The Giants’ just completed home stand would have to be deemed a success as they were able to do fashion a winning record and win consecutive home games for the first time since June 8. But the home stretch lasted just five games and contained just three wins.
As modest a success as imaginable, but a success. Now with 39 games remaining, can the Giants ramp it up and secure a wild card berth or challenge the Dodgers for the division crown?
It all starts Tuesday at Wrigley Field in Chicago where the Giants’ Ryan Vogelsong will face the Cubs’ Tsuyoshi Wada in a 5:05pm start.
Of the Giants remaining 39 games, 22 of them are against teams with losing records including the three in Chicago. The Giants sit just two games behind in the loss column to the Dodgers after they were swept at home by the Brewers.
Coming off two months of desultory play, the Giants appear healthier—physically and mentally—and look to have a solution at second base in rookie Joe Panik. So can they play better and if so, how much better?
If they finish 20-19—another modest success—they’ll likely come up painfully short in both races. Currently the Giants have a 1 ½ game lead for the second wild card spot over the Braves, while trailing the Cardinals by that same 1 ½ game for the top wild card spot. Including the Pirates, someone figures to get hotter than what a 20-19 finish could withstand.
But if the Giants get hot—say a 25-14—finish, they’ll win 90 games and most likely be in the post-season for the third time in the last five seasons.
Among the questions the team will have to answer besides the obvious need for greater offensive production from all hands is the ability to fight through fatigue in their compressed schedule. The Giants only have three off-days remaining and are currently in a stretch of games on 16 consecutive days.
In comparison to the Dodgers this could be an issue, as the Dodgers have completed two more games than the Giants with the balance of a suspended game in Denver contributing to the compressed-nature of the Giants’ schedule.
Also, the bullpen—given the absence of injured Jeremy Affeldt—could experience issues of fatigue and performance although Sergio Romo, the demoted closer, temporarily jumped back into the role over the weekend and picked up his first save in more than two months.
SAN FRANCISCO–It’s unlikely that we will see Pablo Sandoval back in a Giants uniform not becuase they don’t want him back next season but because they will choose not to pay market rates for him. Giants general manager Brian Sabean and manager Bruce Bochy are satisfied with what they see in Sandoval he hit.185 in the first five weeks of the season and has hit .320 since then how can you not be satisfied with that?
In spite of all that the Giants would like to have him but they can’t afford Sandoval, here’s what it comes down to he was asking for three years for $40 million which is $14 million a year that’s not terribly dis-similar from the numbers that were being thrown around from Hunter Pence’s numbers from the beginning of last year.
Pence closed with an explosion in September wound up getting a deal worth $18 million a year that’s five years for $90 million. Pence has played himself into that territory even though five years is a gamble with his size and that’s not to demean his condition and his weight we’re just talking about his body type. He has a shorter squatty body, he may lose his ability to react to the ball.
There is no question about it Bochy said the first three months of the season Panda was gone as soon as he was hitting in games in the seventh inning or later. He replaced Joauquin Arias at third base for defense, now I don’t think there is anybody in the National League you would use to replace him and the Panda is as good a defender as anyone out there.
Oakland A’s update: The Braves are becoming another team that’s an anigma with the highest runs scored in baseball. They traded away one player that wasn’t having that good of a year he was having his worst year in a Brave uniform and suddenly you have a team that can’t score runs. The Angels have been giving the A’s an opportunity to pull away their not taking advantage of it as they lost to Braves on Friday.
The A’s lost three out of four in Kansas City and now their in Atlanta facing a team that has to put out an all points bulletin to find out anything about them. Nobody knows anything about the Braves because they looked like they moved out of Turner Stadium. The A’s come to town and the Braves are below .500 and yet they got blown out on Friday night 7-2.
The Braves haven’t scored seven runs in a game in a week or two, the Braves have Justin Upton .210, Freddie Freeman.294, and Jason Heywood is swinging .269. You could have six guys in a row hitting .279 and how did they score on the A’s? On a single, walk, and a run. They didn’t score putting together rallies they put together hits when they needed to.
The Braves got some big contributions or they get nothing at all, the other six guys in that line up including the pitcher have to hit in order for that line up to win. The Washington Nationals are the class of the NL East and the Nats are going to end up running away with that division. and they’ll win it by double digits by the end of the season.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.–The struggles for the Giants continue as they were defeated Friday night 5-3 in ten innings by the slumping Philadelphia Phillies. The Giants entered the night looking to get two consecutive wins at home for the first time since they went on a five-game winning streak to begin June. San Francisco has lost six of their last seven and 14 of their last 20 games, while Philadelphia was coming into the contest losing five of their last six.
The Giants had high hopes early on, as Madison Bumgarner started the game hot, striking out four of the first six batters. Bumgarner had a perfect game into the fourth inning, until Jimmy Rollins broke it up with a bloop single right over the head of Joe Panik, whose diving attempt wasn’t good enough, as it tipped off of his glove. Bumgarner would be able to get out of the inning fairly quickly after a controversial call at 3rd when Rollins broke for 3rd, but Bumgarner picked him off. Review would confirm the call.
Cole Hamels was the starting pitcher on the other side, and he came into the contest being one of the hottest pitchers in all of baseball, coming into the contest throwing 7 or more innings while only giving up one earned run over his last five starts. He gave up three hits in the first three innings, but the Giants weren’t able to do anything about it.
It wasn’t until the fourth inning when the Giants got on the scoreboard. Buster Posey started off the inning with a single. He would be moved to third when Pablo Sandoval hit a ground rule double to left-center field. This would bring up Michael Morse, who in his first at-bat stroke one 400 ft to right, but it was to the deepest part of the ballpark. Morse would get a hold of another one, as he sent a moon shot to left that landed ten rows up the bleachers over the 382 mark. Giants’ Manager, Bruce Bochy praised Morse “He had some great At-Bats for us tonight”. The Giants were up 3-0 at the end of the 4th.
Bumgarner’s only hiccup out his outing came in the fifth inning, when the very first batter, Maron Byrd, would get one back for the Phillies on a solo shot to left field bringing the Giants’ lead to 3-1. It was Byrd’s 23rd home run of the year, leading the Phillies and is third in the National League. Bumgarner would buckle down not allowing another run the rest of his outing. Bumgarner had a line of seven innings pitched, surrendering one run on four hits while striking out nine. Eight of the nine strikeouts were earned from swinging strikes. He earned just his third quality start of the season at home and the first since June 10. “It feels nice to throw good at home, it’s been a while,” commented Bumgarner. Bochy added “Bum, what a great job”.
The Giants had a couple of chances to add to their lead, their most promising was in the sixth inning, when Brandon Crawford was up with Gregor Blanco on third. San Francisco tried to play a safety squeeze that went wrong. A bad bunt from Crawford plus bad base running from Blanco took away their chance. Blanco read the play wrong and tried to break for the plate, when he relalized that he wouldn’t make it, he tried to get back to third where he was thrown out by Hamel. “ There needs to be a fine line between being aggressive and being smart,” said Bochy.
The Phillies took advantage of the two-time all star leaving the game, as they tied the game up in the eighth inning. Jeremy Affeldt gave up a base hit to Darin Ruf to start the inning, and Cody Asche followed up by hitting his first home run of his career at AT&T Park driving it just over the right field wall to the first row of the arcade. Bumgarner mentioned that “It looked like his foot slipped on that pitch”, to which he added “it would have affected me”. For Affeldt, it was the first home run he’s given up in over a calendar year (June 28, 2013 vs. San Diego) and the first one to a left-handed batter since April 24, 2011.
The score was tied heading into the eighth where the Giants had yet another chance. This time with two outs and Sandoval on second base. Panik lined one to right field for the base hit, but the Giants took the chance to bring home Sandoval, where he was embarrassingly thrown out by ten feet. “We haven’t been scoring that much lately, so we took the chance, and he (Byrd) made a perfect throw,” added Bochy.
The Giants wouldn’t receive another great scoring chance, as the Phillies took the lead in the tenth inning when Chase Utley was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to give the Phillies the lead. Ryan Howard would extend the lead to 5-3 on a sacrifice fly that went to the warning track in left field.
The Giants hope to turn this terrible streak at home around, where they have gone 8-23 in the last 31 home games. This compares to their 22-9 record at home for their first 31 game at home. Even with Friday night’s loss the Giants didn’t lose any ground in the playoff race, as both the Dodgers (5.5 back of NL West) and Pirates (0.5 back of 2nd Wild Card) lost.
Tomorrow the Giants will try to get revenge on the Phillies in the second game of the three game set, where Tim Hudson will take the bump facing off against Kyle Kendrick.
After treating good, ticket buying customers to in-between inning video skits and little else for way too long, the Giants fashioned a genuine, offensive breakout with the help of an unusual source.
A video review of a play at the plate in which Giants’ pinch runner Gregor Blanco was tagged out by White Sox’s catcher Tyler Flowers resulted in the call being overturned due to the Buster Posey-prompted rule that states a catcher can’t block the runner’s path to the plate without having the ball in hand.
The overturned call allowed Blanco to score and the Giants to tie Wednesday’s game, 1-1. After manager Robin Ventura’s meltdown and dirt-kicking display, the run-starved home team went on to score six more times—all with two outs—in a much-needed 7-1 win.
Afterwards, the opinions on how the rule was applied were split, depending of course on which clubhouse you entered.
“You look at the spirit of the rule… of what they’re trying to do and what it’s actually doing, and it’s a joke,” a much more level-headed Ventura said afterwards. In his opinion, the fact that Blanco was clearly out should precede the interpretation of the rule, which was instituted in the off-season to protect catchers from bang-bang collisions like the one that ended Buster Posey’s season in 2011.
“I know the rule has created a lot of controversy, and they’ve talked about reviewing it at the end of the season. But it is a rule. (Flowers) can’t block the plate without the ball,” Bochy stated.
Regardless of your perspective on the call, the review left much to be desired. The original review took nearly five minutes back in the New York following Bochy’s demand that the play be reviewed. While the reversal prompted loud applause throughout AT&T Park, it also drew Ventura out of the White Sox’s dugout and the former All-Star player reacted with a classic umpire-manager confrontation with dirt flying after Ventura was ejected by home plate umpire Chris Segal.
And when the New York review crew allowed lead runner Adam Duvall to advance from first to third, Ventura returned to the field to argue that part of the decision. This time, Ventura must have proved persuasive. Duvall was returned to second base.
All the hullabaloo allowed the Giants to avoid a season-worst six-game losing skid. In the five losses, the Giants managed just nine runs. Prior to the seventh inning Wednesday, the Giants returned home with a whimper, scoring just two runs in their first 16 innings back.
But Giants’ fans know when they enter the park these days that the offense is blacked out. The Giants came into Thursday with losses in six of their last seven games at home, and 22 losses in their last 29 home games.
In the Giants’ rally, several players had critical breakouts. Angel Pagan responded first with a two-run single, his first runs batted in since returning from the disabled list. Buster Posey and Hunter Pence came up with run-scoring hits too, and when outfielders Adam Dunn and Jordan Danks collided trying to catch Pablo Sandoval’s fly ball, two more Giants came in to score.
Starting pitcher Jake Peavy picked up the win as his excellent pitching easily trumped the fact that the former White Sox changed his number from 43 to 22 in an attempt to change his fortunes. Peavy hadn’t won since April 25 when he was with the Red Sox, and he had lumped together 12 losses with the Giants and Boston in the long stretch that ended Wednesday. Peavy went seven innings, allowing four hits and run, and picked up his first win as a Giant.
“Catching those breaks,” Peavy said.
The Giants take Thursday off, and return to the diamond Friday night when the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner faces Cole Hamels of the Phillies.
ANAHEIM–The red hot Royals are eight games in first place in the American League Central with a half game lead over the second place Detroit Tigers. The A’s who are in the middle of a four game series with the Royals dropped the first game on Monday night 3-2. The Giants were swept over the weekend by the Royals in three games.
The Giants entertain the Chicago White Sox for two games starting on Tuesday night and the Sox come into AT&T with probably the rookie of the year Jose Abreu who has 31 home runs and is hitting .306. The Sox also have Chris Sale who’s 10-2 with an ERA of 2.14 and is a great left handed pitcher. You have a lot of stuff going on there and for the Giants to beat them it’s going to be tough.
The Giants haven’t played that well this year, it’s hard to win a pennant with Triple A players let’s face it the Giants Joe Panik at second and newly aquired catcher Andrew Susac the Giants have a bunch of kids there and they haven’t had a great year. Giant third baseman Pablo Sandoval and catcher Buster Posey haven’t had a great year.
The Giants swept by the Royals and the A’s could be battling the Royals tooth and nail in this four game series as the Royals have an All-Star team with such big boppers in the line up like, Lorenzo Cain .301, Jarrod Dyson .286, and Alex Gordon .279. The Royals are getting great pitching help from Wade Davis 6-2, Aaron Crow 5-1, James Shields 11-6.
Racer Tony Stewart under investigation: Kevin Ward’s death was due to “massive blunt trama” by New York medical authorites, Ward was ran over by NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, an Ontario medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Ward found that that Ward was killed by massive blunt trama as a result of Stewart’s car rear end catching Ward and dragging him and sending him to the sidelines face up. Some that watched the video say that Ward may not ever know what even hit him as the impact was forceful and quick and it was over in less than three seconds.
It was reported that Ward was dead before he even reached the hospital, Ward had been clipped by Stewart and spun out near the wall, Ward came out onto the race track pointing towards Stewart’s on coming car on the return lap and it appeared that Stewart swirved and his rear caught Ward and Ward was dragged a few feet and landed face up on the side of the dirt track. The coroner examiner didn’t say if Ward was dead when he was face up on the track but he was checked on the ambulance going to the hospital and it was reported that he was already dead.
Clippers ownership change should put the Sterling era to rest: The Clippers now are hoping that they can focus on playing hoops and forget about their problems from former owner Donald Sterling. The time that I was doing the play by play at the Clippers there was no indication from where we sat as broadcasters that Sterling harbored such feelings about minorities which he spoke about in the V.Stiviano recordings.
A couple of times when walking down the hallway he smiled at me and I smiled back, there are people here in the Southland that only speak Spanish and specifically those who worked at Staples Arena and they didn’t claim to have had a problem with him during those years when I worked there. There are about one million people who speak Spanish in the Southland and he never made any remarks or said anything about Spanish speaking people while I worked for the Clippers.
Most of the time Sterling came into the buidling really late and he owned the team so he could come in anytime he wanted. The Clippers sponsors who threatened to leave if Sterling didn’t leave will come back, right now the Clippers are the number one team and the Lakers have taken a back seat but that may not last long everybody loves a winner. Steve Ballmer an ex-Mircosoft CEO has taken over as owner of the Clippers, he bought the team for $2 billion from Sterling’s wife Shelly.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for L.A. Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com
Sure, it’s partly due to a road-heavy schedule and the All-Star break, but the Giants return home to AT&T Park with this sobering reality: they’ve won just one home game since July 13–a full month’s time–which is surely no way to put an imprint on a playoff race that has reached the final quarter.
So after being swept in Kansas City over the weekend, it’s no stretch to say that the biggest home games of the season are Tuesday and Wednesday against the White Sox, in an abbreviated, interleague series.
The Giants find themselves just a half-game out of the second wild card spot—behind the Cardinals—with 44 games remaining. Certainly, an enviable spot when all 30 major league team’s fortunes are taken into account at this stage of the season, but the Giants are trending bad to worse, with losses in 35 of their previous 55 games.
So the first order of business is tiding up that home record (29-30) on Tuesday when suddenly hot starter, Ryan Vogelsong takes the mound against the White Sox’s two-time All-Star Chris Sale. The pitcher with the funky but effective delivery has been a bright spot for a White Sox team that has spent almost all of 2014 with a losing record. But Sale is 10-2 on the year, and couldn’t be licking his chops any more vigorously seeing the Giants than if you put a pair of steakhouse dinners in front of him and handed him utensils.
Vogelsong’s coming off a win at Milwaukee following his first ever complete-game win at New York on the now completed road trip. But at AT&T Park, Vogey’s been the poster child for all that ails the Giants along McCovey Cove. In his last four home starts, the Giants have been shut out by the Dodgers, Cardinals and Diamondbacks, and before that, scored just one run against the Reds.
A closer look at the numbers in those four starts show that Giants’ fans may have to worry about the 37-year old pitcher calling in sick on Tuesday: Vogelsong took the loss in all four of those starts despite allowing one home run and two walks in 25 1/3 innings of work.
One win in a month at home, a Giants’ starter who obviously might be wary of his surroundings, and an opposing pitcher who has struck out 138 while walking only 22 batters on the season means the Giants will need some serious mojo on Tuesday.
OAKLAND–The game between the Oakland A’s and Minnesota Twins was a nail biter right down to the end and the A’s got contriubtions up and down the line up. The A’s won two straight and A’s pitchers Luke Gregerson has given up only one run in his first game and Sean Doolittle everytime he’s come out he has produced some ridiculous numbers his ERA is at 2.33.
Doolittle has an A’s record for saves by a lefthander at 18 and Friday night set a franchise record for consecutive scoreless innings at 28 2/3 innings the previous record was at 27 2/3 set in June 1998. The A’s improved their lead in the American League West at 3 1/2 games.
One thing that surprised me after A’s manager Bob Melvin picked up his 800th career win on Friday night was that they did not hire a clown to celebrate the win knowing how much Melvin has a fear of clowns and that no one came in with a big red nose and got up and came in and congratulated Melvin. As Melvin said himself after the game it was just another round number after 799.
When you think of how many baseball games have been played and how many managers that have achieved 800 it’s not a bad thing to be in the top 100 manager in wins, “each and every year. I thnk you take a little bit of stock in what you need to do to get better and how to relate to the players, kind of change with the times, more than anything else.” said Melvin
Giants update: The Kansas City Royals who have won five straight and have won 13 of their last 16 games and are 2 1/2 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the A.L. Central. Which means their challenging the Angels, A’s and Tigers for a spot in the playoffs and the Royals are also bidding for 66-77 wins in that range. They have 61 wins as of Saturday.
The Royals are a very good ball club and in particular everybody in the San Francisco knows how good the Giants pitching is and everybody in the Oakland knows how great the A’s bull pen has been well either team can hold a candle to Kansas City. The Royals might be the best yet that I’ve ever seen, they’ve got seven, eight, nine, inning guys average throwing 90 MPH.
They’ve got pitching from guys who can rush it up there at 102 MPH and they can throw a diving two seam sinker at 95 MPH and they can throw a wicked change up besides. The Royals pitcher Wade Davis a reliever has an ERA going into Saturday’s game of 0.95 and is 6-2. Then the Royals closer has off the charts numbers 1-2 with an wicked ERA of 1.81. So if your behind the Royals you are in deep, deep trouble and the Giants made a mistake of getting behind in the seventh inning on Friday night in their loss to the Royals 4-2 coughing up two runs.
Brandon Belt concussion update: Belt seems to be directly in the spotlight of the most star crossed player in baseball this year. Were talking about a player who suffers a fracture and then rehabs and getting ready to come back and was taking extra infield and had a player throw a ball to him at the same time a coach hit a ball to him and the batted ball bounced up to him and hit him in the face and rang his bell.
Belt tried to make a comeback on Wednesday night in Milwaukee but struck out four times and was reshelved again. He was diognoised with post concussion syndrome by Dr.Anthony Saglimbeni who tested Belt for concussion syndrome and Belt failed each of the tests administered and was flown back to San Francisco.
The San Francisco Giants lost 4-2 to the Kansas City Royals Friday night in Kansas City. The game was a battle of left-handed pitchers. The Giants sent out their ace, Madison Bumgarner, to face the Royals who were trying to win their fifth straight game. Jason Vargas was on the hill for Kansas City.
It would not be easy task for the Giants to beat the Royals. The Royals had won four straight coming into Friday’s game and they had won 2 out of 3 from the A’s last weekend. The Royals are just 2 1/2 games behind Detroit for the AL Central lead.
The Royals took a 2-0 lead in the first inning. With one out, Omar Infante doubled and that was followed by a blast off the bat of Billy Butler into the seats in left field.Bumgarner really labored in the first inning throwing 29 pitches. The Giants tied the game in the third. Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval had back to back singles but Pence was called out at third on a very strange play. The play was called safe but Royals Manager Ned Yost asked for a replay. On the replay, it showed that Pence’s hand appeared to come off the bag while the third baseman still had the tag applied. The call was overturned and that hurt the Giants as first baseman Michael Morse singled and that was followed by a Joaquin Arias double that allowed Sandoval to score with the Giants’ first run of the game. Second baseman Matt Duffy singled to score Morse but Aoki’s throw from right field nailed Arias at the plate for the final out of the inning, Aoki tied a club record with two assists in one inning on throws from the outfield.
The Royals scored twice in the sixth inning to take a 4-2 lead. The Giants made two throwing errors on the same play that allowed the Royals to take the lead for good. Omar Infante singled with one out. Royals catcher Salvador Perez lined a shot to first baseman Michael Morse. Morse’s throw to Duffy at second was offline and Duffy’s throw back to Morse, in an attempt to get Perez, sailed over Morse’s head and both runners were safe. Billy Butler singled to drive in his third run of the game. Royals Left fielder Alex Gordon doubled to drive in the Perez with the second run of the inning.
The outstanding bullpen of the Royals took over. Kelvin Herrera in the 7th, Wade Davis in the 8th and closer Greg Holland in the 9th sealed the win for Kansas City.
Madison Bumgarner took the loss and he is 13-9 for the season. After the game manager Bruce Bochy said “I thought he did a great job.After the first inning, he pitched great. He gave us all he had out there. He gave us a chance to win.” Bumgarner went eight innings and threw 123 pitches.
Game two of the series will be Saturday August Ninth at 4:10pm PDT
OAKLAND–The election for a new MLB Commissioner is coming up on August 14th and any sense of a non political transisition might not be in the cards. Sources in baseball say that Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is endorsing his right hand man for most of his 22 years as Commissioner Rob Manfred who is MLB’s Chief Operating Officer. Manfred for the most part supported all of the decisions coming from Selig and the handling by baseball in the BALCO/steroids scandal that took almost ten years to discover, investigate and enforce new drug rules that was just the beginning of a long line of doping policies formed.
If former San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds was the face of the BALCO scandal than currently suspended New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is the face of the Biogenesis case. A-Rod is out for the season after his second infraction for use of banned substances and he was found out by Federal agents to be receiving such enhancements from Florida distributor Biogensis who also supplied current Met’s pitcher Bartolo Colon and the Blues Jays slugger Melky Cabrera.
Federal agents just recently arrested Biogensis Founder Anthony Bosch on Tuesday for distribuition, Bosch in testomonies before sang like a bird and helped name some minor league and MLB players in the distribution ring. A-Rod who fought this season’s suspension even threatening to sue baseball relented and drop his lawsuit against MLB and accepted the year long suspension for this season was named by Bosch in the sting. Colon and Cabrera are not off the hook yet if in the ongoing investigation by the feds find that they’ve received any more banned substances since their last suspensions.
How this will ties into the choice of baseball’s next Commissioner? That will be decided next week and may might make a huge difference. Manfred critics claim he was Selig’s right hand man and Selig acted slowly in getting a drug policy instituted and it litterally took an act of Congress to get Selig to testify and promise the Congressional listening body to get some teeth to baseball’s new drug policy and form it’s own doping invstigative department headed by Senator George Mitchell.
Biogenesis couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Selig and Manfred with the election coming up and with the Bosch arrest as baseball is about to take a vote for the next Commissioner and Manfred has been named as the lead choice to be next Commissioner. 12 unnamed players will be named soon in the federal investigation of receiving banned substances from the Coral Gables lab and this would be the second major distribution case that will be in baseball’s lap since BALCO.
Baseball owners Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox and Artie Moreno of the Los Angeles Angels have been named to be campaigning for Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner who is outside of the Selig circle and Moreno and Renisdorf want to block any chance for Manfred to get elected as next Commissioner it will take eight Werner votes to make that happen. Selig’s handling of baseball’s drug policy was too little too late, it should have been nipped in the bud during the McGwire-Sosa home run derby era in 1998 but baseball was having a resissance recovering from the bad publicity of the 1994 canceled baseball strike shorten season.
With Bosch being photograghed and making the front page tabloids of some of the New York papers being led away by Federal officers Tuesday it sure doesn’t bode well for the Commissioner’s election this August 14th. Moreno and Reinsdorf maybe onto something here with their attempts to get the other owners to make a huge change in the top administration levels of baseball and set a new tone with a baseball political outsider who was not in the MLB office when all this was going down in trying to elect Werner.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice of Oakland A’s baseball and Jerry Feitelberg covers A’s baseball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com
LOS ANGELES–With the upcoming election for the next Major League Baseball Commissioner Los Angeles Angels and Chicago White Sox owners Artie Moreno and Jerry Renisdorf are ready to campaign against Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s top choice and frontrunner for the job Rob Manfred. The owners will hold elections next week on August 14th where the winner must get 23 of 30 of the vote. Moreno and Reinsdorf are pushing for the other candidate to win Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner. If Moreno and Reinsdorf can get eight votes for Werner it would block Manfred from becoming the next commissioner.
I’m not a big fan of Selig but I wish him nothing but the best in his retirement in January 2015 he lacked the leadership under the steroids era and he came to the party a little too late. Then again money talks and you know the rest walks, the owners like him because he ruled over the tremendous era of prosperity.
One of the best candidates for the job should be the General Manager of the Detroit Tigers Dave Dombrowski would be a terrific commissioner, another guy who would be a good commissioner Joe Torre. Torre the former Dodgers manager was watching batting practice at Dodgers Stadium on Tuesday night he works as baseball’s disciplinarian.
I prefer not to see Manfred get the job baseball should get somebody who is dynamic, well known, Torre will be that type of guy, Selig is getting old 79 and you want somebody younger to run the game. Last year in Anaheim when the Tigers came to town I got to speak with Dombrowski and I know him well when he used to run the Miami Marlins before coming to Detroit.
I asked Dombrowski point blank if he would like to be MLB Commissioner? He said,”I would not do a campaign for it but if they asked me I would consider it.” So that means yes when a General Manager who has a lot of pull with the Detroit Tigers says he would take the job. There’s many good young people out there and when I say young people I don’t mean people under 25 but Dombrowski has experience.
Dombrowski is 58 years old and Torre is 74, but baseball could do better than Manfred as successor to Selig,I’d like to see a different face there I like to see somebody that really knows baseball that knew the game that knows the game like Dombrowski and Torre. One of those guys, somebody mentioned to me about NBC Sports talent Bob Costas he’s a broadcaster he lives in St.Louis he knows the game he’s well respected.
I want somebody whose been inside the game and I’m throwing my hat in the ring for Dombrowski, and there are so many qualified people out there but I hate to see somebody who would be a rubber stamp like Manfred with the same kind of politics as Selig. I wish the Commissioner all the best and in a few months he’s going to retire but I think we could do better.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for Los Angeles Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com
