Gregg Zaun an Oriole; Quick Hits
It looks like a familiar face to Orioles -- Gregg Zaun -- will indeed come back for a second tour duty.
Last night, reporter and columnist, Dan Connolly of The Baltimore Sun said that Gregg Zaun has agreed to a one year contract with the Orioles that includes a team option for 2010.
He will earn $1.5 million in 2009 and the Orioles have the option of paying him $2MM in 2010 or buying him out for $500,000. The veteran catcher should get the bulk of the starts behind the plate before uber-prospect Matt Wieters starts his majoe league career.
- Baltimore Orioles single game tickets go on sale Saturday at 10am. It will be interesting to see the ratio of out-of-town fans versus Oriole fans in the park this season.
- With spring training coming up within the month, the Orioles have released a list of players who have been invited to camp.
- Pete Kerzel of Pressbox believes that Orioles should trot out the kids in 2009...
- Nick Markakis, George Sherrill & Luke Scott have filed for arbitration, ensuring that the trio should at least get a nice, hefty payday in the next few weeks.
- Orioles Hangout gives their take on the Gregg Zaun deal.
6 comments:
This is probably a nice little move. I guess he's more of an insurance policy, but better Zaun than Moeller.
By the way, any thoughts on Zaun's being named in the Mitchell Report?
I forgot about this -- you're right.
I don't think anyone cares about players who are marginal or suck who were mentioned in the Mitchell Report -- just the superstars and the future HOF's.
Either way, I think anyone who used drugs -- sparingly vs. hardcore -- broke the rules.
However, the judgment when it comes to drug use comes is the difference of those who produce and who don't -- much as in the case with Brian Roberts vs. Jay Gibbons.
The Gibbons vs. Roberts double stanard is a good one here in Baltimore.
Everyone he said that forgave Brian because he apologized. of course, Gibby apologized, too. He just didn't produce.
And Zaun, as far as I can tell, hasn't apologized at all. He made a really lame excuse, claiming that he gave someone a blank check and that person then forged Zaun's signature and passed it to Radomski.
Sounds likely.
The Gibbons vs. Roberts debate is one that the mainstream media just completely glossed over.
Again, both guys were pretty much the good guys on the team, but again one hit, the other didn't.
Fans basically wiped Brian's hands of his misdeeds -- he talked about it once and really never bought it up again; meanwhile, Gibbons -- who may have been one of the very few aside from Pettitte to fess up and actually seem contrite (for getting caught) -- apologized and wanted to make up for it. However, he was blackballed from the game until just recently.
Again, Gibbons was not a jerk in any sense of the word -- he just could fulfill the obligations of his contract. He didn't hit and was awful in the field.
Total BS in my mind. I really need to do a post on this topic in the future.
That would be a great post. Maybe it will be topical if Roberts signs an extension or (more likely) gets traded. It would be a nice contrast to all of the glowing "B Rob was a saint" tributes likely to surface.
I'm working on a Zaun/Mitchell report post for next week.
I got ripped pretty bad by some for bringing the Gibbons/Roberts debate up with the Mitchell Report, but oh well.
With exception of Bonds, Tejada (MacPhail is a genius for trading him) and Clemens -- all in legal hot water -- the sport and fans have more or less washed their hands of PEDS.
I think fans just don't care anymore, they just want to see their baseball, forget their problems for a while and just fawn over their favorite players.
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