The BBA...Taking Over the World One Day at a Time

Since ITM is a part of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA), we're somewhat forced to share the information below. I gave some thought to submitting a request for some ITM airtime, but odds are we would just quote lines from Spaceballs and Tommy Boy the entire time. We'd also blow up anyone who attempted to argue against us. That's just how we roll.



ITM would have had this attempt at BBA publicity shut down in two days.....


The writers of the Baseball BloggersAlliance (http://www.baseballbloggersalliance.com) would like toannounce that they are taking to the airwaves. Beginning Tuesday, February 16th at 11 pm Eastern, BBA BaseballTalk (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/baseball-bloggers-alliance/2010/02/17/bba-baseball-talk)be found at BlogTalk Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com.

This one-hour show will discuss the big stories of the day in major league baseball and other baseball-related topics. Callers are welcome to chime in at 347-884-8690.


Your hosts for the first edition will be BBA founder Daniel Shoptaw, who writes at C70 At The Bat (http://www.cardinal70.com), and Ron Kaplan of Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf (http://rksbaseballbookshelf.wordpress.com/)


Hosts will rotate on a weekly basis and the time and date of the show may move depending on the requirements of that week's hosts.


The Baseball Bloggers Alliance is a confederation of 132 blogs working together for collaboration and discussion possibilities.

ITM's AL MVP Ballot...

The three of us who write for ITM scrambled this evening to meet the AL MVP voting deadline, submitting our ballot to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA). We still have differences in the exact order of the top ten, but the list below represents a little bit of compromised on all sides. Perhaps the biggest difficulty was keeping Jason Bay off the list, and listing two Yankees ahead of Youk.....our attempt at "fair and balanced".

1. Joe Mauer
2. Mark Texeira
3. Kendry Morales
4. Miggy Cabrera
5. Derek Jeter
6. Zack Grienke
7. Kevin Youkilis
8. Adam Lind
9. Evan Longoria
10.Ben Zobrist

A press release from the BBA is due out tonight, showcasing final votes. It's going to be interesting how closely, or completely far off we all are from the baseball writers association.

The First Stage of Recovery, Seasonal Awards

As a team, the ITM writers are not ready to post about the ending of the Red Sox season. We've sent along multiple emails, confirmed that we've all gone back to work and are continuing our somewhat normal lives, but any Red Sox related post out of us at this point would still be completely irrational and full of anger.

That said, as a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, ITM, along with fellow Red Sox bloggers The Joy of Sox and Boston Red Thoughts, have been asked to submit their ballots for seasonal awards. Once tallied, the results will be made public via a press release sometime in the next few weeks.

We here at ITM see this as a way to ease back into the world of baseball talk. Nothing specific, just a little list to show our ballot for the AL Rookie of the Year award:

This year's talent pool for the award was somewhat shallow, but ITM's ballot reads as follows:

1- Andrew Bailey - Oakland's new studly closer shut down 26 games out West for the A's. His 1.84 era, sub 1 WHIP, and 91 strikeouts in 83.1 innings pitched wraps up the award for him in our mind.

2- Rick Porcello - Got 14 wins at the tender age of 20 for a Tigers team that completely imploded down the stretch. His upside is huge, but at times this year he struggled to find consistency. He got extra points for being on my fantasy team.

3- Jeff Niemann - Two or three months ago I would have said Ricky Romero needs to be on this list, but the fact of the matter is Romero faded significantly down the stretch while Niemann got stronger. Niemann figures to a part of the forever young Rays rotation for a long time to come.


....Go.....Sox....?