The Blue Workhorse

Earlier today, Major League Baseball announced the rosters for the 79th All-Star Game being held at Yankee Stadium, which is only appropriate since this is the final season for the historic ballpark.

The starters were determined solely by the fan vote once again, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, we wanted to do what we hadn’t seen anywhere else and break down the selections team-by-team, so that you could easily see who was selected from your favorite team (starters are in bold):

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In honor of Independence Day, our selection for this week is a product Major League Baseball showcased the entire holiday weekend.

You may have noticed or even thrown back when flipping to Sportcenter to see teams such as the Oakland A’s or Houston Astros sporting blue baseball caps even though they have no blue in their team colors. What you were seeing was Major League Baseball’s attempt to honor our country.

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Minus a very few bright spots during the 2008 campaign, Atlanta Braves’ hometown hero Jeff Francoeur has been horrible in every sense of the word.

In his last 18 games, the right fielder is hitting just .121 with a .183 on-base percentage and .136 slugging percentage, but his struggles go back much further than just the last three weeks. During his two previous seasons in Atlanta, Francoeur built a reputation for being a clutch hitter in big situations.

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The Tampa Bay (no longer Devil) Rays are following the design Atlanta’s John Schuerholz so masterfully created after taking over as the general manager for the Braves and are now doing the unfathomable by leading the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the remainder of the AL East while having the best record in baseball.

The Rays have used each of their high draft picks to build their organization from the farm system up much the same way the Atlanta Braves have been renowned for doing. Tampa Bay also has focused on building around a talented young pitching staff (their starting rotation is aged 24-26) just as Schuerholz did with Atlanta.

How similar are this year’s Rays to the Atlanta squads from the early ’90s? We’ve compared this year’s squad of the AL East leading Rays, who are coming off a sweep of perennial power Boston, to the Atlanta squads from their early 1990s heydays:

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Let’s play a quick game of name those numbers. Who has produced these incredible statistics?

151.1 IP / 9 W / 2.28 ERA / 195 K / 1.13 WHIP

Jake Peavy? Johan Santana? Many of you might see the line and figure it must have been a line from Peavy, Santana, or one of the other top-flight starting pitchers 151 innings through the season.

However, these stats were the combined 2007 season statistics of Carlos Marmol and Jonathan Broxton, two of the most dominant middle relievers in the game.

In terms of fantasy baseball, middle relievers are often forgotten when they can be a huge weapon as an added bonus to your pitching staff. They can be the secret key to lower WHIP and ERA, and many of these guys also pile up the strikeouts:

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In an attempt to jump start an anemic offense, the San Diego Padres are finally making some baseball sense. They have called up the sweet-swinging, infielder-outfielder Chase Headley from their Triple A affiliate, the Portland Beavers.

Headley has been regarded as the top offensive threat in the Padres’ organization after he tore through Double A last season posting a line of .330 AVG/.437 OBP/20 HR/78 RBI/82 R for San Antonio. This year, the former second round pick out of the University of Tennessee, struggled early in Triple A but posted a .357 average in May. Despite the early struggles, Headley’s line at Triple A Portland was still impressive: .305 AVG/.383 OBP/13 HR/40 RBI/49 R.

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The date was December 21, 2007.

The Cincinnati Reds and Texas Rangers decided to make a trade. A winter trade that was not necissarly significant at the time. The experts said there would be bigger ones, and there were right. Johan Santana, Erik Bedard, and Dan Haren were just a few names to hit the market this past winter and help change the landscape of the American and National Leagues.

However, who could have predicted the outcome of that late December day?

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In the Sunday Sports Selection series, we showcase a sports-related product (gadget, book, film, equipment, etc.) that we have enjoyed and think you may find of interest as well.

For half of the baseball fans that come across this post, they are going to hate that I featured these shirts that they would find despicable. For the other half? Well, they probably are going to think these shirts are great ideas.

This is because half of baseball fans are either Boston Red Sox fans or New York Yankees fans (or at least it seems that way), and if you are a baseball fan, you typically either are a fan of one of those two teams or hate both of those teams.

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