What’s Entailed In This “Plan” Exactly?

• Alyssa’s “Plan”:

    I didn’t read the posting, but the promo for Alyssa Milano’s blog on the front page is leaving itself wide open for rampant speculation. Take a look:

Actress and TOUCH designer Alyssa Milano is a Dodgers season ticket-holder and MLBlogger.

Alyssa goes to bat to keep Manny in Los Angeles

Manny Ramirez has been on a tear since his trade to LA and Alyssa Milano has a plan to keep him in Dodger blue for years to come. Leave Alyssa a comment and start blogging with her!

    Hmmm. This “plan” could veer off into several directions, some of which aren’t appropriate for the family-friendly nature of my blog, but might actually be the most effective options at keeping Manny’s monetary price down to keep him in LA.

• The draft slotting system:

    I’m not sure why many teams even entertain the idea of having the league tell them, without any firm repercussions, what they should be paying potential employees; it seems to be a mandate to follow league orders when there’s no salary cap and the only punishment is an angry phone call. It is a bad sign when one of the architects of the system, Frank Coonelly, is named president of the team with the second pick in the draft in the Pittsburgh Pirates, then the Pirates draft Pedro Alvarez, who’s represented by Scott Boras. Coonelly and Boras are in a stare-down and neither is going to blink unless Alvarez tells his agent to get a deal done, which is hard to see happening because these players should be smart enough to know what hiring Boras entails. All this slotting system does is try to hold down the money drafted players make and it’s going to come to two conclusions: teams are just going to ignore the system; or they’re going to draft players who are less likely to hold out—-players who have exhausted their amateur eligibility and won’t want to risk their livelihoods playing in independent leagues. They should just dispatch this slotting system once and for all because it’s a decent idea that’s not working.

• Diamondbacks 6-Rockies 2:

     It may be time for the Rockies to throw in the towel. The Dodgers are getting their traction with their acquisitions and returning players from injury and the Diamondbacks will be there until the end of the season; the Rockies are 14 games under .500 and eight games out of first place. It’s a valid argument that since the hot streak late last season to vault them into the World Series was such a stunning development, then they deserved at least a chance to repeat the feat this year, but there are major differences between the two; not the least being that the team last year at this time the team was five games over .500 and five games out of first place. They should give it another week and GM Dan O’Dowd should deal their veterans and bag the season.

• Rays 7-Athletics 6; Ziegler gives up a run:

    I’m kind of glad that Brad Ziegler finally allowed a run because I wasn’t looking forward to the back-and-forth arguments of the worthiness of a starter’s scoreless inning streak (Orel Hershiser) vs a reliever’s scoreless inning streak. I said the other day that there’s no way to compare them and that the starter’s accomplishment is much more impressive; there would have been arguments the other way as well and it would’ve gone on forever.