Delmon Traded - Coaching Carousel

So one of my favorite Devil (yes I did say devil) Rays was traded yesterday in a six player swap with the Minnesota Twins. Right Fielder Delmon Young was traded along with Brendan Harris and minor leaguer Jason Pridie for pitcher Matt Garza, shortstop Jason Bartlett and minor pitcher Eduardo Morlan. Delmon had a great rookie season for our team in St. Pete if you take out the time he had to play center field in between Rocco Baldelli and B.J. Upton's injuries. Young hit .288 with 13 home runs and 93 RBI. Harris had a pretty good year hitting .286 with 12 home runs and 56 RBI. I really hope the Twins don't expect Delmon to replace Torii Hunter in center field, otherwise they are in for a rude awakening. He's a good right fielder with a cannon arm, a solid bat, and decent speed. Harris is your perfect utility infielder in that he can play all four positions and provide good speed on the bases as well as a solid bat.



Garza is one of the Twins prized pitching prospects and went 5-7 with a 3.69 ERA. The 24-year-old is a good compliment to Kazmir and Shields in the rotation. Bartlett plays good defense but only hit .265 with five home runs and 43 RBI. He also stole 23 bases. As far as the minor leaguers only time will tell if either of them even make it to the show.



With baseball in Hot Stove Season, Black Monday passes as college football goes through transistions with coaches all over the country getting fired, "resigning," or moving on to bigger and better jobs. In less than a week 10 coaches have been relived of their duties and there may be more to follow. Dennis Franchione is gone for Texas A&M but everyone saw that one coming like a hurricane in the Atlantic. The same can be said for Bill Callahan at Nebraska. Mike Sherman is already in place at A&M but I'm not sure how much he'll chnage the culture in College Station. In Lincoln Tom Osborne decided he will just go out on his own and recruit for the Huskers like he used to except he will choose the coach later probobly from the duo of former quarterback Turner Gill or LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini.



Ed Orgeron was fired from Ole Miss after receiving a vote of confidence form the school president in the middle of the season. Orgerson did go 10-25 as the coach in three years and will probobly head back to being someone's defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator, something he excels at.

Speaking of Ole Miss, Houston Nutt resigned from Arkansas on Monday and was the new Ole Miss coach by Tuesday. After all of the off-season turmoil (Mitch Mustain and the Springdale players transfer, offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn left, and his infamous text messaging before games) this was another forgone conclusion. Nutt did it the right in that he can say he was never fired, get a nice payment to leave, and then pick up a job in the same conference and if he's lucky, can stick it to his old team time and time again.

Joe Novak at Northern Illinois was also axed, but I only mentioned this because some hot coordinator could parlay this job into a big job opening.

Ted Roof at Duke. Not suprised either. 6-45 isn't good when the hoops team continually goes 45-6 in the same span of time. It is a lot easier to recruit three gusy that can get into your school and 20 each season. Word on the street is Steve Spurrier may want to go back to the school he made successful and hasn't been since he left.


Chan Gailey is gone and so are many of the players he recruited this year. He does have Calvin Johnson to show for his time there, but he also has Reggie Ball. Gailey will surface as someone's coordinator next year either in the show or in college.

Jeff Bower was let go after 17 seasons at Southern Miss. Good luck finding their next coach. Bower ahd 15 winning seasons there and no one is goin to be there long enough to make waves. After any success whoever they hire will jump to another job.

Sonny Lubick left Colorado State after years of mediocrity and Washington State got rid of Bill Doba who took over for Mike Price. Two bad jobs that will be lucky if they find somone to pull them out of the garbage.

I'm sure more changes will occur after next weeks championship games and into bowl season, we'll just have to wait and see what they are.