John Conniff from MadFriars.com has a different take on the Kevin Towers firing. He will join us later to discuss the story:
The firing of popular Padres General Manager Kevin Towers produced an outcry from the local and national media with the consensus that new owner Jeff Moorad erred in firing the long time general manager in favor of installing his “own guy”.
However, after the knee-jerk responses fade, Moorad, who made a fortune running a sports agency, may have more valid reasons for the change than ego.
In the process of taking control of the team from John Moores, he is not a Daddy Warbucks style owner in the same vein of Detroit’s Mike Illitch, but the leader of a consortium with a finite budget that is expected provide a return on investment.
Towers was not evaluated as a general manager, but rather as the head of baseball operations, Sandy Alderson’s old job, which these days is considerably more than the running a team, but involves, which has been the popular buzzword the past few days, a “strategic vision.”
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by Craig on March 10, 2009
I did an interview on Jeff Erickson’s Blog Talk Radio show last Friday and the guest host asked me if I was concerned with Stephen Strasburg’s mechanics. Having watched Strasburg so many times in person, it was actually an odd question to me, because his mechanics always seemed very solid. He throws very free and easy, not a max-effort guy at all, and if anything I thought his windup was refined from last year to this, better balanced.
Then yesterday,
Avenger-In-Chief passed this along to me…the Mariners’ fan blogging doesn’t interest me that much, but the website he linked to did…
Driveline Mechanics. Now, watching through this guy’s Strasburg posts and his analysis, a second and third look is giving me more and more doubts. Not about Strasburg, more about the analysis. Speaking with great authority on a subject can make you sound really smart and knowledgable, but you also might be wrong. I noticed in the comments that the poster’s analysis was criticized pretty firmly. So I’m just presenting all this for informational purposes, and perhaps I can float it along to Will Carroll over at Baseball Prospectus, who I respect a lot on mechanics and pitcher injuries. Please follow the links and form your own conclusions.
By the way, Strasburg’s next start will be Friday against UNLV at Tony Gwynn Stadium, and I’ll be calling the game on XTRA 1360, a 6:05 first pitch, so please tune in if you can! There will also be video coverage as usual on goaztecs.com.
