Zen Dayley: Rumblings in the Bronx

The omnipresent MLB Trade Rumors figures Impactico Deportivo has been batting about .500 with its scoops, so you can take the Manny Ramirez-to-the-Yankees rumours however you will.

Their conclusion is the timing and the numbers aren't right. Honestly though, when Scott Boras represents both Ramirez and Mark Teixeira, the two biggest bats available, you almost have to assume there's a lot of BS to anything you read. There's also the matter of the Angels and Red Sox refusing to meet Boras' price for Teixeira, so you'd have a hard time arguing against the belief this is a smokescreen. Teixeira, by virtue of being younger than Ramirez and having the cheese still firmly on his cracker, is the probably the bigger fish of the two.

It could also be that Scott Boras is that nuts. That possiblity bears fleshing out, he typed, tongue-in-cheek.

Ryan Express, right to Dr. James Andrews' office

Nolan Ryan is sounding like he should be running his boss Tom Hicks' hockey team, the Dallas Stars, instead of the Texas Rangers.

" ... pitchers feel pain sometimes and think they're hurt. A lot of times they're not.

"They have to learn to pitch through it. " -- Gannett News Service

Not to argue with Nolan Ryan about what's best for a pitcher, lest it play out the same way it did for Robin Ventura back in 1993. Rangers fans, who have some hope on the horizon, must be wondering if this a sure-fire ticket to a lot of sore arms. There's enough anecdotal evidence that suggests the teams that keep telling their pitchers to work through it end up seeing them leave or wind up injured -- not that the post-John Gibbons Blue Jays are a readily available example

This an outsider opinion, but teaching and correcting pitchers' mechanics to they don't end up breaking down would seem to be a lot more important than imparting the importance of being able to "go nine." How many complete games did Tim Lincecum throw last season? (Two.)

WB-zzzzzzzz

Jeff Passan's Yahoo! Sports column this morning does raise the question of who the hell is going to pitch for Team USA at the World Baseball Classic. Adam Loewen pitched for Canada at the 2006 event -- he was the winning pitcher vs. the Americans -- and now he's not even a pitcher anymore.

This that, and the other

• Being a baseball fan is as much about collecting names as it is cheering for a particular team, so remember this name: Clay Zavada. The piece on him in Saturday's Times did bring home what it's like to be a ballplayer who's good enough to dream in a sport where, what, 10% of the players make 95% of the salaries? Being on a team's 40-man roster is a big, big deal for a lot of these guys.
  

  "As much as baseball is Zavada's dream, it is also a paycheck. Being on the 40-man roster will quadruple his salary, at the very least. If he is selected for the major league team, he will earn the rookie minimum, $400,000.

• Google's cache now includes scanned issues of Baseball Digest. There's a rabbit-hole you could lose yourself in for a week.
  
• Last but not least, long-ago shortstop Jose Valdivielso shares his two cents about that ballpark in the Bronx:

  "Yankee Stadium is something that nobody should have touched," he said. "Everything happened at Yankee Stadium. Not just baseball. That is sacred ground."

  Would that someone would have listened, eh.

Related:
Clay Zavada: A Lunch-Pail Prospect for the Diamondbacks (Katie Thomas, New York Times)