Results tagged ‘ Buster Olney ’
Olney: the Red Sox are “headed down that path” to trade Kevin Youkilis
by Craig Calcaterra @ Hardball Talk
Buster Olney was on WEEI radio this afternoon and, based on his conversations with some anonymous executives, he thinks the Red Sox and Kevin Youkilis will part ways this summer:
“I’ve talked with a number of executives at other teams this week, because this looks like it’s headed down that path.” … Olney said that other general managers have told him that Youkilis is going to have to put about three productive and healthy weeks together in order for them to gauge his trade value.
Obviously Will Middlebrooks’ nice place since his callup is goosing this along. I’ve not been paying too close attention to how Middlebrooks is perceived locally, but I get the sense that there’s some college football backup quarterback stuff going on there, where he’s seen as a savior while the old guy is taken for granted.
My question: if the Sox do start seriously shopping Youkilis, do the press and fans perceive it as a white flag waving on the 2012 season, or do they view it as making way for Middlebrooks?
Quote of the Day: Buster Olney on Michael Pineda
by Craig Calcaterra @ Hardball Talk
Buster brings some serious truth to the Michael Pineda injury:
The explosion of social media has fueled the desire to identify incompetence, to illuminate failure, to expose the cheaters. Within seconds that news broke that Michael Pineda will miss the rest of the year with a labrum tear, Twitter was flooded with theories — that the New York Yankees blew it, that the Seattle Mariners knew that Pineda was hurt, that there were idiots and schemers … The Mariners didn’t cheat, the Yankees weren’t idiots. It just didn’t work out.
When bad things happen we often look for someone to blame. It makes it much easier to deal with bad news if we believe that it is the result of malfeasance. The scariest part of this world, however, is that the vast majority of bad things that happen … just happen. Often for no reason at all other than bad random chance.
Baseball player injuries obviously don’t compare to the real bad things, of course, but in their frustrating habit of just … happening, they are pretty similar.
Jon Heyman: Assclown of the Month!!
Caught this funny little tidbit yesterday, had to share it.
First off, I was visiting Hardball Talk and ran across a nice piece going over the recent “Twitter spat” between one baseball pundit I admire (Buster Olney) and one whom I most certainly do NOT (Jon Heyman):
As we noted yesterday, Jon Heyman took the curious tack of accusing the Red Sox of being cheap or small market or something and suspecting that the team owners are spending money on their soccer interests or whatever. It was fairly silly, and no shortage of bloggers have weighed in on just how silly it is.
But it’s not just the bloggers. Buster Olney took to Twitter this morning to tear that line of reasoning to shreds.
He later said in reply to another person that “The Red Sox have made mistakes in the past, but they can’t be accused of being cheap.” Which is 100% correct.
I find this all rather interesting, simply because it’s so rare that you see two of the big name baseball columnists in direct disagreement like this. But it’s not just interesting for gossipy purposes.
In its’ own right this is nothing unusual. One of the bigger upsides of Twitter and the “blogosphere” is that it allows writers and pundits to interact directly with one another, often rather quickly. Ideas are tossed around, giving a thorough examination by many and often discounted or endorsed in lightning speed.
Typically this is done rather civilly. Unless it involves one Jon Heyman of CBS, a.k.a. Scott Boras’s puppet. Then it’s handled in a rather douchey kind of way. Just ask Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.
He tweeted yesterday that Heyman had blocked him on Twitter for nothing more than his criticism of Heyman’s idiotic conclusion that the Boston Red Sox, with their record payroll (third highest in baseball) were being “cheap”. The best part of it is the reply from Hardball Talk‘s Craig Calcaterra mentioning he too is a member of that not-so-exclusive club of baseball writers that Heyman has blocked for this offense.
L. Seven. Weenie.
