Daily Links - 9/2/08

Well, we've made it to September. I hope everyone had a great Labor Day - I did, mainly because I didn't do much but lay around. Perfect. Anyway, as we head down the home stretch I'm going to do a few more posts about building for 2009, a few posts about season performance vs. playoff performance and definitely a recap of my preseason predictions, so look for all that over the next few weeks. Now, on to the links:

Joe Posnanski (TBSWIA) was way more productive than I was over the holiday weekend, posting three times. This post is a breakdown of good managing as exemplified by Ron Gardenshire. Personally, I think managers are overrated: they neither help nor hurt their teams as much as most people suggest.

This post from Hef at Major League Jerks is also a few days old, but I love stuff like this. He breaks down the performance of the Dodgers and D-Backs since the respective trades for Manny Ramirez and Adam Dunn.

Quotes, quotes and more quotes.

Here is a detailed breakdown of Josh Beckett, whose health and success is essential for the Red Sox's chances in October.

I completely agree with this take on the Brewers protest of the scorer's decision during CC Sabathia's one-hitter that if overruled would make it a no-hitter.