things to be thankful for this holiday:
i'm thankful that we have enjoyed ten years of matthew leach as our MLB.com correspondent. he's been a good reporter, a fine writer, and clearly has a keen sense of analysis. he is well-deserving of a promotion to the national mlb.com beat. also, he just seems like a really nice guy. at least we still have goold. i wish matthew nothing but the best in new york city.
i'm also thankful that his replacement at mlb.com sounds intriguing - jennifer langosch is a mizzou graduate (apparently, they have some kind of j-school there?) who put in five seasons in pittsburgh covering the pirates for mlb.com, publishing under the endearing blog title "by gosh, it's langosch." while at Mizzou, she also did some freelance work for the springfield news-leader, which lends lots of coverage to the cardinals' AA team. sadly, despite missouri ties, it appears she was born a braves fan. nobody's perfect.
i'm thankful that walt jocketty is the GM for the Reds. after being comparatively quiet for a few years, walt dealt three top ten organization prospects and an intermittently good starting pitcher to san diego for mat "one t" latos. he followed up this move by trading a decent starting pitcher - who admittedly was lost in the crowd of okay but unspectacular starting pitchers in cincinnati - and two top twenty prospects, at least one of whom would have been on most top ten prospect lists after an excellent 2011. arguably, there was a fair amount of redundancy in the prospects traded, but even so, a four-win starting pitcher and two-win reliever seems like a terribly small haul for a pretty good chunk of the cincinnati farm (and two decent starting pitchers), especially for a team as yet without a left fielder. i understand the desire to capitalize on the remaining votto era, but it seems
conversely, i am generally thankful that john mozeliak is the GM for the cardinals. despite skip schumaker, he's had a very good offseason. he extended berkman and carpenter in reasonable deals. he's avoided overpaying for furcal or beltran or pujols. he's fostered substantial growth in our farm system and avoided trading away bits of the farm for poor return. that's not to say he doesn't make moves i don't agree with or that seem counterproductive or short-sighted. but on balance, we could do much worse. also, despite the rotating middle infield of terror, yuniesky betancourt has never spent a day in a cardinals uniform.
i am thankful that the cardinals won the 2011 world championship.
i am thankful that i have my health, as do most of my closest family members.
i am thankful to have a blog where hundreds of people come together as a community to share their thoughts and ideas.