“What you’ll find is that the people on the intellectual baseball blogs will applaud you for it. But your market, the people who pay for the tickets, they might not. Those prospects you get don’t mean anything to them. That’s why I always say that your driving motivation has got to be to be right in the end.”

It’s like the Kzrzyewski coaching tree but even less successful.

/self hate.

“We’ve actually spent a lot of time on Morton. We really like him,” Shapiro said. “There’s some concern because there’s a lack of track record. His history doesn’t quite match what he’s doing now. But there is stuff. We would have liked to have gotten him. Especially in the National League, he’s got a chance to be a middle-of-the-rotation guy.”

I thought that was interesting.

Seems like a good excuse to post this picture again.

PLEATS!

“I really like [left-hander Jeff] Locke,” he said. “To me, he has a chance to be Jon Lester. And if [right-hander Charlie] Morton just throws strike one, he’ll win 15-16 games a year, if not more. And one thing no one can dispute is that [outfielder] Gorkys Hernandez has five tools. Those tools still need a lot of work. But he can be a top-of-the-order guy who can give you power and produce runs. And he can run and throw and play some kind of center field. So to me, that was a deal where both teams got what they wanted and ”http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings090611" target="new">needed."