Strasburg --> Olympics

by PositivePaul on Jul 16, 2008 12:40 PM PDT Comment 20 comments

At least so says this here article in the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2008054837_webusabaseball16.html

Some more famous baseball Olympians:

Mark McGwire (I traded that 85 Topps card for Canseco rookie, long before the 70 HR season)
Tino Martinez
~~John~~ Jim Abbott
R. A. Dickey
Wlad Balentien
Ryan Franklin
Troy Glaus
Jason Giambi
Nomar Garciaparra
Billy Koch
Ryan Rowland-Smith
Chris Snelling
Paul Spoljaric
Nick Markakis

And the list goes on and on and on. Hopefully this is 75 words. If not, then I shall draw forth more names from this here list...

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Do you mean Jim Abbott?

I was looking him up on wiki the other day; in this whole “making baseball cards” thing, I ran into an old card that said he was the best LHP in the league in, say, ‘92.

by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jul 16, 2008 1:08 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

and this is the rare case where I have no desire to back up my argument with statistics. I could run the numbers and discover that he was actually the, say, 8th best LHP in the league in ‘92, but OH YEAH THE GUY ONLY HAS ONE HAND. As far as I’m concerned, that makes him phenomenal.

Nice Guys Finish Third - Hopelessly lost, but makin' good time.

by pdb on Jul 16, 2008 1:27 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

No

I meant Matt Clement. You know, the up-and-coming catcher for the Mariners??

Uh, yeah. JIM Abbott… No idea who the hell John Abbott is.

My layout.spellcheckDefault goes to 11

by PositivePaul on Jul 16, 2008 2:00 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Jim Abbott

if his nickname wasn’t “The one-armed bandit,” it should have been.

by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jul 16, 2008 2:11 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Not to be a pedant, but he had two arms.

It’s just that one of them ended in a stump where his hand should have been.

Nice Guys Finish Third - Hopelessly lost, but makin' good time.

by pdb on Jul 16, 2008 2:22 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Strasburg had been on the Collegiate nat'l team

that just beat the Cuban Olympic team in a big tourament in Haarlem (huuuuuge upset).

The pitcher that team used in the finals wasn’t Strasburg, however, it was Mike Minor of Vandy.

by marc w on Jul 16, 2008 1:13 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

So you're saying

We should root for the Nationals to beat the M’s in the Strasburg race, hoping that their even-more-inept-than-ours front office will take Minor over Strasburg on the merit that someone else who had the same decision made that pick and it turned out well, small sample size be damned? I’d be happy with the 20th pick if it means we get S.A.S.

Free Stephen Awesome Strasburg!

by thejew4u on Jul 16, 2008 3:17 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

The Nationals FO isn't inept. It isn't anywhere near inept.

It had a lot a smart gambles that went disastrously wrong (talk about bad luck…the Nats have been snakebitten this season), and has done a good job on a small budget. The farm system is slowly becoming monstrous, especially with pitching talent. But the franchise was left a shell of itself during the MLB receivership years (and Minaya giving away Sizemore, Lee, and Phillips in order to ingratiate himself to baseball and grease the skids for the GM job he really wanted in NY didn’t help). It’s going to take a long time.

Still, it’s possible the Nats don’t take Strasburg. Because they simply have so much great young pitching and they desperately need bats.

I root for the two worst teams in baseball, non-ironically.

by esoteric on Jul 16, 2008 9:55 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah that would be a pipe dream, at this point it is silly to think any team anywhere will not take Strasburg with the first pick

You just can’t pass on that talent no matter what the strengths/weaknesses of your farm system currently are.

This might change before the draft but for now the Nationals would absolutely take him, he has all the makings of one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball….It doesn’t matter if you have good pitchers in your system, none of them are anything close to him.

by OlSalty on Jul 16, 2008 10:43 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Hey maybe a future Mariner will be at the 2012 games in London

Oh wait – Baseball has been dropped from the Olympics. Which means no investment in UK baseball facilities and no baseball legacy. Which means that baseball will continue to be on a par with sports like marbles and hop-scotch in this shithole of a country.

FUCK.

I was at Shea for the Felix-Slam!
Personal M's record: 5-4.

by EnglishMariner on Jul 16, 2008 3:22 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

They've GOT to review that horrific decision

Not enough countries in the world play it… but field hockey is in? Rhythmic fucking gymnastics? Team handball is in to placate the Scandinavians (all 132 of ‘em), but we can’t have baseball.
The decision was clearly a way for the IOC to thumb their nose at the US, nothing more.

As for the UK, I’m really hoping your participation in the World Cup can pick up some of the slack that not having BB at the 2012 Olympics might create. Yeah right, I know.

by marc w on Jul 16, 2008 4:00 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs