Yankees Prospects are better than Redsox Payroll

MLB Rumors: Latest On Johan Santana From Minnesota's POV
By Eric Hz Section: Baseball
Posted on Thu Dec 27, 2007 at 07:53:03 AM EDT

La Velle E. Neal III checks in over the Christmas break to offer what he has heard regarding Johan Santana. First, the Twins checked in with the Red Sox, Yanks and Mets just before Christmas. Apparently, the Mets do have a package sans Jose Reyes or David Wright that can get a deal done.

Second, "dormant" is the word he was told aptly described the talks with the Red Sox, and, finally, Kei Igawa's name has resurfaced in links to Yankees' offers. Mr. Neal comments that Kei may be a 4th piece. If that third piece is Jeff Marquez or SS Alberto Gonzalez, I can see Igawa being that kicker that pushes the Twins into consumating the deal!

Charlie Waters of the Pioneer Press reports the Twins are set to have Johan on the mound for the team's opening game agains the Angels. Two 1st round picks in June 2009 is not a good consolation prize for failing to pull the trigger in December 2007.

With the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians ahead of them, the Twins do not have the guns to beat either team in their division. With the Yankees and Red Sox remaining the 90+ win teams they were last season, the chances of the Twins overcoming any of them for the wildcard are also remote. The Twins are not making the play-offs with Santana. Take the best high prospect/0-3 years major leaguer package you can get.

MLB Rumors: Latest On Johan Santana From Minnesota's POV
By Eric Hz Section: Baseball
Posted on Thu Dec 27, 2007 at 07:53:03 AM EDT

La Velle E. Neal III checks in over the Christmas break to offer what he has heard regarding Johan Santana. First, the Twins checked in with the Red Sox, Yanks and Mets just before Christmas. Apparently, the Mets do have a package sans Jose Reyes or David Wright that can get a deal done.

Second, "dormant" is the word he was told aptly described the talks with the Red Sox, and, finally, Kei Igawa's name has resurfaced in links to Yankees' offers. Mr. Neal comments that Kei may be a 4th piece. If that third piece is Jeff Marquez or SS Alberto Gonzalez, I can see Igawa being that kicker that pushes the Twins into consumating the deal!

Charlie Waters of the Pioneer Press reports the Twins are set to have Johan on the mound for the team's opening game agains the Angels. Two 1st round picks in June 2009 is not a good consolation prize for failing to pull the trigger in December 2007.

With the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians ahead of them, the Twins do not have the guns to beat either team in their division. With the Yankees and Red Sox remaining the 90+ win teams they were last season, the chances of the Twins overcoming any of them for the wildcard are also remote. The Twins are not making the play-offs with Santana. Take the best high prospect/0-3 years major leaguer package you can get.

http://riveraveblues.com/2007/12/27/bas-top-10-yankee-prospects-1898/#comments

The list won’t hit the website until January 7th, but the good ol’ print edition of BA’s magazine showed up in the mailbox today. Here’s who they got for the Yanks’ top 10:

1. Joba
2. Austin Jackson
3. Jose Tabata
4. IPK
5. Alan Horne
6. Jesus! (montero)
7. Jeff Marquez
8. Brett Gardner
9. Rock ‘n Rohlendorf
10. Andrew Brackman

WFAN's Steve Somers makes no sense about Andy Pettitte

Steve Somers' WFAN radio show is what happens in a vacuum-garbage dumps in. In this case, it's an absence of Yankee leadership vs the media. The first segment of Steve's show on Monday night in the 6PM hour was typical. If a radio station's license should be revoked for anything it should be for what Somers has been allowed to say on the air about Andy Pettitte, and he's said it numerous times approximating the following:

* Somers: I believe Brian McNamee because the threat is enormous to him were he not telling the truth. So I absolutely believe what he says about Clemens, with the times used in each year. And I believe McNamee about Andy Pettitte, too.

(Steve doesn't mention McNamee said Pettitte's usage was at most a few times in early 2002).

* *Paul Byrd by far the biggest and possibly present day user in the whole report rests easy since he's on the wrong team. New York papers continually ran headlines that their home town heroes "admitted using steroids" or "used steroids," which they didn't and wasn't true. They don't treat home town players like that in Cleveland media from what I've seen.

Somers goes on to say the 2000 Yankee team was loaded with users and is suspect, etc. Which is false anyway--even going by Mitchell/Radomski, there's only 1 Yankee from the 2000 team the report said was using that year (Clemens). I've detailed that on this blog with backup from the report.

* Caller: Steve, you keep saying the 2000 Yankee team had so many people using, you talk about Pettitte but his admitted use was only in 2002.

*(Remember Somers has repeatedly said he absolutely believes everything McNamee has said. He seems to forget Andy Pettitte's admission basically AGREED with McNamee).

* Somers: Well, HOW DO YOU KNOW, I DON'T BELIEVE A WORD ANDY PETTITTE SAYS ANYWAY. NOBODY DOES. PEOPLE DON'T BUY IT. YOU CAN'T JUST USE 2 OR 3 TIMES LIKE HE SAID HE DID. EVERYONE KNOWS IT HAD TO BE FOR MUCH LONGER THAN THAT. SO YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT OTHER YEARS. ANDY PETTITTE IS LYING AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT. (He doesn't say who "everyone" is).

(Caller isn't heard from again).

* As I say, I've heard Steve Somers give this same speech about Pettitte several times, saying he implicitly believes McNamee. He overlooks that Pettitte agreed with McNamee. Somers' diatribe only makes sense if he thinks McNamee is lying but I've never heard him say or imply that. He says Pettitte is lying, and I've heard other radio hosts give the same circular crap on WFAN and the local ESPN station.

This whole subject is a riot, including Mitchell's use of the false front page LA Times story to back up his personal destruction of Andy Pettitte's career. It would greatly have helped Andy if the truth had been unsealed a few days earlier. But a judge adamantly refused to open it until after the Mitchell Report. By then, its helpfulness for Andy was greatly minimized, and Mitchell had left the stage in triumph to return to his paid position as director of the Red Sox.

* And WFAN still has its license.

BY MIKE BARNICLE

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2007/12/28/2007-12-28_boston_getting_used_to_idea_of_beating_n-2.html?ref=rss


Mike Barnicle, a newspaper columnist in Boston for 30 years, is a long-suffering sports fan? and MSNBC commentator.

How did this happen? Was there a specific date, a single event that erased the burden of history and allowed the weight of municipal inferiority to be lifted from the shoulders of every fan in New England who has been witness to decades of humiliation delivered by New York teams?

Think about it.

Saturday, the Patriots play the Giants at exit 16W. They arrive as undefeated favorites, with three Super Bowl championships in four years, the symbol of how a model NFL franchise is run. A dynasty.

The born-again Celtics humiliated the Knicks and Nets each time they met this fall. Of course, the Little Sisters of the Poor could beat the pathetic Knicks, coached by a delusional paranoid and owned by James (Thanks, Dad) Dolan, a soft, spoiled rich guy who inherited wealth, not wisdom.

That brings us to the main event: Red Sox-Yankees. The Yanks have spent billions but they still wear rings tarnished with age while the Olde Towne Team has two championships in the last four years, '04 and '07, turning Back Bay into Hardball Heaven. A minidynasty.

It's a mind warp.

Manhattan was where Boston's dreams went to die after being fatally wounded in the Bronx. Time turned the Hub into a pitiable afterthought as commerce moved from New England to New York in the 19th century. And sports turned our teams - fans, too - into one-liner fodder for anyone from The Rockaways to New Rochelle.

You used to be able to identify Sox fans in Yankee Stadium. They sat, slump-shouldered, with the same panicked expectation nervous motorists have looking in the rearview mirror at the 16-wheeler behind them on Interstate 95 near New Haven.

The inevitability of collapse was genetic. Disappointment was delivered with an October postmark by fringe figures named Bucky (Effen) Dent, Mookie Wilson and Aaron Boone.

Then, something happened in October 2004 in the "House of Historical Horrors" called Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox came back from three games down to beat the Bronx Bombers, leading the Daily News to hit the streets with one of the greatest front-page headlines ever: "The Choke's On Us!"

That was IT, the single moment that pushed the gravedigger into retirement. It took the loser label off the forehead of every Boston fan.

Now, in a bizarre way, we have supplanted New York as the place where champions reside and the home team is hated by others. The Patriots are loathed as much as the old Yankees. The Red Sox are fan favorites who attract big crowds in every town, annoying local ownership. The Celtics are dominating the way they used to when they were despised in the old Boston Garden. We'll skip hockey because the NHL was ruined because of a long strike and ludicrous expansion.

Ironically, we have seen the enemy (the Yankees from DiMaggio to Jeter and Rivera, the once-glamorous Giants of Gifford, Tittle, Huff, Simms and Parcells, the Knicks with Reed, Bradley and DeBusschere, the Jets with Namath) and, incredibly, we have become them.

We have money, swagger, attitude and standing. We've consistently won in baseball and football, and we hit the new year with the best basketball record in the NBA. And, given the short national attention span, nobody cares what happened in the 20th century. Life and sports are about the moment.

Oddly, there are thousands of young people from Waterville, Maine, to Waterbury, Conn., who have no institutional memory of a sporting life once filled with apprehension, even fear, who have never endured the depression that accompanied defeat datelined New York City.

But that was then and this is now: Saturday, the victory parade continues and the dominance of area code 212 is diminished, if not dead.

So, how come I'm still up late at night, worrying the Yankees might sign Johan Santana or the Giants might luck out and beat the Patriots by a field goal with less than a minute left in a game where Tom Brady breaks his leg? Maybe it's because I'm from Boston and haven't quite gotten used to living with something called success. But I'm getting there.