• How do you replace a Hall of Famer? Well, when he’s a mediocre manager, it’s really not that hard at all. Frank Robinson has been deep sixed as manager of the Washington Nationals and future Nat arms everywhere are rejoicing as they will be spared Tommy John surgery under his abuse. Of all the possible replacements being mentioned, I like Tony Pena the best, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I really don’t like superstar managers, and Hall of Famer Robinson was definitely a superstar. They can’t relate to the common player. They just never had to deal with things that fringe players had to deal with. Catchers, on the other hand, of which Pena was a great one, understand the game better than anyone, hence make great managers. Pena guided the Royals for three years, and although he was AL manager of the year in 2003 when KC won 83 games, his overall winning percentage was .410. But come on — he was managing the Royals. RotoRob might have been able to guide a team that bad to a .400 winning percentage. Anyways, Pena is ready for another shot and he arrives in Washington at a time when some good young talent is there to build upon. The team has a lot of work to do (find some pitching, develop a more potent attack, etc.), but Pena could be the right man for the gig.
• Six weeks ago, we looked in on the NL ROY race, and concluded at the time that Ryan Zimmerman was the lead contender. Well, he’s done nothing to sway our minds since, winding up with 20 homers, 110 RBI and 70 extra-base hits. While he’ll need to cut down his strikeouts (120) to take it to the next level, Zimmerman drove in the most runs by a rookie since Albert Pujols racked up 130 in 2001. Zimmerman, who just turned 22 on Thursday, is just the fifth freshman to top the century mark since 1988, and among the others who have done it, Pujols’ real age has always been in question and Hideki Matsui was only a rookie according to MLB’s antiquated and somewhat belittling to anything non-North American rules. The other two were Carlos Beltran and Mike Piazza. Any way you slice it, Zimmerman is in some sweet company and he looks like he deserves the hardware.

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By RotoRob
This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 6:31 pm and is filed under BASEBALL, Fantasy Notes, RotoRob. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.