Leave It To The Kids

Everyone has their addictions. For some it is the hankering for a cup of coffee, for others it may be the lottery, but for me, it’s baseball prospects. I have collected memorabilia and baseball cards for my whole life; the idea just piqued my interest at a young age and has never gone away. Cards are what began my prospect “addiction”, and here’s how: Just like the in stock market where someone with little money has to look for the possibility of large growth in a newer, cheaper stock because proven stocks are too pricey, I discovered that while I love Ken Griffey Jr. and Pedro Martinez, it would be too expensive for me to buy their best cards. This is where prospects entered my life. I saw that while every prospect might not pan out, somewhere in the vast ocean of the minor leagues there is the next Griffey Jr. The MLB, NFL and NBA drafts are like three extra Christmases to me, a whole new crop of talent to pick apart and in my attempt to find that needle in the haystack.

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

I love fantasy sports. I started my first fantasy football league in 2005, and have played every year since, some years with more teams than others. I used to play fantasy baseball, but the problem with that is you have to find a league with people who are really (and I mean REALLY) into it, otherwise everyone loses interest by early June. I played fantasy basketball for a couple of years too, and while that was fun at first, it became apparent pretty quickly that, unless you had LeBron James or Kevin Durant on your team, you really didn’t have much of a shot at winning anything. Regardless of what fantasy sport you’re playing, though, or who’s in the league with you, they all have one thing in common: That Guy.

Friday Update: The Hot Stove Cools Off, Big Papi’s Last Ride, Plus 3 Up, 3 Down

at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on April 2, 2014 in Baltimore, Maryland.

After the Red Sox turned the Hot Stove all the way up to 10 last Friday night with their acquisition of Craig Kimbrel, things cooled off considerably this week with reports that Dave Dombrowski and company weren’t looking to make any other big trades this offseason, as well as news that the Sox had pulled out of the running for righty reliever Joakim Soria. I covered the Kimbrel trade briefly here, and I still stand by what I said about the prospects given up in the trade. A lot has come out over the course of the week about how the Red Sox gave up way too much for the 27-year-old closer, but as far as I’m concerned, that they didn’t tap into the Yoan Moncada/Rafael Devers/Anderson Espinoza/Andrew Benintendi quartet makes all the difference.