metirish

All I need to know about this is that Lowell won, IIRC against the Mets he made some terrible plays, I suppose you can't judge just on a few games but was he Gold Glove caliber all season?

Now that was not a waste of the Sacred Seaver post, Hail

Nope, and they need a SS and a number one hitter.

Paul Kinzer the agent for Furcal has said that the Mets will have to pay more if they want Rafael to play second... http://www.ajc.com/braves/content/sports/braves/1105/02braves.html

Plus the fact that he's playing in illegal underground poker rooms, not very smart but I suppose that's where the real money is won and lost....and lest we forget A-Dog is a role model.....yawn

IIRC Bobby is known for working well with young players, no idea where that comes from but I think it was written in the papers over the years, with the money Bobby will command and the money Lou is owed that's a lot for the new owner....I think he'll hire a cheaper person.

Hells Bells from AC/DC could soon(or not) be playing for the next closer at Shea... ]Padres' Hoffman on Mets' horizon? BY DAVID LENNON STAFF WRITER November 2, 2005 The Mets could add Trevor Hoffman to their shopping list of prospective closers now that he seems to be at an impasse with the Padres over a contract extension. Hoffman, who turned 38 last month, reportedly is seeking a three-year deal worth between $25 million and $27 million. Last week, the Padres offered two years for $10 million, and that may prompt Hoffman to try the open market. "Trevor's first choice has always been to remain a Padre. But it's looking more and more like it won't happen," Rick Thurman, Hoffman's agent, told The Associated Press. "Put it this way: Their offer made Trevor upset enough to have his locker cleaned out at the stadium." But it may take more than that for Hoffman to uproot his family from San Diego, where he has pitched since 1993, and the Mets, nearly 3,000 miles away on the other coast, would be a long shot. Not that he doesn't fit their needs. Hoffman had 43 saves last season, with a 2.97 ERA and 54 strikeouts in 572/3 innings. The Mets already have declined their $5.5-million option on former closer Braden Looper, and they're ready to spend for his replacement. The Phillies' Billy Wagner and Orioles' B.J. Ryan figured to be the top two targets this offseason, but if Hoffman truly wants out of San Diego, that will dramatically change the landscape. "There are 16 teams where their closer spot is up in the air right now," Thurman said. "It's a pretty good year to be a free-agent closer." The Padres hold exclusive negotiating rights to Hoffman until Nov. 11, but Thurman added that roughly 10 teams have expressed interest. Mets GM Omar Minaya did not return a phone call last night.

I find it interesting that McCourt might be interested in Epstein, isn't DePodesta cut from the same cloth?]But McCourt should put in ear plugs when Lasorda starts discussing the virtues of one of his former players, Bobby Valentine, who's been managing in Japan and should remain in the Far East if the Dodgers ever are to have peace and tranquillity and goodwill on earth. well if you want a great manager then you go for Bobby...and I heard tonight that McCourt will meet Bobby later this week.

ahh stop it FK, it was great ,no need to be modest...

Jesus Lord no way to Frank Thomas,he's a DH and I'm sure he thinks the same thing.

What do we know a bout Steve, I know nothing about him,do we have a profile of what he's at these days?

It's perfect for Epstein really, especially is the Sox go in the tubes for years, he will be remembered as the one to take them to the promised land...the legend of Theo will grow..

That is amazing, you never hear about corner outfielders when people talk about this stuff....I guess first basemen are not considered managerial material.

Long LA Times article on Bobby V, registration required so I will post it here... ] A Made Man in Japan Valentine is a national hero after Chiba Lotte's title, and if Dodgers call, leaving won't be easy. By Bruce Wallace, Times Staff Writer TOKYO — "Bobbeeee!" They recognize him wherever he goes. Even out of uniform — no ball cap, no big No. 2 on his back — everyone in Tokyo seems to know who Bobby Valentine is. "Bobbeeee!" They shout and try to shake his hand (he hates that) or take his picture with their cellphone cameras. Having Bobby Valentine on your cellphone is a very cool thing in Japan right now. Always popular, Valentine has become an even bigger star in the week since his Chiba Lotte Marines, the team from the Tokyo 'burbs and the standing joke of Japanese baseball, defied the usual skeptics and socked their way to the club's first championship in 31 years. "Bobby Magic," the media here call it. "Bobby's Family" read the newspaper headline under the team's victory photo after they swept the Hanshin Tigers from Osaka in four games to win the Japan Series. If people have heard the speculation that Valentine may leave Japan to manage the Dodgers, no one is going to be rude enough to ask him if it's true. Tokyo is Bobby's Town. Take the crowd in Shibuya on Friday evening, the neon glowing over one of Tokyo's hippest and busiest neighborhoods. Valentine is standing at Shibuya's famous intersection with three buddies from college days who came over to see the final series — "the Goons," he calls them affectionately — when a murmur begins to surf the crowd. "Is it Bobby?" people ask, and suddenly he and his friends are surrounded, like a milestone home-run ball that has landed in the bleachers. Ten, 20, 50 people with more coming, all thrusting cellphones into his face until finally Valentine calls a halt and strides away. He leads the Goons across the intersection and into a pachinko parlor, the Japanese gambling arcades that are a cross between slots and pinball. People sit at machines, transfixed, as thousands of tiny steel balls tumble about in a deafening rattle. They look as if their fate is in those balls. But an old woman recognizes Valentine and abandons her post at the machine to ask for an autograph. When Valentine steps toward her, he accidentally kicks over a bucket of pachinko balls. Thousands of the tiny steel balls roll down the aisles and scatter under machines. "It's OK, it's OK, Bobby," says the owner, rushing up to soothe him. She doesn't want Valentine to be upset. Staff members grab brooms. The Americans escape into the neon night. Suddenly the owner is chasing after them. "Bobby!" she shouts. He left without giving her an autograph. "Arigato" — thank you — Valentine says as he bows and signs. She's over the moon. Yep. This is Bobby's Town. Understanding Bobby Valentine's place in Japan — and what success in Japanese baseball means to him — is essential to understanding why leaving here would be a tougher call than anyone in L.A. could imagine, should the Dodgers make an offer. Valentine back in Dodger blue? A reunion with Tommy Lasorda, his long-ago minor league manager and mentor? What's to hesitate on? Why be coy? "I'm not kidding anybody, I think it would be great to manage the Dodgers," Valentine says as he drives home after recording a postseason interview for Japanese TV. "Especially when Tommy's still alive, especially when I still have this great energy to get around that city. "If they're sure I'm the guy they need, that there's a fit, it might happen to be the right thing." Whether the Dodgers can afford Valentine might be another matter. According to a source close to the Marines, Valentine made $2.95 million this year, maxing out on his bonuses, in the second year of a three-year contract. Incentives in Japan can be linked to anything, unlike in major league ball, so a new contract for Valentine could be structured around bonuses for victories above a specified number, each round of playoffs or other team accomplishments. It's expected that he will be offered a three-year extension worth $4 million a year, plus incentives, as a starting point, with the understanding that it will rise during the negotiation process. In any event, Valentine bristles at suggestions that Japan is baseball purgatory, a place he came to in order to get more games under his belt while waiting for a "real" opportunity in major league baseball to come his way. He sees himself as uniquely positioned to break down the provincial, chauvinistic instincts of baseball people on both sides of the Pacific. These are two very different baseball cultures, he argues, each with its merits, each ignoring the best of the other at its peril. And if he leaves Japan, he worries that he'll be sending a signal that Japanese baseball is less significant than major league ball. "Look," he says, "I have friends who have said, 'I know you can't wait to get back, I hope someone offers you a job.' And I wonder where I went wrong in my friendship for them not to understand. What is it that they don't get?" What they miss, say Valentine and those who know him best, is that he has climbed a personal and professional mountain in Japan. He has taken a team that was a byword for failure to a title — not just its first since the 1970s when the Marines wore uniforms with pink trim, but his first championship as a manager and the first by a foreign manager in Japan. "People in the U.S. can't fully appreciate the significance of what he's done in this baseball culture," says Jim Small, vice president of international market development for Major League Baseball, who has known Valentine since he managed in Texas in the 1980s. "You have to know what this means to him. Unless you know Bobby and the importance he places on loyalty, it's hard to understand why there would be a conundrum about leaving." The Japan Series victory was even sweeter because it represented a successful second act for Valentine in Japan. His first experience managing here, for the Lotte Marines in 1995, ended in tears after only one season. Valentine led the 1995 team to a surprising second-place finish but was fired by General Manger Tatsuro Hirooka at the end of the season after clashing with his Japanese coaching staff over, among other things, his resistance to their grueling practice routines and long team meetings. In one incident, Valentine ordered his team to take a day off, only to find his players and coaches defiantly holding a practice at the park. Friends recall Valentine phoning home to the U.S., incredulous at what "they" were doing to him. The prevailing narrative about that first managerial stint — at least among English-language baseball writers — portrays Valentine as an on-field success who was popular with fans but ran into a wall of anti-foreigner resentment from coaches, executives and the Japanese media. It's a version that Valentine refuses to subscribe to now. "I came here the first time with the idea it was just a little place to hang up my clothes for a while until I got another job in the States," he says. "I was pig-headed. I was trying to move mountains with a bulldozer, and it wasn't going to happen as quickly as I wanted it to happen. "But I wasn't 55; I was 45. I didn't have 20 years' experience; I had 10. And I made it tough on myself." Valentine laughs when he says he's the only manager to have been fired in the American League (Rangers), the National League (Mets) and Japan. But he also says his failure in Japan burned inside him as "unfinished business" over the years. "I didn't make the difference here that I wanted to make," he says. "I think I made a difference in Texas. I made a difference in New York. … "But when I left here the last time, it was worse. I didn't like that notch on my belt." Valentine was living in Connecticut, doing ESPN baseball broadcasts, when Marine owner Akio Shigemitsu, son of the owner who had hired him the first time, came calling in 2003 to see whether Valentine would return to Japan for another try. He was back listening to his Japanese lessons on his iPod even before the contract was signed. "Bobby enjoyed ESPN and he was good at it, but he was bored," his wife, Mary, says. "And when Bobby Valentine is bored, it's not a good thing." For Valentine, what happened between the white lines in Japanese baseball was the easy part. The tougher challenge was finding the proper calibration of American and Japanese philosophies. The notion that he opposed practices was "lost in translation last time," he says. Indeed it is the Japanese emphasis on practicing skills and fundamentals that leads him to argue that the best in Japan can compete with the World Series winner. It's a line that most baseball people in America scoff at — the Marines' foreign talent this year included borderline major leaguers Benny Agbayani and Matt Franco, who had played for Valentine with the Mets — as more of Bobby's bluster. But Valentine counters that Major League Baseball is arrogant. "I watched the White Sox; we play better than the White Sox," he says. "We don't throw balls in the dirt. We don't throw balls over the first baseman's head. We hit the cutoff man every time. "When I say we play better it's not because we are better players. It's because we practice better." ADVERTISEMENT Where Valentine differed most noticeably from his Japanese counterparts was in his handling of players. Japanese baseball thrives on hierarchy between owners, managers and players, all sticking to their roles in a strict code. The team trumps the player and managers rule through fear. Let your teammates down by going 0 for 4 and expect to put in a couple of more hours of batting practice after the game. Make an error in the field and you might get yanked — in mid-inning. Valentine brought a softer approach to handling his players, trying to get them to not fear failure. No one got chewed out, though players were encouraged to display emotion. "All the Japanese players seem to be playing in neutral," he says. "I wanted our guys to enjoy their successes and enjoy their failures. It was going to be OK to hit a double and clap your hands at second base. And it was going to be all right to come back to the dugout after a strikeout or an error, and kick your helmet. I allowed them to do that." Besides, Valentine says with a big smile, "I think fans like it." The Marines won the title away from home and their enthusiastic fans. The Tigers were never in the series, losing, 10-1, 10-0 and 10-1 before putting up a slight struggle in Game 4. The championship was won in Hanshin's Koshien Stadium, where the stands were so shaky there were fears the bleachers might collapse if visiting Marine fans celebrated with their signature tatenori — literally "vertical movement." Americans would recognize it as pogo-ing. Valentine watched the game from the top step of the dugout, shifting nervously, slapping butts and high-fiving his players when they returned to the bench after good plays. After taking an early three-run lead, the Marines withstood a Hanshin comeback that relied on a bad-hop RBI single and wrapped it up with a strikeout for a 3-2 win, followed by the obligatory mob scene near the mound. Afterward, Valentine stood in foul territory off third base and on national TV used the occasion to thank Hirooka, the GM in 1995, for giving him "the opportunity to manage in this great country." And he thanked owner Shigemitsu "for having the faith to bring me back." On the big screen, he was visibly emotional. Then it was on to the ritual Japanese beer shower that is held, not spontaneously in the dressing room, but at a nearby luxury hotel precisely two hours after the game. The hotel taped plastic sheeting over every exposed surface and the players — some prepared with swimming goggles — went nuts for about half an hour, pouring hundreds of bottles of beer and champagne over each other. Up on stage in front of them, Valentine had goggles on too. His players charged the stage a few times and soon he was soaked in beer, his gray hair matted to his head. The players started chanting, and Valentine began jumping up and down, doing the Marines' bounce. Then he threw his head back and started to holler. "Arigato!" he screamed into the Japanese night. "Arigato!" (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) Bobby Valentine file • Born: May 13, 1950, in Stamford, Conn. • Player: With Dodgers, Angels, San Diego Padres, New York Mets and Seattle Mariners (1969-1979). • Manager: With Texas Rangers (1985-1992), Mets (1996-2002), and Japanese Pacific League's Chiba Lotte Marines (1995; 2003-present).

Furcal to use Mets.....whohoo ]Agent: Furcal could play 2nd for Mets BY ADAM RUBIN DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER Rafael Furcal plans to consider the Mets. And the team won't have to move Jose Reyes to lure him. Furcal, a rifle-armed shortstop who filed for free agency yesterday, would be willing to play second base in Flushing, his agent, Paul Kinze, said yesterday. The Atlanta-based Kinzer said Furcal's preference is to remain a shortstop, but said about the Mets: "I think they'll be a player. ... He would be willing to explore it." The Mets are expected to pursue Furcal and other second-base options, despite Kaz Matsui having one year and $8 million remaining on his contract and rookie Anderson Hernandez going 11-for-24 with seven RBI so far in winter ball. Unlike Matsui, a natural shortstop who joined the Mets with little experience elsewhere in the infield, Furcal is comfortable at second base. Kinzer estimated Furcal has played the position at least five years in winter ball in order to allow mentor Neifi Perez - another free agent this winter - to play shortstop with the Dominican club Escogido. Furcal's brother and extended family live in the Bronx. And Kinzer said the Mets' Hispanic-friendly clubhouse, which includes fellow Dominicans Pedro Martinez and Reyes, is alluring. "It'll help the comfort level," Kinzer said. "And he has a lot of family there." Furcal could team with Reyes atop the Mets' order to provide stellar speed in addition to a dynamic double-play combination. After a slow start with Atlanta this year, Furcal finished with a .284 average, 12 homers, 58 RBI and 46 steals. He batted .338 over the Braves' final 78 games. "He's as good a fielding shortstop as there is in baseball right now for me," Braves manager Bobby Cox said during the playoffs. "He's got tremendous range, a great arm. Right now he's one of the better leadoff hitters. ... We're hoping to keep him." Braves officials are expected to meet with Kinzer and Furcal tomorrow, but the 27-year-old's talent may have priced him out of their range. The Cubs, looking for a replacement for Nomar Garciaparra at shortstop, are expected to be serious bidders. Furcal made $5.6 million in 2005 and could be looking for a deal comparable to Edgar Renteria's four-year, $40 million contract with Boston last winter. He has family in the Bronx,of course he wants to play for the Mets..

Whatever forum this is in I don't care , about time Soler got over here....not that I know a damn thing about him really, but still it's a good thing I hope...do we need pitching, oh yeah you can never have enough.

WOW, that's a shocker for the Sox, I doubt LA would want him, I read today that they are going to interview Pat Gillick and Ed Wade....damn the Sox are imploding, amazing stuff.

Very cool...nice piece Jason.

Your welcome SK, glad MK enjoyed it...Bobby V getting courted.. ]Bobby Valentine being courted by three Major League teams Bobby Valentine, who led the Chiba Lotte Marines to a four-game sweep of the Japan Series, has captured the interest of the Washington Nationals, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Los Angeles Dodgers, a news report said Monday. The three Major League clubs expected to ask the Marines for permission to hold talks in the near future on bringing Valentine back to the United States, Kyodo News agency said, citing the American manager. Valentine, who managed the New York Mets in their World Series loss five years ago to the Yankees, became the first foreign manager to reach the Japan Series since Hawaiian-born Wally Yonamine took the Chunichi Dragons there in 1974. Valentine has said repeatedly he will return to the Marines next season. Kyodo cited team representative Ryuzo Setoyama as saying "there is no doubt he'll be here." His three-year contract expires in 2006, Kyodo said. Valentine is the only manager to lead teams in both the World Series and the Japan Series. (AP) October 31, 2005 http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/sports/news/20051031p2a00m0sp039000c.html The Nats would be a very interesting choice.

]I don't know what Peterson smells like, to be honest. I was close to him once(20 feet) and I swear he was lathered with what smelled like Brute....

Ah I'm just busting Ricks balls, if we are going to use a blue chip prospect then I think we should at least get that "big bat" for him..

This smells of Rick Peterson all over...no thanks

Here's what I found on the story ]Leak riles Henry By Michael Silverman/ Red Sox Notebook Sunday, October 30, 2005 Infuriated by what was reported as a leak from one of their own, the Red Sox said yesterday that the source of another Manny Ramirez-wants-to-be-traded story actually came from outside the club. The Red Sox would not confirm or deny a report in yesterday�s Boston Globe that Gene Mato, one of Ramirez� representatives, had conveyed to team owner John Henry on Friday that Ramirez wanted to be traded. Ramirez could always change his mind during the process, Mato was said to report, but if the trade request was not honored, the slugger would not report to spring training. The Globe attributed the source of the leak to a �team source� and general manager Theo Epstein told the Globe that it was �ridiculous� for the leaker to have revealed any such private communication. The source, said Henry, was actually not from the Red Sox. �I echo Theo�s remarks today that deplore leaks to the media regarding private conversations,� Henry said in an e-mail. �I was able to ascertain that today�s story on Manny did not come from the Red Sox.� A source on the Red Sox said the team was �furious� about the story but given that Ramirez has made and withdrawn similar requests in the past, having him possibly express a desire to be traded once again did not raise anybody�s eyebrows along Yawkey Way. Still, the breach in confidence reportedly bothered the Red Sox a great deal, even if the source was discovered not to be on the payroll. However, if Ramirez� request to be traded does remain on the table for a long period of time, the leak does no favors for the Red Sox, who would lose leverage if potential trading partners believe that Ramirez is forcing a trade. http://redsox.bostonherald.com/redSox/view.bg?articleid=109503

The Boston Globe reported today that Manny is demanding a trade, it's causing all kinds of shit in the Front Office...it's causing shit because it was leaked form an employee of the Sox..

]He wrote back and told me that he registered himself, but he doesn't know when or if he'll actually post anything here. That would be dissapointing if he didn't post.. And I'm Mackey Sasser....Cooby post his picture...