Does Rubin have a problem?

Very well done.

As for being 'too flat'...maybe if Adam ripped off his shirt in the clubhouse he could have proved otherwise.

Loved the ad line that immediately follows the column (and looks like it could be the last line of the column except that it's in blue, perhaps for SJ irony): Buy 2009 Mets Tickets Today.

 

This is silly. You make it sound like the Pulsipher-Izzy-wilson days. Hughes was a top-ranked prospect by all of the national outlets (Baseball America, BP etc.), and joba's star grew when he was a brilliant, unhittable reliever on the major league level. The media had nothing to do with this.

 

All I know is I keep hearing about and reading about these nearly-untradeable great talents tha Yanks have in Hughes and Joba, and this has been going on forever. There are probably 15 or so pitchers around MLB in the same stage of their careers and similar age every bit as good as Joba the Hut and Hughes, i.e. Drabek with the Phillies, but few people know about them because NY media isn't drooling all over them.

 

One other thing about Rubin allegedly inquiring about personnel director's type jobs, it's probably best that a beat writer hold off on that sort of thing until he is off the beat or out of a job. Duh.

 

No one says it anymore, they're major leaguers now. Nobody knows about Drabek? Bucholz? joba is different, he earned his rep on the major league level. He was the story in Yankee games, they have to cover it. Hughes was the #1 prospect in baseball, and came up in trade rumors every year, the way Drabek is now.

 

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle here. Chamberlain drew a ridiculous amount of hype as a rookie. I don't think it's as bad as clutchcargo makes it out to be, but Chamberlain and Hughes did get more hype because they were coming up with the Yankees.

 

So the New York media is talking about New York prospects, that does seem odd doesn't it.

Do you think that maybe the reason their prospects are talked about a lot is that the Yankees are always in contention and come trade deadline they are always rumoured to be looking to add help which means trading top prospects? So naturally those prospects names get thrown around.

How many other teams are always in contetnion? I know I have heard a lot about the Phillies and Dodger prospect in the last couple years. We have also heard about all the Red Sox prospects over the last 6 or 7 years.

 

I don't know what the timeline was but Chris Snow considered Doug Risebrough a confidante; The Jones' story in Esquire February 2007 said he and Risebrough would have long off-the-record conversations about hockey philosophies and such, but I figure you do that every now and then on a pro beat, right? When Snow had offers from ESPN and Yahoo Sports on the table, he called Risebrough to ask some advice, and that's when Risebrough offered him the player personnel gig with the Wild.

Now, I don't know if their conversations ever edged into the alleged Rubin territory ("Hey," Riser says, "You'd make a good executive someday"), but it was clear Snow and Risebrough were friends beyond their professional association when Snow covered the Wild for the Star-Trib. Anything wrong with that?

 

Rubin goes to work today just as he did yesterday and the day before. Sure, the atmosphere will be different and Minaya isn't going to be warm to him, but Rubin needs to do the job the way he did before -- minus soliciting career advice.

If the entire organization treats him unfairly, it will reflect poorly on them, not him and blow up even more in its face.

BTW, Daily News also had transcript of SNY's intro to Monday's game where Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling (all of whom work for the Mets) showed their disdain for what Omar did and all went to Rubin's defense.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2009/07/28/2009-07-28_sny_voices.html

 

Murray Chass says Rubin is guilty of a confict of interest:

http://www.murraychass.com/?p=876

 

Everyone on the job has a multitude of conflicts -- and conflicts of interest -- almost daily. They do not usually compromise the ability to do one's job fairly, and granted, they are typically minor, almost minuscule conflicts. But we are human beings, and if you follow Murray Chass' deeper thinking about this situation, and you go as deep into that line of thought as you can, you will inevitably come up against the first sentence of my post.

In this case, I have yet to see evidence Adam was unable to do his job fairly and accurately. I am open-minded enough to be proven wrong, but this piece by Chass didn't do that for me. He used a lot of paragraphs to say what one graf could have said, and the extra words didn't persuade me.

 

He sure seems to be taking every word from Minaya as gospel on this one. Seems to me Omar's got a credibility problem, too, so I don't know why Chass would be that one-sided on this one. There's got to be more to it.