Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Thursday 2-Fifths

Didn't have enough time to write a full F5ive, here's a preview for the two games running on MLB Network today

1- Nationals vs. Reds
MLB Network
Hernandez vs. Volquez Interest Level:4

So, apparently the Nationals have pitchers not named Strasburg pitching for them. When Livian Hernandez got off to that scorching hot start, it was clear that it was built up with smoke, mirrors, good luck and a low BABIP. In other words, Livan Hernandez odds of that great start lasting the season had as good of a chance of surviving as that house made of straw in the 3 little pigs had of surviving the big bad wolf. As of today, his ERA stands at 3.27 and appears to be well on its way to its rightful place in the mid to upper 4 range.

The Reds counter with Edison Volquez (who despite failing a drug-test doesn't actually serve his 50-game suspension because he happened to be injured at the time....I don't see how this could be a controversy if the Reds win the division, but thats besides the point). who pitched well in his first start of 2010 and looks to give their pitching staff a much needed jolt in the arm as they battle the Cardinals for the NL Central playoff spot.

2- Royals vs. Yankees MLB Network Chen vs. Sabathia

The Royals and Nationals on National TV on the same day! This can be placed on the list of things that would never hapen on FOX or ESPN.

Anyways, the Royals are playing their normal role of also-ran, sitting at 12 games out of first (I thought it would look a lot worse for them at this point). The Royals bring Bruce Chen to the hill. Surprisingly, Chen hasn't pitched that bad this year (5-3 4.06 era 104 ERA+) I didn't say it was great but it's not bad either........it's a bit mind boggling that the dude has pitched for 10 teams in his career (including 4/5 of the NL East by the time he was 25)....considering he's left handed and only 33, he could very easily break the all-time record for teams pitched for before all is said and done.

None of this really matters as they are facing the Yankees and CC Sabathia. The Yankees are contending for a division title/world series title (as always) and a pre-requisite of that is taking care of business against also-ran teams such as the Royals.

Monday, July 19, 2010

The Tuesday F5ive

A few things to pay attention to for Tuesday:

1-Rangers vs. Tigers MLB Network
Hunter vs. Galarraga
Interest Level: 6

Pretty decent Tuesday Night match-up with some playoff implications. The Rangers take the AL-high 4.5 game lead and 81% playoff chances and take on the Tigers, who despite being tied for the Twins at a game and a half back have minimal playoff chance (18%) in comparison to the Twins (36%).

The Rangers are taking Tommy Hunter to the hill who has very quietly who has come out of nowhere to pitch very well (6-0 2.33 era) after coming up from Oklahoma City. If he keeps this up......a Rangers duo of Cliff Lee and Tommy Hunter would make opposing teams dread facing Rangers pitching for the first time since......ever. The Tigers counter with Armando Galarraga who has had a bizarre season to say the least. It's not every year where someone gets sent to the minors twice and pitch a 28-out "perfect" game.

2- Minor League Matinee
Buffalo vs. Rochester MLB Network

According to the MLB Network website, they are extending out to a Triple A matinee and showing a game between the Buffalo Bisons-Mets Affiliate (50-45) and the Rochester Red Wings (35-62). Don't know too much about these Triple-A teams but for some reason a random nationally televised minor league baseball game piqued my interest.

Some ex-MLB players on to this team who may or may not see action include Ramon Ortiz, Oliver Perez (on a rehab assignment stemming from being placed on the DL with an inflated ERA), Brian Bruney & Mike Jacobs.

The Rochester team (Twins) affiliate sits 21 games out in the International League's Northern Division. Ex-major leaguers clinging on for a last chance at the show include Mike Maroth, D'Angelo Jimenez and Jacque Jones. According to their official website, Curt Schilling was their opening day starter in 1989.

3- Conflict Of Interest Game Of The Day:
Cardinals vs. Phillies

Chris Carpenter, how I love/hate the strong season he's having. The good part is he's been an anchor in my fantasy team rotation as he is coming off a very strong performance against the Dodgers. I hate it because he's a major reason why the Cardinals are in first and have a 69 percent chance to make the playoffs and a minor reason why the Brewers playoff odds sit at .5 percent.

4- Pitchers Duel Of The Day:
Dodgers vs. Giants
Lincecum vs. Kershaw

The last time I mentioned Kershaw and pitchers duel in the same sentence (Thursday against Chris Carpenter and the Cardinals) Kershaw didn't hold up his end of the bargain. Maybe the situation of going against the rival Giants and the fact that the Dodgers need a major boost will motivate Kershaw to step up in this start.

5- Random Ex-Big Leaguer Who Signed A Minor League Contract:
Wily Mo Pena

The Padres signed Wily Mo Pena to a minor league deal today. One of the moves that seems out of left-field and a bit desperate but so crazy, that it could work. At the very least, he appears to have the raw talent (which didn't completely materialize) as he was a top-100 prospect 3 times (2000, 2002 & 2003). He's even displayed some power in his bat at a big league level as he did hit 26 homers at the age of 22.

However, things seemed to go downhill from there as Pena's career had slipped from there getting to the point where he got DFA'd by the Zombie Expos in March 2009.

Considering his numbers appeared to have peaked and much hasn't been heard about him in the last few years, it was surprising to see that he's still only 28. While his free-swinging tendencies likely makes his career ceiling somewhere around Jeff Francoeur, he does have the capability to impact the offense as he does have plenty of power in his bat (something that is lacking from most Padres hitters not named Adrian Gonzales). This signing of an apparently washed out player may not look big today but he could have a surprise impact on the NL West, having a similar effect that Pat Burrell has had on the Giants. It might sound crazy but not as crazy as a first-place team starting Scott Hairston, Tony Gwynn Jr. and Will Venable in their outfield as unique for its lack of production as it is for the fact that all 3 are the sons of ex-MLB players....and that is why Wily Mo Pena is a deep-sleeper candidate for comeback player of the year.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Monday F5ive

The five things on my mind:

1-Phillies vs. Cardinals ESPN
Kendrick vs. Hawksworth
Interest Level: 8

A battle between two pitchers on my Razzball team....obviously, I would prefer the Phillies to win this one but the more runs these two starting pitchers give up, the better


2- Madison Bumgarner's start against the Dodgers

Bumgarner has taken the minors to school and gives the Giants another talented arm in the Giants rotation. He's pitched well in 4 starts in the bigs this year (2-2 2.57 era). Bumgarner faces a giant test tomorrow to see how reliable he will be down the stretch as he gets his first taste of the bitter Giants-Dodgers rivalry.

3-Roy Oswalt's Injury

Oswalt ended up leaving Sunday's start with an injury. This makes things a bit complicated. They haven't mentioned how much time Oswalt will be out but it seems to go without saying that this will complicate the inevitable trade to a contender and diminsh the returns the Astros would get for Oswalt.

Another in-direct subplot is how (and if) this injury affects his place in Astros history. If this injury causes Oswalt to miss a start, it may take away his chance of breaking Joe Niekro's all-time Astros record for wins (though the anemic Astros offense could just as easily take the blame if this were to happen....6-10 despite a 134 ERA+).

Or this could indirectly give him more than a few more starts in an Astors uniform. This injury could scare potential suitors away and/or reduce what they are willing to give in return....combined with him missing a limited amount of time...it could divert contenders looking for starting pitching in another direction, Oswalt gets time to get the franchise win record and the Astros hold off until the off-season and get a better return for Oswalt.

4- Sports/Movie Cross-Over Part 1: Major League

A sad day in the sports/entertainment industry as James Gammon, who played manager Lou Brown in the Major League franchise died at the age of 70.

The movie, about an Indians team assembled with a bunch of cast-offs designed to make the Indians so bad to plunge attendance numbers so their owner could move them to Florida.

In real life, the 2010 Indians being managed by Manny Acta have zero-to little hope of winning this year (like their movie counterparts had in spring). While the scrappy underdogs pull it off in the movie, edging the Yankees for the AL East title (this scenario has to change in the inevitable remake due to re-alignment), real life does not act like the movies and as good as Carlos Santana is it is unlikely they would bypass 4 teams and cash in on a .2% chance of making the playoffs (even if Kerry Wood gets off the DL, returns to his dominant form circa 1998 and becomes a modern day Ricky Vaughn). But hey, if the Indians do pull it off, they could re-make Major League (even if they don't it will probably be re-made as 80s movies are being re-made left and right as we've apparently run out of ideas).

5-Sports/Movie Cross-Over Part II: Tropic Thunder
Disclaimer: This one is not baseball related but is something I couldn't resist mentioning since seeing Tropic Thunder

Yesterday, I ended up renting and watching the film Tropic Thunder. The film is about three mega-stars (Ben Stiller as Action Star, Jack Black in the Eddie Murphy esque-role of playing several unfunny roles in the same film and Robert Downey Jr. as the critic-favorite) who unite to make a mega-budget film with a rookie director only for the director to be unable to manage their egos and having a project where nothing can go wrong have everything go wrong.

During the summer, three mega-stars (LeBron James, Dwayne Wade & Chris Bosh....alongside their hand-picked supporting cast...) who have previously played for separate teams (Cleveland, Miami & Toronto) who unite in Miami for the mega-uber project of the ages........together with a fairly young Eric Spoelstra (while he has a couple years experience....seriously he doesn't look like hes over 25).

One thing thats popped into my mind as this LeBronadrama has been going on is that anything less than 5 titles is going to be a disaster. However, with the unprecedented amount of stars (and egos) involved......somebody is not going to be happy...........all 3 of these are going to want to be the man and how their egos are not going to take over, I don't know........this is a very delicate balance that could very easily implode.....and this is BEFORE we take into account Bosh's lack of playoff experience and LeBron's tendency to save his best for the meaningless regular season games, the real life Miami Heat could easily become just as dysfunctional as the fictional actors in Tropic Thunder and this could make LeBron and Bosh both title-less even after their contracts expire.

Friday, July 16, 2010

The Weekend F5ive

A look at the games getting some TV attention this weekend

1-Dodgers vs. Cardinals Saturday FOX
Kuroda vs. Wainwright
Interest Level: 5

The Dodgers and Cardinals continue with their series this weekend. My projection of a duel between Kershaw and Carpenter turned out to be horribly wrong. Carpenter did his part while Kershaw had a rough day in the office.

We're probably looking at another one-sided affair in favor of the Cardinals on Saturday as Wainwright has thus far one-upped his career year in 2009 and it appears very little is going to get in his way in 2010.

2- Rays vs. Yankees Saturday FOX
Niemann vs. Burnett
Interest Level: 7

This game gets extra interest points for fantasy purposes. On one of my teams, the starting pitching has been solid most of the year and Jeff Niemann has been one of the main reasons why...replacing Javier Vasquez with him has been one of the best decisions i've made all year.

While his strong performance has been aided by really good luck (.242 opposing BABIP). Still, he deserves credit for one of the more under-rated pitching performances of the 1st half as he's in 4th in Wins Above Replacement, 5th in WHIP, 5th in ERA+ so on and so forth....should be a likely win for the Rays in this one.

3- Rangers vs. Red Sox Saturday MLB Network
Lee vs. Lackey
Interest Level: 6

A couple things to pay attention to here. First, will the Red Sox be able to make up ground on whoever loses the Rays-Yankees game/series.

Second, OMG....the Rangers have Cliff Lee.....the Rangers traded for Cliff Lee (so who hasn't traded for Cliff Lee in the past year). In all seriousness, does Cliff Lee bounce back against an inexplicably bad start against Baltimore and take his rightful place in the role of that guy that swings a division race and leads his team to the World Series......he was that guy for the Phils last year....and with the Rangers having an 80% chance of making the playoffs....it's likely he's going to have the same role in Texas.

4- Rays vs. Yankees Sunday MLB Network
Price vs. Pettite
Interest Level: 3

While the pitching match-up is better than the rest of the series....this is where the over-exposure of this entire series being on national television and the Third/West coast bias of myself and this blog kicks in. The outcome will tweak the AL East/Wild Card standings but since both teams have at least a 75% chance of making the playoffs.....there will be more meaningful games between these two as we get deeper into the summer.

5-Phillies vs. Cubs Sunday ESPN
Halladay vs. Gorzelanny
Interest Level: 4

The only reason the interest level is this high is because Halladay is pitching. So, yeah this is pretty much a match-up of two high profile teams that have underachieved to various degrees. The Phillies have done so to a more moderate degree (that they have a 18% chance) of over-coming while the Cubs are the front-runners for the underachieving team of the year award. But the game has fantasy implications as I have Halladay which is about the only reason I personally have for paying attention.


Thursday, July 15, 2010

The FridayF5ive

It's Friday, the weekend is upon us. Here are 5 things to pay attention to:

1- The only national broadcast game is

Rays vs. Yankees--MLB Network
Shields vs. Sabathia
Interest Level: 6

A match-up with playoff implications but not really. I say playoff implications as the outcome of this series will have at least a short-term impact on the AL East lead and gives the winner a shot to distance themselves from the Red Sox. I say not necessarily playoff implications because if the playoffs were to start today both teams would be in anyways.

Looking at the teams it should be a close match-up. However, looking at the pitching match-up its more likely than not the Yankees should take this. CC Sabathia is coming off a strong performance against the M's (which led my fantasy team to a loss) and another All-Star performance/strong season, etc. The Rays counter with James Shields. While Shields is an average pitcher with a strong K/BB ratio, compared to Sabathia, he doesn't really give the Rays a good chance in this game.

2-Will the Zombie Expos give Strasburg some run support?

With rookie phenom (and the main reason to pay attention) to the Nationals, Stephen Strasburg taking the hill against the Marlins, now is the good time to ask the question. Strasburg has proven himself to be big-league in just about every conceivable way. However, having a weak hitting team behind him has caused him to have a 3-2 win loss record (he gave up 2 ER in 13 innings in those two starts).

Tomorrow, Strasburg takes the hill against the other NL East team that called up an uber-prospect in June but has no hopes in contending (Marlins). It's a given that Strasburg will bring it but can their offense do enough against Ricky Nolasco to give him a win (or at least not tag him with a loss) remains to be seen.

3-How long will Dan Haren be stuck in Arizona?

With Haren starting tomorrow against the first place Padres, it seems like the appropriate time to ask the question. With the D-Backs in flux and in no hopes of contending soon, it would seem to make sense that contending teams would be willing to part ways with some prospects in exchange for pitching help down the stretch. While he hasn't pitched as well this year as he has in years past, Haren is definitely talented enough to be a talent upgrade for a contending pitching staff. Could this be the last time Haren puts on a D-Backs uniform or will his talents continue to be spent on a team that is a non-impact on the playoff chase?

4- Two bad teams, two different paths

Something that will be on display starting tomorrow as the Astros and Pirates battle each other to stay out of last place. This series will move towards answering the debate of the most effective way to 100-losses......A) Be saddled by large contracts for hitters in their 30s that are simultaneously regressing skillwise or B) Go on an 18-year rebuilding plan....my vote B)...The Astros may be terrible but they did go to the World Series 5 years ago and this is only their second straight losing season

5- The next Reds-Cubs series could be interesting to say the least

And probably not because of the quality of the match-up. While the Reds are in 1st, the Cubs are in the NL Central purgatory battling the Brewers for 3rd place. While it is a player on a rival team, it is good to see a player take their divisional rivalries seriously. The highlight of the article:

Asked why he has such disdain for the Cubs, Votto said: "We are Cincinnati Reds. We're taught to hate everything in the Central Division. That's just how it is."


While Joey Votto plays for a divisional rival for the Brewers and as a result hates the team I follow because of it, i've gotta say the honesty is refreshing. In an age where everything is uber-pc and outside factors have made it more about money than loyalty (Scott Boras.....cough......cough). It's good to see a star player back up the colors of his team. In a way, this could be a rallying cry and a turning point for the Reds (as a Brewers fan I hope i'm wrong about this) and it the snub of Byrd (and the Cubs as a whole) will add a bit of tension in the air the next time these teams match-up. Either way, this story is more interesting than reading another article about how under-rated he is (even though this is an accurate statement).........seriously, this dude could win the MVP if he keeps doing what he's doing and the Reds hold on.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Back From The Break, Five Things To Watch For

So the All-Star Break is coming to an end (after three long days) and i've finally mustered up the motivation to do some writing.

Thursday happens to be a light day (a soft launch if you will).....the only game being nationally televised is:

1-Dodgers vs. Cardinals MLB Network
Kershaw vs. Carpenter
Interest Level: 8

This is a pretty solid match-up to start off the second half and the beginning of things to come. First of all, there is the factor of this being a rematch of last years NLDS. Also, both teams come into this game with legitimate playoff hopes as the Dodgers are 2 games behind the Padres for the west and tied for the Rockies in the Wild Card race. The Cardinals are in decent contending position as well as they sit only 1 game back of the Reds in the Central.

Also, the pitching match-up is nothing to scoff at either. The Dodgers are starting Clayton Kershaw who in my opinion, is one of the under-rated young pitchers in the game. He barely turned 22 before the season started, he's capable of dominating at times, piling up high strikeout numbers (he leads the NL in SO/9) and has improved on his one weakness control (going from 4.8 BB/9 to 4 BB/9 from last year to this). In other words, once Kershaw gets his walk totals a little lower, he is bound to have his name in the discussion of young ace pitchers that has been dominated by Strasburg (despite the disadvantage of playing on the West Coast).

The Cardinals are countering with Chris Carpenter. While Carpenter obviously isn't as young as Kershaw, the last couple of years have proven he can still pitch. He nearly won the Cy Young last year and has followed it up with a strong 2010. This game also includes a conflict of interest element. Obviously, a Dodgers win over the Cardinals would help the Brewers increase their 1% chance of making the playoffs (albeit slightly) while a rough outing by Carpenter would hurt my fantasy team that is in the midst of a season high 3-game losing streak. Either way, expect this to be a close, low-scoring game


Other things that pique my interest:

2- How will the Brewers start the second half?

While the Brewers may have embarrassed themselves against the Giants, they still managed to sweep the Pirates last weekend giving them a 3 game winning streak and get themselves within single figures in the Games Back column. The Brewers have Dave Bush taking the hill. This may not guarantee victory (as indicated by a 4-6 record) but it at least means that more likely than not, the Brewers will at least have a chance to extend their winning streak to 4 as he held the opposing team to 3 ER or less in 14 of his 17 first-half starts.

3- How will the Gonzales/Escobar trade affect the Braves?

We will begin to find out starting with their game against the Brewers. Personally, i'm not sold on it being as positive of an impact as the Braves are hoping. Sure, Gonzales went on a tear in the first half and hit a bunch of homers. Personally, it's more he had an extended hot streak than Gonzales turning a corner (at 33 and with a .296 OBP). The Blue Jays were smart enough to sell high on Gonzales while the Blue Jays were able buy-low to pick up a younger, talented but struggling Yunel Escobar (who's younger (27) has a better OBP than Gonzales (.334...so he's getting on base more often in his worst year than Gonzales has in his best year) and he also happened to be 10th the NL in Wins Above Replacement last year while Gonzales has never had an OPS+ over 100 in a full season.

My take, i'm not convinced the Braves upgraded themselves going from Gonzales to Escobar and there is a fair possibility that they may regret this trade a few years down the line.

4- How long can R.A. Dickey keep this up?

If you would have told me on opening day that R.A. Dickey would have been the Mets best pitcher in the first half and asked me how many games out of first they would be, I would have said 20. However, R.A. Dickey has been a major factor in the Mets having a legit shot at the playoffs. In terms of the NL East race, a major factor for the Mets being a player will hinge on whether Dickey reverts to the journeyman pitcher he was through his age-34 year or if he's made a permanent breakthrough with the knuckle ball that will keep him effective into his 40s.
We'll begin to find out tomorrow as he goes up against Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants.

5- Is this the 3rd straight year the AL Central gets decided in a one-game playoff?

The reason I ask this question is the Twins and White Sox get started in a crucial 4-game series coming up this weekend. In 08 it was White Sox over Twins, last year it was Twins over Tigers. Leads me to think about a couple of weird scenarios. Scenario #1 being that neither team wins it as it would be the Tigers turn to win the AL Central via a one-game playoff. Scenario #2 being an unprecedented 3-way tie that leads to a 3 team round-robin playoff. Considering that Coolstandings.com gives all 3 teams at least a 25% chance but none of them have a 50% chance to make the playoffs.

My prediction, with pitcher Jake Peavy out for the year, the White Sox eventually take the AL Central via the Ewing Theory.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

6/12: Disabled List Reunions, Pitching Past 50 & More

The weekend is here and with that (even) more baseball. The last time I wrote a column was during a Manny Parra start and coincidentally i'm writing this now as Parra is making his next start.

Last time, I made an off-comment early in the game about a long night for the bullpen based on the short length of his prior starts.....granted he didn't pitch that long Sunday (5 2/3) but he had a nice start racking up 10 K's and the bullpen kept it together to beat St. Louis.

It's been a good stretch....winning 4 of the last 5 including an extra inning win in STL and two walk-off wins against the Cubs...on the off-chance the Brewers get into contention this year, the walk-off sac bunt by Counsell could be the catalyst to an extended run of good play.

This nice stretch of play has coincided with the end of the Jeff Suppan era. Probably should of happened before the season began. I thought I would have been happier about this development but the only reaction is relief that the experience of watching him pitch (whether it be as a starter or mop-up man are over and if I do see him pitch it will be with the Brewers bats going up against him as a member of the Cardinals. Apparently, the Cardinals are looking to give Jeff Suppan a chance in their rotation......which means they may have inadvertently increased the Reds chances of getting their first playoff appearance since 1995.

On a more disturbing note, the release of Jeff Suppan allowed the Brewers to lead the league in a category. However, the bad news is that category happens to be percentage of payroll going to players no longer playing for them.

So early today, I stumbled across ABC and some new show (it's been a couple hours but I forget the name already) where they had the plays of the week on a bracket (BTW in my humble opinion, this show is downright terrible and I don't see it lasting more than a couple months.....seriously I could feel my IQ dropping by the minute watching this.....the concept is good....the execution not so much).

Anyways they had a couple 16-seed brackets and the walk-off Sac Bunt was seeded 11 against Big Baby Davis drooling after celebrating a basket.

Needless to say, Carlos Gomez did not advance to the next round (BTW Strasburg's debut won their tourney). Granted Big Baby has the advantage of doing his thing on the stage of the NBA Finals.....but c'mon i'm pretty sure people drooling after a big play happens on a regular basis. Scoring from first on a Sac-Bunt hasn't happened since 1975. That was so long ago that I wasn't even born for 8 years and the Dharma Initiative was in its prime....this may involve two teams who won't be talking about the Playoffs?! but we're talking about History?! it hasn't happened in 35 years and your reducing it to an 11-seed....you kidding me?

In the it was a matter if when not if category, Rich Harden was placed on the Disabled List for what seems like the kajillionth time. If it was anyone else, there may be speculation about the DL trip being connected to performance (Harden throw a season high 120-pitches last night, gave up 6 runs (second highest total in 2010) and has seen his ERA reach a season high of 5.68.

However, this is Rich Harden we are talking about. Harden and the Disable List are total BFFs. When all is said and done, Rich Harden is probably in the top 5 of pitchers that we will be speculating on how much they could have accomplished if not for their frequent jaunts to the DL:
other pitchers w/in this discussion would be Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Ben Sheets and those are just the ones that come to mind at this point.

Thus far he's only had 4 seasons where he has pitched over 100 innings. His ERA+ for those years are 114, 173, 212 & 110.....a couple decent seasons and a couple seasons that would have been Cy Young caliber if extended to a full slate of 35 starts. To further the point, players on his top 10 similar's list on his Baseball-Reference page include Felix Hernandez, Matt Cain & Adam Wainwright.....in other words health is keeping the list of elite pitchers at least one pitcher too short.

In the you never know what your gonna see/i'm glad I decided to change the channel to this game department.......Daniel Nava. So, I was aimlessly flipping through the channels and the thought came to me to see which game was on FOX during their exclusive domain known as Saturday afternoon. At that time it was 2-1 Phillies and the Red Sox had two men on (they loaded the bases shortly after)......leading to an epic matchup between Nava and Joe Blanton. The broadcasters barely get a sentence out about it being his debut, etc, etc, etc.......and then BOOM grand slam....first pitch......history made. Honestly, didn't see it coming.....Grand Slams don't happen very much as it is but to see someone do it on the first-major league pitch that they see......not bad when you start your career with a rate of 4 RBI/Pitch Seen.

That makes it the second player to make history in this weekend tilt between Red Sox/Phillies.
Yesterday, Jamie Moyer set another age-related record becoming the oldest pitcher to give up 9+ runs in a start (well, technically he was breaking his own record that he set a few years back). Even the writers of this blog (Baseball-Reference) have little to no faith in this record being broken (by someone other than Moyer)....but the door is open for it to be broken within the next five years. While many of the pitchers on this list have since retired (Maddux, Clemens, Fassero, Sad Sam Jones, etc.).....the last active player to make this list (Tim Wakefield....who made it with his May 28th start against the Royals) happens to be 4th all-time on this list (2nd amongst pitchers not named Jamie Moyer. Wakefield isn't that much younger than Moyer (43 vs. 47) and knuckle ball pitchers are known for lasting forever, for all we know Wakefield could still be pitching into his 60s if he wanted......then again Jamie Moyer might be still be pitching keeping one-step ahead in all things related to age records.

In all seriousness, I am rooting for Moyer to stay in the bigs and effective into his 50s. Seeing a pitcher be able to get hitters out this deep into his 40s and beyond is very rare and something we don't see all the time. Since Julio Franco barely missed this threshold (probably) Moyer/Wakefield may be the last hopes of seeing someone playing past 50 as MLB has been on a league-wide youth movement.

Till next time.......

Sunday, June 6, 2010

6/6: The Sunday Night Column: ESPN, Brewers-Cards & My Dislike Of The Super-2 Rule

The Brewers are facing off against the Cards on Sunday Night baseball. In the I knew this year was bad but can it get any worse......the Brewers need to win tonight to avoid dropping to a tie for last-place with the Houston Astros.......ouch.

In the I feel a bit old already category, ESPN used music that I actually grew up with (Tumble In The Rough-Stone Temple Pilots). The reward for national tv...the Brewers get to go up against the buzzsaw that is Jaime Garcia.....counterting for the Brewers......Manny Parra.....if his last couple starts are any indication, we could be seeing a lot of the not so vaunted bullpen tonight.

In terms of imagery, Jon Miller was talking about the Cardinals going for a sweep as they cut to an image of a groundspeople sweeping dirt off of the right-field foul line.......yes it's been that type of year when even the groundspeople.

I haven't watched very many ESPN broadcasts this year and i'm getting a refresher course on listening to Joe Morgan. They brought up the fact of the lead-off man changing....prompted by Rickie Weeks leading the league in strikeouts amongst lead-off men and a conversation about how back in their day the lead-off man role was to bunt their way on to base. While I would prefer Rickie Weeks to play closer to his hype......its not like he's been that terrible despite the strikeouts despite the strikeouts and a .248 average he has a passable OBP (.340) and an okay OPS+ 104...in other words a lot better than your stereotypical light-hitting middle infielder leadoff man from back in the yesteryear.

Another thing to note is the broadcast team mentioned Macha and Melvin having a conference call discussing the rest of the season (primarily seeing if they can improve the pitching staff).....on the speculative side, it does trigger my thinking to what else (that they're not going to tell the public) that they are thinking about doing (i.e. will Suppan (finally) get released? what about Hoffman? does Macha get to finish the year or will they go in another direction? are they thinking about trading one of their hitters (i.e Hart to upgrade the pitching staff?). These questions and many others are likely to at some-point (maybe tomorrow maybe in a couple months, maybe in the off-season, who knows).

Taking a shot in the dark but it's safe to assume ratings for tonight's games are probably going to be lower than average.....even if the Brewers weren't south of .400, this would still be the case as this game has the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final games (despite the Onion constantly bashing the NHL for having no fans) going on at the same time.....but hey, ESPN is showing the crew Wednesday against the Cubs.

So, Weeks just went deep for the 10th time this year leading to more discussion revolving around Weeks in the context of his spot as the lead-off hitter, leading to a couple backhanded compliments. Joe Morgan praises his power (despite him being on base less than you'd like from the leadoff position. At this point I would like to note that Weeks has a higher OBP (.340) than the two Brewers players who typify the stereotypical "traditional" lead-off hitter (lack of power coupled with lots of speed) those being Carlos Gomez (.297) and Alcides Escobar (.297).

Jon Miller counters by saying Rickie Weeks has the batting line of a #5 hitter.....in other words if Weeks keeps his average in the .250-.260 range, i ain't too worried about it because he draws enough walks to keep his OBP/OPS within a respectable range (even if he isn't a "traditional" lead-off man).

OMG!!!!!!! Strasburg is making his big league debut on Tuesday. I find it a bit ironic that ESPN is going to be covering this story pretty much all day Tuesday but they weren't even able to pull off getting the broadcast for the game (which went to MLB Network instead). On a side note, this indirectly led to me making some tweaks to my Razzball team as i've ridden Craig Stammen's 5.88 ERA as far as I could as he was the pitcher who got sent down to make room for him on the roster (I also had to find someone to replace Oliver Perez who went on the DL with an inflated ERA).

As we are into June (i.e. far enough into the season to avoid the Super-2 arbitration rule) means one thing.....super-prospect call-up season. Strasburg isn't even the only mega-prospect from the NL East getting the call this week as the Marlins are calling up Mike Stanton. While he hasn't gotten the hype of Strasburg, the way Stanton has absolutely killed the ball in the minors has a better chance to be a game-changer than Strasburg.

Even if Strasburg is as good or better than advertised, the Nationals are slowly but surely coming down to earth after a better than expected start and even with a strong performance from Strasburg, there's only so much he could do every 5 days to cut into the 6 1/2 game hole the Nationals have dug (thus far).

The Marlins, while they aren't much better (28-29 5 1/2 games out) get an impact bat in the line-up every day. Stanton should give a nice jolt to the Marlins line-up and replacing him with whoever goes to the bench (probably either Chris Coghlan or Cameron Maybin). Either three things happen in the context of the playoff race. A) This isn't enough to get the Marlins into contention B) It's enough to get them in contention but not enough to get them in the playoffs C) It helps put them over the top and into the playoffs.

If options A or C happen, 2 months in the minors isn't going to be that big of a deal. However, option B seems to be the most likely at this moment. The Marlins have done enough with their hitting and pitching wise to indicate that they have at least a shot. If this happens, this (should) and likely will bring in more discussions of the "merits" of working around the Super-2 rule (i.e. would two more months of Stanton versus two less months of Coghlan or Maybin) would this have been the difference between playoffs and no playoffs.

Seriously, the yearly manipulation of the Super-2 rule is one of the things that is wrong with the game. One of these years, some GM is going to mis-calculate the 17 percent rule and have the combination of a partial season for an uber-prospect but still having to go to arbitration as a Super-2. You, know how i'm going to react? I'm going to sit back and laugh at this act of karmic retribution.

Seriously, this super-2 loophole needs to be eradicated. It doesn't benefit the prospects as they have to toil around in the minors for a couple of months even though their game is major-league ready. It doesn't benefit the fans as they are usually stuck with a less than optimal (i.e inferior product) as less-talented players like Maybin, Stammen, etc. are filling roster slots and contributing little to their teams success (versus what Stanton and Strasburg) are expected to do. Seriously, most of the time this happens it is pretty clear that the GMs are under-mining their teams chance of a playoff spot in an attempt to delay arbitration.






Thursday, June 3, 2010

6/3: My Take On The Jim Joyce Incident

It's definitely been an interesting few days in Baseball. Roy Halladay threw a perfect game on Saturday night in a 1-0 win over the Marlins. Even though this happened less than a week ago, it still feels like a distant memory in the context of what has happened this week. It turns out, its pretty easy to do well in Fantasy Baseball if you happen to have the pitcher who threw a perfect game......it's even better when you also have a pitcher who threw a 1-hit shutout the night before. However, tonight I am not here to talk about what happened last weekend.

Speaking of 1-hit shutouts. Armando Gallaraga threw one last night. Unless you have been under a rock for the last 24 hours, you would already know that it could have (and should have been) a lot more than a 1-hit shutout. Of course, Gallaraga's game should have been much more (being the third perfect game in 2010 joining 209 Braden and Doc Halladay).

A few thoughts on this matter:

1) If nothing else, Jim Joyce has conducted himself like a pro:

In a season where many umpires have called teams disgraces to baseball and charged after pitchers, Jim Joyce showing some common sense has been a breath of fresh air. He manned up to his mistake, admitted he was wrong and has said/done all the right things in the aftermath (just imagine how much uglier this situation would be if Joe West would have been the umpire.)

2) This is likely to bring instant replay to baseball on a full scale:

This seems to fulfill (to most people) the doomsday scenario that having instant replay in baseball would avoid. While it would have been nice to have another perfect game on the record, its not like this call cost the Tigers the game.

Anyways, having instant replay on a full scale would be bad for baseball. This would open up a pandora's box of when replay is applied and when replay isn't. Is it going to get to the point where its used to dispute every ball that is on the fringe of the strike zone? Is it used to validate each and every play? Will it be possible to finish a game in under 10 hours to satisfy all the replay advocates?

3) Reversing the ruling to change it to a perfect game would have set a DANGEROUS precedent:

As much as I dislike Bud Selig and as reluctant as I am to say anything positive about him ever, I do have to concede that he made the right call by holding up the ruling. Seriously, if this call would have been reversed it would give the perception that you could arbitrarily re-write the history of the game.

Take this unrealistic scenario for example: Joyce's blown call was compared to the blown call in the 1985 World Series. What if in the aftermath of this reversed call, they decide to reverse the Don Denkinger call that was seen as the turning point of the World Series. Seriously, would they have them replay the rest of Game 6 (and Game 7 if need be 25 years later?).

Seriously, it would take at least a couple years to convince people that the Royals were a respectable team once (let alone play in and win a World Series). When you look at the Royals these days George Brett ain't walking through that door, Bret Saberhagen ain't walking through that door, Frank White ain't walking through that door.

Going down I-70 to St. Louis.....while the Cardinals are still competitive the likes of Todd Worell, Terry Pendelton and Jack Clark have one thing in common? They ain't walking through that door.

In all seriousness though, if last night's call gets reversed, we'll be stuck with more re-plays, re-dos and mulligans that we won't get to the playoffs till January. If the 1990s have the black eye of Steroids, this reversal would have ushered in the 2010s era of the mulligan.

Does this sound like fun? I didn't think so. I already made the next point but i'll do it again, while we did get deprived of some history and that is disappointing the big picture is that ULTIMATELY WINNING THE GAME IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HOW IT IS WON AND THIS MISTAKE DID NOT COST THE TIGERS THE GAME. Now all I can do is sit and hope that the reaction over this mistake is not used to have the machines (instant replay) become a disgrace to the game.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

5/28: Epic Duels, Epic Walkoffs With A Side Of West-Coast Bias

Well, it's been an interesting night baseball-wise. The Brewers-Mets game has been an epic pitchers duel to the nth degree as Yovani Gallardo and Johan Santana have put zeros across the score-board all night long.

As I write this, there is one gone in the bottom of the ninth and the Mets are in the process of making a pitching change. Will this be the second straight day the Crew win it in their last at-bat? That is a question that is yet to be revealed. With Braun and McGehee the next two batters up, the Brewers have a shot.

Braun eeks out an infield hit after Reyes makes a diving stop...good for the momentum but there's still work to do. McGehee jumped the gun and hit a harmless pop-up. Tonight in particular it seems like the Crew hitters have an all or nothing approach (i.e. everyone seems to be swinging for the fences).

And just like that IT WORKED. Corey Hart took one DEEP!!!!!!!!!. Had to chill for a few moments and let the walk-off homer sink in. Even though the Brewers still have work to do standings wise (20-28)....it has been nice to get out of the abyss of a 9-game losing and to start winning some games in the 9th inning instead of losing them.

As epic and awesome as tonight's game was, there is still more baseball to get into. We might be getting towards the late games but these games do have heavy fantasy implications for myself. As I write this, my team is trailing by 4 points for the week (191.5-187.5) and two of my starting pitchers are pitching right now (Cain and Richard) and the team i'm up against has Edwin Jackson and Scott Kazmir getting starts currently.

In other words, lots of hectic split-screen back and forth engagement between split-screens on the mlb.tv and the Angels game on Fox Sports West.

Right now, my main focus is on the Padres-Zombie Expos game as Clayton Richard has put up 3 2/3 scoreless right now. If Clayton Richard keeps this up, i'll have to ask myself why it took me so long for me to replace John Lackey with Clayton Richard.

I'd definitely have to say that I find the Padres to be one of the more interesting teams in baseball this year. Pretty much everyone (myself included) thought the Padres had little or zero chance to contend this year. But the way that team is pitching, this is a definitely a team that is not going away anytime soon (even though Willingham just hit a 3-run shot off of Richard).

The Zombie Expos on the other hand seem to be playing the hang around .500 until they can call up Strasburg without accruing arbitration time in 2010 (this rule manipulation is up there amongst things that are wrong with pro baseball). While this team is not going to be as bad as they have been the last few years (100-plus losses)......I definitely wouldn't give the Zombie Expos a higher than 20% percent chance to stick around (tougher division, less overall talent, no way that Livian Hernandez keeps that era low, etc.).

Either way, if I end up winning this league Strasburg will be indirectly involved to some extent (no he's not on my team). To back track, third base had been a black hole for my in the first month of the season as I decided to pick Brandon Wood's upside over Casey McGehee (big mistake). I had stuck with Wood (not good) gave Casey Blake a chance to start (didn't work out) but at this moment, a third basemen fell out of the sky the same way a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky for Benjamin Linus when Oceanic 815 crashed on to the island. I look one day and Casey McGehee was on the waiver wire. I picked him up and out of curiosity looked to see who the NL Leader In RBI was replaced with (none other than Steven Strasburg).

Bounced to the D-Backs-Giants game to see if the Giants can put up some runs on Edwin Jackson. The Giants broadcast team just put up a pop-up of highest slugging average since 2009. Not suprisingly, Kung Fu Panda took the 1-spot. The #2 spot, Andres Torres.

While it may be a small sample size (305 At-Bats) and he didn't exactly set the world on fire prior to coming to The City, it does seem odd that it took Torres a year to get regular playing time considering how much this team has struggled to score runs in recent memory. Playing for the Giants (and thus half his games at Pac-Bell and he's put up a nice 126 OPS+, his profile may be low but that's actually fairly impressive. (Giants went up 2-0 BTW).

Back to the Padres-Zombies game which has the Zombie Expos up 3-1 (my team is up by .5 pts currently).........it looks like lots of leads changes and ties for my fantasy team tonight. Since Richard wasn't back on the mound yet, back to the Giants game and Matt Cain cruising along into the 4th inning.

Cain gets through another scoreless half-inning, my lead jumps to 4 points (helped along by Scott Kazmir giving up 4 runs). Off to the top of the 5th inning, a shot of the San Diego skyline and Richard racking up his second K. Richard shows a nice bounce-back from giving up the homer as he goes through a very quick 1-2-3 5th inning.

Back to the Giants-D-Backs game. I show up just in time to see Bengie Molina strike out. With mega-prospect call-up season right around the corner, Molina may not have many more chances to look clueless at the plate. Molina's (probable) replacement Buster Posey could be coming over from Fresno any day.

While this article indicates that Posey could be brought in to play 1st instead of going behind the plate, it is inevitable that Posey will take his reigns as Giants catcher of the future at some point. With the Giants still having hope for contending (only 3 1/2 out) and their offense struggling as always, there just seems to be more-upside to upgrading (i.e. starting Posey) at Catcher than at First.

Aubrey Huff has had a reasonable bounce-back season so far and it being questionable that Bengie Molina is an asset offensively (yes he can be counted on to hit .270-.290 with 15-20 homers but the last time he even had a 100 OPS+ was in 2006 with the Blue Jays). Point being, the numbers show that Molina is a slightly below league average hitter, he's 35 this year (his hitting is bound to regress at some point) and I think Posey is one of those prospects who steps in and gives his team a boost (probably should have broken camp with the Giants but hey, he "needed" those two months to develop his game.

Well I finished that rant in time to see Cain put up scoreless inning number 5 (as my team has pushed the lead up to 10). Kung Fu Panda misses an opp to blow the game open as he strikes out with the bases are loaded. The Giants are still in good shape though (up 3-0) and my team's lead has expanded to 16 1/2 points.


Well, that's whats going on right now....been a pretty good night.....till next time





Sunday, May 23, 2010

Nerve-Racking Save Situations plus my thoughts on Jose Lima and Nyjer Morgan's inside the park incident

Just another sunny-Sunday afternoon. Got the Brewers-Twins game going on the MLB.tv feed. Got the end of the Red Sox-Phillies game playing on the TV.

Yesterday's game was interesting to say the least. Coming back from 4 down to take a lead only to blow the lead and lose in the 12th. Thus far today, the Brewers pitching (despite being in shambles) has pitched reasonably well so far as they are up 4-2 in the 6th inning. This also happens to be the second game where a Brewer has made their big league debut this weekend as Zach Braddock is in the middle of his first appearance as we speak.

Today is a sad day in the world of baseball as Jose Lima died at the age of 37. This was a bit shocking to say the least (anyone that uses a name such as Lima Time for his pitching appearances has to be interesting). His Major League career might have been over but he wasn't that old. Lima had an interesting career to say the least. He had a couple really good seasons in '98 at '99 and at age 26 it looked like he was going to be amongst the elite pitchers for the foreseeable future.

Of course things didn't work out that way. He did have his moments after that (pitching a playoff shutout for the Dodgers in the 2004 NLDS) but he was never able to recapture what he had for the end of the 90s. The last I remembered seeing of him was about a month ago. I was watching a Dodgers-Pirates game, it was about the 8th inning and they cut to the crowd where Lima was signing some autographs for some fans....I didn't think too much about this when I was watching that game but it seems surreal now that the next time I would see or hear anything about Lima would be to hear of his death.

So, yesterday I was watching MLB Network and they were about to go to commercial and they were teasing for a highlight for the Nationals game and something about an inside-the-park home run that happened in an unusual fashion. Since I wasn't feeling like TV after the Brewers loss yesterday, I didn't think much about it and went on with my day.

Well, I just saw the YouTube video for it and all I gotta say is wow. So I know its gotta be disappointing falling short on making a catch that would have robbed the hitter of a likely double. Being distracted enough to throw your hat down and completely lose it to the point that another outfielder has to throw the ball in a desperate attempt to prevent an inside the parker--that has got to be about the dumbest i've seen on a big league field in a long time (if not ever)--i'm guessing it will be hard for him to live this incident and he'll be likely to be remembered for the 20 seconds of bad judgment more than whatever he may accomplish on the field....it might not be fair but thats just the harsh reality of things.

Felling a bit tense the Brewers are up 4-2 right now but down to those elusive last 3 outs. Today's closers role is going to John Axford (after a very quick inning by Hoffman). Hudson just led off with a double--not liking how this is starting......strikes out Morneau (not bad at all)....struck out Cuddyer swinging (up and in).....Kubel RBI Single (not hit that hard outfield playing deep 4-3).......base hit runners at 1st and 3rd, Thome coming up...based loaded Plouffe coming out......strikes out Plouffe to end the game and lead the bases loaded...........for once a blown save is averted...........wow that was a bit nerve-racking......been inside my apartment a bit much this weekend, time to hit the gym.....till next time

Saturday, May 22, 2010

5/22: Ranting on the Brewers and Roy Oswalt Wanting to get out of Houston

Well, after Thursday's win over the Pirates, there was (faint) hope that the Brewers could turn things around and go on a winning streak (that's when a team wins more than one game in a row.....or so i'm told).

Then, last night happened. Dave Bush lasting a 1/3 of an inning (but long enough for an umpire to try to fight him). Carlos Gomez over-celebrated a home run (while the Crew was down 12). In all seriousness, maybe this is the type of swagger the Brewers need to come back to (i.e. Choreographed Home Run Celebrations, Untucking, etc.)......the Brewers toned down on that stuff this year and also toned down their place in the standings at the same time.

Also, gotta say, i'm slowly but surely coming around on Carlos Gomez. I didn't think much of him when he got traded for J.J Hardy......i thought of him as another speedy light-hitter who was going to be a liability on offense. However, he's shown improved power (still not being mistaken for Braun/Fielder) he's hit for decent contact (but could improve on selecting which pitches to swing at) and the guy is an absolute vacumn in center field.

As for today, things ain't lookin much better. At least today's starter made it out of the first and has "held" the Twins to 4 runs in 2 2/3.

In the fake baseball world, John Lackey's bad start finally moved me to the point where I had seen enough and I sent him away to this magical place called the waiver wire (all this place had to do is give me Clayton Richard). Despite this bad start, my team is still hanging on to a 206-180 lead.

Well the Brewers might be a dysfunctional NL Central team but......but their team of strong hitters, bad pitching, and bad managing is joined in this dysfunction (and in the bottom of the standings) with the soon-to-be conducting a fire sale Houston Astros.

The writing for this is basically on the wall. Roy Oswalt has formally requested a trade. This is beyond bad for the Astros for a few reasons.

Oswalt is the face of this franchise:

Maybe the last few years haven't been the peak of his career. Maybe he hasn't finished in the top-10 in Cy Young voting since 2006. Maybe he's had lingering injury troubles as he gets to the wrong side of 30. But when you think of the Houston Astros, Roy Oswalt is one of the if not THE first name that you associate with that team. He has been deeply entrenched in that teams rotation since 2001. While star players switching teams isn't exactly a new phenomenon, he is on the short list of players where it would be totally weird to see him pitching in a different uniform.

He's one of the few bright spots on a pretty dull team:

The reality is this, if he were to be theoretically traded today, this team goes from one of the worst in baseball to a chance to be one of the worst teams in history. As it stands, the Astros are 15-27 (which is sadly better than their pythagoreon record of 13-29......Brad Mills may or may not be a good manager but we'll never know since this team is going to tarnish his W-L to the point where this is likely his only chance to manage...but that's another rant for another day).

Point being: 2010 Astros are pretty bad and they would be a lot worse if not for Roy Oswalt. Yes, I am completely aware that Roy Oswalt is 2-6 this season. However, the rest of his numbers indicate that this is a vintage peak (or better) season for Oswalt.

His ERA+ is 160 (Tied for 8th in the NL and the second best total for his career), His WHIP is at 1.066 (good for 9th in the NL and just shy of his personal best 1.059), he's only given up 7.2 Hits/9 (shy of the top-10 but would be a career high), Tied for 7th in innings, tied for 5th in strikeouts tied for 7th in SO/BB ratio at 3.75 (his best since 2006).

Point being, this isn't your typical 2-6 pitcher..if you remove this from an already bad team this becomes an even more colossal train-wreck....when (not if) he gets traded Brett Myers become their #1--Myers isn't a bad pitcher but he hasn't exactly been mistaken for an ace..with a back of the rotation of Wandy Rodriguez (acutally not that bad) Felipe Paulion/Bud Norris/#5 Pitcher TBD combined with a starting line-up led by a struggling Lance Berkman (95 OPS+), their second best hitter being Michael Bourn (seriously, you couldn't even make this up) and 4 starters with OPS+ below 52 ("led" by Tommy Manzella at 35+, this team has 110, maybe 115 losses written all over them, depending on when they trade Oswalt.

To put into context the pitcher that is requesting to have no piece of this team (according to his B-R page, the 3 most similar pitchers to him are Roy Halladay, Johan Santana & CC Sabathia). It's too early to tell where he's going to get traded but wherever he does he's probably going to be the difference between that team going to the post-season and not going to the post-season. I'd be surprised if he DIDN'T have a CC Sabathia type-effect on his future team.



Monday, May 17, 2010

The Ramble 5/20: It's Been Awhile, Its been a bit too long

Been away for way too long (been a busy couple of weeks).....lots have happened since the Gerut cycle.

-The Brewers lost a lot of ball-games. They lost 9 in a row......the lost by blowouts (Braves series)....they lost due to a faulty bullpen (Phillies series)....they lost when Ken Macha tried to get 130 pitches out of Chris Narveson.......they lost due to further bullpen failure (Todd Coffey having a bad 7th inning......we all have a bad game now and then).....they lost because Ken Macha brought in Hoffman to close a game (totally indefensible........you know it's bad when you see that your team is up 4-2 after 8 1/2 and you see who's pitching in the 9th and you think to yourself........the Brewers ain't winning this game..........they finally won when Ken Macha finally figured out that bringing Hoffman in to pitch the 9th isn't getting it done (about a month late).

-With the closer situation....my vote for who to blame for this mess goes to Ken Macha. While Trevor Hoffman might be the one losing the games and struggling horribly......Macha was the one that kept putting him into these situations to lose until the Crew dropped 10 games below .500. If you read between the lines, its pretty clear where I place the blame for this mess. It's so bad that he's starting to make Eric Gagne look good.....nuff said.

-It's really hard to find a silver lining through all of this failure. The closest I can come up with is this stretch only cost the Brewers a couple games in the standings as St. Louis struggled pretty bad during that stretch and the Reds have lost the last couple of games (in pretty brutal fashion nonetheless). While that 16-25 record is pretty ugly, they are still only 7 1/2 games out............if they turn things around and get hot for a month (with their offense it's not beyond reality) this team could bounce back yet.............it's a fat chance but with 121 games left it's too depressing to think about looking ahead to 2011 (even though that is a reasonable thing to think)

-Whew....lengthy rant.....the fantasy teams....they keep moving along. Chillin at 4-2 in the CBS League.....lost pretty bad last week.....found some time to pick up Ian Desmond and Casey McGehee (one of the few Brewers to actually show up the last week and a half).....i'm in pretty good shape this week (up by about 40 points).........(however the team i'm playing has Tim Lincecum who's having a nice start against the D-Backs as I write this).

-I know it's been about a week in a half but I gotta say. Calling out A-Rod (twice).......A-Rod calling him out by saying he doesn't want to add to his 15 minutes of fame......pitching a perfect game 2 days later........I don't care what happens the rest of his career, Dallas Braden is THE man.

-Who doesn't like a good list to ignite some discussion? Why Do I say this? The Sporting News just released their list of the top 50 players in the game.

To the surprise of not very many people, Albert Pujols is their #1 player. The show the list plus where they ranked last year (if applicable). This year 19 of the 50 players were nowhere to be found in 2009.

Out of those 19 players, the five I see as most likely to be on the list in 2011:

Prince Fielder
Matt Kemp
Andre Ethier
Pablo Sandoval
Felix Hernandez

The Five Newcomers Least Likely To Be On The List in 2011:

Todd Helton
Adam Wainwright
Aaron Hill
John Lackey
Bobby Abreu

Connor Jackson busts out a game-tying 2-run triple to tie things up at 2.......slightly increasing the chance of my team being 5-2 come Monday......which happens to be the score in favor of the D-Backs after Mark Reynolds took Lincecum deep......................

That's all for now....till next time.....

Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Ramble 5/8: Brewers-D Backs, Robin Roberts & Lefty/Right Power Duos

Yaayy for some Saturday Baseball and it being late enough in the day for it to not be blacked out by Fox.

The time between my last post and now have seen the Brewers split with one LaTroy Hawkins induced loss and a victory over Arizona where the bullpen pitched 4 scoreless innings after Gallardo left due to a high pitch count. Another positive out of last nights game was Hoffman getting another fairly drama free save last night putting him at 2 for 2 for the month of May.

For the Brewers, the face their second starter who is making their second career start (Cesar Valdez) in the last three days. This led to trouble the other day as the Brewers looked lost against Joe Ely. So far it is looking like trouble again as the Brewers failed to capitalize on a 2nd and 3rd with Braun, Fielder and McGehee coming up and coming up empty. On the flip side, Arizona's bats are looking strong out of the gate with a 1-0 lead and on the cusp of adding some more runs.

As for the fantasy team, Things are looking pretty good right now with a 265-218.5 lead. Despite my pitchers having less starts this week.....holding on to win looks like something that could reasonably happen with Bucholz being pushed around for 5 runs in 5 innings......if the Twins push around Millwood some tonight the chances of going up to 4-1 should go up a bit more.

Randy Wolf may have won his last 6 starts in Arizona. However, the way this game is starting, winning 7 in a row is looking questionable. On the brighter side, Wolf was able to avoid complete disaster by inducing a DP with the bases load to limit the damage to 2 runs.

Steeped away from the computer for awhile...its nice to see the Brewers cut into the lead by making it a 2-1 game......time to see what else is going on around baseball.

Baseball lost another member of the Hall of Fame with the passing of Robin Roberts. While his career came and gone way before my time, the numbers show many areas that were impressive.
First of all, the number of innings he logged in (300+ in a six-year stretch).....he threw 20+ Complete Games in 8 different seasons.....and 305 in his career (plus he found time in there for 25 career saves).

If someone tried to give somebody that many innings these days, whoever was their manager would probably never hear the end of it and would be accused of ruining said pitcher at the earliest sign of injury. My take: if the pitchers could hold up for this many innings 50 years ago and the improvements in conditioning these days....why couldn't we get pitchers back to expecting to pitch all 9 every time out?

Another thing I've looked at for players announcing their retirement & when the Hall of Fame voting results come in is look at the similar players index for from Baseball-Reference and see if it gives us a clue to what other players may see Cooperstown's doors in future years:

In Robert's case, 4 of these said similar pitchers are not in the Hall of Fame (Jim Kaat, Tommy John, Bert Blyleven and Jack Quinn). Taking a look at these players backgrounds the one thing that sticks out is Roberts lead in Complete Games at 305 (none of the other pitchers have more than 243).

Looking at career Wins (not the best measurement but it tends to sway more than enough voters) everyone except Quinn won between 283 and 287 games). ERA is also very close (3.29 to 3.41) as is ERA+ (108 to 118). Taking a closer look the thing that got Roberts into the Hall of Fame but not these four other pitchers was Roberts was more dominant at his peak than his statistical neighbors. He finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting 5 times between 1950 and 1955 while the other pitchers combined for only one.....considering that its tougher for pitchers to get MVP votes than hitters....still.....it shows the overall number similarites do indicate that Kaat, Blyleven and John should get a chance to get into Cooperstown at some point down the road.

During my look at these pitchers, the Brewers had themselves a nice 3rd inning to take a 5-2 lead......giving Randy Wolf a much better chance to run his in-Arizona winning streak to 7 games.

The Brewers managed to avoid their struggles against pitchers with <2>

So i've been watching the Arizona feed for the game on MLB Network and their broadcast team has been heavily discussing Righty/Lefty power-hitting duos discussing various ones within the last few decades and heavily promoting their fan text poll of the best righty/lefty power duo in the game today with the choices being (Fielder/Braun, Werth/Howard, Longoria/Pena & Zimmerman/Dunn). They had been heavily urging viewers to vote Zimmerman/Dunn until Braun went deep and they told viewers it was ok to vote Fielder/Braun. But that is besides the point....with it being 11-2 in the 5th, I decided to take a closer look to see how these duos stack up.

My Rankings:

4- Zimmerman/Dunn

Zimmerman is a good hitter but I wouldn't put him in the elite category. Adam Dunn, the 3TO here himself and the only player amongst these duos with other 300 career Home Runs....willing to overlook the strikeouts, still there are better options here.

3- Longoria/Pena

Carlos Pena bounced around the bigs for several years before settling in at Tampa. He has a couple Top 10 MVP finishes and led the league in homers last year. Longoria hasn't led the league in anything nor finished in the top 10 in MVP voting but the way he is progressing, it is only a matter of time before he does so.

2-Werth/Howard

Werth (like Pena) took a few years to get into the right situation and has rewarded the Phillies with a couple of 30-Homer plus seasons. Ryan Howard was rewarded with that $125 million contract as he already has 4 Top 10 MVP finishes and has led the NL in homers twice and RBIs three times.

1-Braun/Fielder

Alright, this could be the result of homerism but the numbers do back up Braun and Fielder being the best duo. This is the only duo where both players have OPS+ totals of 140 or above (Braun 143+ & Fielder 140+) the only other player amongst the duos over 140 is Howard. They've combined to only lead in Homers and RBIs once (Fielder 07/Fielder 09) but they've already combined for 3 Top 10 MVP Finishes. If we were going on an individual basis, Howard would have a good case to get in the top-2 but having Jayson Werth as the other half of the duo doesn't help.

My decision to continue watching the game while the outcome is not in question is rewarded as it allowed me to watch Jody Gerut successfully hit for the cycle......pushing the Brewers run total up to 16.....now 17.........third time the Crew have busted out 17 runs in a game.....first Brewers cycle since 2004 and the 291st in MLB History.

Well.....it's been fun...the Brewers got a nice victory in Arizona.....saw a little bit of history....more than a little bit of hitting....till next time

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Ramble 5/6: Brewers-Dodgers, Tasers, Eric Byrnes and more

Well, it's been a week since I posted anything. Been a pretty busy week, just turned 27 (my body decided to give the gift of a cold for said birthday)......anyways I ain't here to talk about that....its time to talk some baseball.

-What the Brewers have done since I last posted: They lost 3 out of 4 and scored a whopping total of 2 runs in a 4 game series to a San Diego Padres team (which by the has a real chance to contend....if Blanks and/or Venable get things together and Headley continues his strong start....this should give them enough offense to make a serious playoff push)

-The first two games of the Brewers-Dodgers series have been much more encouraging. The Brewers bats came alive and dropped a couple of 11-spots on the Dodgers. (However, the Dodgers just took a 1-0 lead against the Brewers on a Walk, Steal and back-to-back Sac Flys....well at least Dave Bush still has a no-no going.

-One thing I like about the Brewers playing the Dodgers is being able to watch it on the big-screen and not having to worry about the mlb.tv feed.

-Fantasy Teams Update: Cheddarhead is in 8th place.......the Razzball team is languishing in 9th....the random CBSSports league is the only one doing well.

-For that team, i'm sitting pretty well at 3-1......despite having a 9 1/2 point lead (159.5 to 150), i'm not sure about my chances of going to 4-1 as I have 2 starts remaining and my opponent has 4 starts remaining

-For any chance to win, things pretty much have gone down as I needed them to today (Strong starts by Halladay and Cain coupled with a rough start for Kazmir).......now if Niemann follows suit and has a good start in Seattle, that should put me in a much better spot to be competitive.

-One sign of trouble for the Brewers, the pitcher for the Dodgers is John Ely who is making his second career start (for some reason the Brewers going up against someone making their first or second start always seems to be a sign of trouble.

-Now to surf around the internets to see what else is going on in the baseball world: It looks like the end is here for Eric Byrnes . Starting off the season at 3 for 38 and his last solid season occurring in 2007, this is probably the last we'll see of Byrnes on a major-league diamond. Speaking of 2007, he did happen to finish 11th in the NL MVP voting that year (despite a 103 OPS+). Looking at his B-R page its pretty obvious he's not a Hall of Famer......he does have the common link with his most similar player (Jeffrey Hammonds) of getting 3-year contracts ($30 million for Byrnes, $27 million for Hammonds) that they didn't even come close to living up to.

-It looked like the Brewers were gonna get out of the second unscathed....routine grounder turned into a Prince Fielder error....2-0 Dodgers......grrrhhhh.....on the bright side it is still early and if the Brewers bats act like they have the last couple nights....2 runs is not an insurmountable deficit......with Xavier Paul hitting a double to make it 3-0......time to get a bit worried

-Listening to the broadcast....random comment was made about Joe Ely looking like Matthew McConaughey........it don't matter what else he does in his career he will always be associated with Wooderson from Dazed and Confused to me

-Randomly stumbling around the internets and saw that ESPN writer Rob Neyer has embarked on a 30-part series where he breaks down team eras by players. In a not so shocking development, the Red Sox and Yankees are the first two teams that get covered......considering ESPN is involved in this series, it should come as no surprise that these are the teams that get covered first (wouldn't expect anything less from ESPN).

-A story that is a few days old but i'm gonna talk about it because I haven't had the time or chance to do so yet: The Taser Incident: In episode 2 of the season of Phillies fans behaving badly. So a Phillies fan runs onto the field and gets tasered and has generated controversy:

-My take: It was the right move. When you have funs doing stuff like this running onto the field, usually it's an attempt to get their 15 seconds of attention and usually aren't a physical threat. HOWEVER, you never know......if someone is nuts enough to think they can get away with running on the field....you don't know what their intent is.....you never know what their thinking is.......you never know whether its someone who wants to run circles around the outfield or if they want to cause physical damage to someone on the field.....point being on the security perspective, if you are struggling to apprehend whoever is on the field and feel the Taser is necessary go for it.......if you are the fan dumb enough to run on the field........dude your running onto the ballfield......sorta tough to feel sorry for you.

-Well that's all for now....till next time

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Thursday Night: My thoughts on the Brewers, and that WSJ poll listing the most hated teams in baseball and more

Well, its been a few days since i've written anything. Not the best stretch for the Crew as they lost 3 out of 4 with Trevor Hoffman single-handedly handing the Pirates a couple of games.......ouch.

Well it's another day, another series as the Brewers are spending the next 4 days playing the NL's surprise team, the San Diego Padres. The last series proved back-to-back losses, blown saves and a conflict of interest scenario between real and fantasy baseball (the same type that kept me away from fantasy ball for several years (Ryan Doumit pretty much owned owned Hoffman and I happen to own Doumit on one of my teams...grrhhhhhh.

Tonight has a NL West oriented theme as the Brewers playing in San Diego is firing away on my laptop and the Pirates-Dodgers game is going in the background.........ahhhh to live on the West Coast........it is weird to come home and have to wait an hour or so for the Brewers game to start.....the 2 normal scenarios are a) the played during the day and the game is long over by the time I get home or b) they play a night game and the game is in the middle innings by the time I come home from the gym.

Now would be a lovely time to congratulate Carlos Gomez for getting picked off and costing the Brewers a run....with the Brewers losing 5 of their last 6 and a closer that's singlehandedly dropped them into a tie for fourth.....not the best way to start a game.....

That base-running blunder not withstanding, it may be time to re-evaluate my take on the Gomez-Hardy trade. For pretty much the entire off-season, I was not feeling the trade at all. I saw Gomez as just another fast light-hitter along the lines of a Bourn, Taveras, etc. While 70 plate appearances isn't the greatest sample size, the early returns seem at least somewhat encouraging. So far his average is up 45 points his slugging average has gone from .337 to .468 and his OPS+ has gone from 64 to 108.....his BABIP is .319....so he's getting a little lucky but still leaves some proof that maybe his hitting game has turned a corner.

Speaking of off-season acquisitions, Doug Davis is in a bit of early trouble with runners on 1st and 2nd no outs and A-Gon at the plate, ouch. Not the best way to improve on an 8+ ERA. In Davis' case part of this high ERA can be explained by some extreme bad luck.......opposing hitters have a .450 BABIP against Davis.....there is no way that BABIP is sustainable and is going to remain at .450 all year and gives a silver lining of hope that Davis is not as bad as his current ERA indicates.

Not even an inning into the game, and the FS Wisconsin crew is having the mandatory conversation about Petco Park being a hitter's graveyard (it's almost like there was a law passed in 2004 making it mandatory for announcers to point this out within the first three innings).....or not.

Gotta give credit where credit is due....Doug Davis may have pitched his way into a sticky situation but he got out of it just as easily.

In terms of other stuff going on in the baseball world, this article from the Wall Street Journal is interesting. At first glance a bit surprising that the Yankees are only the fifth most hated team in baseball (somehow the Indians get this "honor") a bit surprising since the Indians probably haven't prompted any strong feelings one way or another since the late 1990s. But on second glance I can't escape the feeling that some New York bias is in there. Think about it, a newspaper based in NYC is trying to convince us that there are four other teams more hated than the Yankees.....it would seem given that the Red Sox would be high on this list considering the New York basis.....and the (possible) poor cover-up of said bias by placing a random AL Central team at the top of the list.......i'm probably horribly wrong about this assesment....maybe the Indians are really hated but nobody admits....but with the Yankees being hated by everyone outside of ESPN and New York City.....it does seem a bit odd to say the least......having a favorite team hanging out in the NL Central that happened to play in the AL Central against the Indians during their hey-day.........in 2010 i definitely have stronger negative feelings about the Yankees than the Indians

Could this be people that don't think the team name is PC? Maybe, maybe not........maybe they surveyed a bunch of people that don't like bloggers. This article from Walk Off Walk discusses the Indians reaching out to the Social Media world by inviting bloggers and local prominent twitter users to sit in the new section at Progressive Field. For reaching out to bloggers and that someone working for the Indians recognizing the existence of the blog/social media world as being relevant and here to stay. For that, the Indians do not get my vote for most hated team in baseball

And Doug Davis pitches himself out of trouble again........gotta say between his start against the Cubs and the first couple innings tonight, Doug Davis is looking pretty sharp and may be on the cusp of getting past his early struggles.

On the Padres side, Wade LeBlanc is also looking very impressive......looks like we could be in for an extended pitchers duel........while I like the results so far.....its a bit discomforting that Doug Davis' pitch count is in the 60s and its only the third innings.....with the bullpen being stretched out for 9 innings yesterday (5 of those after Hoffman failed to get a save).....this could make things interesting in a bad way towards the late innings.

Speaking of this closing situation, it seems reasonable to speculate on who should replace Hoffman as closer (assuming Macha ever notices that continuing to bring out Hoffman has the potential to derail the 2010 season. There has been some limited speculation about who should/would get a chance at closer usually involving Villaneuva, Hawkins and/or Coffey. While I see 2 of these 3 pitchers as relievers that can be relied on.......not sure what it is just a hunch i'm not sold on them being the best internal option.

I know i'm probably going outside the box a little bit.......i'm not sure if this option has been brought up elsewhere and I haven't read about it but my gut instinct says Manny Parra should be given a chance to pitch the 9th inning.

While Parra has been on the starting pitching path for most of his career, it seems as though the Brewers are planning not to place Parra in the rotation as he has been passed over for Jeff Suppan (bad decision) and Chris Narveson (defensible toss-up decision....Narveson had the better spring/better 2009.....Parra was off to a stronger start in 2010).

Beyond that I could see Parra having a good chance to excel in this role as a) thus far he has improved control-wise (11 2/3 innings is a small sample size but a BB/9 rate dropping from 5 to 1.5 indicates Parra deserves a chance at something beyond middle-relief and he's proven more than capable of ringing up strikeouts (7.9/9 IP for his career) that would make him an asset being handed the ball in the 9th inning.

As with the current game, Doug Davis is in another jam......the Brewers committing miscues with the glove and on the base-paths......this seems to not bode well for the next 5-plus innings, especially with the Padres getting on the board in the middle of typing this paragraph.

Ahh....Brewers down 2-0 and now for something that is a lot less depressing. I was stumbling around the internets and stumbled across a new website that is being rolled out on 5/1 that is blended the addictive powers of gambling and fantasy baseball. This new concoction, Rosterslots.com allows users to build a fantasy baseball team by spinning a slot machine........Just heard the words Jeff Suppan warming up in the bullpen from the FS Wisconsin crew.......not gonna lie those words don't do much for comfort.

Anyways, back to the Rosterslots....this thing gives you 20 spins in which to get a fantasy team to your liking (you can field a new team every day if you wanted to).....between probable starters, bullpens, middle infielders/catchers, corner infielders/dhs and outfielders.....the best part is you can get this done through your Facebook account as well........

Well....that time of the night....time to get some shut eye.


Sunday, April 25, 2010

Early Look At Sunday's TBS/ESPN games

Cubs vs. Brewers TBS
Interest Level: 10
Wells vs. Bush

The I-94 rivalry is a bitter/intense match-up regardless of time of season & the teams respective places in the standings. In this case, probably good in the name of being interesting since we're not out of April yet and both teams find themselves on the wrong side of .500.

The Brewers find themselves at 8-9 and thus far have unable to hold teams not called the Pittsburgh Pirates to less than 5 runs in a ballgame. Speaking of that series, epic.......anytime you can outscore a team 36-1 in a 3 game stretch (20-0 in one of those games). Things are going good. Unfortunately, reality has struck the last 2 days as thus far they have been outscored 13-2. Still, they sit in 2nd place a couple games behind St. Louis. The Brewers are starting Dave Bush today who has pitched very well in his first 3 starts and would be 3-0 if not for some shoddy bullpen work. Bush is very familiar with a many of the Cubs hitters as he's faced several of them at least 10 times. Fukudome and Soriano tend to hit him pretty well while Lee, Nady and Soriano have struggled against him.

The Cubs, while playing well this weekend, haven't played very well in 2010. They come into todays game at 8-10, 2 1/2 games back and with an opportunity to get into second in the NL Central. The Cubs are starting Randy Wells who has been a bright spot for the Cubs since coming over. Like Bush, Wells is a pitcher who started his career with the Blue Jays before ending up in the NL Central.

Braves vs. Mets ESPN
Hanson vs. Pelfrey
Interest Level:6

Another early season divisional battle. The Braves are in the midst of a 4-game losing streak that has taken them down to last in the NL East. They still have the talent to make a playoff run but things aren't exactly trending in the right direction currently. The Braves start their talented second year pitcher Tommy Hanson in this game. In his 3 starts so far, it appears that he has a shot to have a nice follow up to his rookie year. Also worth looking forward to is seeing what Jason Heyward will do next.

Ah, the New York Mets. The team that can't stay off the disabled list. Well, at least they haven't completely embarrassed themselves so far. Currently, the Mets are at 9-9 and tied for the Zombie Expos for third place. Mike Pelfrey takes the hill for the Mets in tonight's match-up. The sponsor of his baseball-reference page (Section 518) asks the question of is 2010 the year Mike Pelfrey realizes his potential. So, far the answer of that question seems to be yes as he's rocking a 3-0 record with a .86 era. If the Mets are going to stay in contention despite all of their health problems, they are probably going to need to get a breakout season from Mike Pelfrey.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Friday/Early Saturday MLB National TV Preview

Well, the weekend is upon us. Things looking better baseball wise this week. I'm very happy that the Brewers rolled the Pirates 36-1 over a 3 day stretch including a 20-0 grand finale in today's game. Gloating time is over, on to the games.

Friday: Tigers vs. Rangers MLB Network
Scherzer vs. Feldman
Interest Level:4

It's too early to tell (as of this writing) what the Tigers record will be coming into this game as they are in the 3rd inning of their game with the Angels. The Tigers were I team that I thought was worse than most people thought but thus far that has been a wrong assessment. Max Scherzer takes the hill in Friday's game. He definitely has lots of potential which we've only seen parts of so far but he's looking good so far in 2010......a chance to see someone in the start of their breakout season perhaps?

The Rangers are off to a 6-9 start and with Seattle and LA of Anaheim of North America getting their acts together (plus Oakland playing better than expected) it may be in their best interest to get their act together. The Rangers bring Scott Feldman to the hill....sure he may have won 17 games last year but i'm not sold on him as an ace pitcher.

Saturday: Yankees vs. Angels FOX
Pettite vs. Pineiro
Interest Level: 6

If I want to watch the afternoon game this is probably the game i'm stuck with like it or not as both the Yankees and a team they show on TV all the time here (Angels) are both involved.
On a side note, this game involves the three players (Teixiera, Wood and Vasquez) who have struggled the most on my fantasy team.

The Yankees are currently battling the Rays for top positioning in the AL East. Andy Pettite looks to continue his strong start to the season in this game.

The Angels had a rough first week of the season but have battled back to .500 (for at least the next couple hours). Still, they are sitting 1 1/2 out at this point and look to be in the thick of things (while not in first) in the AL West. The Angels start Joel Pineiro who has pitched better than I expected so far. I thought his strong 2009 performance was only going to last as long as he had Dave Duncan as his pitching coach and I thought the Angels over-paid for him. Pineiro looks to keep proving detractors like myself wrong in this game.

Mariners vs. White Sox Saturday FOX
Fister vs. Garcia
Interest Level: 7

The Mariners have also started slowly but have gotten things together to get within 1/2 a game of overtaking Oakland for AL West Supremacy. The Mariners start Merced, California product Doug Fister in this game. Not knowing much about Fister other than he was in the back end of the M's rotation, I picked him up on my razzball team a couple weeks ago. This has not turned out to be a very smart decision. Doug Fister is on notice, one more strong start from him and he gets dropped from my Razzball team.

The White Sox counter with ex-Mariner pitcher Freddy Garcia. Garcia definitely isn't as strong of a pitcher as he was when he pitched for Seattle. In fact, he's actually pitched pretty poorly in his first couple starts and one of the many reasons the White Sox find themselves currently in the basement.