Now that the holidays have passed, activity should start picking up again. After the Furcal fallout with the Braves and my realted posts, I decided to forego providing my immediate thoughts on signings, rumors, departures of franchise icons, etc. I’ve never really intended for this blog to be a Twitter or Facebook status replacement, and I’m trying to stick to the slow-blogging approach.
While it’s been awful for Frank Wren and company so far, I’m cautiously optimistic that not all is lost. As shown below, Kenshin Kawakami appears to be a nice middle of the rotation pickup, and if they can somehow lure Derek Lowe to Atlanta (with a little help from Alan Jackson), it should be a solid, albeit not great, rotation. It’s been a horrendous offseason from a PR standpoint, but the team still has the potential to contend, given a few breaks here and there.
There’s still a need to add a bat in left field, and, oh yeah, a couple of radio announcers, so I’m looking forward to an interesting month before pitchers and catchers report.
I think most people had bailed on the Smashing Pumpkins bandwagon by the time Machina came out in 2000. However, this actually is still one of my favorites from Billy Corgan and company. Maybe it was the return of Jimmy Chamberlin on drums…
So the MLB Network officially starts in a few days (Jan 1, to be exact).
While I’m glad that the channel has actually appeared on Comcast here in Atlanta, I don’t think there’s too much to get excited about until the season starts up. Although, I’m sure I’ll tune into their Hot Stove Live show to torture myself as the Braves miss out on yet another player this winter.
What I’m looking forward to the most is the nightly show during the season showing live look-ins with their “oh-so exclusive” ballpark cameras and other game wrap-ups, highlights, etc. It should be a good alternative for those nights when Jo-Jo Reyes is serving up batting practice.
Plus, it’ll be nice to have Harold Reynolds on the air again. I just hope he doesn’t try to hug Hazel Mae in between highlights.
I’m not going to whine too much about the events over the past couple of days, but Furcal’s agent really sounds like a prick. I’m not wishing further injury to Furcal, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him fall into a season-long slump.
As DOB notes in his blog,
“Term sheets are, as an official from another team put it, “golden” in baseball. You don’t change those, and once the details are negotiated and put on the term sheet, it’s seen as basically a formality to sign it. The negotiating is already done at that point.
Wren said Braves were asked by Kinzer to send over a term sheet Tuesday to sign, after negotiating all the details Monday night, and the Braves never got the sheet back.”
I guess this is the price I get to pay as a fan of a team that won 14 division titles in a row.
(Photo credit to Talking Chop)
