Baseball News is Fun

by BH

This morning, I was greeted on ESPN.com's baseball page by a picture of Mike Cameron diving for a baseball. The caption under the picture read:

"Mike Cameron is widely considered to be a stellar defensive outfielder."

Thanks. I've seen the highlights. I'm trying to figure out if this caption is ESPN's way of justifying why they have paid so much attention to a trade involving guy with a career .249 BA and .340 OBP. I think it may have a little to do with the guy playing in New York. "Widely considered." Wha? That doesn't mean anything. He is exciting to watch, and I consider him a stellar defensive outfielder, but come on ESPN. "Widely considered" is like citing the anonymous source. What the hell do I care what you speculate others think of him?

It has been reported that former Giant Scott Eyre has signed a two-year deal with the Cubs, with a player option for the third year. Excerpts from an ESPN.com article are bolded.

The 33-year-old left-hander had received a two-year offer with a club option to stay with San Francisco, but was hoping for a three-year deal and wanted to play closer to his family in Florida. He was also considering deals with the Houston Astros, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals.

"It had nothing to do with the Giants' contract offer," Eyre said Thursday night. "They couldn't do anything about it. They can't move their team any closer."

This is interesting. Eyre "had received a two-year offer with a club option to stay with San Francisco, but was hoping for a three-year deal," but "it had nothing to do with the Giants' contract offer." Unless this information is crap, which it may be, the first part doesn't mean anything when applied to resigning with the Giants. I guess I have a couple problems with his whole argument. It seems as though Eyre was set on moving closer to home from the beginning. So why was re-signing with San Francisco even something that was discussed? Simply to drive up his price? Secondly, really, during the course of the baseball season, is Chicago that much closer to Florida? It seems that the difference between flying 5 hours from San Francisco to Miami or 3.5 from Chicago to Miami is not that big a difference when you have one day off every two weeks, and it's not really a turnaround you can do on a Monday. It's like if my family lived in Portland, and I worked every day of the week in San Diego. It doesn't seem like a move to Reno would really give me the chance to see my family more often. And it's not as though Florida and Chicago are in the same division. The Giants and Cubs should face the Marlins an equal number of games. I don't know. I love seeing my family too. Maybe that's why it's such an attractive, seemingly infallible, reason given by athletes. He won't really see his family more at all, and it seems like too much of a feel good excuse.