the randy johnson saga

I guess it's well within their rights to do it...

it's been my experience that jon heyman is only marginally less biased than say, the boston dirt dogs.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1840380

i knew someone wouldn't be able to resist commenting on the three-way thing.

vazquez got shelled, mussina on the dl...if the thing about johnson only wanting to go to the yankees is true, the snakes must be happy tonight.

i don't see how one could be a communist and like the yankees...maybe a stalinist.

i can rationalize my yankee love because it doesn't really matter which team you're behind, it's owned by a billionaire or big business. at least the yankees are owned by a guy who runs the team like a fan, who invests heavily into the franchise, and who makes the cash-cow aspect of his baseball ownership at least appear coincidental.

The thing is that they can go get another player, but in playoff baseball that makes no guarantees that it will put them over the top. The pressure to win at all costs seems to have worn heavy on the Yanks in the past few years, especially when any team in baseball can get hot and beat someone 4 out of 7.

The Lakers completely came apart after only two seasons of being good, but not being good enough to win it all. If the Yanks fail this year to win everything, this will be the fourth season in a row. The Yanks getting knocked out in the playoffs with all of that talent is as bad a choke as some clubs not having a winning season.

Keep in mind, The Big Unit has been streaky in his playoff performances. His first couple with Seattle were great, then he lost a bunch of playoff games in a row up until the year Arizona won it all and then the next year didn't do much.

"Meanwhile, Newsday cites an unnamed NL source saying Johnson's behavior among his Arizona teammates has become "intolerable" in recent weeks and that they are rooting for him to be traded."

arizona would really be dumb not to trade him, but that doesn't mean anything, because they're dumb.

johnson supposedly turned down a trade to the dodgers last night. according to espn the dodgers offer was mota, werth, chuck tiffany, and chad billingsley. the last two are the presumably the prize, and i know nothing about them other than that they're well under 20 pitching prospects. so apparently, the dbacks are perfectly willing to toss the "major league ready" prerequisite out the window and go after high upside, high risk talent, preferably pitching. but that leads me to conclude that they'll be demanding at least one and probably more of eric duncan (3B/1B/LF), melky cabrera (CF), or abel gomez or tyler clippard (SPs), all very young, low minors talent. what ticks me off is that there are very few guys i'd be willing to give up, including navarro and cano, who play positions of need. duncan's the big catch, and right now he looks like a cross between troy glaus and chipper jones (troy's hitting, chipper's fielding). cabrera's an all-around talent and is doing well in high A at 19-going-on-20. gomez and clippard are putting up similar stat lines as 19 year olds in low a ball; gomez is a lefty and has allowed fewer hits, but clippard has better control and more velocity. i'd be willing to part with either if it nets johnson. imo, pitching is easier to get than quaility skill position players, so a team like the yankees should hold on to any CF/IF prospects they have but make 80% of pitching (or LF/1B) prospects expendable, only holding on to the projected stars, and i don't believe either clippard or gomez are believed to be such (but obviously w/ the age of the yankees staff, i'd like to hold on to them too...). i'm beginning to think that the real problem lies in the middle relief, and that guardado should be our #1 priority. johnson would be worth a lot more to the sox, where he'd be part of an invincible playoff rotation, than he would to us, so unless boston becomes an option again i'm not terribly enthused about this. i hope he becomes a yankee, but i don't support emptying the farm for him. i have a feeling george thinks otherwise.

[don't mind 90% of this post, it's just me rambling to myself now that this is becoming a serious possibility]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/sports/baseball/29trade.html?hp

please get guardado.

Yanks Expect Arizona to Hold On to Johnson
By TYLER KEPNER

Published: July 29, 2004

Pat Sullivan/Associated Press
The Diamondbacks have budgeted Randy Johnson's $16 million salary into their 2005 payroll and believe they can contend next season with him.

TORONTO, July 28 — The Yankees now believe that Randy Johnson will stay with the Arizona Diamondbacks past the trading deadline, a development that would be a devastating blow to a team with a shaky starting rotation.

Officials from several teams, including the Yankees, said on Wednesday that Johnson seemed most likely to remain in Arizona, despite his desire to be traded to the Yankees. The Diamondbacks have acted as if they want to keep Johnson, failing to tell the Yankees what it would take to acquire him. They have also not made a serious effort to find other interested teams to which Johnson would accept a trade.

No matter what the Diamondbacks could get from the Yankees, it would probably not be enough to justify trading Johnson, their ace lefthander and the face of a franchise suffering a terrible season. The Diamondbacks scout who followed the Yankees’ minor league teams, Bryan Lambe, filed positive reports on some players but did not judge any to be elite prospects.

The deadline for making trades without waivers is Saturday at 4 p.m., and Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, said Wednesday that the Yankees had no deals they could make at the moment. Cashman seemed prepared to enter August without any additions, focusing on the return of the injured starters Mike Mussina and Kevin Brown and of first baseman Jason Giambi, who has been ill.

“We’re looking to see if we can improve the club in any way, but if not, we’re comfortable going with what we have,” Cashman said. “We can be better by just getting Brown and Mussina and Giambi back to full strength and healthy.”

The Diamondbacks and the Yankees have had different perspectives on the possible trade all along. It has been a must-do for the Yankees, and a maybe for Arizona.

The Yankees are all but assured of a postseason berth, but do not seem built for October. With no other intriguing starters available in trades — and believing that Houston would never trade Roger Clemens — the Yankees have focused on Johnson to strengthen their rotation.

But the Diamondbacks have budgeted Johnson’s $16 million salary into their 2005 payroll, as General Manager Joe Garagiola Jr. has repeatedly emphasized. They believe they can contend next season with a core of Johnson, outfielder Luis Gonzalez and first baseman Richie Sexson, and $35 million to spend.

Johnson does not share that view. Sexson will be a free agent, and while the Diamondbacks have begun negotiations with him, he is not guaranteed to re-sign. And Gonzalez will have reconstructive elbow surgery next month.

“Do I want to leave? No,” Johnson told Sports Illustrated. “I’ve enjoyed it here. But the reason I’ve enjoyed it is we’ve been winning. This team was put together to win in a four- or five-year window, and that window is closed. This team is going through a major transformation. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s wanting to win. The only thing I want is to win.”

In that article, Johnson speaks as if he is has no faith in the Diamondbacks’ plan to win next season. “I can’t turn things around by myself,” Johnson said. “There’s no better example of that than this year. We’re not drawing any more fans or winning because I’m here. There’s no doubt that my leaving here can help the franchise rebuild, because they can get great young players and free up money to sign others.”

Johnson also said he has had no communication with Arizona’s owner, Jerry Colangelo, about the direction of the franchise. Colangelo was out of town on Wednesday.

But Colangelo had not met with Johnson by Wednesday afternoon, and he might have gone to his home in California to relax. Colangelo returned from a vacation in Italy on Monday and spent two days mourning the death of his close friend, the former Phoenix Suns coach Cotton Fitzsimmons.

Colangelo has made few public comments about Johnson, and what he has said would indicate that the Diamondbacks expect Johnson to fulfill his contract, which runs through next season. Colangelo’s partners are also believed to want Johnson to stay.

If the Diamondbacks kept Johnson, they would run the risk of angering a 40-year-old pitcher already famous for his ornery nature. But Johnson is also increasingly aware of his legacy as a future Hall of Famer, and it is unlikely that he would let his feelings affect his performance.

Johnson has pitched brilliantly lately, unlike in 1998, when he pitched poorly and seemed distracted before the Seattle Mariners traded him to the Houston Astros. In other words, he has not pitched his way out of town.

Johnson’s agent, Barry Meister, has said for weeks that the Diamondbacks had not approached him about a potential trade. Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Meister would not say that. “I’m not going to speculate,” he said. “I don’t want to violate any confidences.”

But Meister also denied a report that said Johnson had exercised his no-trade clause to block a possible deal to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Diamondbacks reportedly had sought two major leaguers, catcher Paul Lo Duca and reliever Guillermo Mota, from the Dodgers.

Mac & Sid [WFAN] interview
Some guy from AZ. I'll get his name in a moment. But here is what he said, I'll paraphrase.

Here is what the AZ D'Backs think:

"They DO NOT LIKE Yankee prospects"
"Navarro is WAY over his head"
"Cano has no fielding ability, can't run very well"
"Halsey is Casey Fossum at best"

(says i until he gets dumped off to the sox in a vastly inferior deal)

On Saturday, Luis Gonzalez said he never expected the Diamondbacks to deal with New York in good faith. Not after the way George Steinbrenner once jumped in and stole David Wells, violating Wells' handshake deal with Jerry Colangelo. Not when Colangelo would rather eat pine tar than help King George win another championship.

This theory has merit.

A Yankees source close to the situation said the Diamondbacks wouldn't return phone calls over the past week. He said that General Manager Brian Cashman could lose his job over the Johnson fiasco. He said that, at one point, the Yankees engaged six other teams trying to work out a deal, only to find no cooperation in Arizona.

"If they wanted to make the Yankees scramble, they succeeded," the source said.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1155646/index.htm

So dominant was Johnson that before a game in 1993, the home plate umpire told Mariners catcher Dave Valle, "They don't even need you with Randy pitching."

"What are you talking about?" replied Valle, who would not name the ump.

"He's so good they don't need you. Let me call the pitches tonight."

"I let him call every pitch." recalls Valle, to whom the umpire whispered pitches under his breath.

An overpowering Johnson went the distance in a Mariners victory.

wha

That's pretty funny, except in my opinion that umpire should lose his job?

No question mark about it.

I'm sure the Sanctimonious Steroid Crew is heh-hehing over that story. It's certainly not CHEATING!

I can't tell if you are joking or not.

it must be bs - the hitters would have caught on at some point.

will randy johnson retire on the spot after getting win no. 300 y/n

he's going to tell the umpire that he's thowing him out of the game then attack the gatorade machine with a bat

when they bring out the microphone so he can address the crowd and savor the moment he's just going to scream "WHAT!" and drop the live mic from six feet onto the ground, hip hop style.

hope he gives Henderson's "today i am the best" speech.

Huey Lewis & the News will set up on the mound for a brief set. Johnson will play drums. Zito will somehow horn in on it.

so #300 vs the Nats would count?

if he gets the loss they should deduct 5 wins

so #300 vs the Nats would count?

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, June 3, 2009 2:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Hate to pull a Shasta here, but...

Runs scored, 2009:

Mets: 240
Nationals: 240

burned!

the amount of runs given up tend to play a role in a team's W-L, I always heard

you can't win if you don't score more runs than the other team, I always heard

kind of addresses my point?

Runs differential, 2009:

Mets: 240-219
Nationals: 250-314

A quick perusal of team stats reveals that Nats can score. That doesn't make them hard to beat as they do everything else at AA level.

Let's say Johnson pitches decently -- a quality start, for instance -- against the team with the third most runs scored in the NL. If he leaves the game with a lead and the lead is preserved until the end of the game, does he deserve a W?

(As in, should it count?)

only if the umpire is calling the pitches

it's funny how ppl like to get literal when it's not a pol*t*cs wankoff

last SF_WASH series of the year, Kurkjian says game may start in an hour or two if the rain ever stops.