Cleaning out the inbox

For this post, we will mention a few things that have accumulated in the home office's inbox, where various articles have built up over my absence. The Pirates lost eight games in a row, but have rebounded for two home wins over the visiting Cardinals. The series ends tonight at PNC before a three-game weekend visit from the Colorado Rockies. 

 Pitching Matchup St.Louis: Mitchell Boggs (1-0 3.50 ERA) at Pittsburgh: Jeff Karstens (1-1 5.19 ERA) 7:05 

 Hockey's Future has a look back at this past season's results for the prospects in the Devils farm system and how each of them fared, along with some thoughts on their future projection. From the looks of things and their thoughts, the Devils are not as barren as one might have thought before the season began and that is nothing, but good news. We will have our annual season in review/off-season to-do list post around draft time, which is around a month or so for the Devils.

 In Lou We Trust featured two thought-provoking posts about the Devils dipping into the free agency pool and being able to keep the players on the team that are free agents as well. We will cover our thoughts on these issues in the above-mentioned future post.

  This link discusses the differences in organizational philosophy on pitch counts between Tampa and Texas. The Rays use a strict pitch count and have chosen to lay off pitchers totally at times in an effort to conserve arms, while the Rangers under new team president Nolan Ryan are disdaining pitch counts using the argument that the arm is a muscle that needs to be built up and not babied. I tend to lean slightly towards the Texas argument as long as you use that program at all levels. It does no good at all to gently use a prospect's arm for years in the minors and then heap large amounts of use onto the player upon his arrival to the majors. 

Wilbur Miller disagrees somewhat and we will be having a future debate on both sides of this issue in a future post here. Speaking of Wilbur, I had the best time all season at a Hagerstown game in the West Virginia series as I was surrounded by solid baseball men in Wilbur, our friend Wooden, Ryan, our up-and-coming young mind Hank and of course the ever-present Battling Bob. Loads of baseball talk and a good time had by all... Sorry to hear of the passing of Jack Kemp from cancer at the age of 73. Kemp's eclectic resume' includes GOP Vice Presidential nominee, Presidential candidate, Congressman, think tank operator, labor leader, and AFL championship-winning quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in 1964 and 1965. 

 This article deals with the loss of the Pontiac brand after General Motors announced plans to discontinue the brand. Pontiac joins Oldsmobile among others on the GM scrap heap. I am neither a car expert nor aficionado, but it seems like much of GM's problem through the years with their various brands with icon status has been this-you cannot make basically the same car and just slap a Pontiac, Olds, Buick, etc tag on different cars and have nothing else to distinguish it from others. Sad to see these classic names on the death pile. Back tomorrow or possibly later with more thoughts as the relentless pounding of the clock continues.

 Photo Credits Devils: New Jersey Devils Kemp: Topps