Neal Huntington joined with Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein (I know!) this weekend at Buster Olney’s “Going to Bat for Vermont Farmers” benefit to help the region recover from Hurricane Irene, and Jed from Sox Detox was there to chronicle the event. He wrote that Huntington, who’s inclusion probably stems from the fact that he’s a New Hampshire native, held his own pretty well with the big-market guys and in a brief chat with him afterwards discussed everything from trading Joel Hanrahan to Rod Barajas to Pedro Alvarez to Starling Marte to pitcher development. It’s definitely worth your time to check out both links.
Ryan Doumit reportedly turned down a 1-year/$3 million offer from the Dodgers over the weekend. That’s quite a bit less than the Pirates would’ve owed him on his team option and even less than the Pirates are paying Rod Barajas, so it’s possible that quite a few clubs have downgraded Doumit due to his poor defense behind the plate and inability to stay healthy. Jerry Crasnick expects him to sign a one-year deal (presumably to drive his value up some) soon. As Tim pointed out last week, that’d be nice because it’d ensure that the Pirates get a draft pick for him, assuming that sort of compensation for Type B free agents holds in the new CBA.
Speaking of which, Buster Olney has some interesting stuff on the new CBA this morning and it looks like there will be some real changes to the draft. They would include a 10-round ceiling based on slot recommendations. Teams wouldn’t be forced to adhere to slot guidelines, but they’d be penalized for going over the ceiling. Right now it looks like they’ll be taxed the first time and penalized by losing a pick the second time. Nothing’s set in stone yet, but it looks like this is aimed at keeping teams like the Pirates from making big first and second round picks. Which is pretty unfortunate, for obvious reasons. We’ll have to stay tuned to see how it all plays out.
Gerrit Cole had a solid bounce-back performance on Saturday after his disastrous start in the AFL Rising Stars Game. He struck out four, walked one, and gave up one run on two hits in a three inning outing.
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