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Australian All-Star Game: A possible look at Team Australia’s WBC Roster

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The Australian Baseball League’s All-Star Game is coming up, and it pits the league’s best Australian players against the league’s best foreign players. This allows, interestingly, for something of a glimpse of what Australia’s World Baseball Classic team could look like.

The Australian roster for the ABL ASG, which can be found here, has seven players with MLB experience: pitchers Shane Lindsay, Chris Oxspring and Ryan Rowland-Smith, infielders Brad Harman, Luke Hughes and Justin Huber, and outfielder Chris Snelling, who was born in Florida but grew up in Australia. The WBC roster could add Grant Balfour, Rich Thompson and Travis Blackley, but they aren’t playing in the ABL, so they aren’t on this roster.

Some other notable names on the rest of the roster:

Allan De San Miguel, who has been confirmed to be playing in the WBC, is, as I noted back during my August projections for the Aussies, a light-hitting but good-fielding catcher who spent the past year in the Orioles organization.

Stefan Welch, who was in the Pittsburgh system last year, is a utility guy who can player first and third, although he played mainly third last season.

Elliot Biddle and Mitch Dening were also on my projections. Biddle was one of the best hitters in the ABL in 2011, while Dening was a Indy Leaguer in 2012.

Brendan Wise had a tough year in AAA, but he’s done well in the ABL this season so far, and well-deserves the spot he has on the team. He also will likely be on the WBC team.

One of the players who I did not have on my projections who is on the ABL Australian roster is Paul Mildren. Mildren, a lefty, spent eight season in the minors, reaching as high as AAA. However, he eventually washed-out, but is now pitching professionally down under. While he’s only 1-3 with a 5.40 ERA so far this season, there can never be enough lefties, so it’ll be interesting to see if he make the WBC roster.

Another player who wasn’t on my earlier projections? Corey Adamson. The San Diego prospect has been blazing his way in the ABL this season, one of the league’s leaders in batting average.

Overall, the Australians would do okay if they went to the WBC with this all-star-game team, but they’d probably have trouble advancing, since they are in a tough pool with Korea, Taipei and the Netherlands. Of course, in baseball anything can happen, and if enough MLB players take part for the Aussies, they could be a Cinderella team.

You can expect a full new projection for the Baseballroos sometime in the coming days.

Number 12s for 12/12/12

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It’s 12/12/12! So in honor of 12/12/12, perhaps it’s a good idea to note that two number 12s have seen their numbers retired in Major League Baseball.

The more notable of them is Roberto Alomar, who’s number 12 has been retired by the Toronto Blue Jays. Interestingly, Alomar is getting married today, so he must really like that number.

The other player to have number 12 retired is Wade Boggs. The reason this isn’t as notable as Alomar is because, well, Boggs had the number retired by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now Rays). Boggs was from the Tampa area, and he had his 3000th hit in a Tampa uniform, so his hometown team honored him by retiring his number. Boggs wore 26 during his time with the Boston Red Sox, and switched to 12 when he went to New York.

Number 12, it should be noted, has far more retirees in the NFL: Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, John Brodie, Bob Griese and Seattle’s “Twelfth Man” have had it retired. Just a random thing I found that I thought to note.

Did you know…

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Four quick factoids that you may find interesting.

Did you know…..

…that “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” was first coined by Frank Robinson? He did it in 1973 in Time.

…that Michael Vick, Tom Brady, Jake Locker, Colin Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, and Brandon Weeden all were drafted by MLB teams? Wilson and Weeden played minor league baseball.

…that Marty Bergen, notable for having ax-murdered his family and then killing himself, received 1% of the HoF vote in 1937? He wasn’t even that good of a player!

…that Ed Porray of the 1914 Buffalo Buffeds of the Federal League was born on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean?

With apologies to SI, this week’s sign of the apocalypse

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Sports Illustrated often has a feature where they point out a sign of the apocalypse. Deadspin also does this occasionally, mainly to point out how SI’s sign is mild compared to actual world events.

I, for one, nominate this:

Pablo Sandoval, beauty pageant judge. One of Kung Fu Panda’s many talents.

So about the weekend…

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Things we learned over the weekend:

The Dodgers have a lot of money

You know how I wrote that analogy of how the Yankees are like Godzilla sleeping between rampages? Well, the Dodgers think that’s adorable. This weekend, they’ve signed Zack Greinke for $147 million dollars,  Korean ace Hyun-Jin Ryu for $36 million and presumably the moon for a few billion dollars they had left over. For the first time since the ill-advised 1998 Orioles, it looks like a team will top the Yankees in the payroll column.

But, interestingly, the Dodgers aren’t getting as much hate as the Yankees do when they go on sprees like this. I have a theory: The Yankees’ public image is of the Steinbrenner family and it’s surrogates, old money with a superiority complex, real or imagined, and with the YES network filled with varying degrees of homerism. By contrast, the public face of the Dodgers’ ownership is Magic Johnson, one of the most beloved sports figures in America, and their games are called by Vin Scully. Add in the fact that there are 20 titles between the two, and it becomes clear that the Dodgers are going to be regarded as benevolent overlords, at least by comparison.

The Dodgers have a lot of pitching

Oh, the other thing: here’s the list of MLB-ready pitchers now on the Los Angeles Dodgers-

Of course, there are only, at most, five rotation spots for these eight guys. Presuming that perhaps they will keep six pitchers (with the sixth pitcher being a long-relief and spot-starter who can go in when somebody inevitably gets hurt), that means that two pitchers, likely Harang and Capuano, will probably be traded. Traded, presumably, for prospects that could one day further reinforce the Dodgers.

The Royals actually have done something, but the Rays may have gotten the better part of the deal.

The big move this morning/late last night is that the Royals and Rays made a trade: James Shields, Wade Davis and a player to be named (or cash) go to the Royals, who send top hitting prospect Wil Myers, pitching prospects Jake Odorizzi and Mike Montgomery, and long-term (he’s still in the low minors) 3B prospect Patrick Leonard.

In the short-term, perhaps, the Royals have gotten the better part of the deal, getting “Big Game” James Shields, a perennial Cy Young Aaward candidate, as well as fellow MLB pitcher Wade Davis. But in the long-term, this could be a disastrous move for the Royals. They gave up four prospects, three of whom were on Baseball America‘s list of the minors’ top 100 prospects. Myers is said to be one of the best power-hitting prospects in all of baseball, Odorizzi had a brief stint in the majors last year and had a 3.03 ERA between AA and AAA last season and Montgomery isn’t as big a prospect as he once was but could still blossom into a big league pitcher. The Rays will be able to have these players for at least another five or six years.

And for this, the Royals get Shields for two years, and Wade Davis for maybe three or four years. And even with these upgrades, it’s unlikely that the Royals will be able to compete in the AL Central, although perhaps it makes them a outside contender for a Wild Card spot.

Could the Royals still “win” this deal? Of course. But I agree with many of the other people online: the Rays will probably win this deal in the long run.

Who’s In/Out/In-Between as of 7:22 PM of Dec. 9, 2012

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Today’s movers and shakers:

Alfredo Aceves has apparently volunteered to play for Team Mexico… as a catcher. He’s a pitcher usually. So either there was some sort of joke he made that got lost in translation in Nick Cafardo’s baseball column at the Boston Globe, or he’s considering a position change. What the heck, I’ll put him in as possibly/likely.

Go below the jump for the whole list:

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Sunday Trivia

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Here’s a new one: Below are 10 trivia questions. After the jump, you will find the answers. The answers, by the way, will be in white text, so you may need to highlight them to see.

So here we go:

1. What pitcher has the best winning percentage against the Yankees, with a minimum of 20 decisions?

2. Besides the fact that it was his first game, what was so notable about Boog Powell’s first game in the big leagues?

3. What player in the All-Star Game era (1933+) has the most career home runs without ever playing in an All-Star Game?

4. Rick Monday was the first pick in the first ever MLB amateur draft. Who was the earliest player drafted to become a Hall of Famer? (As in, who was the earliest player picked in the first draft to become a Hall of Famer, not necessarily the first to actually join the Hall of Fame)

5. Similarly, who was the first number one pick to become a Hall of Famer?

6. As of the end of the 2012 season, who was the last person to play at least one game in Major League Baseball and at least one game in the NFL (albeit not in the same year)?

7. Kevin Millar was never featured on official MLBPA-approved merchandise or video games. Why?

8. Who are the only two players to win the Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award and MVP during their career?

9. What HoF manager tried to use African-American 2B Charlie Grant in a ballgame in the early 1900s by saying he was a Native American?

10. Who are the only two HoF players to have spent a part of their career in Japan?

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In/Out/In-Between of the WBC as of 8 PM on December 8, 2012

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Today’s changes:

The Boston Globe reports that David Ortiz almost certainly will be unable to play in the WBC, due to his Achilles’ injury not being fully healed yet.

The complete list is below the jump:

Continue reading →

Michael Young leaves the Rangers, removing another career-with-one-team man

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Michael Young wasn’t drafted by the Texas Rangers- he came as a Minor Leaguer in a trade with the Blue Jays- but he has for years been Mr. Ranger. But now, he is headed to Philadelphia, waiving his no-trade clause in order to be traded to the Phillies. He has, barring a possible mostly-ceremonial return at the end of his career, hit his final hit and played his final game as a Ranger- he held the record in both categories for the team.

But what it also does is eliminate the chance that Young would join the list of players- increasingly endangered- who have played their entire career with one team.

In fact, as far as I can tell, these are the only active players left who have spent their entire career of 10+ seasons with the same club:

Derek Jeter

Mariano Rivera

Todd Helton

Jimmy Rollins

Brian Roberts

Now, admittedly, there are a bunch of players who are only a season or two away from joining this list: Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, David Wright, Cole Hamels, etc. But as “Mr. Ranger” leaves Texas, it’s interesting to know this in order to truly appreciate just how rare it is now for a player to spend their entire career with one team… and how Michael Young won’t be one of those players.

The Yankees are just sleeping

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When I was younger, I had a thing for Godzilla movies. But I sort of realized that, at the end of each movie, there probably should have been a scene where the Japanese government realized that Godzilla was going to come back, and that he wasn’t dead, he was just sleeping.

The same could be said of the Yankees this offseason. So tight have their pockets been that Brian Cashman apparently went to the Winter Meetings without authority to sign free agents. Names like Jeff Keppinger and Eric Chavez went elsewhere, and the big names like Josh Hamilton and Zack Greinke have been almost entirely unconnected to them. They haven’t been in for any trades. The only player they seem to have officially been in pursuit of so far is Kevin Youkilis.

But, rest assured, they have a plan. A horrible plan. Much like Godzilla no doubt dreamed of stomping Tokyo or Osaka as he slept between B-movies, the Yankees have dreams as well, and it involves a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement.

You see, there is a threshold of about $189 million dollars. If a team is above it, they have to pay luxury taxes, and a lot of them, and the penalties accrue based on how much and how long the team is over it. The Yankees, as they have been going, would have been paying up to a 50% luxury tax.

But if a team goes under it, the formula for luxury tax resets. They could then proceed to go over the tax threshold and not have to pay close to the luxury tax amount they  would be paying if they didn’t reset the clock.

If what I’m reading is correct, this would mean that they’d be relatively unencumbered in the 2014-2015 off-season in their quest to stomp Tokyo, or at least the American League, free to spend, spend, spend without much worry about all the taxes they’d be inflicted upon.

And here comes the part that is terrifying for the people of Tokyo, or at least the American League: Justin Verlander could be a free agent after 2014. So could Clayton Kershaw. And Felix Hernandez. And Chase Headley, Johnny Cueto and Elvis Andrus.

In other words… they Yankees could spend and attempt to buy a pennant in a way even George would find crazy.

And that is why they are sleeping.