Mostly Baseball

The Braves traded Edgar Renteria (pictured, in what would probably have been a better picture if I wasn't so lazy as to grab the first picture on Wikipedia that I could find) to the Tigers for a couple of prospects. We picked up a pitcher named Jair Jurrjens, who made a handful of starts for the team this season, and a minor league outfielder named Gorkys Hernandez. This would make Yunel Escobar, who had a good season as a backup for Renteria and Chipper Jones (119 OPS+ over 94 games), our primary shortstop, which should be okay, but I liked Edgar's time in Atlanta, and I'm sorry to see him go. Still, the team is on a budget now, and if this shores up our pitching rotation it's all to the good. I'm fairly sure that Mark Teixeira gets a pay raise through arbitration this off season, and we need to find a replacement for Andruw Jones.

I'm ecstatic that Alex Rodriguez is all but certainly done as a Yankee. The man more or less single-handedly took the team to the post season, and still got shit from the Yankees fans for not being Scott Brosius (a true Yankee). I'm curious about where A-Rod will wind up. For Ralph's sake, I'd like to see A-Rod with the Giants (I shudder a little at the thought of him in the National League). At least the Yankees are said to have offered their manager job to Joe Girardi instead of the more heart-warming choice of Don Mattingly. Still, without Rodriguez's bat I can't help but think that the last season in Yankee Stadium won't be a pleasant one.

Obviously I don't get too much credit for predicting that the Red Sox would win the Series. The cover of SI described the Series as "The Red Sox have Beckett, The Rockies have the magic", and anyone with half a brain knows which of those to choose. (Although a disappointing number of sportswriters would undoubtedly still opt for "intangibles" over "tangibles".) The Rockies playoff run was unexpected, and unquestionably impressive, but we could all see that the Sox were the better team. It was disappointing to get another boring World Series (the last World Series that was interesting as a World Series, rather than being interesting for external factors such as a supposed curse or Kenny Rogers cheating, was the Yankees/Marlins series, and that one wasn't all that great)