Rumors for MLB Secrets
Ron Washington Wants More Bullpen Depth
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According to Richard Durrett of ESPN.com, Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington wants the Rangers front office to acquire more bullpen arms before the Trade Deadline this Sunday. Here is a running list of possible relievers for the Rangers
Kerry Wood (Cubs): Wood, 34, is 1-5 with a 3.45 ERA in 33 appearances this year. With him having been in the Majors for 13 years he would bring a great veteran arm to the Rangers. He also provides postseason experience. The disadvantage is that he has a no trade clause so he can turn down any trade the Cubs propose with him.
Todd Coffey (Nationals): Coffey, 30, is 3-1 with a 3.82 ERA in 43 appearances this season. He also has a lot of experience in the Majors and could be a valuable asset to the Rangers come October.
Jason Isringhausen (Mets): Isringhausen, 38, is 2-0 with a 2.60 ERA in 40 appearances. He could provide a veteran bullpen arm with postseason experience, but a severe downside is his durability as a 38 year old in the Majors.
Heath Bell (Padres): Bell, , is 2-3 with a 2.40 ERA in 42 appearances with 29 saves so far this season. He is one of the biggest names on the trading block and would require several prospects for the Padres to trade him. He also stated earlier that he would assume a set up role if traded.
Mike Adams: (Padres): Adams, 32, is 3-1 with a 1.17 ERA 46 appearances so far this season. He is on many contenders wish lists for the Trade Deadline. He would provide a consistent bullpen arm for the Rangers.
Image by dherrera_96 Under the Creative Commons License
10 ways Major League Baseball is pitching in for the Haiti disaster relief
Posted by: | CommentsOn a more serious note, I’d like to bring your attention to the crisis in Haiti. On January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island of Haiti. MLB Secrets encourages everyone to assist in the disaster relief. We encourage everybody to donate to UNICEF or donate to CARE. You can do so by clicking on this link and donating through Google.
Here are a few ways that Major League Baseball and its teams are pitching in to help those in need in Haiti:
- Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB will donate $1 million to UNICEF which will provide the necessary supplies, clean water and sanitation, medical supplies and temporary shelter.
- The Cubs set up a booth at the 25th annual Cubs Convention to collection donations from people. Every dollar will be matched by both Cubs Charities and the Ricketts family, the team’s new owners.
- The Giants and the Giants Community Fund are auctioning off: (1) 10 pitches from a Giants starting pitcher, (2) private meeting with Tim Lincecum and (3) private hitting instruction with Pablo Sandoval and hitting coach Hensley Muelens.
- The Angels are participating in “Hope For Haiti”: three “drive-through” fund raising events that will raise money for Haiti.
- The Yankees are donating $500,000 in support of rescue and relief efforts.
- David Ortiz has ordered a collection of canned goods, water and other goods.
- Miguel Tejada was preparing a container van with emergency supplies that would be sent to Haiti. This included water, canned food, medicine, powdered milk and kids’ clothes. He encourages all of his MLB colleagues, particularly Dominicans, to step up and help the victims.
- The Reds have asked fans to bring clothing and personal-care items for Haitian children to Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on Monday
- The Blue Jays, Rogers Communications and the Rogers family have announced a mobile giving campaign that allows customers to donate funds. Additionally, they are donating $250,000 in funds and goods to the Partners in Health organization for the recovery process.
- Blue Jays reliever Dirk Hayhurst (Twitter), has created a personal fundraising page through the MercyCorps organization and is giving away a Roy Halladay-signed ball as enticement.
Information for this article came from MLB.com.
MLB Secrets iPhone & iPod Touch App Version 1.00 is released
Posted by: | CommentsOn January 12, 2010, MLB Secrets released the MLB Secrets iPhone App version 1.00 on the iTunes App Store. We put a lot of hard work into getting the app ready for you, and we hope you enjoy it. Here’s a quick highlight of the app:
- Up-to-the-minute Major League Baseball rumors, trades, secrets and news from all 30 MLB teams with sources, so you can always double-check our work.
- Articles are downloaded to your iPhone or iPod Touch so if you lose connection to the mobile network, you can continue reading what’s already be download. If you’re about to take off on an airplane, then fire up the app and get the latest news and then sit back with your bag of peanuts and enjoy the latest MLB news.
- One button touch to share the stories on Twitter or send directly to a friend via email.
- View MLB Secrets Tweets from Twitter.
- All blog postings are linked to the player’s statistics and contract history (if available). Now you can tell immediately if the trade of the player pick-up was worth it.
- Many more features to come!
You can access the app by clicking on http://www.itunes.com/apps/mlbsecrets or on the App Store logo below.
You can see a list of Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q) here.
MLBSecrets.com's new homepage features and technology background
Posted by: | CommentsGood morning! The team at MLB Secrets has been hard at working to provide a better user experience. After reviewing our statistics and logs, we realized that many users would go to the homepage at www.mlbsecrets.com and not know what to do, so they would just leave or go directly to the blog at blog.mlbsecrets.com. To fix that, we made changes to the homepage to give users a suggestion as to what they may want to discover. Please check out the changes at www.mlbsecrets.com. We hope you like them:
- We’ve added MLB Secrets Discover. We want you to discover new players, teams, contracts, salaries, awards and Twitter accounts, so on the left-hand side you’ll different links every time you refresh the page. Give it a try. Go to www.mlbsecrets.com, take a look at a a contract or award. Click on it. Then refresh the homepage. You’ll see a whole new list. This way you won’t get stuck looking at the same things. You can learn something new that you weren’t aware of beforehand.
- We integrated the MLB Secret’s blog to the center column.
- Added the blog’s Top Stories.
- Added MLB Secret’s Twitter feed.
It’s hard to believe that this is build #123 of our website. For those that aren’t familiar with software releases, it basically means that we’ve created 122 other versions before the one that you see today. Some of the differences between versions are small. Others are significant like the current change. We want to keep on building, so please keep the suggestions coming.
Some people have asked us what technology is being used at MLB Secrets. The main site at www.mlbsecrets.com is on a CentOS operating system. It’s coded in Ruby and uses the Rails framework. All the data sits on a MySQL back end database. We use the nGINx web server and it’s clustered via Mongrels. The blog that you are reading right now at blog.mlbsecrets.com is sitting on WordPress. Both sites are located in different data centers just in case. There are various other technological facets involved, but I can go on forever talking about what is being used. If you want me to go in depth about the technology, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to do a little tech talk.
We love the feedback that everybody is providing us through Twitter or through email. Please keep them coming. You can send a suggestion, feedback or just say hi through Twitter (@mlbsecrets) or email me (bigal <at> mlbsecrets.com).
