TSDMike | June 16, 2009

After landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated a couple of weeks ago, baseball’s LeBron is once again turning heads and raising eyebrows with news that he is foregoing his final TWO years of high school to take the H.S. diploma equivalency exam – resulting in him being awarded a GED (in the words of Chris Rock, a “Good Enough Diploma”). It was also reported that he intends to attend community college in the fall. All of this is suited to one purpose – to make him eligible for the 2010 amateur draft.

As a likely high first round pick right now, the move makes sense in the respect that he’s not going to really improve his stock much by playing high school ball for two more years. He’s got the body of a 21 year old, and power that’s possibly never before been seen at the high school level. The video of his moon shots at Tropicana Field is impressive to say the least.

But, was this the right move?

Category: MLB, Other/General Commentary | Comments Off
Tags: amateur draft, Baseball, bryce harper, drew henson, ESPN, high school baseball, home runs, hype, scrutiny, teenage boy, turning pro early

TSDMike | May 8, 2009

I almost didn’t write about this.

It seemed redundant. Didn’t we just go through this? Aren’t we still going through this? The Alex Rodriguez debacle has even totally played out yet and now we’re pounded with this: Manny Ramirez tests positive for steroids and receives the automatic 50 game suspension.

The sad thing is that I still haven’t decided how I feel about the A-rod thing. He juiced for a couple of seasons, had some inflated numbers while playing for a last place team, then quit taking performance enhancing drugs. His power numbers declined, but other than that, he’s still a helluva baseball player.

Man-Ram falls into the same category. Did steroids made him a better player? Do steroids make anyone a better player? I actually don’t think that they do. Steroids enhance performance. The key word is enhance. The ability to perform has to be there first.

Category: MLB | 4 Comments »
Tags: alex rodriguez, Baseball, baseball stats, commentary, home runs, major league baseball, manny ramirez, mark mcgwire, MLB, sammy sosa, steroids, strikeouts