Can the Yankees Develop Starting Pitching

The Yankees inability to develop highly touted pitching prospects into quality major league starters is an organizational problem that probably involves scouts, minor league managers and coaches, big league managers and coaches and front office management. Solving this problem will not be easy and probably cannot be done simply by bringing in one pitching guru like the San Francisco Giants’ Dick Tidrow.

Some More Baseball Awards for the End of the Decade

As the decade winds down, baseball fans can read about teams of the decade,top 100 players of the decade, all-star teams of the decade, the greatest moments of the decade and other measurements of the decade which just ended. Here are some other awards for the soon to be complete decade which have been overlooked.

Can the Yankees Get the First Round Monkey Off their Backs

 

When the ALDS opens today in the Bronx, it will be the latest installment in the now familiar baseball series called “Can the Yankees make it out of the first round?”  Before missing the playoffs last year, the Yankees had been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive years, part of a seven year streak of making the playoffs but not winning the World Series.

An Olympian Mistake by the IOC

The Olympic decision seems to have come right as international baseball is approaching a tipping point.  In the next few years Major League Baseball will likely become more international as more countries are represented at the Major League level, thus building greater fan bases outside the U.S. and contributing the growth in popularity of the baseball globally, and the WBC specifically.  The inner workings of the IOC on questions like this are something of a mystery to me, but they made a mistake this time and placed themselves firmly behind the curve with regards to baseball’s international popularity.