Beckett's Blister Problem

Josh went down with a torn finger flap.  As great a talent as he is he just can't win, can he?  I bring it up here for two reasons:

The other day on Boog's show I heard Peter Gammons say that he was sad for the Marlins when he saw Beckett, Penny, and other former Marlins doing so well.  He was saying that we should have kept the Penny, Pavano, Beckett, AJ, and Willis (the big 5) all together for many more years.  I can't help but disagree a bit.  Of course it's ideal to keep your best players, but when I look around I see mostly very good decisions.  Penny is doing well again this year, but had some down times.  Pavano has been a joke, AJ not much better, and Beckett continues to be saddled with problems.  Other teams can afford these problems and mistakes, but the Marlins can't.  Not that our young pitchers aren't getting hurt as well, but at least they aren't getting paid tens of millions to do it.

The other reason I bring it up is a concern for Sergio.  I hope that he has this situation under control.  He looked great in his last start, and I hope he can become a consistent starter for us, and not fall prey to finger issues as well.

I don't have time to write this up, but for those that prowl this site, here's the info:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15668276.htm

The Marlins fired first-year manager Joe Girardi this morning, ending an acrimonious and sometimes confrontational relationship with the Marlins owner and front office members....Girardi met Tuesday morning with club officials. The meeting was described as ``short, brief.'

While I think we'd all agree that trading Adrian Gonzalez for Ugie "Machete Man" Urbina was worth it at the time, I noticed today that the kid is doing pretty well for San Diego (which, of course, in German means 'a whale's vagina').

He's hitting .303 with 20 HR  an OBP of .353 and a SLG of .514... all the while looking like their 1B of the future as well as today.  

Would I trade our World Series in 2003 for him?  No way.  But I think it's helpful to keep in perspective what you do give up when making trades to "win now".  When it works, and you "win", then it's great and worth it.  But it's always the risk you take.

I wouldn't mind having Adrian on our team right now (no offense to Jacobs and Helms).  Although, besides batting average (which is an iffy stat anyway) they as a team are out-performing Adrian.

Maybe this was a wasted post now that I think about it.  Well, I already wrote it, so I'll post it anyway.  Good job front office!

Go Marlins.

Or... "why we should love our owndership."

Today was the deadline for trades in the MLB, in case you hadn't heard.  Looks like many teams were busy, while others (like the Florida Marlins) were relatively quiet.

Why the lack of activity on the part of the Fish?  It's because we're doing nearly everything right, and there is no need to change our strategy at this point.  Now, compare that to the Phillies.

Poll

How has our leadership done in regards to player personnel.

22%

They Stink

4 votes

66%

They should win executives of the year.

12 votes

11%

I guess they dont' quite stinl, but it's not like they should win executives of the year or anything.

2 votes

18 votes | Poll has closed

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So I'm in Chicago on a trip for school stuff (to keep a long story short) and guess who I run into at a bar. Only one of my favorite Marlins of all time, one of the people most responsible for our World Series Championship, and probably one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. When I ran into him, I felt so guilty trying to talk to him. You see, some jerk had just spent five minutes harrassing him and trying to get some girl to show her boobs to him. All of this made him very uncomfortable, and he just tried to chuckle a bit. So here I come, and I just had to try and talk to him. I approached him outise a bar called Rock-it! in downtown Chicago. He's leaning against the wall after having just fended off this jerk. I say :"hi. I'm from Miami and I've been a big fan of yours for a while. Thanks for what you did for Miami. He said hi, shook my hand and said thanks. Then I asked if I could take a picture, he said yeah, and was pretty impressed with my camera phone. Yeah, a millionare was impressed with my camera phone. In retrospect that's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm honestly trying to fill space and build suspense.

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Or, how Dan Uggla became one of the best second-basemen in baseball...

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In a previous post craig asked me to comment about shoulder injuries, like the one affecting Hanley. Let me start with the usual disclaimer:

I am NOT a physician yet (2nd year med student), and even if I was, this information should not be construed as medical advice, or replace the expert opinion of a personal visit with a physician.

Sorry about that, I'm sure Craig understands ;-) If you want to read a little about shoulder injuries, click read more.

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There seem to be a lot of new people around the site, which is cool.  I feel like I've been gone so long that I'm the new guy.  In fact, I was on Spring Break.  

Before Mike gets any fancy ideas about co-eds that's not (entirely) the case.

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OK, so that might be exagerating a bit, but this recent news caught me a little by surprise. The Red Sox appear to be finalizing a feal with World Series hero Alex Gonzalez to fill in their hole at short-stop.

This according to The Boston Herald. If the Sox add Gonzalez to the mix it will make for three Florida Marlins from the 2003 roster on their team including 2003 1st Half Season MVP (In my opinion) Mike Lowell, WS Game 4 hero Gonzalez, and WS MVP/Yankee killer Joshua Patrick Beckett.

Why get creative when you can pick winners I guess.

Alex Gonzalez will probably benefit from the wall in left given his pull stroke, though his HR numbers might not since he doesn't hit the ball very high. His defense will likely fall off a bit now that he doesn't have Luis Castillo at second base, but he should look great turning that 5-4-3 with Mikey at the hot corner.

The Red Sox also jettisoned former Marlin Guillermo Mota to the Indians in a trade for Coco Crisp, but will likely retain Matt Clement and Rudy Seanez, giving them a total of 5 former Marlins on the roster, with 3 from the 2003 Season.

I'm going to hate watching these guys play for other teams.

I just saw a blurb in the MiamiHerald about Dontrelle Willis. Apparently the team execs have not completely lost their minds, and have rewarded Willis with the richest one-year contract ever for a first time arbitration eligible player.

Dontrelle will be paid $4.35 million next year, not including incentives such as winning the Cy Young or Silver Slugger awards, or being named to the NL-Allstar team.

The only downside is that we did not wrap him up longer-term. I guess for a fiscally conservative management team, this is the best that they could do. It's better than nothing, but not quite what I hoped for; though it's exactly what I expected and voted for in the poll.

Update [2006-1-16 20:20:40 by fishfan24]:Here's a link to a better write-up than the herald one, from MLB.com.