I see no reason Freddy Garcia shouldn't walk into the 4th starter role, and neither does he:
“If I lose the spot, that’s my fault,” Garcia said. “That’s my responsibility.”
I'm not saying to tell him to line up his first start of the season; it's only March 4th. But the guy pitched pretty well with the White Sox last year, and he's been a solid big league starter for most of his career. He's clearly a notch above Bartolo Colon and Ivan Nova.
Horace Clark made the Hardball Times' list of 10 worst leadoff hitters of the retrosheet era (we have game data on every game going back to 1957, but before that it gets spotty). In 1968, Clarke got over 600 PA, despite hitting .230/.258/.254.
I'm going to put that triple slash line in a bigger font, so you don't think your eyes are playing tricks on you:
.230 .258 .254
So, you guys who saw him play... did he have some redeeming quality that we should know about? Like, did he regularly rescue people from burning buildings, or did he ever single-handedly save the city from the Moleman? Because otherwise, there's no excuse for letting a player with a .250 OBP play the game of baseball.
Alex Remington thinks the appointment of John Thorn to the position of official MLB historian will be good for the game, and that it might lay to rest the myth of Abner Doubleday as the inventor of baseball.
As someone who actually owns a Doubledays jersey (and who remembers the hideous teal 2001 version), the thought saddens me, just a little.