{"id":2636,"date":"2010-01-22T19:31:52","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2010-01-22T19:31:52","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:31:52","slug":"friday-notes-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/friday-notes-7-2636\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure that I have seen a player as desperate to get rid of a decent player as the Angels were with Gary Matthews Jr. today. Matthews had two years and $23 million left on his deal. He hasn&#8217;t lit the world on fire at the plate in the last three years with the Angels, but he is a very solid defensive player and he is sound at the plate. In other words, though he&#8217;s no all-star he&#8217;s not exactly a handicap either. Despite that, the Angels not only sent hm to the Mets for a journeyman middle reliever, but they also agreed to pay $21.5 million of the remaining contract. So, the Mets get a very solid platoon outfielder &#8211; especially since they aren&#8217;t going to have Carlos Beltran for at least a month &#8211; and it cost them practically nothing. On the other hand, the Angels are saving a lousy $1.5 million, and they lose outfield depth for it. Terrible deal, but that&#8217;s fitting for the offseason that the Angels have had. Wow, this has not been their winter.<\/p>\n<p>Percy Harvin is sitting out of practices right now because he has been suffering from a migraine since yesterday. There is not yet any indication whether he will play on Sunday Harvin is a very ice player, and he&#8217;s done a lot for the Vikings this year, but I&#8217;m not that sure that this is going to be a big impact either way &#8211; it certainly won&#8217;t be as significant as the public will give it credit for. n my eyes the game on Sunday s gong to be won by the offenses, not special teams, so Harvin is far from the most important Viking that day. He&#8217;s a nice-to-have, not a must-have.<\/p>\n<p>Interesting story out of the A&#8217;s farm system today. Grant Desme, an outfielder and one one of the top prospects the A&#8217;s had is leaving baseball just months after being named MVP of the Arizona Fall League. Desme isn&#8217;t leaving because he is disillusioned or because he wants to play another sport. He&#8217;s leaving to join the seminary. I bet you that Billy Beane was more than a little shocked when he had that conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure that I have seen a player as desperate to get rid of a decent player as the Angels were with Gary Matthews Jr. today. Matthews had two years and $23 million left on his deal. He hasn&#8217;t lit the world on fire at the plate in the last three years with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[1306,1307,791],"class_list":["post-2636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl-handicapping","tag-gary-matthews-jr","tag-grant-desme","tag-percy-harvin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2638,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}