Daily Roundup- Thursday, February 26th

After a brief one day hiatus, I am back to deliver more news, more opinions and more Spring Training gossip. First off, the rumor that perhaps David Wright is NOT clutch seemed to invade the general discussion when talking about how the Mets collapsed yet again but as John Harper writes, that could not be further from the truth when considering his numbers over his career.

Frankly, talking about clutch is a completely useless argument and based purely on opinion. The most objective stat we have in baseball is 2 outs/runners in scoring position and even there he’s hitting well over .300 so he’s a pretty good situational hitter as they like to commonly refer to it over clutch.
You could read it on Wright’s face last year whenever he came up in a big spot that the weight of the world was on him. More than anyone else last year, Wright took the burden of the ’07 collapse on himself and bore it the entire year yet he still put up great overall numbers but as any frustrated fan base can tell you they will only harp on specific at-bats where he didn’t come through. That is unfortunate and unavoidable. As much as Wright can do he will do and he will have to understand that despite his overwhelming skill set, he can’t do this alone and must not be asked to do this alone.
This year, he will have to ease up on it and a quick start by the Mets and better bullpen will give them that but again, its on the Mets, not David Wright to right the ship. The stat that still haunts this team is that if they were playing softball rules (7 innings) they had the best record, IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES. So hopefully if J.J. Putz can come in and K-Rod can come in and shut the door for the final two innings, there will be no suspense in September for anyone to crow about.

Finally, the hard times the economy is facing has hit the Yankees. But even still those damn Yankees are only giving away the obstructed view seats for $5 which of course for Yankee fans who may not be fortunate enough to afford one of the higher priced ones will still allow them to be at the Stadium when it opens. Speaking of the stadium opening, Joba might be the starter on opening day.

Unfortunately for New York area baseball teams they picked a really bad time to be opening up cash cow stadiums. While in early 2000 they were thinking that their new stadiums would be raking in the dough, they didn’t expect the economy to go belly up. More affordable seating will be announced since a lot of those expensive seats have not been filled in both stadiums. Most of the season ticket holders have been priced out of their seats and they have been so since the times of Mickey and Roger. But the young bloods with money and no real love for the game will use those seats to schmooze clientele and take pictures and post them on their facebook pages while important baseball games are being played. Sadly I’m not only talking about the new Yankee stadium.
Having Joba as their starter could be a huge P.R. move seeing as how its going to be a true Yankee opening up the stadium and not one of their high priced imports which sends the right message of course and he’s the right kind of guy with the fist pumping to get the crowd energized and ready to go.

Pretty cool article I found from SI’s Tom Verducci about the lost slugger of the steroid era, Carlos Delgado. A guy that is underappreciated and under loved by a fan base who was ready to run this guy out of town pre June.

I wrote about how high I am on Delgado in terms of confidence that he would come back from his funk he was mired in early in 2008. He’s a guy who is methodical in his preparation and training so its no wonder that he was able to right and fix whatever was hurting him. What I liked more was even though Jerry Manuel was trying to use the excuse of injuries slowing him down early on last year, Delgado never did. He blamed it on himself which players rarely do nowadays which is being accountable.
Looking at his numbers, it just seems he flies way under the radar and he’s a guy who does deserve the recognition a lot of these other guys get and now knowing what they were on to get that, its easier to appreciate a guy who likes to be away from the cameras and all the know it alls.


Pretty cool story about appreciating what you have and the lack of awareness of the surrounding environment that the sports players walk in everyday by Kevin Sherrington. He writes about the indifference big time athletes with exorbitant salaries have for regular every day folk who couldn’t imagine having all the money they have currently.

Sometimes I feel like sports players need to be reminded that they play a game for a living and they should be happy about it. But for them, being in the system of organized sports for so long, and most of these guys coming from virtually no where, asking them to give it up is like asking someone to give up a lottery ticket when they have the winning numbers. Its not going to happen and neither should we ask it which of course made me upset when the reporter asked Jim Calhoun about giving back some of his salary. Not only is that none of the reporter’s business, its also an unfair question to be asking a guy who just finished up coaching a game. While Calhoun’s response could have been a bit more easy going, I don’t think people need to badger others who make more money to give up theirs, wanna know why? Cuz Obama’s going to tax them to high noon anyway!