Manny Ramirez is retiring, the federal government’s perjury case against Barry Bonds has gone to the jury, and baseball’s Steroid Era takes another sad turn. On a side note, next Tuesday’s edition of Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? will be on Manny. I’ll do one before too long on Barry, as well.
Rob Neyer offers a look at what Manny’s departure could mean for his final team, the Tampa Bay Rays. Short answer: It’s not good.
With all of Nick Swisher’s struggles in recent years (read: most, if not all of his career, though I like the guy from having covered him in the minors) it would seem like apt advice to tell him to break a leg. This can’t be what was meant, though.
Regular contributor Rory Paap writes of the Giants’ bullpen and something called Shutdowns and Meltdowns in a post for Bay City Ball of the ESPN Sweet Spot Network. Rory does a good job absorbing obscure metrics and told me recently they’re not hard to pick up, somewhat intuitive really. Whatever you say, dude (I’m amazed I have a basic grasp of OPS+ and WAR.)
Non-baseball link: It’s Masters time which means we get some golf-themed blog fare this week from Joe Posnanski, who began his newspaper career two decades ago as a young reporter in Augusta. I interviewed Posnanski back in September, and in a portion I didn’t include in the transcript I posted, he told me he once met legendary sportswriter Jim Murray in the press tent there.