Links and musings for a rainy Friday

DL is in the Dodger Math Worst GM Finals, you know what to do.

Maybe it's a tradition to have the home manager be a coach on the All-Star team (I know Leyland was third base coach in '94, one of the more enduring images of that game is him waving the winning run home in the 10th inning like a madman... can't tell you who scored the run, but I remember Leyland windmilling him home), but it's flat out bullsh!t that Garner named Tracy a coach. It's nice that he made Tanner an honorary coach, but he should've stopped there. Tracy may not be the source of the problem here this year, but the way he's treated the players in the press and taken credit for every small thing that's gone right while deflecting all the blame is despicable. He gives all managers a bad name with the stuff that comes out of his mouth, and I can't believe Garner would wantto be anywhere near him.

New Pittsburgh sports blog: The Dock Ellis Experience. Of course, that reminds me of one of my favorite fantasy baseball team names, The Dock Ellis D's. Note to Dave Littlefield, Kevin McClatchy, and co.: While Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, Romo Phone Home, and now The Dock Ellis Experience exist, no one is ever going to name a blog after Raul Mondesi, Matt Stairs, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Chris Stynes, Jeromy Burnitz, Jeff D'Amico, Joe Randa, or Roberto Hernandez. There is a reason for this.

Dejan's Q&A appears in it's new Friday timeslot for the first time. Seems Pirates fans are getting pretty frustrated. Imagine that.

And one final thought: Who the hell made the schedule that requires us to go to Arizona, San Francisco, and LA on three consectuve road trips? And we still have one more LA/San Diego trip awaiting us in September. The serious amount of travel miles logged by this team isn't the reason they're losing, but flying all around the country like crazy sure can't be helping things.