WasWatching.com

I know Ray personally and am proud to call him my friend. This story is as real as it gets. He is a very special guy. The Steinbrenner boys should give him a LIFETIME contract for what he has done and continues to do for this organization.

Sorry, this is off-topic, but...

Joe Sheehan has an article up on si.com about players who will have breakout seasons in '08.

He names Phil Hughes as someone he thinks will have a strong '08, "but [he and the others mentioned] don't have enough career preceding them to fairly call them breakout candidates."

But the really interesting thing is his take on Melky:

Melky Cabrera: Cabrera went backward in '07, but not by enough for concern. Remember that he's just 23 years old and has more than 1,100 plate appearances in the majors, with average to average-plus defense (good physical tools but very raw, takes bad routes) and a very good 129/96 K/BB. He's a mature player offensively, patient at the plate and fair on the bases (25 for 35 stealing in his career). One interesting quirk is his G/F ratio, which is 1.63 for his career and was a whopping 1.81 last season. Cabrera is listed at 5'11" and 200 pounds. He's not Willy Taveras, but rather a player who should be developing power and learning how to drive the ball, rather than hitting the ball on the ground 60 percent of the time.

I'm reminded of Alex Rios, who doesn't look a thing like Cabrera. Rios was largely disappointing in 2004 and '05, hitting just 11 homers in more than 900 at-bats, with an isolated power of 117. The problem: Rios was hitting the ball on the ground too much, a 1.82 G/F in those two seasons. Starting in '06 Rios put the ball in the air more than half the time and became a star. When you look at Cabrera's body, his established control of the strike zone and his ability to hold his own at a young age, you recognize that all it's going to take is for him to start elevating the ball. Cabrera may not get there in 2008, but he's going to pop 80 extra-base hits and slug .500 in a season very soon.