BASEBALL
	5.14.03 - Notes My early candidate for comback player of the year is Kevin Brown.  After a couple of injury plagued and unproductive seasons, Brown is off to a great start.  After tonights victory he is 4-1 with a 2.51 era and 46 strikeouts.  That puts him on a pace to be 16-4 with a 2.51 era and 182 strikeouts.  That would get him back to his form during the mid 90's when he could be counted on for 16-18 wins every season.                                                               *************** I've talked a lot about players exceeding their expectations early this season, but one player who has completely bombed this year after breaking out last year is Paul Konerko.  Konerko seemed to be a guy that was perpetually on the verge of breaking out and then the last two years he put in solid performances, going .282 with 32 homers and 99 rbi in 2001 and .304 with 27 homers and 104 rbi last season.  This season has been a nightmare, though, as he is on pace to hit .224 with 8 homers and 46 rbi.  Ouch.                                                                  ************* Is it possible that the New York Mets have turned into the Baltimore Orioles of the late 1990's?   Remember that Baltimore was a quality team in the mid to late 90's, making postseason appearances in 1996 and 1997.  But then they steadily declined to the point last year when they only won 67 games.  Their steady decline happened in spite of (or perhaps because of) the presence of high priced star-quality players.  Now look at the Mets.  They made a World Series appearance in 2000, but have had a marked decline since then, even though they have continued to reload with high priced stars.  The time is coming, possibly very soon, when the Mets will realize, as Baltimore did, that the way to get back to winning is by getting rid of all the old overpaid "star" players and rebuilding around some younger, cheaper, and more productive players.                                                                   ************ Did you know that it is not considered an official triple play if an error occurs between putouts?                                                                     ********** Well, Ken Griffey, Jr. is healthy again and started for the first time against the Cardinals last night.  He doubled and scored twice and his swing looked as sweet as ever.  I am rooting for the guy to make a full comeback and have a great year.  The guy was the best player in baseball and had a chance to be one of the greatest players ever to play the game.  It is a shame that injuries have crippled his career over the last few years.  The real shame of it is that a lot of his injuries have come because he was playing the game the right way: hustling, crashing into walls, diving in the outfield.  That's the way I want to see Griffey play, it's a shame that playing that way has taken him out of the last few years of baseball.                                                                       ******* Julio Lugo either threatened his wife or hit his wife, or something.  Who knows what the real story is, but it was bad enough that the Astros wanted nothing more to do with the guy and dumped him.   Rumor has it that the Devil Rays are close to signing him.  Isn't this the same team that signed John Rocker?  Maybe being on the same team with Rocker will help Lugo, it certainly helped Carl Everett.   Many jokes were made last year about the Rangers picking up both Rocker and Everett - people called them the Portland Trailblazers of baseball (sans the pot aspect), and while Rocker didn't stick with the Rangers, Everett has exploded this year.  He has kept his temper mostly in check while going off offensively.  He is on pace to hit .326 with 50 homeruns and 145 rbi.  Maybe by playing with Rocker, other head cases realize that they don't want to be grouped with that crazy bastard, and they get their career together.  Maybe Julio Lugo will flourish in Tampa Bay.                                                                          ***** Speaking of Carl Everett, look at the picture of him here.  If he is trying to avoid the label of temper tantrum throwing head case, don't you think he could have insisted they use a different picture?                                                                           *** The Detroit Tigers have won 6 out of their last 9 games, including a four game winning streak.  They are still under .500 for the month of May, though, with a 6-7 record for the month so far (in April they went 3-21, so they've already doubled their win total from last month).  If they keep this up, they might actually win 60 games this year.                                                                              * The most comical moment of the season to this point was earlier this week when Frank Robinson charged out of the Montreal dugout, not to argue with the umpires, but to yell at his own players for arguing because they didn't know the infield fly rule.
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