I’ll be on ESPNEWS today between 2 and 3 pm (along with Joe Sheehan and Tim Kurkjian) to react to the Hall of Fame announcement, which comes at 2 pm.
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The collected thoughts of sportswriter, bookworm, & food critic Keith Law
I’ll be on ESPNEWS today between 2 and 3 pm (along with Joe Sheehan and Tim Kurkjian) to react to the Hall of Fame announcement, which comes at 2 pm.
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Keith, I don’t know when your next chat is (Thursday?) so I have to come directly to you. A Yankee fan friend of mine is convinced that, in his words, “no one in his right mind” could pick Clay Buchholz over Joba Chamberlain because of size, stuff and “experience on the big stage.”
Where and why would you rank Buchholz, Hughes and Chamberlain?
Craig:
1. Joba
2. Buchholz
3. Hughes
However, your friend’s argument doesn’t hold water. Buchholz’ stuff holds up well against Joba’s (he has a far better changeup and his curve is close in quality to Joba’s slider), and the “big stage” argument is total crap.
How about you two just acknowledge that Chamberlain and Bucholz are both outstanding pitching prospects and just leave it at that? 🙂
Really who knows what future is in store for all three of them? As a Cubs fan when we had Prior, Wood, and Zambrano at the top of their game and had Prior, Zambrano, and Juan Cruz in our farm system, just about all objective observers rated Zambrano behind Prior/Wood and Prior/Cruz. Of course, today Zambrano doesn’t rank behind any of them.
Keith can come on here, rank them, make you feel good as a Yankee or Red Sox fan and say one is a little better than the others for now. But when you’re talking about similarly talented young pitchers, it is kind of pointless argument in a way. You never know how injuries will take hold or who will make the most of his talent and who won’t.
Just be happy you’ve got the outstanding young pitchers you have, and worry more about how they’re going to develop and how their health is going to hold up instead of worrying whether somebody ranks them ahead or behind the Red Sox pitcher or not.
Justin, I wasn’t trying to get into a “my team is better than yours” argument. I was just wondering about those specific three, because my friend is very sensible but when it comes to Yankee prospects I think he’s convinced that every one of them is a future Hall of Famer.
I am sure we can all talk about our favorite team’s “can’t miss” prospects – Carl Pavano and Brian Rose come to mind immediately for me. So many things can happen within the next five years – injuries, trades, role changes, new mechanics, makeup changes, advanced scouting, etc.
I just wanted to address a specific argument I was having.
I’m currently watching this and I’m continuing to ask myself why Steve Phillips even bothers arguing. He clearly isn’t in the same league of knowledge as Tim, Keith, and Joe, and frankly is making a fool of himself.
Steven, I logged in here just to say the exact same thing.
“Doesn’t feel like a Hall-of-Famer….”
What a moran….
A gem from Steve Phillips: “Not studying the numbers as much as you guys have (clearly indicating he shouldn’t be discussing this)…Tim Raines just doesn’t sound like a HOFer in my gut. He just doesn’t feel like a HOFer.”
Great argument, Steve.
All that said – fantastic segment. This is how good sports commentary can be, where you can see/hear for yourself the difference between analytical approaches (or in the case of Phillips, the lack thereof) – the Jim Rice segment was especially good.
Without looking at data, Steve Phillips feels like a great GM/baseball analyst to me, subjectively.
Shit. I guess we can’t always trust our gut feelings.
I didn’t see the telecast, but can one assume that Tim Kurkjian said that he still believed that Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Brian Roberts, Andy Pettitte, FP Santangelo, Paxton Crawford, Alex Sanchez and Matt Lawton never took any performance-enhancing drugs?
At work so I hope to catch the broadcast later however I’m disappointed that Rice wasn’t inducted. Not because I think he’s worthy, I’m just not looking forward to hearing the same ridiculous pro-Rice arguments until this time next year.
Hahaha, I watched earlier and I thought the same thing about phillips. Honestly though, does he ever bring anything to the table? I don’t even bother reading his stuff on ESPN anymore because it never includes anything substantial.
As a phils fan I wish the mets still had phillips in their organization…oh well, omar is proving to be just as incompetent