In case you missed it, Carlos Beltran announced that he would move to RF permanently, and allow Angel Pagan to spend the rest of spring training getting ready to play centerfield. A classy move by Beltran, who did not look great in center after coming off the DL last year, and is clearly still affected … Read more
The Texas Rangers have an interesting situation on their hands at the moment: what to do with Michael Young?
On national television in May 2009, Steve Phillips made the bold statement that the Mets should trade Carlos Beltran. This caused quite a ruckus in the blogosphere, but I supported the idea. Mind you, my argument for dealing Beltran was wildly different from Phillps’ — but the end result was the same.
Back then, there was still this fantasy brewing that the Mets were a playoff-contending team, and so people thought Beltran was central to their expected success — a “core player” so to speak. Phillips saw Beltran as a “flawed” core player — one who wasn’t as “perfect” as Albert Pujols or Derek Jeter (his examples). Ironically, the true fallacy of Phillips’ argument was that he bought into the same nonsense suggesting that the Mets would be a postseason team in 2009 — his feeling was that the Mets should trade Beltran for a player or players who had more “grit”.
It was dumb on many levels. But if “the ends justify the means”, then Phillips was right on target
If you were riding the Carlos Beltran – to – Boston rollercoaster on Wednesday, it’s time to get off — the Red Sox have agreed to sign Carl Crawford to a 7-year, $142M contract. So, no need for the Bosox to acquire Beltran. Additionally, the wild fantasy of seeing Crawford play in a park built … Read more
Adam Rubin at ESPN-NY is reporting that the Boston Red Sox are “talking internally” about the possibility of obtaining Carlos Beltran. I wondered if the Red Sox would be interested in Beltran a few weeks ago, but a friend of mine from Boston (and diehard Bosox fan) convinced me that Theo Epstein had enough injury-prone … Read more
So I thought I was finished with the evaluations, then realized that I somehow missed Jason Bay. Most likely it was because he didn’t appear on the official 40-man roster when I put together my list of players to write about back in October. But, the fact I completely forgot about him speaks volumes about … Read more
If not for R.A. Dickey, Angel Pagan would be the Mets’ runaway team MVP. Miraculously, Gary Matthews Jr. and not Angel Pagan was the 2010 Opening Day centerfielder. Think about that for a moment. Now that you’ve thought about it, was it any surprise that the previous management regime is history? After looking like a … Read more
It’s hard to evaluate Beltran’s 2010 season, since he only appeared in 64 ballgames, and the first 30 or so could have been considered “spring training games”. Beltran was not ready to play minor league baseball when he returned to MLB just after the All-Star Exhibition, but Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel were desperate to … Read more
