Baseball Digest Daily :: Roundup

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All Baseball Transactions Wednesday

- 'Bangqiu' is what baseball's called in China (stick ball) and with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres about to play a couple of games in this country, it will be interesting to see the way this people reacts to our game.

"One day we'll look back on this — maybe a landmark event — and say it was the start of many great years of baseball history in China," Hoffman said. "You think of all the emperors and dynasties they've had. This had a beginning. I'm sure building the wall felt equally daunting when they started."

Getting attention on Thursday was easy. Chinese TV stations attended the event, Chinese tourists snapped photos of some of the unknown players, and young girls ran by giggling "hello" and "xie, xie," — Chinese for "thank you." Save for their larger stature, players like Hoffman, Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Kouzmanoff were largely ignored.

The star was the Padres mascot — "The Swinging Friar." Hundreds mugged for photos. Some thought it was a promotion for McDonald's restaurants.

"Here they don't know anything about baseball, they don't know who is who," said Michael Grace, who donned the mascot's garb. "The friar looks friendly, it's an oddity."

A bit like baseball, which is expected to draw crowds in Beijing on Friday when the Padres and Dodgers practice at the venue for this summer's Olympics. Sellouts over the weekend would help baseball's reputation. The game will not be played in the 2012 Olympics in London but could be reinstated for 2016.

- This is what I wrote in a blog post that looked at some players performances a week into Spring Training:

Detroit - Ivan Rodriguez has two hits this Spring in 16 AB and ont of those went over the fence for a trip around the bases. He is hitting .125 and that's also his OBP (he has no walk and 4 K)

Well, how things change in seven days!

The Tigers catcher now leads the majors in home runs (6) and also hit two doubles, making all his hits since March 6 for extra bases.

For Seattle, center fielder Ichiro Suzuki is still hitless this Spring and now stands at 0-for-21, with two walks.

- ESPN's Keith Law shot a short video of the White Sox's Alexei Ramirez in the batting cage and wrote an excellent scouting report about him and other players (only Ramirez part is available to non-subscribers).

Ramirez reminds me in a lot of ways of Alfonso Soriano, although he doesn't have Soriano's explosiveness at the plate. Ramirez is slight of build, but wiry strong, and could probably add some muscle in an MLB-caliber conditioning program. He has very quick wrists and gets the bat to the ball quickly, with very good plate coverage as well. His swing has Soriano's exaggerated finish, and when he connects he has plus raw power to his pull side (left field) and can at least put it to the wall to the opposite field.

The Baseball Digest Daily Channel on YouTube brings you three videos from the Blue Jays Spring Training facilities in Dunedin. Here's one where you can see a batting practice with...

- Jerry Crasnick writes about GM Kenny Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen from the White Sox. There are some great quotes in there:

• Williams on the pressures of the job: "Boston. New York. Chicago. Philadelphia. These are very demanding sports towns. If you don't recognize that one basic principle, it will swallow you up. So I wake up every day knowing that to a large segment of our fan base, I'm the village idiot.''

• Guillen on the lack of respect accorded Williams: "People forgot how good Kenny was for four years. People forgot he didn't finish worse than second. It's a funny thing about this game. We win the World Series and Kenny makes three key moves to winning, and the guy in Cleveland [Shapiro] wins the Baseball America Executive of the Year. That's a bunch of s---.''

• Williams on the pecking order in Chicago: "Our fans don't care about injuries and other things that happened last season. It's all about what you do on the field. There's only one sports team in Chicago that will get a pass. I won't name them. But it ain't us.''

• Guillen on his "hate-love'' relationship with Williams: "Last year Kenny and me stuck together. We fought together. We sat together. We were upset together. We blamed each other. We found out who was behind us and who wasn't. Ninety-nine percent of the people weren't behind us. Hey man, this game is a bunch of front-runners. If you're good, they kiss your butt. If not, you're horse s---.''

• Williams on the hits he took for signing Linebrink to a four-year, $19 million deal: "I don't know why that's perceived as an out of line deal, when Justin Speier signed for pretty much the same thing with the Angels. The market was already set. We needed bullpen help, so we did what we had to do and make no apologies. If other clubs want to take issue with it, they don't have to face the Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers.''

• Guillen on White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf: "The media in Chicago should kiss Jerry Reinsdorf's butt every day, because he put sports back on the map in Chicago. He won six rings with the Bulls and he has one in baseball, and he helped build the new ballpark and a new basketball court. Nobody gives him any credit, and I don't think that's fair.''

• Williams on the mood in Chicago's camp: "I love the camp, the intensity. You can see right off the bat that guys are a little embarrassed by what happened last year. We did some historical things -- and not in a good way.''

• Guillen on how he'll react if the Sox win another title: "We made a big mistake when we won in 2005. We never took credit. Me and Kenny, we just did our jobs and never went out of our way to rub it in people's faces that we were the champions. If we win it again, I'll be a cocky, arrogant, SOB. I'll be wearing my World Series rings hitting fungoes in the field.''

While it seems this duo has been together for a short time, the Crasnick mentions that they are the fourth longest-running GM-manager tandem in baseball today, behind only Colorado, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

- Good piece by John Donovan at SI about the Pittsburgh Pirates and Neil Huntington's attempt to restore the franchise credibility in the eyes of baseball fans. Love the way this general manager goes about his business and pays attention to details. This is what will make the difference in the long run.

A quick example, seemingly small, of how things have changed in this organization over the past few months: After exhaustive talks with the new group, including president Frank Coonelly, rookie manager John Russell and others, Huntington found that many of the lower levels of the Pirates' minor leagues did not have bilingual instructors.

You would think, given the fact that so many players in the major leagues are from Spanish-speaking countries, that the Pirates would at least have someone who could speak to an 18-year-old prospect from, say, Venezuela.

"Attention to detail," says Huntington, who has remedied the oversight. "The process of how we're going about it is very different than what has been experienced in the past, and we're hearing that from players, from the staff that's been here."

- This Chicago retailer could be sorry it even thought of the idea or it could turn out to be a stroke of genius.

SuitePlay!, a Chicagoland retailer of fun home furnishings, announced today that all store purchases made at their four Chicago area locations between March 13th and April 14th, 2008 will be 100 percent reimbursed (excluding tax and delivery fees) if the Chicago Cubs go all the way to win the 2008 World Championship.

"This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs World Championship win against the Detroit Tigers and all of Chicagoland is hoping that the Cubs will repeat history," said Kelly Claffey, Vice President of Marketing for SuitePlay!. "We are inviting our shoppers to step up to the plate and buy furniture, games and other accessories to make their home more fun for baseball season during the promotional period. To show our team spirit, we'll pay them back for their store purchases should the Cubbies go all the way! It's a win-win for everyone!"

A poster on BBTF mentioned that a Boston retailer had done the same in the past, but I could not find it. If you have an idea who that might be, post it in the Comments section please.

- This tidbit from Buster Olney's column yesterday, about the new Astros shortstop, Miguel Tejada:

Multiple talent evaluators are saying that Houston shortstop Miguel Tejada looks absolutely terrible this spring, and they can't see him finishing the year at his current position.

- My colleague Geoff Young wrote a post titled "How to Quit Your Job and Write a Book (or Two)".

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Dave Rouleau

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