Lance Berkman told ESPN's Jerry Crasnick that he thinks Bud Selig extorted new Astros owner Jim Crane into moving the team to the AL next season. "I think that's exactly what it was," said the former 'Stro. "To tell [Crane], 'We're going to hold the sale of the team up until you guys agreed to switch?' It just happened that the Astros were being sold at an optimal time for that to happen."
Conspiracy theories aside, here's the latest from around the league…
- Jeff Francis can opt out of his minor league contract with the Reds on March 28th, but he told reporters (including John Fay of The Cincinnati Enquirer) that he will report to Triple-A if he doesn't make the team.
- MLB.com's Todd Zolecki hears that the Phillies have been looking for infield help lately, but no one seems to be a clear upgrade over Freddy Galvis. The Phightin's lost utility man Michael Martinez due to a broken bone in his foot today.
- Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com wrote about all of the Athletics roster turnover. "You do know your time is limited here," said Brandon McCarthy. "You're not looking to put down roots."
- Joe Torre is waiting to see what happens with the Dodgers' ownership situation before returning to his old job at MLB, writes Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. Torre's group bowed out of the bidding because of the parking situation at Dodger Stadium.
- “I think that we as a franchise have a chance to go through sort of an evolutionary process to get us back to where we want to be,” said Mets GM Sandy Alderson to Andrew Keh of The New York Times in the wake of the team's recent financial moves. "From just an overall, organization standpoint, the landscape today is a lot brighter than it was two or three days ago, going into a potential three-week trial."
The Phillies are phalling apart
We would Francis not look for another deal? Another team must want him
As a ‘Stros fan who hates the cardinals, I love Lance Berkman
Berkman should have spoke up sooner. Guess he realized he won’t be playing any more home town road games in Houston after this season. I hate Selig, 9pm baseball games will be unwatchable. Who wants to play against the A’s or M’s? YAWN
Don’t forget those games that will be in the Eastern time zone along with the Central one and games in Houston itself.
the division has three teams in the pacific time zone. so your looking at least 30 games played on the west coast. which means a 9pm start time in houston
Yep, I realize that’s a pain, it’s just that it’s so few games overall.
I rather have Glavis start at second over martinez anyway, though he obviously would have been a useful back up. But Glavis has a better glove and I bet he would put up better numbers than martinez as well.
I’m not sure if Glavis will get the start, I’m thinking it will be Galvis.
Galvis is the starter at 2b. The “problem” is a back up ss. Right now on your projected roster Galvis is the backup there as well. And Galvis is gonna struggle a bit with the bat, at least this at times. I imagine Orr makes the team now as the backup 2b/3b and goes down to AAA when Utley comes back.
There’s plenty of guys out there that are an upgrade over Martinez though…
Such as?
Maicer Izturis and Alberto Callaspo for starters… basically anybody who’s going to obp over .300 and not make careless errors.
When you say “out there”, I assumed you meant free agents.
If Rube were to make a trade now, coming from a position of weakness, he would get bent over, badly, by the Angels.
They decided they didn’t want to own one of the oldest, most storied (and potentially profitable) franchises in all of baseball because of parking?
There are 16000 parking spaces at Dodger Stadium, they charge $15 to park, and play 81 home games. That comes to a potential $19.44M in revenue that would be going to McCourt instead of the team. That’s money that should be used to do things like keep Clayton Kershaw there long term. That’s why the parking situation killed their interest.
It amazes me how many people still beleive the goal for the owners is to put the best team on the field. The true goal of any ownership group is to make money. You can bet that parking revenue would still be pocketed by the owners, no matter who it is.
I know I’m not supposed to bash players here, so all I’ll say is that Berkman sure seems to like hearing himself talk.
he is being accurate in what he said though
Well he is a Rice Graduate…
nice post, thanks for sharing
I’m not sure if Glavis will get the start, I’m thinking it will be Galvis.
Lance Berkman is correct in what he is saying.
The sale of the Astros was supposed to have been voted on Last August, and when Crane told Selig no on the move to the American League, all of a sudden the vote was pulled, and supposedly MLB needed to do more investigations into Crane and a couple of minority owners.
Fast Forward to a November deadline to buy the team or the sale was off, and since Crane wanted to own a team so bad, he said okay..
Not many Astros fans are okay with this and Selig claims that he understands and values history of the game.. Yet when you look back the astros have been around since 1962, and Houston was the minor league team for St. Louis back to the 1920s, so this is almost 100 years of Houston having ties to NL Baseball.
Those I feel sorry for are those who are fans of NL baseball, other NL teams besides Houston who would go to Houston when their favorite team came to play. Now because of this, they have to go to St. Louis, Denver or Atlanta to see their teams play. Not exactly a three hour drive… and in this economy.. please ! ! !
I live just outside of Dallas, and I liked it that I could drive Four hours down the interstate and go see National League players and teams in Houston, now if I want to do that, Denver or St. Louis is a 12 hour drive
I love Lance Berkman, but I’m not gonna start painting him as a genius for coming to this amazing revelation. Everyone knew that when the sale went down 5 months ago. Personally, I think this will be good for the astros because they have a local rivalry now. It’s definately better for baseball in general to finally have even divisions. That’s not to say I think Selig is a good commissioner. Other than this, I would say he’s destroyed a lot of the things in baseball that I considered great.
Phillies take Chone Figgans, M’s get Joe Blanton. Make it happen
What about the Dodgers moving to the AL West? they are being “sold” too and low and behold they are on the West coast! NL Central, no other team is more Central than Houston. Nobody here wants to stay up till 1am watching ball-games. Too many Cub and Cardinal fans live and watch games in Houston what about them?
It still doesn’t solve the problem. The NL Central still has too many teams, which means you have to move somebody, and you just created a hole in the NL West. Obvious solution? Astros to the NL West. What did you change other than moving two teams instead of one? (“No team is more Central than Houston” takes the cake for the lamest argument I’ve seen in the debate, by the way. Stick to arguing time differentials, it’s at least compelling.)