2009 Red Sox Prospects
November 15, 2009 by Mike · Leave a Comment
From Baseball Prospectus:
Five-Star Prospects
1. Ryan Westmoreland, CF
2. Casey Kelly RHP/SS
Four-Star Prospects
3. Josh Reddick, OF
4. Ryan Kalish, OF
Three-Star Prospects
5. Anthony Rizzo, 1B
6. Jose Iglesias, SS
7. Junichi Tazawa, RHP
8. Michael Bowden, RHP
9. Lars Anderson, 1B
10. Reymond Fuentes, CF
11. Derrik Gibson, 2B/SS
Four More:
12. David Renfroe, RHP/SS: Like Kelly, he’s another big-bonus, two-way star, but Renfroe will begin his career as an infielder, and he projects as a prototypical third baseman due to his size, power potential, and arm.
13. Alex Wilson, RHP: He had a 0.50 ERA in New York-Penn League while giving up just 10 hits in 36 innings, but he’s already 23, so he should dominate. Still, his fastball/slider combo is impressive.
14. Stolmy Pimentel, RHP: The young Dominican righty still has plus command and plenty of projection, but performances have been so-so.
15. Che-Hsuan Lin, LF: Lin’s tools still impress, his defense remains outstanding, his numbers… not so much, but Red Sox officials remain very high on him.
1. Ryan Westmoreland, CF
DOB: 04/27/90
Height/Weight:6-2/195
Bats/Throws: L/R
Drafted/Signed:5th round, 2008, Portsmouth HS (RI)
2009 Stats: .296/.401/.484 at Short-season (60 G)
Last Year’s Ranking: 5
Year in Review: The high-profile over-slot draftee from 2008 did not disappoint in his pro debut.
The Good: One scout described Westmoreland as having “the tools of a top-five high school pick, with the advanced skills of a college player.” Supremely athletic, Westmoreland has average power with projection for more, as well as a keen understanding of the strike zone and a silky smooth swing with some natural lift to it. He’s an outstanding runner with instincts, as indicated by his 19 stolen bases in 60 games for the Spinners without getting caught.
The Bad: Westmoreland had shoulder surgery after signing, and he played in the field for only eight games last year. He had a plus arm in high school, but it’s not completely back yet. His season ended early when he broke his collarbone, so there are some minor concerns about his health record so far. Some of the more advanced left-handers of the New York-Penn League gave him trouble with good breaking balls.
Ephemera: Westmoreland knew how to get things started at Lowell, batting .423/.500/.635 in his first plate appearances over 60 games.
Perfect World Projection: Westmoreland could be the kind of player people thought Grady Sizemore would become.
Path to the Big Leagues: Jacoby Ellsbury is well established in Boston, but it’s too early to worry about that.
Timetable: Westmoreland will make a highly anticipated full-season debut in 2010, beginning the year at Low-A Greenville.
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November 6, 2009 by Mike · Leave a Comment
No need to adjust the color on your monitor, this is the actual skin tone of the once beloved slugger, Sammy Sosa. Is this what years of steroid does to you? Or just the onslaught of vitiligo? I know for a fact its not herpes. Definitely not that.
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August 24, 2009 by SOS · Leave a Comment
Bruntlett already made two errors in the ninth, it was the least he could do.
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March 11, 2009 by SOS · Leave a Comment
Poor Roger, you should have just admitted it and shut the hell up! Now in breaking news Clemens was seen throwing this bat at Brian McNamee’s child, just kidding. NESN was showing Clemens highlights of when he was skinny and then a fat dump and then a giant musclehead. Funny how he went from being the greatest right handed pitcher of all-time (other than Pedro) to being the biggest joke of all time.
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March 7, 2009 by SOS · Leave a Comment
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“Dinner for One” thinking about a return
America’s least favorite overweight loud mouth, not named Rush Limbaugh, is thinking about pitching in 2009. Schilling said this on ESPN radio:
But if Curt Schilling returns to pitch this season in the major leagues, a comeback likely could involve the American League-champion Tampa Bay Rays or Chicago Cubs.
“The challenge would be in a place like Tampa Bay or Chicago,” the free agent said Saturday in Orlando, Fla.
Schilling, who sat out the 2008 season after undergoing shoulder surgery, said he hasn’t made a decision on coming back.
Schilling was in Florida attending ESPN The Weekend festivities at Walt Disney World.
“I’m hemming and hawing right now,” he said. “I’ll make a decision in the next couple of weeks.”
Schilling put the chances of his return at 20 percent Friday.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not going to, but I’m not positive,” he said, speaking to ESPN Radio’s Erik Kuselias on the “Tirico & Van Pelt” show. “I don’t have to make a decision yet, and I’m just not sure if I want to.”
Cubs general manager Jim Hendry wouldn’t specify whether his team would be interested in Schilling, but he sounded optimistic when discussing the prospect of the 20-year veteran’s return with the Chicago Tribune.
“We’ll always keep our eye on anybody we think can help us,” Hendry told the newspaper. “I have a lot of respect for him. Great pitcher. Great big-game pitcher.”
Schilling, who has a 216-146 career record, declined Friday to say exactly when he would announce his decision.
“I’ll figure it out when I need to figure it out,” he said.
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I wonder who the other 103 names are???
February 24, 2009 by Mike · Leave a Comment
This list is complete speculation and these names are in random order, but here is the list of players that I think could have shown up on the same list that A-Rod was on. There is a good chance we will never know and this will always be speculation.
- Barry Bonds
- Sammy Sosa
- Adrian Beltre
- Gary Sheffield
- Andy Petitte
- Roger Clemens
- Eric Gagne
- Brian Roberts
- Kevin Millar
- Jay Gibbons
- Jason Varitek
- Manny Alexander
- Jason Grimsely
- Jason Giambi
- Brett Boone
- Jim Thome
- Javy Lopez
- Carlos Delgado
- Jeff Bagwell
- Jim Edmonds
- Raffy Palmeiro
- Jose Guillen
- Mike Lowell
- Jeromy Burnitz
- Reggie Sanders
- Jorge Posada
- Magglio Ordonez
- Trot Nixon
- Richard Hildago
- Scott Rolen
- Jose Valentin
- Miguel Tejada
- Luis Gonzalez
- Preston Wilson
- Gary Matthews Jr.
- Bobby Abreu
- Shea Hillenbrand
- Juan Encarnacion
- Jeff Kent
- Moises Alou
- Raul Ibanez
- Brian Giles
- Marcus Giles
- Pudge Rodriquez
- Juan Gonzalez
- Wil Cordero
- Raul Mondesi
- Paul Konerko
- Eric Hinske
- Placido Polanco
- Rich Auralia
- Benito Santiago
- Ruben Sierra
- Paul LoDuca
- Troy Glaus
- Andres Galarraga
- Travis Hafner
- Fernando Vina
- Gabe Kapler
- Russell Branyan
- Aaron Rowand
- David Dellucci
- Brian Daubach
- Bobby Estalella
- Jeremy Giambi
- Derrick Turnbow
- Randy Velarde
- Matt Williams
- Marvin Bernard
- David Bell
- Jerry Hairston Jr.
- Scott Schoeneweis
- Brendan Donnelly
- Jack Cust
- Kevin Brown
- Matt Herges
- Kent Mercker
- Armando Rios
- Ron Villone
- Mo Vaughn
- Steve Woodard
- Ismael Valdez
- Larry Bigbie
- Jorge Julio
- Ugueth Urbina
- Troy Percival
- Danys Baez
- Armando Benitez
- Fernando Rodney
- Steve Kline
- Jesus Colome
- Arthur Rhodes
- Tim Worrell
- Erubiel Durazo
- Ryan Franklin
- Mike Lansing
- Chuck Knoblauch
- Todd Hundley
- Adam Piatt
- Todd Pratt
- Denny Neagle
- David Justice
- Jose Canseco
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New Manny Tell All Coming out Soon – Becoming Manny
February 12, 2009 by Mike · Leave a Comment
This might be the surprise of the century, Manny is authorizing a new book to tell his side of the story. It will be available, soon. From BecomingManny.com here is an excerpt from the book:
Selfish Slugger?
Who is Manny Ramirez?
Reduce Manny to a series of stats, and it’s easy to see who he is: one of the best batters in history. A twelve-time All- Star and nine-time Silver Slugger, Manny ranks seventeenth in career home runs and eighth in career slugging as of this writing. The only players above him on both lists are Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Barry Bonds. Manny is also second all-time in gram slams, behind only Lou Gehrig, and has hit more postseason home runs than anyone in the history of professional baseball. He still appears to have several years of baseball ahead of him.
But if you skip the stats, the question “Who is Manny?” gets confusing, controversial, and cultural. A favorite target of reporters and talk show pundits, Manny’s every misstep is exhaustively analyzed and then reduced to “Manny being Manny.” This oblique phrase has come to provide a shared wink of explanation for a player whose laser-beam focus at home plate seems irreconcilable with his periodic gaffes (or “Manny Moments”) in left field and outside the ballpark.
The history of the phrase “Manny being Manny” in the popular press provides a series of thumbnail portraits of Manny at his most bizarre and intriguing, and a catalogue of the baseball world’s struggles to understand him.
Its first mention in a major publication came in 1995, when Cleveland Indians’ manager Mike Hargrove was asked about the young slugger’s carefree-bordering-on-careless approach to money.
How do you explain Manny and Dominican teammate Julian Tavarez asking a Cleveland sportswriter to loan them $60,000, so they could buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle? And what about forgetting a paycheck in a pair of boots he left behind in the Texas Rangers visiting clubhouse?
“That’s just Manny being Manny,” Hargrove told a Newsday reporter.
Several years later, a Cleveland sportswriter used the phrase to account for why Manny’s old New York City neighborhood still adored him — because of how he showed up at his old high school cafeteria unannounced almost daily in the off-seasons to eat lunch with kids, and in spite of how he forgot promises to childhood friends to leave game tickets at the stadium box offices. But the phrase became less clearly defined after Manny moved to the Boston Red Sox in 2000, and its use grew with the city’s fascination and ultimate disillusionment with their star slugger.
It has been invoked in print and online tens of thousands of times since 2000 as a shorthand explanation for Manny’s mysterious injuries, his absences, his tardiness, his indiscriminate use of other players’ bats and clothing, his silence in the clubhouse, his quiet acts of kindness to friends, his choice of an expletive-riddled song to play over Boston’s Fenway Park sound system, his childlike playfulness, his midinning break inside Fenway’s left-field wall, his failure to show up at the White House to meet President George W. Bush after the Red Sox won the world championship, and, yes, his towering home runs and unparalleled work ethic.
Manny is partly to blame for the mystery. He rarely grants interviews, and reporters who manage to breach his defenses are rewarded with little more than clichés or incendiary oneliners.
So, with little to go on but fielding miscues, baggy uniforms, flowing dreadlocks, big hits, and tired anecdotes, the public is left with caricatures of Manny as a carefree goofball and spoiled superstar.
Yet the question of who Manny really is endures, baffling his most ardent admirers and even some of his teammates. In fact, it was never more pressing than during the 2008 season, in the days before the Boston Red Sox traded Manny to the Los Angeles Dodgers, his third team in seventeen years as a professional. Manny’s dispute with Red Sox ownership over his future — and questions about his commitment to the team — convinced many once-adoring fans that he was selfish.
The day after the trade, Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell told the Providence Journal, “For me, he’s a sure first-ballot Hall of Famer, and when he gives his speech, he’ll probably give it via satellite because he’ll be in Brazil. That’s him and that’ll be perfect. He’ll be wearing a Brazilian National Team hat when he does it.”
Lowell’s distinction between malice and oddity is insightful. On many levels, Manny and Boston were a mismatch from the start. Nothing excuses Manny’s shoving of sixty-four-year-old traveling secretary Jack McCormick, and perhaps Manny didn’t give the Red Sox his best in 2008. Still, there were reasons for his frustration. And one could argue that if Manny had behaved this way in 2004, the Red Sox front office, not yet emboldened by two championships in four seasons, would have found a way to weather the storm.
If Manny had finished his career in Boston — or simply departed under more amicable circumstances — the grandchildren of today’s vociferous fans might have even driven through the Manny Ramirez tunnel. That may sound farfetched, but Manny’s comments in advance of his exit are comparable to those of Red Sox legend Ted Williams, whose name graces the recently constructed highway that runs under Boston Harbor.
In fact, Williams was so embittered by his years of acrimony with the Boston press, Red Sox management, and fans that he refused to even tip his cap after his final hit. Manny’s “enough is enough” comment, directed to the Red Sox management in the middle of the 2008 season when tensions were at their peak, was less acerbic than Williams’s vituperations. As Leigh Montville described in Ted Williams:
[Williams] said he wanted to be traded. He said he hated Boston, hated the fans, hated the newspapers, hated the trees, hated the weather, hated, just hated. The word “fuck” or some derivative was woven into most sentences. He wanted out. And for most of Williams’ tenure on the team, Boston hated him right back.
Manny’s badmouthing was mild by comparison. Moreover, there is consistency in his teammates’ and coaches’ characterizations of him as a hardworking team player. He was, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “everybody’s little brother” in his early years and, recently, has been more of a role model and source of support to younger players than he’s generally credited for. “He was a mentor to me,” says Red Sox shortstop Julio Lugo, three years his junior. “When I went through tough times, he knew that I had trouble sleeping so he would call me early in the morning, when he knew I’d be awake, and he’d say, ‘Look, don’t worry about it, man. You’re going to do good today.’ That meant a lot to me. There’s no one like Manny.”“To be honest,” says Pedro Martinez, “I don’t have enough kind words to say about Manny. I think he’s misunderstood.”
But Manny’s teammates are not the only ones capable of shedding light on the vexing question of who Manny is. Conversations with Manny and his coaches, agents, mentors, parents, wife, sisters, and childhood friends, as well as side trips to his neighborhoods, show that he cannot be reduced to a caricature. They illuminate a nuanced, if inscrutable, man who defines himself by what he is least known as — a dedicated athlete, a wellregarded teammate, and a beloved father, husband, and son.
Among the mentors in Manny’s life were his sandlot coach, Mel Zitter, and his then Triple-A manager, Charlie Manuel. But none have been more influential than his former Little League coach, Carlos Ferreira. In his neighborhood, Ferreira is endearingly known as “Macaco” — Spanish for little monkey. A thoughtful, charismatic man who left a medical career in the Dominican Republic to immigrate to the U.S. in 1979, Macaco, now fifty-nine, has coached several Little League teams in the baseball-crazed Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. He was — and he remains — a de facto father to many aspiring Dominican players.
The story of how Manny came to rely on this gentle, unassuming coach — from their first encounter in the basement of a Washington Heights housing project to their ongoing, daily conversations — is a window into Manny’s development and his hidden essence: his vulnerabilities, his values, his uncomplicated worldview, and what it really means to be Manny.
But to understand the story of Manny and Macaco, we first need to understand another story: that of Manny’s early life with his parents, Aristides and Onelcida, and his three sisters.
Copyright © 2009 by Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg
Also the Inside Track in the Boston Herald is sharing Manny’s side of the Jack McCormick story:
“Jack [McCormick] disrespected Manny for many years and on many occasions,” Ramirez’s former agent Gene Mato says in the new, authorized biography “Becoming Manny.” Manny’s bride, Juliana, added that her husband’s request for tickets to a Sox-Astros game was for fewer seats than the 16 cited in media reports. “Jack’s response was very rude,” she recalled. “And Jack had a history of insulting Manny in front of the other players… The team management didn’t have his back,. They gave him up to the press instead of protecting one of their own players.”
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