Remember when Mets owner Fred Wilpon coined the famous phrase “Carl Crawford money” when describing what it would cost to keep then Mets shortstop Jose Reyes from bolting for free agency? I was reminded of that on Sunday when Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe wrote:
“In the first five years of his seven-year contract (two with Boston and three with the Dodgers), Carl Crawford has played in 451 of a potential 810 games, and has had 436 hits in 1,582 at-bats (.276 ) with 32 homers, 168 RBIs, and 71 stolen bases. The next two years of his contract will pay him $43.464 million.”
Yikes…
Keep an eye on the Atlanta Braves rebuild. The top three prospects involved in trades this offseason were all acquired by the Braves according to J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. SS Dansby Swanson, LHP Sean Newcomb and RHP Aaron Blairsit ranked first, second and third on Cooper’s Top 25 Prospects who were dealt this winter.
The Braves acquired Swanson and Blair as part of the Shelby Miller trade with Arizona while Newcomb was came from the Angels in the Andrelton Simmons deal.
The Atlanta Braves already had the No. 2 ranked farm system according to ESPN’s Keith Law last August, and I’m not sure if these additions change anything. But the Braves will soon be one to contend with in the NL East, though I wouldn’t worry about them this year.
Here’s an interesting stat tweeted out by the Mets on Monday. Darryl Strawberry hit 85 go-ahead homeruns in his career with the Mets, a franchise record. But David Wright is right behind him in 2nd place with 83 and could possibly supplant Strawberry as soon as this season.
That’s a lot of go-ahead home runs for somebody who gets so much flak for being “un-clutch” or whatever you want to call it. Of course there’s never been any truth to that as Wright’s career .853 OPS with men on base and .883 OPS with RISP clearly illustrates.
We’re tossing around an idea that could radically change our current Disqus Commenting System. The truth is that less than 10 percent of our readership leave comments, and that number has dropped to less than 5 percent in December.
The issue is that it’s become too big to control, creates little to no revenue, and the majority of the 90 percent who don’t comment view it as an eye sore of late. While me and many of my writers personally enjoy interacting in the comments, the fact remains we’re writing less articles and are spending way too much time moderating, addressing email concerns, banning, resolving battles, editing, deleting, policing, etc.
While roughly 25 percent of all sports related sites have gotten rid of comment sections altogether – and that number keeps rising everyday – we’re pretty sure we won’t be doing anything that drastic. We haven’t made any decision yet, but we will keep all of you who do use our comment threads updated.
