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Originally Posted by goyanksgonj
Must be serious evaluation time for AAA guys. Why it would be during, for some teams, the biggest games of the season, is beyond me, but, anyway. I mean, just among CC's, we've got 7 of the 15 with assignments this week taking a back seat, not to mention that there are always two crews on vacation in any given week (BTW, if anyone knows which ones these are for this week, please let me know, thanks). Plus, there's 4 other ones out of the rest of the staff taking a back seat (although, one of those is filling-in as the possible associate CC on another crew, and the other two, between them, I believe, have worked one game the entire year). Now, I guess it's really not fair to talk about Brinkman being taking a back seat, since I believe he's retired, as injuries wouldn't allow him to complete the season. We already had another one of these situations come up earlier this season (Craft), but at least we know already which AAA guy took that spot. In Brinkman's case, there's two things that need to be considered. First of all, which AAA guy took that spot. And, second of all, which non-CC was promoted to CC? The MLB.com Umpires section is really slow in getting updated, and the WUA Web site is even worse. They never made any mention of congratulating Craft on his retirement, or Barksdale on his promotion. They didn't even bother to update the crew listings there to reflect that retirement and promotion, not to mention Brinkman's. And their list of AAA guys that worked games is so out-of-date, it's really not funny anymore. I mean, even on the MLB.com Umpires section, they need to change Cuzzi's biography for the 2nd consecutive year to reflect his number change, not to mention spelling Dreckman right. Also, not ever reflected in their AAA roster was the addition for this year of Mike Estabrook. I mean, they did update the crew listings and staff roster to reflect Craft's retirement and Barksdale's promotion. But, again, nothing when it comes to Brinkman. Joe West's site is actually worse. He's been saying the '06 roster is coming soon for practically the entire season, and doesn't even have the AAA roster. His crew listings are, like the WUA ones, from the beginning of the season. Oops, I forgot one thing. Neither the WUA nor Joe West's sites bothered to mention this year's All-Star game crew. The WUA also has a sort of "Ask the Ump" feature. That hasn't been updated in almost two years, as it has T. Welke's crew from '04. Then again, neither has MLB.com updated their rules question column, nor their own "Ask the Ump" column, in quite a while.
If anybody possibly has information on the Brinkman situation, would you mind passing it along? Thanks. And, if you're from one of the Web sites I picked apart above, I hate to say it, but you might want to try and taking most, if not all, of my suggestions.
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