shocked by how many people carry pocket knives.

I've ordered the Executive Leather All-Ett last night and will see how it works in my back pocket.

After reading all the responses, I'm intrigued by the idea of a front-pocket wallet. If the All-Ett doesn't work out I'll return it and go shopping at a Fossil store (this one looks cool).

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I know it's really random, but there's no baseball to talk about, so...

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Wow.  I don't think I heard the LAA in connection with Hunter very often.

Yahoo Breaking Story

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This is just about the most horrifying baseball article I've ever read.  It puts anything ever written during the dark Buck n' Hart years to shame:

Ozzie Guillen loves to bunt, hires fantastically bad former hitter as hitting coach.

Seriously.  If this was the state of my baseball franchise, I'd have to boycott the team until they cleaned house.

I thought I'd share a good deal I came across:

You can get one year of ESPN The Magazine (lame) for $3, which gets you a free ESPN Insider subscription for ESPN.com.  This gives you access to columns from people like Keith Law, Gammons, Rob Neyer, etc.  Also rumor mill type features and more.

You can sign up for the magazine here.  And by the way, I found this deal at this Slickdeals.net thread.  Slickdeals is a great website for awesome online sales of all sorts of good stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving

Did I miss a post or diary about the huge new ads on LSB and the rest of the network?

I went to the Dodgers blog to see reactions to the JD Drew situation and found this story on what's happening.  For you lazies:

we're putting up ads to try and fund a complete redesign of the sites (and therefore make the ads much more natural in the design).  These ads are just rotating placement ads to show big companies what the placement is like.

We're trying to make them as unobtrusive as possible, but we can't move the top banner ad.  That's the one advertisers are paying the most for right now.  We're going to try and make it more seamless in the coming weeks and less obtrusive, but for now, it's going to stay the way it is.  As for the ads in the middle of the post, well, I thought those were pretty obscure and advertisers also love those for some strange reason.

I don't see any ads because I have Firefox and the AdBlock extension, so I'm pretty much 100% banner free.  I had to go to Internet Explorer to see just how big they are!

Did I ever mention that I love Firefox and will find any excuse to tell people about it?

Apparently the Cubs had waived him, and the A's picked him up for nothing.

Adam and many others (myself included) wanted to see the Rangers acquire this guy over the last few years.

I'm not sure what happened to his career.  He had some dominant performances with the Giants when he was first called up, and hasn't been the same since.  Maybe Dusty Baker destroyed his arm at age 21.

A's have a project pitcher now, although they had to place him on their 40 man roster according to the article.

I'm curious to get the perspective of others LSB'ers.

For years I visited the NMLR board on a daily basis.  At some point a couple of years ago it jumped the shark, becoming full of trolls and flamewars.  I think it was a victim of its own success -- it became very popular and was very poorly moderated.

I periodically check the board to see how things are going there.  I thought the last couple of times had a reasonable level of civility, so maybe they're turning things around over there.

How many of you visit the board?  And Adam -- I've noticed that I'm not seeing any posts from you there.  Have you left that community?

The only thing that I truly miss from NMLR is reading Brian Hayes posts.  He and Adam were always my favorite contributers on that board.  They really should team up in running LSB -- the blog would then become truly unstoppable :)

Adam brought up this very idea last week and according to this NY Post article, the Yanks might be looking to exercise Gary Sheffield's $13-million option for 2007 and then trade him:

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YANKS MULL SIGN-AND-TRADE WITH SHEFFIELD

By JOEL SHERMAN

August 6, 2006 -- DOWN THE LINE

Once the Yanks obtained Bobby Abreu, the natural inclination was to assume they would not pick up Gary Sheffield's $13-million option for 2007. But they are seriously contemplating doing just that. Not for him to play first base or DH. But to trade him.

The free-agent market is going to be thin again with the main outfield sluggers likely to be Jermaine Dye, Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano. There will be more than three teams who need an outfield bat and there will be more than three teams who simply cannot afford to get into the five-year, $75-million range it is likely to take to land Lee or Soriano. Sheffield (who even has $4.5 million deferred next year) can be an alluring alternative on a one-year deal. If they simply do not pick up the option, the Yanks would lose Sheffield for nothing. Here, even if they accepted, a second-tier prospect or two, it would be more than they would get otherwise and help deepen their hurting system.

But one AL executive cautioned, "My guess is that is a dangerous game to play, especially since they have Abreu's salary on books. If Sheffield goes off in the last two weeks of September or the postseason, then I might do it. But if they get stuck with that salary or paying a big chunk to trade him, that would be a bad move, and you are talking about a player who is in his late 30s, who is coming off a major injury and has had his power production decline in recent years." However, another AL executive said, "I believe someone would take him for a year, but the deal would have to be worked out ahead of time" and cited the Angels, White Sox and Giants as possible landing places.
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I'd agree that signing Lee to a long-term contract would be a huge mistake.  I'd be much more excited about making a deal with the Yanks for second-tir prospects and getting a couple of 1st round draft picks for Lee.

I just came across this on the SBnation Giants site and had to share.

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2006/7/25/165424/499

I'm sure many of us read these books as kids.  I enjoyed the post tremendously.

And now imagine you're at the beach.  Aren't the waves nice?
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I was going through my del.icio.us bookmarks and came across perhaps my all time favorite post on this blog.

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2005/8/19/17944/8199

I thought some other people may enjoy looking over that again while we have a few days of no baseball.

The electric pencil sharpener line slays me every time I read it.

I know that there are several bay-area Ranger fans on this blog.  Would anyone be interested in going to the day game on Thursday at AT&T park?

The game starts at 12:35PM.  Koronka and Schmidt are starting.

It would be totally cool to hang out with some Ranger fans, especially since we can't go to the Newberg day at the ballpark (although I wouldn't be super excited about going to that even if I could -- I've been a long time NMLR reader, but many of the people on that board are unbearable).

I might be able to get some slightly discounted tickets from a co-worker.

Adam -- you making the road trip for our LSB event?  I'll buy you a hot dog (or ballpark sushi) if you show up :)

As if that pick hasn't looked bad enough, Cole Hamels is doing his part in making Ranger fans feel that much worse about it.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the 2002 MLB draft results.

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We love Drew Meyer (aka "that minor leaguer")
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The young man is starting at 1st base, hitting 5th, and doing real well at the plate.

5 for 8 with two doubles and a homer.

It's stupid to draw any conclusions on two games, but I was disappointed when he was traded, and still wish he was around (although I do recognize that 1B/DH is a bit crowded these days).

http://www.ballbug.com/

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with tech.memeorandum.com (an amazing aggregator of technology news), but the same guy has created a similar site for baseball news.

The site is fully automated, intelligently finding hot stories and then including links to blogs and other non-traditional news sources commenting on the story.  It's an insightful and addictive format.

LSB is linked on a couple of the stories!

The guy also has a politics and celebrity news site -- neither of which are very interesting to me.

Check it out!

There was a ton of speculation this offseason that Mench would get traded to the Blue Jays in some deal that involved Miguel Batista and/or Orlando Hudson.

Now the Jays are trading those two for Troy Glaus and a prospect.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2270112

Batista would have been nice, while Hudson never made much sense to me, as he'd block Kinsler.  I haven't heard a Mench rumor in a while, so I wonder if the Rangers are still shopping him hard.

I'm unsure how this gets him much closer to his family, but whatever.  The link at http://www.nynewsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-spmets1214,0,5679986.story?coll=nyc-sports-headline s says:

In return for Vazquez and money, the White Sox are sending former Yankee Orlando Hernandez, righthanded reliever Luis Vizcaino and outfield prospect Chris Young.

Supposedly this Chris Young is a nice prospect, but Hernandez and Vizcaino are expensive-ish and at best average.

Here is what Sickels had to say of Young:

8) Chris Young, OF
    Toolsy outfielder, hit .277/.377/.545 with 26 homers, 32 steals, 70 walks for Birmingham. Impressive power/speed/patience player. Strikeout rate is high and he may not hit for average. Similar to Mike Cameron perhaps?

I'm unsure of how to feel about this trade.  I think Vazquez might be overrated, and is probably overpaid.  Still, he's better than any starter currently on the staff.

SBNation Padre blog is reporting that XM Radio is reporting that the deal is done.

http://www.gaslampball.com/story/2005/12/6/231521/300

So excited about locking up Barajas to a long term deal.  Very aggressive and creative.  Oh, and expensive, and unnecessary-ive.

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Sure -- the list has been out there for a few weeks already, but I just came back from overseas so give me a break, will ya?

So here's are some options for Brian Sabean on how to actively throw away draft picks this year by signing any of the following players before December 7th:

Wilson Alvarez (LAD), Brad Ausmus (Hou), Jeromy Burnitz (ChC), Royce Clayton (Ari), Jeff Conine (Fla), Octavio Dotel (Oak), Erubiel Durazo (Oak), Kyle Farnsworth (Atl), Tom Gordon (NYY), Tony Graffanino (Bos), Mark Grudzielanek (StL), Trevor Hoffman (SD), Matt Lawton (NYY), Braden Looper (NYM), Kevin Millar (Bos), Bengie Molina (LAA), Mike Piazza (NYM), Joe Randa (SD), Al Reyes (StL), Rudy Seanez (SD), Julian Tavarez (StL), Rondell White (Det), Tim Worrell (Ari).

Sabean is also certainly relieved to know that the draft pick he's been unfairly forced to take as compensation for Scott Eyre will only be a third round pick.  Scott Eyre is a type A player which mean the Giants get a sandwich pick plus the Cub's second round pick, but because Chicago also decided to throw absurd money at Bobby Howry, the Indians will get the 2nd, and Giants will get the 3rd.

And for the record, here is the list of type B compensation players.  These guys are on Sabean's emergency signings in case he hasn't been able to sign any of the type A guys prior to the arbitration deadline:

Antonio Alfonseca (Fla), Rich Aurilia (Cin), Paul Byrd (LAA), Hector Carrasco (Was), Elmer Dessens (LAD), Cal Eldred (StL), Juan Encarnacion (Fla), Shawn Estes (Ari), Carl Everett (CWS), Julio Franco (Atl), Nomar Garciaparra (ChC), Alex Gonzalez (Fla), Todd Greene (Col), Chris Hammond (SD), Scott Hatteberg (Oak), Rick Helling (Mil), Roberto Hernandez (NYM), Jason Johnson (Det), Jacque Jones (Min), Al Leiter (NYY), Esteban Loaiza (Was), Kenny Lofton (Phi), Brian Meadows (Pit), Jim Mecir (Fla), Jose Mesa (Pit), Dan Miceli (Col), Kevin Millwood (Cle), Jamie Moyer (Sea), Mike Myers (Bos), Rafael Palmeiro (Bal), Todd Pratt (Phi), Felix Rodriguez (NYY), Reggie Sanders (StL), J.T. Snow (SF), Sammy Sosa (Bal), Russ Springer (Hou), Frank Thomas (CWS), Brett Tomko (SF), Michael Tucker (Phi), Daryle Ward (Pit), Jarrod Washburn (LAA), Bernie Williams (NYY), Preston Wilson (Was), Eric Young (SD).

A fine list of trash.  I believe that Grant predicted Mike Myers getting overpaid by the Giants, so this could kill two birds with one contract for the Giants this year.

I've never posted a diary before, but I wanted to share with you all a terrific and very funy post on the Giants blog of this network:

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2005/8/19/17944/8199

I throughly enjoyed it.  Grant is a terrific and very funny writer anyways, but this is one of his best posts in my opinion!