-At long last, we should finally get a look at Andrew Brackman in a game within the next few days. There’s still time for him to compete for a spot in the rotation, though his most likely destination will be to open the season in AAA. Despite all the attention Banuelos and Betances have garnered, Brackman is the only Killer B who has a realistic shot to crack the Yankee rotation this year. Manny and Dellin will have innings limits of around 140 innings for this season.
-Everyone reported A-Rod gushing over how impressed he was by Manny Banuelos, likening him to a young Johan Santana. But Peter Gammons passed along part two of what Alex said about Banuelos, which is the side of sports most fans don’t see:
Rodriguez insists on telling Banuelos’ story. “You should know the kind of kid he is,” says A-Rod. “He was making $600 a month last year and sending $350 of it home to his mother and grandmother, who are poor. He cares about them, not himself. He’ll be a favorite of yours for years.”
-The Gorgen twins both have Tommy John surgery within 6 months of each other. Despite all the efforts to protect pitcher’s health, you can’t minimize the impact of simple genetics.
-Mark Teixeira fires Scott Boras as his agent.
“From the time I was a rookie, people started talking about my free agent contract,” Teixeira said. “Hey, that’s the world I live in. Unfortunately, it took away from a lot of the things I did on the field. At times I felt like I was Mark Teixeira, Scott Boras client, instead of Mark Teixeira, baseball player.”
Color me unimpressed. It would have been a much more bold statement had he done it before Scott got him his free agent contract in 08, not after. It’s easy to look like a big hero and dump Boras now, after Scott got him the biggest payday of his life. If he was really that worried about his image, he would have hired someone like Leigh Steinberg 10 years ago.
-Nice interview by Marc Carig with Kevin Long, who has an instructional book on hitting coming out April 26th.
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4 Responses to Sunday Notes and Commentary
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TIQ IQ
Not really sure how Mark is trying to look like a hero, and if you post the rest of the quote he talks about how now that he signed the big contract he isn’t thinking about money because he won’t get another huge deal and your focus changes to wining a ring, winning another ring and helping the community off the field.
If anything it just sounded like he thanked Scott for all he had done but now he was ready to move on to the second half of his baseball career which isn’t Scott’s strong point.
now that he signed the big contract he isn’t thinking about money
My point exactly. Just too convenient.
I really don’t get your point…
He’s not trying to be a hero and their nothing too convenient about it, I imagine he gave some thought to this before he ever became a free agent, you hire the people who are the best at what they do and if you are trying to make money and you need a baseball agent you call Boras, if you want to help the community, have someone manage your non contract baseball career and you never expect to sign another contract again you fire Boras and hire a guy who is better at getting you endorsements off the field and what not.
Boras certainly gets the big players the big money but I have never heard anything about him being a guru at getting endorsement deals or handling/getting in touch with people to set up charities and what not so if that’s the route you want to go why shouldn’t you be allowed to hire the best at that?
I guess to me it just sounds like you have Mark doing this diabolical thing when he is just making the smart business move by transition to a new agent as his career goals transition.
Think about what Alex said about Manny. Assuming he has room and board set up somehow with the Yankees or a teammate, that means he’s leaving himself about $250 a month, or $8 a day for himself to live on. Which is about enough for some fast food or a home cooked meal.
Stories like this are all too common in Latin America, specifically in Mexico. Working in the restaurant industry for most of my adult life, you hear stuff like this all the time. In major cities of Mexico wages of $200 a month are the rule, not exception. School teachers are considered upper class, and they earn about $400 a month.
I wonder what happened to his signing bonus, but apparently very little is known about it. It’s not listed on Baseball Cube or BR, and thinking back to when the Yanks signed Aceves, Vazquez and Manny, they waited a while to announce Manny because he wasn’t 16 years old yet and the details of his signing are fairly murky.
Does anyone have any info about his signing?