Gotta keep the Devil / Down in the hole

The Astros signed this pitcher in the Rule V draft from the Phillies over the off-season, but I’d never seen a picture of him. Once I saw him, the only conclusion I can draw is that the Astros will now be sending on of West B’almore’s most cold-blooded killers to the mound this season. Astros’ …

Random Stuff

I downloaded Twirhl, which is a Twitter client that is built on the Adobe AIR platform. It has the best interface of any Twitter client I’ve used so far and I’ve been twittering more today. Follow me here.  Patrick Ruffini has created FriendFeeds for Barack Obama and John McCain which aggregate various updates they post …

Traded to Japan

A bunch of Phillies convince one of their teammates he’s been traded to a Japanese baseball team.

Troubling Times

This Baseball Prospectus article ($BP subscription required) takes a look at the recent history of the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor league system. The author predicts a pretty bullish future for the Redbirds from their minor leagues, perhaps beginning as early as 2009. They apparently have two or three good pitching prospects, with one of them …

The Mitchell Report

Well, it landed yesterday, in all it’s 400+ page glory. I’ve only read excerpts, notably the ones about Clemens, Pettitte and Miguel Tejada. I also perused, as one internet wag called it, Kirk Radomski’s awesome MLB autograph collection on the canceled checks in the appendix. On the whole it reads like most other boring legal …

Astros Rule 5 Draft

We picked up a AAA pitcher from the Dodgers, Wesley Wright. This short blurb from Baseball America makes him sound like he’ll fit right in with the rest of our AAAA guys. He’s a lefty too, which is good, since none of our other lefties are very good (perhaps Troy Patton excepted). Likely not a …

State of the Astros

Despite the flurry of activity, it’s hard to see this off-season as being positive for the Astros. Naming Ed Wade as the new GM before the end of last season demonstrated that Drayton McLane and president Tal Smith remain unconvinced that the latest generations of GMs, who have been influenced more by Bill James than …

Meet the New Boss …

… same as the old boss. Of all the boneheaded moves I can imagine, this isn’t the worst, but it ranks very high as a head-scratcher. Richard Justice reports that the Astros are planning to sign Geoff Blum, he of the colorful hair and obsessive fan club, as a 2B/utility infielder. Now, Justice is far …

Huck and Heck

Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost makes an abrupt shift in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, jumping off the Fred Thompson bandwagon and throwing his support behind Mike Huckabee. He’s joined by Between Two Worlds blogger, Justin Taylor.  My concern with Huckabee continues to be that he lacks a serious foundation or purpose …

Time Zones

One of the more disconcerting things about travel is keeping track of what time it is where you are. Now, since I’m based in London for the present you might think that wouldn’t be such a problem for me, but there’s still stuff going on back in the U.S. that I’m keeping track of, so …