It’s been a fairly flat couple of weeks, slipped back to 9th but still in touch with 7th and 8th places, 6 and 3 points ahead respectively. The All Star Game took a big piece out of last week and the week before was a week where nothing of significance was achieved. Quite pleased with myself for ending up with three closers, none of which are named Gagne, and it must be admitted none of which may have the job to the end of the season, Saito has gone down for the Dodgers and Broxton seems to have inherited the role, at least he got the save last night, Gonzalez pending the return of Soriano and Morrow pending the return of Putz, still I’ll take them where I can get them though I have a long way to go to make up points in SAVES but if they continue to perform well I might make some progress in WHIP. Harang has gone to the DL and opened up a roster spot, I’ve picked up Ricky Nolasco for a couple of spot starts recently and whilst he lost to the Philies last night I might hang on to him rather than put him back into the free agent pool. Spot started Buehrle last night for a win but not had much recent joy pitching and ditching. I’ll give Harang a couple of starts on his return from the DL but if there’s no improvement I’ll drop him.
Picked up Delgado and he has been in for most of the last couple of weeks and been doing very nicely thank you, Giambi has definitely cooled off for the moment. AVG looks like the place I can target a few points with a number of teams not too far ahead. As I have a bit leeway in power numbers I’ve picked up Kaz Matsui to see if he will give me some AVG and RUNS and whilst he has a few SBs for the season, he’s not been stealing recently so may be looking elsewhere.

Now I’m not a spiteful sort of guy, at least that’s what the people who don’t know me believe, but I have to say that I am delighted to see that Chambers’ Olympic career has been unceremoniously tossed down the crapper by the High Court. He always was an unlikely challenger to the BOA’s bylaw, of banning drug cheats from ever representing GB at the Olympics even though they may have served bans imposed by other sports bodies, having run a laughable PR campaign and an equally poor legal campaign. His attempts to redeem himself, in a PR sense have been perfunctory and the timing of the legal moves were a transparent attempt to railroad the court in to considering only an injunction against the BOA’s bylaw and not a full examination of it’s legality. It can’t have escaped the court’s notice that this was primarily about Chambers’ earning potential subsequent to the Beijing Olympics and not about his desire to represent his country at the Beijing Olympics. To the people who suggest he has served his time and should be allowed to compete the simple answer is, ‘no, he hasn’t’, he has served the part of his punishment handed down in his 2 year ban but a concomitant of this ban, by virtue of the BOA bylaw which has been in place ever since Chambers has been competing, is that you cannot compete at the Olympics. This is not some sort of post facto bolt on but an inevitable consequence of, and an integral part of, the punishment, part of the ‘time’ you have to do for the crime.
Chambers’ cheating has robbed clean (we all hope) athletes of funding, resources, opportunity and maybe some glory, dissuaded some from entering the sport and persuaded others to leave it before their time.