Defensive Indifference

Following in the footsteps of Kendry Morales, Livan Hernandez, and others before him, top Cuban baseball star Dayan Viciedo has recently defected to the United States, joining relatives in Miami.

Despite being only 19 years old, Viciedo is apparently considered the best baseball player in all of Cuba. He started playing in the top Cuban league at the age of 15, and took part in the 2006 WBC as a 17 year old. For analysis on his abilities, check out Baseball America. Apparently it’s unclear whether Viciedo is eligible to be signed as an international free agent, or whether he will have to wait to be drafted in 2009.

Either way, this should be a very interesting story to follow. It’s pretty rare to have a Cuban defector who is still young enough to qualify as a true prospect, and I imagine this will only make the bidding war more intense (should he be deemed a free agent).

An enthralling bench-clearing brawl in Boston this evening—which I’m sure will be all over Sportscenter tonight—saw Coco Crisp get plunked by James Shields, the former charge the mound and dodge a Shields haymaker (despite how the above picture appears, Shields totally whiffed), connect a left to Shields’ lower neck-shoulder area, get jumped by Dioner Navarro, then Jonny Gomes and Carl Crawford jumped on Crisp with arms flailing MMA-style while Crisp was pinned to the ground. Oh, and I think Sox third base coach DeMarlo Hale also got jumped by a bunch of Rays. Crisp, Shields, and Gomes were ejected (Crawford wasn’t for some unknown reason). All in all I was rather disappointed with the Red Sox reactions; the Rays clearly won this brouhaha. The Red Sox ‘pen was rather lackadaisical and late getting in on things; most Red Sox didn’t arrive until Crisp and Hale were on the ground already getting mauled (though I guess the Rays did have the advantage of having 9 players already on the field).

Oh, and the Red Sox are winning the game, but who cares about that?

UPDATE: Here’s the AP’s story on the fight.  Later in the game Jacoby Ellsbury injured his wrist making a diving catch, and then a few innings later Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis got into an argument in the dugout and had to be separated.  No one knows what the fight was about.  Crazy night.

That’s what happens during baseball season, when your job — the one that pays — is related to baseball. Sorry, folks. Many times sorry. Anyway, a feel notable pieces of information.

I interviewed Sig Mejdal of “Fantasyland” fame. Sig is much smarter than me, he was once a rocket scientist for NASA and now he works in the Cardinals front office. Anyway, he has some interesting things to say about the MLB Draft and I recommend reading the whole thing, but I’ll excerpt the best part.

AJ: What makes a successful draft? If the Cardinals pick, say, 45 players this year, will it be considered a success down the line if one or two players make the majors? What about if five of the players from this year’s crop make the majors?

SM: I have never heard of any sort of rule of thumb as to a successful draft or not. I know that about 1/6th of drafted players make the majors, but I can’t imagine anyone saying that since we got “x” major leaguers, the draft was successful and we should be content with our performance. We draft 50 players and every one of them has a finite chance of making the majors. While the expectations are different for each player, our hopes are with each of them. As idealistic as it might sound, every time one of those players falls short of the big leagues, it is a disappointment — not only because the players’ dream of making the majors has likely disappeared but because we know there was still a major leaguer out there when we drafted that player and we missed that player.

Second, I will be part of a live chat on AOL Sports (link here) tomorrow at 2PM during the MLB Draft. The first chat I did earlier this week went really well, and it should be a regular thing every Tuesday at 1PM ET.