-Jon Weisman & Company's Dodger Thoughts provided a nice primer for baseball fans not to get caught up in the impending "Winter Meetings" hoopla. They even posted a few rules that we all should remember...
- Rumors are not facts.
- Teams and agents often float rumors to generate attention or to misdirect rivals. The media will report these rumors without much concern over how viable they are. The rumor is the news - whether it comes to fruition or not is not the media's problem (or so the media has decided).
- A report that agents, players or teams "were talking" is meaningless. People talk all the time. It doesn't mean anything will come of it.
- Any rumor attributed to an anonymous source is particularly useless.
- Making judgments about a general manager based on a rumor reflects poorly on the judge.
There's 2 more rules left, so I'll let you see what those are for yourself.
Also, in my humblest opinion, Dodger Thoughts is probably the best and most gracious Dodger Blogs on the entire internet. I recently emailed Jon a few questions about what he thought about all the Dodger/Rays deals and he answered my questions pretty well. However, he told me that I should post those same questions on Dodger Thoughts and said that I'll get probably the most in-depth info about the prospects and players that I'll find anywhere. He was right, I got quick and nicely-worded responses from all their commentors to my questions. I'd like to thank Nate Purcell, D4P, Andrew Shinmin, BHSportsguy and all the rest that answered my questions. I'll be returning there, I'm sure, with the Rays-Dodgers partnership as it is.
-Raysbaseball.com's Jay Bradley surprised me this week when he wrote his article about the Rays new ownership's plan and how, in his opinion(along with a few other people), he was wrong in saying earlier that "the honeymoon being over" and the NDRO's ways of doing things were wrong.
It shows alot of guts and cajones(That's balls, for all you Steve Lyons fans) for any writer to eat crow and basically writing an article saying that you were wrong or made an error in judgement. While Jay and I don't really see things eye-to-eye alot, I've got to say that I have a ton of respect for you doing this. Good job.
-If you asked me, "Who is the funniest Rays Blogger on the net?", my vote would to to Rays Talk's own Sam Kilay. When I wrote at MVN, it was hard for even me to compete with his quick wit.
In his latest post, he pretty much shows everyone what he really thinks about Tubby Hall and Lugo's comments made about the Devil Rays Organization.
-If you haven't noticed already, our own RJ has created a few banners for some of our more reoccuring posts(Jake's Take/Minor League Minute). I've got to say that you've shown me that you're the "Swiss Army Knife" of DRB and that I appreciate everything you've done here.
Also, I'd to commend Patrick for his frequency of posts as of late after announcing that he may be possibly leaving soon. If you keep things up like you have been, I may have to woo you into staying.
No need to worry about Tyler Marsh, he's been bettering himself in the real world and I think that's better than devoting every second to writing. Come back whenever you want to.
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Thanks, everyone
-Jake