Free Tacos Today
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by Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook
Free Tacos Today Courtesy of Jacoby Ellsbury
Today is the day 303,246,177 Americans will go to their neighborhood Taco Bell to pick up their free crunchy beef taco. Between 2-5 this afternoon Americans will be enjoying free tacos thanks to the generosity of Taco Bell and Jacoby Ellsbury who stole the base that qualified all of America for a free taco. So Ellsbury has over 303 million fans who are thankful he stole the base that qualified all of America to be given a free taco.
Taco Bell probably won't lose money on the promotion in the long run even if they lose money today because they hope to win new customers who like their taco so much they may return again and order other items from their menu in the coming weeks. What Taco Bell is hoping more than likely is that about 2 million of those Americans entitled to free tacos will forget all about the free tacos until 5:01 PM and be ineligible and since they are in store anyway order a smorgasboard of Taco Bell products. Hope the word gets out to the homeless and those with babies who are entitled to the free tacos even if the babies can't eat them. American owes a debt of gratitude to Ellsbury who has enabled all of America to not go hungry for at least one day.
Offseason News
Now that the Red Sox have achieved the objective of every major league team to win the World Series we can concentrate on what the players and teams are doing now to prepare for the 2008 season.
We will soon be finding out who will win the various awards given in the offseason as they are disclosed week by week. It is a safe bet to say Alex Rodriguez will win the AL MVP but there will probably be some close votes in the other awards given.
Geoff Jenkins will no longer play for the Milwaukee Brewers which is no surprise considering the plethora of outfielders who had to share playing time last season. This may be the chance Anthony Gwynn Jr. needed to get more playing time in 2008. Brewers declined to exercise their option on Jenkins who had played his entire ten year career with Brewers and had hit 212 home runs and had 704 RBI's and hit .277 as a Brewer.
An interesting website to watch during the offseason is mlb4u.com which is a website that lists all the free agents and also list the agent for each player for those who want to know what players Scott Boras is representing and a lot of general managers may be going to the site to make sure not to try to sign any players represented by Boras.
In the first major trade of the offseason the Atlanta Braves sent Edgar Renteria to the Tigers in exchange for Jair Jurrjens, who was 3-1 for the Tigers last year, and minor league outfielder Gorkys Hernandez, who stole 54 bases for West Michigan in Midwest League while hitting .293. Jurrjens will be 22 on January 29th and Hernandez was 22 last month.
The trade makes the Tigers even stronger offensively as they can now move Carlos Guillen to first base. Guillen hit 21 home runs and drove in 102 runs and hit .296 a huge upgrade over Sean Casey, who had 4 home runs and 54 RBI's and also hit .296. Renteria is known for his clutch hitting and I saw several games last season in which he delivered clutch hits for the Braves. He also returns to play for his manager Jim Leyland, who guided the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series and Renteria delivered the game winning single in the game that won the championship.
Yunel Escobar almost certainly will play shortstop for the Braves next season since he hit .326 after being called up. Jurrjens should be a starter in a rotation that needed a good fourth and fifth starter and it is still possible Tom Glavine may join the rotation if the Braves decide to spend the money it will take to acquire Glavine.
Joe Girardi has been offered the manager's position with the New York Yankees but so far has not accepted the position but Don Mattingly has said he will not coach for the Yankees at any level in 2008. So now two Yankee icons in Joe Torre and Mattingly will be missing from the Yankee dugout in 2008. Mattingly has not disclosed any other plans for the 2008 season but that could change in the coming months. There are rumors that Torre will take the place of Grady Little with the Dodgers who may be fired soon and bring Mattingly with him as a coach.
Alex Rodriguez will more than likely also be missing from Yankees dugout in 2008 after opting out of the last three years of his $252 million contract. Rodriguez failed to parlay regular season success into postseason success with the Yankees except for the 2004 postseason when he hit three home runs and drove in eight runs and hit .320.
However, in the last three postseasons he has a total of one home run and one RBI and has only seven hits in his last 54 postseason at bats. If Rodriguez leaves it could signal the exodus of other long time Yankees like Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. One thing for sure is that the Yankees have subsituted one Joe for another with Joe Girardi taking over for Joe Torre but Girardi may find it harder to compete in AL East than Torre did. Brian Cashman will have a busy offseason trying to keep the team competitive probably needing to replace Rodriguez for sure and possibly Posada and Rivera and even Bobby Abreu.
One rumor is that with Rodriguez gone the Yankees would acquire Mike Lowell to play third base. Think it is safe to say the Yankees won't make a huge outlay of money for Roger Clemens to pitch part of a season in 2008. 6-6 pitchers don't deserve that kind of money and they could call up a minor league pitcher who they would have to pay the 2008 minimum salary of $390,000. Must be nice to start a job getting paid that kind of money. I wonder if there is a market for 63 year old lefthanders like myself?
It was no surprise that Balco Bonds has declared for free agency. It is a case of which team is willing to endure the Bonds media circus that follows him and all the distractions that entails.
The first day of the offseason is over and it looks like we will have plenty of hot stove league action to discuss over the fall and winter.
