Trade Idea - Giants Edition

By Kalen
Just been mulling over some ideas for what the Giants could do in terms of what trades they could look to make.

Trade Idea #1 - San Francisco Giants trade SP Barry Zito to the Chicago Cubs for OF Alfonso Soriano, Giants also pay 7 million of Barry Zito's contract in 2012 and 2013.

HOW WOULD SORIANO LOOK PLAYING LEFT FIELD IN AT&T PARK FOR THE GIANTS?

The Reasoning - The Cubs wanna cut payroll as they are not a contending team. They save 7 million over the next 2 years, plus their pitching is extremely weak and could use another SP like Zito. The Giants don't need Zito as they have 5 capable starters, they are a contender and could use a bat like Soriano's. You put Soriano on the Giants team right now and he is instantly right there with Sandoval as the best hitter. Then lets take a look at the Giants 2012 lineup:
Torres CF
Sanchez 2B
Sandoval 3B
Posey C
Huff/Belt 1B
Soriano LF
Schierholtz/Ross RF
Crawford/Burriss SS
Pitchers Spot

Not exactly a muderer's row, but nothing to laugh at either. The Giants with their pitching staff in their prime, need to capitalize and be in win now mode. The Giants should also have the money to spend especially when guys like Rowand, Tejada and DeRosa come off the books. They are top 3 in attendance, with playoff and World Series success have made huge sums of money. I'm not saying Soriano is the difference between winning and losing, but it helps to solve a major weakness, and would essentially come at a price of approximately 3 years 21 million (Same as Juan Uribe got from the Dodgers).

Other players who would cost a lot more in terms of trade chips could be: Hunter Pence, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes. While all these guys would help, I just don't imagine the Giants making this drastic a trade.

Kalen from the Sports Cave.

Baseball Realignment - My Thoughts

By Kalen
Personally I like how Baseball is with the number of teams going through, it makes it so the best of the best get in, unlike football where teams like Seattle with a 7-9 record get in or in Basketball where the 1st round tends to be a snoozefest the majority of the time. However, I can and do understand the arguments for adding 2 extra teams to the playoffs. And not only this but maybe realigning the divisions too. Is it really fair to have teams like Baltimore and Toronto have to compete with the likes of Boston and New York year in and year out? I think changes can be made without having to completely alter the game. The beauty of this debate is hearing all the interesting ideas people come up with. Here are my thoughts:

What to do with the Divisions? - I've heard arguments that have just 1 division in the AL and NL, and the top 4 teams go though and so on and so forth. This is an intriguing idea but not one I agree with. One of the beautiful things about baseball are the rivalries and division teams playing each other regularly, Boston vs New York, San Francisco vs LA Dodgers, St. Louis vs Chicago Cubs. Not only this, but having the Mets and the Padres in the same division means so much more travel in an already crazy schedule for the players.
Here is my idea, move 1 of the National League teams to the American League. The easy choice has to be the Houston Astros, they are already a team re-building, a great rivalry can be made with the Rangers and they can be slotted in to the AL West. Thus giving each division 5 teams. I never understood why so many thought it was fair having 6 teams in the NL Central but only 4 in the AL West?

WOULD MOVING THE ASTROS TO THE AL BE GOOD FOR BASEBALL?

What to do with the Playoffs? - As I said before, I quite like how Baseball is done with the playoffs, but I can't help but think it can be improved. Hear me out on this, 10 teams go through, 5 in the AL and 5 in the NL. The winners of each of the divisions automatically go through to the 2nd round, so in both the AL and NL you have 2 teams play each other. 1 game, and whoever has the better record gets the home field advantage. Can you imagine how exciting this one game would be in each League? Imagine the Phillies, Cardinals and Giants win their respective divisions and then you have the Braves travel to the Brewers to play sudden death. How great of a start to the postseason would that be? What a way to kickstart it.

Minimum Team Salary - First off I want to say that Baseball will never be like the NFL where you can have 1 salary cap figure for every team, its just impossible. What my idea is to implement a minimum team salary that owners must spend. MLB needs to do this on a team by team basis, and the number is based on how much income the team gets. Example, the Yankees make so much more than the Pirates, so the minimum salaries are going to need to be significantly different. I just don't think it's fair or reasonable to fans of say the Pirates to look at their awful team of 18 straight years losing, most owners should wanna spend money to win and therefore make money. In recent years, all the Pirates have done is dump contract after contract and spend so little on the team and they just keep losing. I feel that owners of each team need to be serious about the team and not just in it to make money. This would be good for all the smaller markets like Kansas City, Florida, etc.

WHILE HAVING A SOLID 2011, THE PIRATES HAVE NOT SPENT ENOUGH TO KEEP THE TEAM COMPETITIVE

All in all I think Baseball is in a great position and with the pending Lockouts of both the NFL and MLB, they can hope to expect a big surge in interest. By possibly implementing my ideas I feel it could vault Baseball to be right there with Football and ahead of Basketball once again. The one issue you can say about Baseball, is the refusal to alter the game for the better. This is something that Football has been great at.

Baseball is my 2nd favorite sport behind......you guessed it Football. Who knows how that will go in the future? Giants are playing great and the 49ers have been tough to watch. I like the direction of the 49ers and the Giants and Bulls are all in great positions going forward. God it's good to be a sports fan.

Kalen from the Sports Cave. Check in tomorrow when I update my weekly MLB Power Rankings.

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The NFL Lockout - Where do you stand?

By Kalen
The most popular sport in the US has been locked out for over 3 months now and while we do hear rumors of progress being made, how much? We really don't know. What makes this Lockout so difficult is that both sides have valid arguments. Now while fans in general tend to agree with the players, there are numerous issues where I do have to side with the owners. I think that, ultimately the game will be better for the fans if the owners come out on the winning side of this (and they most likely will).

THE LEGACY OF ROGER GOODELL WILL HINGE ON THE OUTCOME OF THE LOCKOUT

Now I don't think they should get everything they want, I do agree with several issues. Such as:

Installing a rookie salary cap - The draft was designed in order to help the bad teams get better, correct? Well the Raiders take Jamarcus Russell #1 overall, and at the time I think most people thought it was a solid choice. That Russell had all the talent, tools etc etc etc. 3 years and a guaranteed $32 million dollars later, Jamarcus is not only out of the NFL but out of sports. There is no such as a sure thing when it comes to the draft, why put teams in a horrible position should the draft pick not work out. It defies the logic of the draft. Also think about this, a lot of the guys coming in to the league are maybe 21 or 22? And they are being guaranteed $30-40 million now? What incentive do they have to put in the work? I know I know, the draft screening process should reveal this, but if so many draft "experts" get it wrong so often then can we really blame teams for this? I think the NBA has it right here, I think there should be a price slot allocated to each draft position and a contract of 3-4 years. Paying crazy money to rookies is already an insult to veterans who are proven, why potentially cripple an entire franchise over 1 selection not working out?

THE FUTURE OF FOOTBALL RESTS IN THE HANDS OF THESE GUYS

The future ramifications to fans - Should the owners lose out in the new CBA, you know prices for basically everything football related is going to increase significantly. Imagine ticket prices? Jersey prices? That $10 beer suddenly turns in to $15. And the NFL owners know they can do this and get away with it because of the popularity and demand for basically anything football related. Who knows how far owners could take things in order to recuperate the losses made, should the players come out on top.

Salary Cap needs to be reinstated - I'm not 100% sure on how the owners or players feel on this issue. I tend to feel that the owners would be in favor of the Salary Cap. It keeps things fair and keeps every team at a similar competitive level. Do we really want to see the Redskins and Cowboys turn in to the Red Sox and Yankees? I feel if owners are able to budget and know exactly where they stand financially with player contracts, we can expect better prices. Put a decent size Salary Cap in place and I think a minimum amount needs to also be implemented so the NFL does not have a Pittsburgh Pirates on their hands (18 straight losing seasons would never fly in the NFL).

A get out of Contract Clause - I think this should be implemented in most professional sports. What I mean by "get out of contract clause" is that teams should be able to terminate a contract with zero financial consequences under certain circumstances. I feel that a team should be able to put forth 1 contract per year for review by a neutral party (or else a party with an even vote between players association and league representatives). For example, lets say the San Francisco 49ers signed Nnamdi Asomugha and gave him a 7 year $100 million dollar contract. Now if Nnamdi comes in and plays well the Niners will have no problem paying him that. Now lets say if Nnamdi has constant injuries or else his level of play drops dramatically and he comes in to camp out of shape and is basically a huge bust, then the 49ers should be allowed put forth that contract to the 3rd party and from there a verdict can be made on how to restructure or terminate the contract. A good real life example would be Albert Haynesworth in Washington. Now there would have to be a drastic significant decrease in the level of play for a change to be made.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

These are just some of the issues that I think I would favor the owners in AND would benefit the League. There are however many issues that I disagree with; such as retirement medical insurance, wanting players to play 2 extra regular season games without improving the current contracts or medical coverage. While 4 preseason games can be torturous, think about this, each team will have maybe 10 fringe players to make the 53 man roster and 8 to make the practice squad. That is 18 per team. We times that by 32 (for all the teams) and we get around 575 players who need all those 4 games to prove themselves to make the team in some capacity. Plus owners keep complaining about their high priced stars getting injured, yet you want more games to put them in harms way? In these cases it clearly can be perceived that the owners care about their wallet and not for the players health and safety.


The whole CBA issue is so complex, and there are so many issues which can be looked at so many ways that it's hard to even digest the whole issue. This is why it has and will take a long time to solve. Ultimately all I can ask for is we still have the game we all love back ASAP and not ruined by this whole ordeal.

Let me know what you guys think about my points, let me know what issues of the CBA are on your mind and maybe we can get a discussion going. Thanks for reading (if you made it this far).

This is Kalen from the Sports Cave.
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Underrated Starting 9 - American League

So I previously wrote on the Underrated Staring 9 in the National League link , now I'm turning my attention to the American League. Again the aim here is to get my readers to find out more about players they don't know or know very little about. The rule I'm using is the player I pick at a position must make most if not all starts at that position. Lets get this started.

Pitcher - Jered Weaver, Los Angeles Angels - Weaver has been in a word 'Dominant' this year, not often a name you hear with the elite pitchers in the AL, but he has been playing that way. Weaver has a 2.14 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 7 wins already. His ERA and wins are 2nd in the American League only to Josh Beckett and his WHIP is also 2nd. Weaver is right in line for a potential Cy Young this year if he can keep up his already impressive season. At the age of 28 expect Weavers name to be mentioned in Cy Young candidacy for the next 5 years.

      Don't be surprised to see Weaver be in contention for the AL Cy Young.

Catcher - Alex Avila, Detroit Tigers - The young 24 year old is having his coming out party this year, with significantly less at bats than most other hitters, Avila is already hitting 9 Homers, with 32 RBI and a .351 OBP. If you take these numbers and project them for the rest of the season, expect him to hit between 20-25 HR's, 85 - 90 RBI and is currently at a .289 AVG. Russell Martin of the Yankees is having a resurgence, but needs to improve upon that .238 AVG.

1st Base - Paul Konerko, Chicago White Sox - Konerko is one of the most reliable consistent hitters in the game, just one of those guys who's not flashy in any way but always puts up big numbers. This year he is on pace for a 36 HR and 121 RBI season with an impressive batting average floating between .315 and .320. Again I think playing for the White Sox, a mostly non-playoff team in recent years and being one of the most normal, non-flashy guys in baseball is a reason he gets overlooked and underrated so much.

            Paul Konerko has been the one consistent piece of the White Sox team.

2nd Base - Howard Kendrick, Los Angeles Angels - Maybe its the team being stranded in mediocrity and out in Anaheim, maybe its the total East Coast bias of ESPN, but Angels players get so overlooked. Not only Weaver but Kendrick has been having one of the best seasons for a 2nd basemen in the Majors. He has solid power numbers, his RBI numbers should definitely increase, but his main weapons have been his defense and AVG. Can't ask for much more then that.

Short Stop - Jhonny Peralta, Detroit Tigers - Peralta is the best SS you've never heard of. Guys like Tulowitzki and Reyes seem to hog the attention at his position and Miguel Cabrera and Verlander on his team but Peralta is having himself the best year of his career. Right now Peralta is projected to finish with 22 Homers, 86 RBI's and is currently hitting for high average too (.314). With solid defense and these numbers, thats excellent production for your Short Stop.

3rd Base - Wilson Betemit, Kansas City Royals - Overall 3rd Basemen have really disappointed this year in the American League, A-Rod, Youkilis, Beltre and Longoria have all not played up to expectations. This are all the big name underperforming 3rd basemen. Betemit is earning 1/25th of what A-Rod is earning, and keep in mind Betemit plays better defense, hitting for almost 20 points higher in average, and if Betemit played in the Yankee lineup would have just as much RBI.

Left Field - Alex Gordon, Kansas City Royals - Another Royal makes the list here. Was very tempted to go with Corey Patterson who is extremely underrated playing up in Toronto in the shadows of Jose Bautista, but Gordon is just as underrated and is putting up much better numbers:
Patterson: .281 AVG, 5 HR, 28 RBI and .311 OBP
Gordon:   .280 AVG, 7 HR, 31 RBI and .350 OBP

Center Field - Adam Jones, Baltimore Orioles - Cursed with playing for a bottom feeder team that hasn't much chance competing with the likes of Boston and New York, Jones is still a great player. Recently Jones made one of the best defensive plays you will ever see, think Willie Mays and add in being able to brace himself for the wall too. Besides for awesome defense, lets not forget his numbers this season so far, 8 HR's, 32 RBI's and a .301 AVG.




Adam Jones' unforgettable catch, 1st picture during the catch and 2nd picture (with footprints in wall) after




Right Field - Jason Kubel, Minnesota Twins - Most casual baseball fans wouldn't have heard of Kubel (myself included), then you go and check out his stats and they are so much better than you'd expect. Often when people think of the hitters for the Minnesota Twins, the only guys they can come up with are Morneau and Mauer. But Kubel has been just as good as any of those guys. Kubel on one of the worst teams in baseball has a projected statline to finish the season with 14 HR's, 82 RBI's and a .310 AVG. Great numbers for a guy you would never have heard of.


I wanna say that half the players on this list are guys I never heard of, the other half I was shocked when I saw just how good they have been doing. This is my list of the most underrated players in the AL, I intentionally left off the DH. Not a fan of the DH at all.