Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

I'm amazed that some people still debate whether Ichiro Suzuki is a Hall of Fame Player or not. Ichiro has been in the league for 8 years and each year he's been an All-Star and won a Gold Glove. He's also had over 200 hits in each of his seasons and won 2 batting titles. This year Ichiro is batting .342 and shows no sign of slowing down. To top it off - when you see him play in person he's simply mesmerizing. I've seen him play a few times and you can't take your eyes off him... Bobby Abreu's batting average dropped 65 points in May. He hit just .221 for the month (not including today's game). I just don't seem to like Bobby Abreu... Speaking of Bobby Abreu - of the minor leaguers that Philly got back as part of the Cory Lidle/Abreu trade - only Matt Smith made an impact. Too bad for the Phillies that the impact was to have an 11.25 ERA in 9 games back in 2007. That trade between the Phillies and Yankees will go down in history as a textbook salary dump trade... I'm not a fan of collusion but I'd be willing to set aside my scruples for a minute to get the MLB owners to agree to block the Washington Nationals from drafting San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg. Scott Boras is going to have a field day with the mess that is the Nationals front office and the money Strasburg will get will unbalance the pay scale an unprecedented amount. Then again - this could be the perfect storm that leads to a rookie pay scale... In Nick Carfardo's notes column today - he asks, "How about Omar Vizquel as a fill-in shortstop for the Red Sox until Jed Lowrie comes back?" I love that idea but there are two problems - Jed Lowrie is almost back and why would the Rangers give up the versatile Vizquel?