83Gator

Dump Castro now. We don't need this loser on our team. I wouldn't dump him yet. I think they should put him on some kind of suspended list for the rest of the season, with pay (he's only owed about $50,000). Put the typical spin of "we want him to concentrate on his off-field issues, which are much more important than baseball." Then see how it plays out over the next couple of months. If the evidence comes out and it looks bad, then dump him. But if this ends up being a bogus charge, which happens sometimes, then we can deal with it later. He needs to come off the active roster and stay away from the ballpark for the rest of the season but I don't think the team should react too strongly right now and cut him. Maybe it seems trite to some, but he is innocent until proven guilty. And like any employer, the team needs to send the message to its other players that they'll support them when something happens. If he's innocent, I hope he gets to resume his career in baseball. If he's guilty, I hope he finds a new long career making license plates. But let's see how it plays out before we rush to judgment.

It's been done. Billy Martin did it at least twice, once while managing the Tigers in 1972 and once with the Yankees in 1977. His team won both games. In the Yankee game, he had Chris Chambliss batting 8th; Chambliss drove in 5 runs.

He doesn't belong here now. They can bring him up Monday when the rosters expand and they don't have to demote or DL somebody.

I keep having the feeling that we've just been outsmarted by the Clippers. They end up with Brand and we get Lamar Odom. Maybe we should've gone after Odom first.

Sounds like Rick Carlisle has a good shot to replace Thomas.

Nice looking page. I ran into a couple of broken links. If you click on the Columns or Schedule links, it can't find the page. If I select something in the dropdown list under those links, it's fine. I'm using IE 5.5.

I'm another non-hater. Lee's kinda like Looper. He's not an All-Star and he's clearly not the best in the league. But like Looper, there's only 3 or 4 other guys in the league that are better. He's frustrating but we could do a whole lot worse. In fact, since he's swinging the bat better, and as badly as we need runs, it may be time to move him up in the lineup. Maybe even to cleanup and take some pressure off Lowell for a few games.

SO WAKE THE F.... UP!!!! BECAUSE IF YOU WANT $$$$ YOU MUST PLAY NOW!! Dude, it's not like he's batting poorly on purpose or he's not paying attention out there. He's in a bad slump. Remember last year, he managed to get out of it in September and have a good last month so he may be able to pull out of it.

English is not his first language, after all he is in Canary Islands, Spain. Ah, that explains it. That's not bad then.

I'm come back and Marlins come to win. You can see now, today at 7.05 Don't worry Phillies was lost too. We've the Wild Card. A question: Any people know when play ant Marlins match on ESPN Sunday Nigth or ESPN Wednesday Night? Thanksssss Hey Admin - I know you had the software to translate the home page into different languages. Do you have anything that will translate posts into English?

2 days a week is too much, especially as bad as Mordecai and Fox have hit this year. Mordecai hit a couple of huge HRs but they're hitting a combined .206. They'd have to get hot just to get up to where Gonzalez has slumped to. And that's not even mentioning the huge defensive drop off. I wouldn't mind seeing Gonzalez get 2 straight games off, but just once to try to snap him out of it, not every week. If he doesn't snap out of it, we'll just have to suffer with him. He's the best we got.

Niels isn't the only one panicking. The Phillies mlb board had a thread titled "Is it time to turn off the lights?" before today's loss against the Brewers. They had won 5 straight before dropping 2 on the road and were leading the Wild Card race but their fans thought it was over. If we go 2-4 or even 1-5 on the Colorado/San Francisco trip, we'll still be in decent shape, thanks to Milwaukee. I'd be unhappy to lose that many games but better teams than us have gotten beaten on west coast road trips.

I'm glad we're ranked high but y'all make it sound like it's surprising. We have the 7th best record in baseball - this is right around where we should be ranked.

The problem with the manager of the year award is that it's really the "Manager of the Team that was Most Badly Underestimated by the Media in the Preseason" award. If Pena gets wins 90 games and gets the Royals to the playoffs this year, he'll win the AL Manager of the Year award. If he does it again next year with the same exact players, he won't finish in the top 3 in the voting. McKeon has had a huge effect on the Marlins. Just about everybody not named Mike Berardino believes that the Marlins would be out of contention if Torborg was still the manager. I don't know that we can say the same thing about the Royals and Pena. Other guys could possibly have turned around the Royals too. On the other hand, other guys may have been able to turn around the Marlins. The only thing we're 100% sure of is that Torborg didn't do the job. Personally, I'd vote for McKeon over anybody in either league. Unfortunately, I don't get a vote.

How is tony Pena the manager of the year IF there were an award for manager of the year in the majors? Because that's how I think the media would vote. I don't know if that's fair or not because I haven't followed the Royals that closely other than I know they're making one of the biggest turnarounds of all time. But I think the media would give it to Pena over anybody else. It's not worth debating anyways because there are two awards and we don't have to even worry about Pena, other than playing "what if." And please stop "shouting". You're giving me a headache.

He can replace fox. Why? What has Lenny Harris done this year that warrants putting him on our post-season roster? He's 38 years old. He may be washed up. If somebody got legitimately hurt, I'd bring him up. But otherwise, I'd rather just go with the guys that got us this far.

I don't think Harris has done anything to show he deserves to be on our postseason roster over anybody currently in the majors. Sure our PH has been bad, but Hollandsworth has gone 4 for 11 as a PH with an 1.318 OPS. Since Cabrera became our regular LF, Hollandsworth has moved to the bench where he belongs (though not at this salary) and made our bench and PH stronger. Besides, the guy he'd most likely replace, Mike Mordecai, has hit two game-winning HRs after coming in as a late inning replacement, a role that Harris would fill. Lenny Harris doesn't have 2 HRs all year. I think replacing Hollandsworth as the primary left-handed pinch hitter and Mordecai as a utility guy with Lenny Harris weakens our team. As far as veteran leadership, didn't Mordecai play on some playoff teams with the Braves?

There is one for each league. Pe?a will get the AL one, McKeon gets the NL one. I know there's one for each league. I was answering c/r who said that McKeon is the manager of the year in the majors. I was saying that IF there was only one for the majors, it would go to Pe?a. The operative word was "IF".

As a philies fan I was really disapointed with the Phils losing. But if we lose the wild card to you guys, I would not be all that upset. Just promise me one thing, if you make it to the playoffs, sweep the Braves out of it. That is if the wild card team plays the braves, I am not sure. How does that work? who plays who? If the Wild Card comes out of the East, the Braves will play the Central champs in the first round and the Wild Card will play the Giants (assuming the Giants win the division and have a better record than the Central division champs). The division winner with the best record plays the Wild Card in the first round, unless they're in the same division.

Right now, Jack IS the manager of the year in the majors. If there was one award for the majors, it would go to Tony Pena. You're giving Felipe Alou too much credit too. I didn't think I was giving Alou any credit. Braves loosing alot of their pitching staff?? They have a 17 game winner, which is like having 1 8 game winner and a 9 game winner on a staff, hampton, horacio who complement the rest of the staff pretty nicely.? Their bullpen is about regular and smoltz takes the rest of the load on himself.? Without smoltz, you wouldnt even be mentioning Cox for manager of the year.? Castilla is also hitting .280 with 20 homers... fick aint no pushover either and with J.Lo hitting 34 bombs, Chipper and Fick can hit as mediocre as they want.? They also got a pleasant surprice with Giles and Sheff is doing spectacular... remember... the braves had 7 all stars.. and the only one that really didnt belong was Giles... I'll give you that even I could manage that team and look like a genious with that given lineup ... but not that.

Most of that Expos team belongs in AAA... Common man, Carroll? Cipikey? I dont even want to look at that roster... You could do that with any team. Somebody could look at the Marlins and say "Come on man, Almanza? Hollandsworth? I don't even want to look at that roster..." You could look at the Expos roster and say "Vlad, Vidro, Cabrera - that team's going all the way." You'd be wrong if you said that by looking at the stars on the team just like you're wrong for ignoring them. I don't think they have enough to win the WC. They had to travel too much, their pitching staff's been injured, and their bullpen is terrible. But they are catching up. I think the race is going to come down to whoever stays the healthiest.

It ain't just the Phillies we should be looking at. The Expos have won 6 straight and are now only 3.5 behind us.

I think it should go to McKeon. Without Jack McKeon, the Marlins wouldn't be in the race. Without Baker and Alou, the Cubs and Giants respectively would still be winning games. Dusty Baker has done well with the Cubs. But while everybody talks about them coming back from 95 losses last year, they had won 88 games the year before that. With Sosa, Wood, and Prior, they were probably going to bounce back regardless. Besides, Baker should be disqualified for giving 130 ABs to Lenny Harris (who by the way is only 4 for 20 in AAA). The Giants are lucky. 19-8 in 1-run games. Alou wasn't exactly taking over a bunch of underachievers - they went to the World Series last year. They lost some players but they made some nice pickups too. The only guy I wouldn't mind getting it besides McKeon is Bobby Cox. The managers of the good teams never get the credit they deserve. The Braves have the best record in baseball despite losing a lot of the pitching staff, playing Fick and Castilla in the IF, and Chipper having a down year.

Yeah, you are right. I can understand how hard it would be to pick up that highly complex "I got it" in English. The original New York Mets had that problem. Felix Mantilla would always run over Richie Ashburn in short center. So finally one game, on a short fly to left-center, Ashburn shouted "Yo lo tengo! Yo lo tengo!" Mantilla stopped short but Ashburn got run over by the left fielder, Frank Thomas.

Anyone who thinks Pudge is going to come back for any other reason besides money is on crack. I suppose you also beleive that Lowell would give the Fish a "hometown discount" too. Pudge is gone Luis is gone D. Lee is gone Pudge would come back to SoFla if the money was real close and the team we were bidding against wasn't Texas. That's not going to happen, so he's gone. I bet he ends up in Texas, but maybe the Cubs will take a run at him. Luis is gone unless the market really dries up for him. He's another that will come back if the money is close but if San Diego goes after him and opens up like they've been rumored to, we can't compete. Lee is gone if we decide to trade him. He's not a free agent. What we do with him will depend on what we do with the other guys, including Lowell. Everyone else besides Cabrera and Pierre could be gone. No, anyone else could be gone, not everyone else. If we lose Pudge, Luis, Hollandsworth, and Nunez, the projected payroll of $81 million that Berardino talks about is down to about $58 million and that includes Hampton's money and Pudge's 2003 deferral. So we won't have to lose everyone. We can bring back more guys than you'd think. Also, I think it's a pretty safe bet that Willis will be back too.