With him not accepting arbitration and us having five starters under contract, it definitely takes us out of the Kevin Millwood competition at this point. |
Worry and bullpen are always in the same sentence for me. He'll be a welcome sight for us up here at this point. |
Yes, it is tiny. Can we survive injuries like the larger market teams? No, we can't. But if you're a competitive person, you have to believe you can win to do this job. |
You can't take stretches of weeks off, especially coming out of the Indy 500, or you lose your momentum. TV promotes a week out. The IRL will be there when its season starts in April and ends at Labor Day. |
You do everything you can to discipline yourself not to evaluate. |
You hope the back end is solid. The middle will have fluctuations. It's going to have some fluctuation over the next two to three days to get settled. |
You just hope to get back to that level and get in. These guys don't need to focus on getting better. |
You're talking about a guy that got moved from the 9 hole very shortly to the 6 hole and then, in his first full season in the big leagues, being put in the 3 slot in the lineup. And he didn't blink. . . How he handled that mentally and emotionally, as much as what he did statistically, really drove the confidence that we had in making an offer like this. |
[ESPN2] doesn't have signature identity programming. After live events, it's void of 'SportsCenter,' 'Baseball Tonight,' 'Pardon the Interruption.' Shows that define a brand, ESPN2] currently lacks. |
[Francisco has] had a lot of injuries, but he can play all three [outfield] positions, and he plays hard. |
[In 2005] we couldn't afford to take Vic out. We've got to find ways to take Vic out this year. |
[Sizemore (he's making $318,000 this year) and Lee ($345,000) come cheap, too. Those numbers are as important to Shapiro as batting averages and ERAs. The Colon trade -- he is making $10 million this season -- was Shapiro's way of announcing the Indian's new business model: Expensive free agents were out, hunting for prospects and bargains was in. It's a little easier to sell that small-market approach when trades work out as well as that one did.] The Colon trade was the start of everything, ... It started the change. |
[Two years ago Mark Shapiro , ESPN's executive vice president of programming and production, told Sports Illustrated that Mike Tyson was at the top of his wish list for an athlete reality show subject. That was then, and this is now: They don't make reality shows about missionaries.] It's unfortunate that our viewers would find a reality series on an explosive figure like Mike Tyson uncompelling, ... [But] a life of caring for underprivileged people, as [Tyson] says he's going to do, just isn't as riveting as the ticketing-time-bomb life. |