Red Sox and Francona Split

I just had to push at least one more post out before the end of the month. I'll beat the deadline...barely. It wasn't a kind month for blog posts for many reasons:

• The Mariners sucked
• There weren't pennant races until the last week of the season (but how awesome were they once they showed up?)
• My job ramped up again with the start of the school year, meaning lots of training at the start of the month
• My job is also strongly tied to Tacoma Public Schools, so the teacher strike threw off my schedule pretty good for a good chunk of the month after training
• I've been working on some bigger posts, which will come out in October

I do post things in my Google reader somewhat frequently (click on the "Reader" tab above to get to it), if you are ever looking for something to read with your downtime that is almost always related to sports.

With my apology and explanation out of the way, back to baseball. It's been a crazy week, and with the playoffs here, the craziness may not stop (though I think we've already seen the most dramatic action we'll get). Even with all the drama on the field, the most inexplicable news to me came out this morning, when Terry Francona and the Boston Red Sox split ways.

Filling Out The 2012 Roster

Another long season is about to conclude. It's been time to look forward to 2012 for a while now. Coming off the successful Filling Out The 2011 Roster post, here is my attempt at the same thing for 2012:

The Z Difference

I got to thinking this evening that there are currently three players from the 2009 draft on the Mariners roster - 2B Dustin Ackley, 3B Kyle Seager, and LHP Anthony Vasquez. It's way, way too early to close the book on the 2009 draft, but if history repeats itself, there will be some teams that do not get three players out of their 2009 draft classes ever. Just having a trio from a draft only two years ago make it to the majors is something to celebrate.

In fact, I got to thinking: What was the last Mariners draft class to generate three MLB players?