Posts Tagged ‘Kyle Snyder’

Jim Thome - 40 years old today. He was 21 when he made his Major League debut

Words of wisdom (again) from Rob Dibble:

“So for me, a little bit has to be put back on Strasburg here. Ok, you throw a pitch, it bothers your arm, and you immediately call out the manager and the trainer? Suck it up, kid. This is your profession. You chose to be a baseball player. You can’t have the cavalry come in and save your butt every time you feel a little stiff shoulder, sore elbow.

“I mean, excuse me. There’s guys I played with that had screws holding their elbows together. Chris Sabo played two weeks on a broken ankle. I put a steel plate in my wrist so I could be back in five weeks instead of three months. So, this is your choice. You can either suck it up and be a man at 22 making $2 million a year [with] a $15 million contract, or every time you get an ache and pain you can go out of the game and say I’m gonna let down the other 24 guys right here and possibly en

Chris Sabo’s baseball career lasted eight seasons. Dibble’s lasted seven. It occurs to me that playing while you are injured is possibly not the best way to extend your career and keep collecting those million dollar contracts.  Something you might want to think about, Rob.

To say nothing of the fact that young Mr. Strasburg is on his way to Tommy John surgery.  So not only was Dibble being an arrogant jerk but he was about as wrong as he could ever be.

Surgery on the arm of a pitcher is nothing to take lightly.  Kyle Snyder has now had five surgeries on his arm and is currently working toward his arm hopefully becoming strong again.  Anything could happen to Strasburg:  He could be back healthy and as strong and good as ever, or he could come back a different pitcher and not the superstar he’s been projected to become.  It’s definitely something  anyone with half a brain would be concerned about so I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Dibble was totally off the mark here.  Instead of paying him to speak, maybe the Nationals should pay him to shut the hell up.  Just a suggestion.

I wouldn’t say that this weekend series with the Rays has me worried or anxious but I am a bit excited.  While I’m being realistic about this season, the Red Sox doing well this weekend would make things a whole lot more interesting.

The best news of the weekend?  National television only snatched up one of the weekend games.  So while we get stuck with Morgan and Miller on Sunday we are at least saved from Buck and McCarver (tonight and tomorrow’s games are at 7:10/Sunday’s at 8pm).

Kyle with the Captain in 2006 (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission)

There was a lot to dislike about last night’s game but the one positive I took from it was the general reaction of the fans.  Most of them seemed to stay at Fenway last night and a good many of them stuck with it on NESN as well (if updates on my Twitter feed and Facebook page are any indication).  It was a horrible game yet Red Sox fans were still compelled to watch.  As Larry Lucchino said to Don and Jerry last night:  “This game is one of those games that happens every year”.

And he was right.  Of course, finding out that Dustin Pedroia is back on the DL and having this blow out happen against one of our two top pitchers (currently) makes it feel worse than just a randomly bad game.  The Red Sox have had 19 different players on the DL and while some will argue that many of those players weren’t starters (as some have to me in email) those people need to remember that some of the back up players who have been DL’d were in there before their injury replacing the starters who were injured.  To pretend that it hasn’t had an effect on this season is absolutely ridiculous.

Yet, here the Red Sox sit, 6.5 games out of first place on August 21st.  Still right in the hunt for the playoffs, especially thanks to the six games left against the Rays and the six games left against the Yankees.  The minor leaguers the Sox have brought up to help out have been making this season a lot of fun (Yamaico Navarro getting his first major-league hit last night, for example) and well worth watching.  So last night sucked.  The bright side is that the chances of tonight’s game being that bad have diminished.

Not so randomly:

I think WEEI does a wonderful job with the Jimmy Fund radio/telethon.  No one can criticize that.  What bothers me is listening to the likes of John Dennis and Gerry Callahan talk like they care about people for two days out of the year when they’re absolutely horrible folks the rest of the year.  If you believe that living a good life means an afterlife of happiness you have to believe that these guys need to do more than host 48 hours of a telethon for sick kids each year to get a seat at the table upstairs.  It’s what makes me not listen to the telethon (I find other times or ways to donate).

As if having them on isn’t bad enough, WEEI hit a new low yesterday by having Roger Clemens on.  Roger Clemens who is being indicted for lying to Congress was on with this donation yesterday (pre-planned if you follow the time line on Twitter).  Roger Clemens who….well, hell, I won’t get into the Roger Clemens bashing I could.  I’ll just send you here to Joe Posnanski’s Sports Illustrated piece on Clemens and let you judge for yourself.  I’ll tell  you what, unlike what Joe Cochran had to say to the Boston Herald about him, I’m pretty sure you won’t be calling Clemens “A real good guy”.  (As an aside, I think the equipment manager making the decision to not give out Roger’s “21″ is absolutely asinine and makes the team look like a teenage girl who got stood up for her prom waiting outside her house clasping her corsage in anticipation of the date who will never show.   It’s embarrassing.)  Of course, that story came from John Tomase so there’s a good chance there’s a retraction by the Herald tomorrow.

The Jimmy Fund is a wonderful organization most worthy of your donations but I find it difficult to promote their telethon when there is so much about it I find offensive.  You know it’s on; you can watch or listen if you like and do what your heart tells you so you don’t need me pointing it out to you.  (This paragraph comes to you courtesy  of the handful of emails I received yesterday wanting to know why I hadn’t mentioned the telethon. Now you know.)

In much happier news (also known as “News that doesn’t make me want to throw things at my television”), we have a Kyle Snyder update!  His rehabilitation from his fifth arm surgery is going well and there are still plans for him to play winter ball.  He’s not yet throwing from the mound but that will come soon as a natural progression of his current throwing program.  I probably receive two or three messages a week asking about Kyle and his progress and hearing that he’s “healthy and pain-free” yesterday is news I was eager to share.  Here’s to continued success to Kyle in his bid for making it back to the mound and, hopefully, a ballpark near you!

Today I’ll be in Lowell getting to see the Spinners play for the first time this year.  Game time is 5:05pm which means I’ll miss most of if not all of Daisuke Matsuzaka v Ricky Romero.  I have a good feeling about tonight’s game.  If nothing else, the Blue Jays are probably tired from those 20 hits last night.

Holding out hope that Kyle takes the mound again. Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.

Wrote this just after Kelly O’Connor and I met Kyle Snyder in New York (after a particularly lousy Sox/Yanks game that Kyle got into and pitched well which happened to be the same weekend Josh Hancock died).  It’s one of those entries where I bare my soul and probably write more emotionally than bloggers who want to be successful and mainstream do, but I don’t care because it’s also one of my favorite entries.

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As I mentioned, I met Kyle Snyder Saturday night. Normally being shy in situations like that, I wasn’t going to approach him. He looked like he was trying to blend into the wall and there were screeching groupies trying to make their move. Kelly and I were ready to leave when I decided to just approach him. He had pitched in Yankee Stadium that day (in the only loss the Sox have to the Yankees thus far), giving up one hit (to Derek Jeter) and a strike out (Johnny Damon swinging) in the 8th inning and I wanted to tell him what a good job he did.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. One, because it was a really nice moment. I got to tell Kyle what a good job he did and how we enjoy watching him pitch (He was very sweet and soft-spoken. Thanking me multiple times before we shook hands -our left hands- and Kelly and I left). Also, reading Will Leitch’s poignant tribute to Josh Hancock on Deadspin got me thinking about it as did CHB’s berating of Boston/New England fans (yet again) for being accepting of the Randy Moss trade.

Being a fan (Especially a Red Sox fan) comes with some baggage. Other fans get you, writers mock you and people not interested in sports just don’t understand. But the only people whose opinion matters to most fans are the players.

Leitch writes about his parents and how they had a ‘moment’ with Hancock that seemingly affected him. He remembered their kindness and acknowledged it. Saturday night, Kelly noted that Kyle Snyder looked ‘relieved’ to have me approach him and talk about baseball as opposed to what the groupies (who didn’t even know who he was and were mapping out game plans on how to approach him, depending on whether or not he had a ring on his left finger. Oh how I wish told them, when they asked me, that his name was Bronson Arroyo instead of telling them the truth. Sorry for that, Kyle.) were doing.

Fans have an ego. We tend to think that the players play for us and when they do well, it’s in our name. To be fair, the 2004 team reinforced this belief with what they said, so our egos can’t be blamed for that solely. I don’t know what made me talk to Kyle or why I said the specific things I said instead of something geeky like “you’re so great!” or the opening line one of the groupies used (“you’re my friend’s favorite player!”), but his reaction to me made me very happy that I did. Maybe he was feeling down because the team lost? Maybe he’s very shy (he certainly seemed to be) and wanted to be anywhere but in a loud, crowded bar, making a public appearance the night after a disappointing loss, being accosted by drunken chicks pretending to know who he is? Maybe one person coming over and telling him he had no reason to hang his head; that he did a good job, maybe that actually mattered to him?

Even if it didn’t, was it so difficult to say? Did it pain me to take a moment out of my evening to thank him for entertaining me? Bringing in ego again, for me it was pretty much the highlight of the day (save the Yankees fan who yelled “1918″ in the subway, prompting his Yankee fan friend to yell, “Dude, WHAT did you say??”). I felt like I made a difference in Kyle’s evening. Even if I didn’t, I felt like I did.

If something, God forbid, happened to Kyle Saturday night, it would have happened with him knowing that at least one stranger cared enough to let him know how well he did. What’s wrong with that?

Dan Shaughnessy would have us not care about the players. He tells us that we’re too passionate about the game (“It’s only baseball” is one of his popular refrains when fans dare write him to criticize him), but now he tells us that if we act rationally (giving Randy Moss a chance given the Patriots and their success with the likes of Rodney Harrison and Corey Dillon) that we’re just blind followers. Give it up, Dan. We know that you’ll use any excuse to bash us and we don’t care.

As fans, what we care about is the team…and we think they care about us. It makes the game that much more fun to watch.

And if it isn’t true? If the players act a part just to keep the fandom going? So what? We give out love and support and try to cultivate good feelings – and there’s never anything wrong with that.

He IS terribly pretty but I still hope he gives up six runs in the first.

I figured as a way to jumpstart my brain as well as celebrate my five years blogging I’d spend this week posting entries from 2005-2009.  My original plan was to go back each year and re-post the entry from this day in that year.  Apparently, though, this is the time of year when I get my writer’s block because last year on this date my post was nothing more than a picture of Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson  and underneath it I wrote:  “Congratulations, Jim Ed (hell and Rickey too!)…long overdue!”.

Hoo-boy, that’s good writing there, folks.

So I changed my mind and decided to celebrate the anniversary by posting my favorite entries from over the years.  Starting today and going through the end of the week, it’ll be flashback week at Toeing the Rubber.  This allows me to be both nostalgic and lazy!!!  It will also give newer folks a taste of what’s kept this blog going and my long-time readers will remember what drew them to me in the first place. 

Disappointing last couple of days in Seattle but all I’ll say is this:  If Hideki Okajima doesn’t want to give the Boston sports media an opportunity to pile on with the “why did you stink” questions right after a game in which he did, in fact, stink, I’m really quite all right with that.  I understand why they want to ask but I also understand why he doesn’t want to deal with them.  As an annoying man once said, “The negativity in this town sucks”.  Find a real story and stop trying to create drama, people who get paid to write.

Clay Buchholz against old friend Joel Pineiro (or as Kyle Snyder dubbed him, “The Sexiest Man” in the 2007 Red Sox bullpen and a “Good-looking cat”) at 10:05pm ET.  Let’s hope Clay makes staying up for the game well worth it!

Chosen because I need to be reminded of the players who play for love of the game and aren't money or publicity whores. Plus the sticker is timely!

Well the Yankees PR machine did us in but we gave it a good shot.  Sorry we came up short, Youk.  Hopefully the rest will do you good and you come back after the all star break and break the Yankees (and the rest of the American League) into tiny pieces.  As has been written, we all know you deserved to be an All Star.  Hope you know it too.

Between the news about Youk and the ridiculousness surrounding LeBron James, I decided to go offline early last night and purge my brain of sports thoughts…so waking up this morning to the news that the Mariners will, most likely, trade Cliff Lee to the Yankees wasn’t quit how I was hoping things would go.

Of all the months in a baseball season, I hate July the most.  Between the All Star Game (which I used to enjoy but Bud Selig making it “count” just to save his own ass has turned me off of it) and the trade deadline I spend most of the month on edge.  (Fair warning for the crankiness and snark that might permeate this blog for the next couple of weeks.  I’ll try my best to contain it.)  Youk getting out-voted by Nick Swisher and the possibility of the Yankees acquiring Lee has made me temporarily lose all hope in humanity.  All the stars are aligning for the Yanks right now and that isn’t a baseball world I enjoy participating in.

Tomorrow I’m taking my 9 year-old niece to the Futures at Fenway double header.  We’ll get to watch players playing because they enjoy the game and not because they’re looking for money or attention.  For a few hours tomorrow, I’ll forget that the Yankees are back to owning the universe and just focus on what the future of the Red Sox looks like.  Maybe it’ll help clear my head and make me not want to stab MLB to death?  Maybe I’ll come home to the news that Cliff Lee got traded to a team that could actually use his help and not one that just wants to add to their collection?  At least I’ll get an afternoon to pretend that baseball is about how much talent you have and not about how much money or pull you have.  I’m looking forward to the day even more than I already was.

I’m on the fence about the All Star live chat right now.  If the Lee trade to the Yankees does go through, it’s definitely off.  The idea of listening to Buck and McCarver slurp all over the Yanks for four hours makes me extremely stabby (it’ll be bad enough listening to it without the trade happening).  So stay tuned!

Kyle Snyder. Just because. Courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.

Not writing about last night’s game.  Won’t do it.   As a matter of fact these few words are the last I will mention that game.  We’re done.  Okay, one thing:  They won the battle (beating Ubaldo Jimenez) and lost the war (losing the actual game).  This doesn’t make me feel as good as I thought it would.  Now, we’re really done.  Let us never speak of this again.

What I wanted to write about and what I meant to write about during the game last night is Terry Francona and the fools he has to suffer.  Yesterday on the WEEI Full Count blog, Sam Dykstra posted the transcript of Tito’s appearance on the Dale and Holley Show.  Now I’m not listening to the broadcast for fear I might break my computer so I don’t know who asked this question, but here it is (in regard to Mike Lowell):

You’re doing really well right now without him so why not release him?

They’re doing “really well right now”?  Someone who covers sports professionally actually phrased a question that way?  The Sox are tied for second place so they should just be happy that the wheels aren’t falling off and give into the wishes of a player because nothing else could possibly happen that would make having Mike Lowell on the team a good backup plan, right?  The stupidity of the question is mind boggling but, as usual, Tito is ready with the response:

Well first of all, I would never talk about that with a player, especially on the radio. I can’t do that. But I think you’re being a little short-sighted. What if Youk twisted an ankle tonight? How good would that look? … It’s something that’s not making Mikey very happy, but it’s a long season and as you kind alluded to a minute ago, we’ve gone through a lot of players. It doesn’t always work out perfect for the players’ personal goals. We understand that, and the timetables are a little different sometimes. That’s why we just do the best we can.

I am genuinely amazed that Tito has yet to begin a response to one of these questions with “Are you a friggin’ idiot?”.    I dig Mike Lowell and I hate the situation he’s in.  Well, I hate some of it.  I get that he wants to play and I get that he feels like he’s good to go but I also get that he’s being paid a lot of money to sit on that bench and possibly make it to the playoffs.  Money shouldn’t always be a factor and I often argue with people who want to say things like “For the money he’s making…” but it’s tough to garner sympathy (although Lowell has said straight out that he is NOT looking for sympathy) for a guy who spends his days at a park and pockets lots of cash to do so.  On the other hand, Lowell has done a lot for this team and seems to be a good guy so I feel sorry that he’s seemingly so miserable.

Having written all of that, I think anyone who suggests the Red Sox should just give him his release or trade him in a package that would benefit him more than the team (there is no reason I can think of that it would be a good idea to get rid of him just because he wants to go) is out of his or her mind.  Why should the Red Sox do anything that would benefit him more than the team?  It’s only June.  The season has already been insane with injuries…why put the team in a position to be short a decent back up infielder and/or DH just because he’s a nice guy and wants to leave?  Also, if the Sox lose another player they end up paying to play somewhere else, I just might have to visit Fenway Park and set it on fire.  It is not my desire to see Mike Lowell wither away during what is most likely his last season in MLB.  It is ALSO not my desire to see the Red Sox hamstrung because they took the feelings of a beloved player into consideration over what was best for the team.  Sometimes, as lousy as it is to acknowledge, we have to remember that baseball is a business.

Tito showed he is also on the side of the people I don’t want to punch when he answered the question about Stephen Strasburg being in the All Star Game:

Oh my goodness, no. Maybe the Triple-A All-Star Game. I understand what this kid means to the game and what his potential is, but no, that’d be so disrespectful to a lot of good players. This kid’s made three major-league starts. I think that’d be setting a horrendous precedent. Again, no disrespect for the player, he’s got a chance to be one of the best pitchers in the game, but he’s got a chance. He’s got three starts under his belt. You can’t do stuff like that.

Strasburg has now made 4 starts in the majors (he took his first loss last night against the Royals). He has pitched 25.1 innings in the Bigs. While his numbers are impressive there are plenty of other pitchers who have put in more time this season (I know he’s good, but 25 innings is still a bit of a small sample size, IMO).  I think Tito is spot on here as well.  It’s a terrible precedent to set just because MLB wants to use this kid to help repair their image.  I don’t see it happening but if it does it’ll just give me another reason to root against the National League.

Roster change will be happening tonight.  Daisuke Matsuzaka will be coming off the DL and starting tonight’s game.  There is much speculation over at WEEI.com (the site is oddly obsessed with the Mike Lowell situation.  I know coming from the woman who is still holding out hope that Kyle Snyder gets one more shot at playing baseball talking about someone else’s “obsession” is the pot calling the kettle black, but still…) that Mike Lowell could be involved in the roster move.  Me?  Unfortunately, I think it’ll be JD Drew to the DL…but I’m hoping I’m totally wrong.

EDIT at 2:40pm:  I’m really off my game.  Never saw them putting Lowell on the DL as an option.  This makes my brain hurt. I suppose I get why they’re doing it and I still stand behind what I wrote about the needs of the team coming before the wants of any one player but it’s almost to the point where it feels like they’re purposely torturing this guy and it’s becoming painful to watch unfold.