And That Happened

Posted by twinsmvb on November 24, 2008 under John | 2 Comments to Read

Monday morning sportsfans and again a relatively quiet weekend on the baseball front. As the ESPN boys have noted (Gammons and Olney) CC Sabathia is in control of the free agent market. Because all GM’s and player agents want to reach a deal at “fair market value” everyone is still waiting around to see where the fair market value will be.

Gammons says when Sabathia signs than it’ll trickle down to AJ Burnett, Derek Lowe, Mark Teixeira, and even Manny Ramirez. I did read one report on MLB Trade Rumors that Rafael Furcal is close to signing. The article is in Spanish but I’ll link it anyways because Twins MVB has a surprisingly large percentage of Hispanic followers???

The article notes the rumored deal, from the Oakland A’s, at four years $48 million. This seems like a pretty good signing if you ask me. I know I’d love to see Minnesota make a run for Furcal but I understand why they are not. The per year price would actually fit the Twins just fine especially considering Orlando Cabrera could command $10 million a season. However, Furcal does have a history of injuries and I don’t think the Twins would want to go four years. Third base seems to be Bill Smith’s focus as the moment but I think we’ll know more next week during the GM meetings.

Finally, I leave you with another video to start of your week. My good friend Kate sent met this video and knew I would enjoy it. It comes all the way from Japan during MLB’s season opener between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s.

As I searched on YouTube the comments mentioned that the “announcer” in this video is actually John Mayer playing a joke because he apparently he hates baseball. I must admit I’m not a huge Mayer fan, especially because when I went to college everyone thought my name was John Mayer…. annoying.

If there are any huge John Mayer fans out there, feel free to confirm in the comments section of this is the real John Mayer.

Morneau for MVP?

Posted by twinsmvb on November 18, 2008 under John | Be the First to Comment

We will see today at  1 pm EST. The honor would be a great one for Morneau who would join a small club of multi-MVP winners. However, I’m not feeling too optimistic about Justin’s chances.

In no way a slight against Justin, the guy had an awesome season batting .300 with 23 homeruns and 129 RBIs, but I just feel like his stumble down the stretch will cost him this award. There is also a hot debate among Twins bloggers and writers if Morneau is even the MVP of his own team. As much as I like Justin, I happen to be in the Joe Mauer as team MVP camp and if any other MLB writers feel the same way it’ll cost Morneau the award.
It’s too bad because I feel like once Chicago’s Carlos Quentin went down with injury the MVP was Morneau’s to lose. Sadly, he did a pretty good job at trying to lose it down the stretch. It must be noted the Twins would not have even been in playoff contention if it weren’t for their Canadian first baseman, but unfortunately in the final 10 games of the season Morneau batted just .135 with zero homeruns and only one RBI. He struck out nine times and just stopped coming up with the big hits that he had for the five months prior. It is no doubt that with the playoff pressure and talk of MVP Justin appeared to press a little at the plate but it’s just too bad he couldn’t have even hit just .200 with one or two homeruns and like five or six RBIs.
However, I’m not completely counting out Morneau. The American League race is wide open with Dustin Pedroia, Morneau, Carlos Quentin, Josh Hamilton, and Francisco Rodriguez all most likely receiving recognition. I think the winner will really come down to the 2nd and 3rd place votes. The numbers will be spread around and maybe like in 2006, Justin Morneau will come out the surprise MVP winner!