Cleaning out the Inbox

    Time to clean the inbox with various articles of note.

Most people who know me know how much I love "The Office" and while I did know that Steve Carell had played hockey (watching him skate on the show, you knew he had to have played hockey at some time!) I didn't know and learned from the Athletic that Carell actually played college hockey!

Carell was the netminder for Denison College in Ohio. While Denison was considered club level, it's still college hockey, and Carell is still listed on hockey's Elite Prospects website with his own page! 

Carell didn't comment on the story but several of his teammates did and the article covers his years at Denison both on and off the ice.

The Athletic is next with two articles from the Great Britain side of the Atlantic with the first one writing about Kenilworth Road, home of the recently promoted to the Premier League Luton Town, and a stadium so quaint that Luton had to spend millions of dollars to bring it up to the bare minimum of Premier League standards for television.

The home of Luton Town was built in 1905 and is located in a residential section of Luton that you wouldn't expect to see a stadium.

The article also talks to the neighborhood residents about the pros and cons of such a unique stadium.

Luton is building a new home for their team but due to their Premier League promotion were forced to spend money to upgrade Kenilworth Road.

The other offering from the Athletic also concerns an English stadium, this time in Rotherham with Millmoor. This stadium has been unused for soccer since 2008 and is next door to the home of Rotherham United, yet has no plans for renovation or removal.

It's strange to have a stadium stand that long and have no future plans at all.

ESPN.com takes over with two articles of note with the first dealing with the futures of Oregon State and Washington State without the Pac 12 but digs deeper into how the loss of Power Five conference sports will affect the homes of the two schools, Corvallis Oregon and Pullman Washington.

The article also mentions the possible end games for the pair and legal measures that the two schools working together are attempting to try to secure their futures.

The second article from ESPN concerns the planned move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.

It covers the city of Oakland's attempts to build a stadium, why Athletics owner John Fisher decided to move the team, how things became so bad for the team and the city, and what Oakland may want in return for allowing the team to continue to play there while their new home in Las Vegas is built.

I'm torn on this because I do think that the Bay Area is a bit small to have two teams and both are healthy financially.

History has shown it is very rare that both the Giants and Athletics are doing well at the gate and I can see why the Athletics want to leave.

I do wonder about Las Vegas though as it's actually a smaller market than Oakland, although growing and more affluent, and there won't be a sweetheart expansion deal to turn a bad baseball team around as the city received from the NHL with the Golden Knights.

We wrap with a stop at SABR  BaseballGaming with a writer's look at a game from the seventies- Sports Illustrated's All-Time All-Star baseball.

The author writes of how he discovered the game in a toy store, how the game wasn't his first choice,  how the game played, and why he moved on from it to another baseball dice game three years after purchasing it.

Minor League Fantasy Draft-Round Three-Jesus Luzardo

I had forgotten about my fantasy draft after all the various Browns news, so I'll be filling in the final few picks of mine over the next few days.
I plan on perhaps following these players at the end of each month with a post looking at how they are playing at their respective levels,

In the third round, I planned on taking the best pitcher available and there were three pitchers that I had highest on my board ( Two players that I was watching were selected after my second round pick of Heliot Ramos), I looked over things and decided to take Jesus Luzardo of the Oakland Athletics over the other two.

Luzardo, who turned 20 after the 2017 season concluded, was drafted by the Washington Nationals but was traded at the trade deadline last season with Hagerstown Sun Sheldon Neuse to Oakland for pitching help for the Nationals in Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson.
Luzardo underwent Tommy John surgery in high school, but Washington paid a 1.4 million dollar bonus to keep Luzardo from going to the University of Miami.
Washington has had good luck with drafting injured pitchers that dropped through the draft farther than they should have due to injury and then nurturing them through the aftermath of surgery having done just that with Lucas Giolito and Erick Fedde before drafting Luzardo.
Luzardo made his minor debut last year at short-season Vermont and dazzled before the trade in five starts allowing just four earned runs over 18 innings before the trade to Oakland.
Oakland sent him to their Arizona rookie league team first rather than straight to their NY-Penn league in Vermont where he allowed just two earned runs in eleven innings there.
Luzardo's numbers in his three stops ( he also pitched some for the Nationals Gulf Coast league team). were strong with an ERA of 1.66 and 48 strikeouts in 43 innings.
Strikeouts are always a number that I look strongly at the lower levels- mainly that I want to see a strikeout per inning pitched against lower competition.
Even a finesse pitcher should have his share of strikeout in the low minors and if they aren't tricking hitters by either pure stuff or perplexing movement (of either the ball or a deceptive motion) at those levels, they aren't likely to fool many as they climb the ladder.

That's not all from Luzardo, who is reported to sit in the low 90's, but has been listed as hitting 98, he walked just five batters in those 43 innings.
Keep in mind that batters at these stops aren't always known for their plate patience, but still five walks for a hard thrower is pretty impressive to me.
The well-traveled lefthander, who was born in Peru, lived some in Venezuela before settling in Florida for high school has an excellent head on his shoulders besides his three pitches (fastball, curve and change-up) as Luzardo graduated from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, the site of the recent shootings in 2016 and is involved in raising money to honor Douglas A.D. Chris Hixon, who was shot and killed during those shooting as he sought to save others.

It'll be fun to follow the power-armed lefthander as he moves through the Oakland system this season, he is expected to start at Low A Beloit, and even though drafting pitchers are always risky, Jesus Luzardo was a nice selection in round three.

I'll attempt to finish the series with my other picks (I pulled a trade later to add a third player) as the week goes on...