AGRI Biz

At 1 am, the Red Sox announced their 25-man Opening Day roster in an e-mail to the media. Executive Vice President/General Manager Theo Epstein made the announcement. If you have any doubt as to the reasons this organization is successful, all you need to know is that the front office was toiling away at 1 am on Easter Sunday morning. The club confirmed the last few transactions which finalized the roster: southpaw ...

Drafted: 17th Round, 2006 (Middle Georgia JC) Height: 6′2″; Weight: 180 lbs Born: February 19, 1987 Josh Reddick hails from Effingham County, Georgia, which is located approximately twenty miles north of the magnificent Antebellum city of Savannah. He was born to be a baseball player.  It’s all he has wanted to do since he was four years old and it’s all he wants to do for the next 15 or 20 years. It seems ...

A few years ago, the Red Sox front office decided to experiment with Bill James’ closer-by-committee theory, and we all know how THAT worked out for them. This season, Theo & Company have decided to pursue the concept of run prevention as opposed to run production — and over the course of the next several months we will learn how THAT will all learn how THAT will work out for them. It ...

After winning their first World Series in nearly a decade, the Yankees refused to stand pat and spent the off-season making wholesale changes to an increasingly-aging roster. As a result, they re-tooled for another AL East title and put themselves in position to challenge for back-to-back championships. The Yankees said goodbye to players at both ends of the career spectrum - aging veterans near the end of their playing days and ...

Over the last few years, the Tampa Bay Rays have converted from an also-ran into a contender. Last year at this time, they were the defending American League champions. In my 2009 preview article, I posed a question: will they be able to win now that it is expected from them? The answer was mixed: yes, they won…but just not enough. And so the question lingers, but must be asked a little ...

The Orioles struggled through their twelfth consecutive losing season in 2009, finishing with a 64-98 record which, surprisingly, was four games worse than their record in 2008 (I say “surprisingly” as I had expected some minimal improvement from the O’s last season). The upcoming season looks to be considerably better, as I expect the Orioles' rebuilding process will finally start bearing fruit after more than a decade. Just how much the ...

The Blue Jays finished the 2009 season with a surprisingly-decent 75-87 record, but it is really hard to imagine they can come close to repeating that performance this year. Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos traded long-time ace, Roy Halladay (17-10, 2.79), this winter as part of a three-team trade.  He then flipped one of the prospects received in the Halladay trade (OF Michael Taylor) for another prospect (3B Brett Wallace). Those deals ...

Ryan Kalish grew up in Red Bank, N.J. In high school, he starred on the gridiron and the diamond. He was offered a baseball scholarship from the University of Virginia and planned on attending, in part, because the Cavaliers baseball program agreed to let him play football. He had decided he would go to college and play two sports if he was unable to secure a professional baseball contract on the terms ...

The White Sox have made wholesale changes over the course of the last twelve months, acquiring RHP Jake Peavy, 3B Mark Teahen, and OFs Alex Rios, Juan Pierre, and Andruw Jones, while introducing 2B Gordon Beckham to his first big league action. While the organization traded a couple of its better prospects in the Peavy deal, they managed to obtain a staff ace without gutting the minor league system. The division is ...

The Twins are coming off a very successful 2009 campaign in which they finished in a first-place tie with the Detroit Tigers (86-76), and then won a one-game playoff to move into the postseason. This year they will open their new, open-air stadium, Target Field (pictured), which is reportedly a hitter-friendly ballpark… that fact may cause havoc with the club’s hope of repeating as division champs. The Twins have lots of questions in their ...