1
The New York Yankees face an interesting question as the 2010 season heads toward a close: Do they re-sign team captain and shortstop Derek Jeter?
He’s 36, hitting .261 with 10 HR and 61 RBI — and making $22.6 million a year. It’s no secret his range at shortstop is declining seemingly with each series. He’s hitting .237 in the second half of the season. Age 36 tends to be about where baseball skills really plummet.
But he’s Derek Jeter, a clutch post-season player and a poster boy for the franchise.
Word in the blogosphere and on sports talk radio is Jeter wants four years at $25 million per year. The New York Times reports the Yankees prefer two years, and might be amendable to a third.
2
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim et ala. manager Mike Scioscia has a plan to bring aid to some of baseball’s scheduling woes. He is proposing a 158-game season that would maintain revenue while keeping the World Series out of November. Like any progressive thinker, he will be ignored and quickly forgotten.
Here is Scioscia’s idea: “If you went to 154 games, you’d lose a lot of gate revenue. But if you blend it, where you cut down some games and some dates, you could minimize the (financial) impact, tighten the schedule by a week to 10 days to accommodate an expanded Division Series and get the World Series done in October.”
3
It appears Denver coach Josh McDaniels in going to use rookie QB Tim Tebow to play mind games with the Broncos’ opponents.
The smart money said Tebow would be used in short-yardage situations or in the wildcat formation. Instead, McDaniels sent him in Sunday on three first-and-10 situations. He ran on the first two, gaining one yard both times.
At that rate, Tebow will surpass Emmitt Smith’s career rushing record in another 18,354 carries. The Jaguars didn’t seem all that freaked out at the sight of No. 15.
“Well, it’s just another quarterback,” tackle Terrance Knighton said. “We knew he would run the ball so we played stout upfront and we just treated him like a running back.”
On Tebow’s third play they probably treated him like a punch line. Tebow lined up at wide receiver, only to have QB Kyle Orton throw an incomplete pass to the other side of the field.
That was six plays into the second quarter. Tebow never got on the field again.
