I couldn’t find any good videos for your viewing pleasure this week, so here are a couple photos I snapped during Wednesday night’s Padres-Orioles game at Petco Park in San Diego. The O’s should do whatever they can to keep Nick Markakis in Baltimore as long as possible. Dude has serious game.

Something is rotten in the state of Maryland. The ballclub from Baltimore is in full free fall, and manager Sam Perlozzo has been let go. As everyone knows, when your superiors make poor decisions, you will be the one to suffer for it. Perlozzo ultimately couldn’t rise above his organization’s ineptitude, and now he is looking for work again.
The Orioles, meanwhile, are talking to former Florida Marlins manager Joe Girardi about the vacant position. Girardi, you may recall, led a team with a $15 million payroll to 78 wins last season. That’s a little less than Baltimore is paying Danys …read more

I managed to watch parts of five games yesterday. Not sure what that says about me, but there it is. Some quick impressions:

Brett Myers and John Smoltz both were in mid-season form yesterday. Smoltz in particular was making guys look silly with off-speed stuff. He seems like another one of those pitchers that could keep going strong well into his 40s.
Adam Dunn is a very strong man. That second home run he hit to dead center on the first pitch from Carlos Zambrano was a jaw-dropper. It must be fun to get a hold of one like that.
Johan Santana looked …read more

I’ve finished up my second fantasy draft of the spring (my first is here). This is a 12-team AL-only Scoresheet league (we can protect up to two players that cross over to the NL) . I lost track of how many rounds we were drafting and shorted myself a bit in the pitching department. I’ll be able to address that in the supplemental drafts, though. This should get me through the first few weeks of the season:

SP: John Lackey, Ana; Jon Garland, ChA; Josh Beckett, Bos; C.C. Sabathia, Cle; Scott Kazmir, TB; Glen Perkins, Min; Thomas Diamond, Tex; Bartolo Colon, …read more