Oh What, Another Baseball Blog

The Thursday 2-Fifths

2010-07-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

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.

The Tuesday F5ive

2010-07-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

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.

The Monday F5ive

2010-07-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

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.

The Weekend F5ive

2010-07-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

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.

The FridayF5ive

2010-07-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Back From The Break, Five Things To Watch For

2010-07-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2010-06-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

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.......

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

2010-06-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

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.

6/3: My Take On The Jim Joyce Incident

2010-06-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2010-05-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

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

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

2010-05-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

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

2010-05-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2010-05-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

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.....

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

2010-05-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

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

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

2010-05-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Early Look At Sunday's TBS/ESPN games

2010-04-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Friday/Early Saturday MLB National TV Preview

2010-04-22T20:01:00.001-07:00

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.

Wednesday Night:A No-No In Progress, No Support For Sheets & Whatever Else Come To Mind

2010-04-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

Alright, it's a rainy night (despite the calender saying it is late April) I felt it was the right time to do a live-ish blog for part of the night. My original plan was to have the Angels-Tigers game running on the HD Background (this game appears to have been pre-empted for an LA Kings Playoff Game) but instead I'm "settling" for MLB Tonight.

On the MLB.tv feed, I was able to catch the last couple innings of the Brewers victory over the Pirates. It turns out LaTroy Hawkins is capable of holding a lead. Unfortunately, said lead has to be around 8 runs. Still, i'm happy that the Brewers have won 3 in a row and have managed to make it back to .500.

In terms of fantasy implications, plenty of games to keep me entertained (Yankees-A's, Angels-Tigers, Twins-Indians (Cuddyer just hit a 2-run triple) Rays-White Sox and Cardinals-D Backs).

So many places to go where I land nobody knows. I guess this should mean I shouldn't have to sit through too many commercials. Since theres only half an inning left with the Twins-Indians, i'll stay in this neighborhood for a few minutes.

Didn't get a chance to see Liriano pitch....i'm not sure what happened but it seems like this could be 2006 all over again (sans the injury). This is now his second straight start without surrendering a run....is it too early to put him in Cy Young consideration or the very least comeback player of the year (i know he played in 29 games last year but he didn't pitch that great).

Whoa.....i didn't know Mark Grudzielanek was still playing in the bigs. I thought he had retired but appearantly I had thought wrong. But hey when you get the chance to sign the player who finished 27th in 2003's MVP voting, you gotta go for it. I must be in the right place if the game i'm watching on MLB.tv is the same as the one on MLB Network as the Twins are on the verge of their 11th win...as the Indians are down to their last strike...which has been elusive the last couple of pitches.......game over......seems fitting that Joe Mauer gets the last out to finish it out.

Time to ask the question of What's Next? I would move on to the Rays-White Sox but that games pretty much a blow-out. I would go on to the Angels-Tigers but that's blacked out.

I guess i'll check out what the Yankees and A's are up to. Didn't know it but Ben Sheets is getting the start for the A's tonight. It's gotta be a good sign that Sheets has made it to his fourth start without missing anytime. It's gotta be a good thing that Sheets has done his part to justify his 2010 salary thus far.

The state of my team: 2-0 right now......things are going good so far this week as I have a 28 point lead (If/when Teixiera, Wood and Vasquez get things going) this team's solid play should continue. Just saw that Phil Hughes was pitching for the Yankees and decided to check out his baseball-reference page. Which happens to be sponsored by something called The Buffet Is Closed. With promises of bad Yankee journalism being skewered my mediocre journalism...hasn't been updated since last summer and it involves the Yankees and bloggers that don't like some guy named Peter Abraham.

So apparently, the Cubs have moved Carlos Zambrano to the bullpen. I know he's struggled this year but it should be interesting to see how this move works out. I wonder if he'll get enough work to hold onto his NL lead in Wild Pitches. If nothing else, his strike outs haven't lagged 12.1 K/9 this year. Either way, i'd hate to be a gatorade machine right now.

The Yankees have pulled out to a 2-0 lead. Rumor has it if you watch a Yankees game for more than 20 minutes you get ESPN syndrome where what the Yankees do is more important than every other team combined....actually, I came up with this far-fetched legend off the top of my head.

Time to see what the Cardinals-D Backs are up to. With Carpenter on my team, this is one case where I don't mind if my player doesn't always have a great game (as they lead the Brewers by a couple games right now). So far its 3-2 Cardinals in the 5th. I'm reading an article by Jeff Passan from Yahoo where he argues that the concept of divisions should be eliminated.

Honestly, i'm not sure how I would feel about a set-up like this. In the article it says this would address inequality but i'm not sure how eradicating divisions would address the revenue inequalities between the top and bottom markets (I should make a sarcastic comment about this thing called a salary cap but the odds of this coming to MLB is slim and none.....and he acknowledges that would be the best idea but that would never happen so you can't really hold this against him)

Still, it's hard to see how this would change the chances and hopes of mid to small market teams in either a good or bad......the upside to his argument

So blow it up. Start over. Unalign. Allow teams to keep the current sharing agreement while addressing the balance problem. Sacrifice the bonanza of Yankees-Red Sox 18 times a year – sorry, ESPN – for a schedule that evenly spreads games against them and gives every AL team a substantive piece of the New York-Boston ticket spike

Anything that forces ESPN to show the other 28 teams more often can't be that bad of a thing.

Somewhere during that rant, the Cards-D Backs game went to the sixth and the Cards tacked another run to their lead but hey it's baseball, these things happen

Carpenter seems to be cruising along in Arizona. Still not feeling the rooting for a divisional rival thing......moving back to the Yankees-A's game.

At this point, the Yankees have held on to their 2-0 lead into the fifth. If it was tomorrow we would be seeing Sabathia pitch (i'm still slightly surprised he didn't sign with the Giants or Dodgers when he was a free-agent). Sure, the Yankees have the money but with Sabathia from NorCal I felt that those two NL West teams had a legit shot.

Could someone get Ben Sheets some run support here?! Or some base-runners. If I didn't dislike the Yankees I probably wouldn't mention the fact that Phil Hughes has a no-hitter going through 5 (is it just me or does it seem like a lot of pitchers have taken no-hitters fairly deep into the game this year). Either way, it's good to see that Ben Sheets still has it.

Wandering around aimlessley through ESPN.....checking out some excerpts of their 30 for 30 doc. about fantasy baseball.....sorta distracted by the 30 for 30....just noticed Hughes has a no-no through 6.

Looks like Ben Sheets' night is done. Good that he had a good start bad that he'll unfairly get tagged with a loss. Broadcasters said the magic words of his club is yet to get a hit. Which probably means the A's will lead off the 7th with one of these said hits.

So 9 outs away from a no-no, can Phil Hughes pull it off? At 77 pitches and 9 Ks....its an impressive outing either way. The announcers reference the no-hitter again (for the second time). For the second time the exact same broadcast is blaring from the laptop and MLB Network. With a pop-foul that would have gone into the stands in just about any other stadium, it's now a no-no through 6 1/3. No hitter reference count up to 3. Down to 7 outs which MLB Network has now deemed both a Developing Story AND Breaking News. If not for that pesky 1st inning walk....we could be talking about a wait for it.......perfect game.

Despite 7 innings.....hes only at 87 pitches..........Blevins is back to pitch in the 8th but this game is unlikely to be remembered for whatever Blevins does in his second inning of work......well it's that time of the night where my day is comin to an end.....does Hughes throw the no-no?....stay tuned to find out

Back From Vacation, Back To Previewing

2010-04-19T18:50:00.001-07:00

So....i haven't written anything in a week. I was on vacation....had me a nice 4-day weekend. But now it's time to get back to business. With that......on to the games.

Phillies vs. Braves

Kendrick vs.Hanson Tuesday-MLB Network

TBD vs. Hudson- Wednesday ESPN

Interest Level: 7

This might be only the third week of the season, but this NL East match-up is still important. The Phillies have a razor-thin 1 game edge over the Braves. For the Phillies, they have Kendrick starting...he has been absolutely brutal in his first two starts.

The Braves are one of the more interesting teams in the league. Jason Heyward alone makes them worth watching as you never know what he's going to pull off. Both Hanson & Hudson are off to solid starts and if they keep it up....everyone's prediction of the Phillies running away with this division could turn out to be very wrong.

Royals vs. Blue Jays Wednesday MLB Network

Greinke vs. Marcum

Interest Level: 5

The Royals are off to a 5-7 start and considering the job their GM did in the off-season, this could pass as over-achieving. The Royals are giving reigning Cy Young award winner Zach Greinke the start. He is 0-2 this year but this can be attributed to the ineptness of the team around him and not Greinke himself as he has a respectable (though not 2009-level) 114 ERA+

The Blue Jays have gotten off to a better than expected 8-6 start. If they want to sustain this strong start or even stay above .500, they are going to need Shaun Marcum to stay healthy for throughout the season (having Vernon Wells continue to hit the cover off the ball wouldn't hurt either).

Indians vs. Twins Thursday MLB Network

Talbot vs. Baker

Interest Level: 7

A sneakingly interesting early AL Central Match-Up. The Twins have thus far taken their rightful place on top of the AL Central. This game gets extra points due to fantasy implications as J.J Hardy (hasn't done much since hitting a couple homers in the first week) and Michael Cuddyer (off to a nice start) are on my fantasy team. The Twins have Scott Baker starting...text-book definition of a solid but not great pitcher.

The Indians, expected to head straight to the cellar, have a fairly respectable 6-6 record. Speaking of my fantasy team, one player that has allowed the Indians to be respectable 6-6 and my team to be 2-0 is Shin-Soo Choo. Coming off a quietly strong 20-20 season....he's hit the ground running in 2010 and hit the cover off the ball (to the tune of a 240 OPS+!!!!). His last week was insane 11-19 3 Homers 11 RBIs 6 walks (that's a .680 OBP!!!!!!).....is it too early to talk MVP? Not according to this guy. But....one totally epic season does not win a division or allow you to be good (isn't that right Kansas City Royals?)...and some competency from the other 24 players is still needed.

The Indians start Mitch Talbot. He has 3 career starts under his belt. Two of them have come in 2010. So far, so good (1-1 3.21 era 120 ERA+). I'm not sure how sustainable this performance is but if he can continue to play fairly well and Shin-Soo Choo ends up breaking into the elite this year, the Indians could surprise some people this year.

Rangers vs. Red Sox Thursday MLB Network

Wilson vs. Bucholz

Interest Level:5

The Rangers have slogged to a 5-7 start thus far. Not too much about this team screams contender to me. The Rangers are starting C.J. Wilson in this one. Not sure how he will hold up the entire year as a starter (he spent the last 4 seasons exclusively in relief, 3 of them as a closer). One thing at least is for sure, you can't blame the Rangers slow start on Wilson (0-1 2.08 era 206 ERA+).....he even has a complete game under his belt....not bad for a player who has Ed Vosberg as his #1 comparable on baseball-reference.

I'm pretty sure not many people were expecting the Red Sox to start 4-9. Whether this is a sign of things to come or they are getting their worst stretch out of the way early, it is too early to tell. They have Clay Bucholz taking the hill for this game. Like Wilson, the Red Sox early struggles can't really be blamed on Bucholz as he has also started off well (1-1 1.80 era 242 ERA+). Are we in the middle of Clay Bucholz's breakout season? The Red Sox may need it if they want to be in contention.

Early Week National TV Baseball Preview

2010-04-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Time to see what's in store to start the second week of the season

Red Sox vs. Twins Monday ESPN

Lester vs. Pavano

Interest Level:6

The Twins finally get to open Target Field. It should be interesting to see how this stadium plays out in terms of whether it will be hitter friendly or not. The Red Sox come into this game at 3-3, the Twins have started 5-2 and at this point and appear to have not missed a beat despite not having Joe Nathan closing games out.

Reds vs. Marlins Monday MLB Network

Cueto vs. Nolasco

Interest Level: 4

The Reds were a lot of peoples pick to be a sleeper team in 2010. With a 3-3 start, they haven't really done anything to prove or disprove this notion. The Marlins had a nice first week going 4-2 and bring Ricky Nolasco (one of my picks to bounce back in 2010) to the hill.

Angels vs. Yankees Tuesday MLB Network

Santana vs. Pettite

Interest Level: 5

The Yankees started off pretty strong this week at a 4-2 clip. The Angels, well they have had better weeks. Hideki Matsui looks to be an excellent signing for the Angels early on as he came up clutch against the A's in last nights game. One of the few bright spots in their 2-5 week. Speaking of bright spots, Brandon Wood has been the exact opposite of this in his first week with a full time starting gig. Is this a sign of things to come or just the result of a bad week? We'll find out in due time.

D-Backs vs. Dodgers Tuesday MLB Network

Kennedy vs. Kershaw

Interest Level: 6

An early season NL West divisional battle. Not too much of a shock that one of these teams is sitting in second and one of them is sitting in fourth. The surprising thing is that the D-Backs are the team sitting in second and the Dodgers are the team sitting in 4th. One good reason to check this game out is that Clayton Kershaw is taking the hill for the Dodgers. Kershaw still struggles with bouts of wildness from time to time but has the talent/potential to be a Cy Young award caliber pitcher. Does this happen in 2010? Stay tuned to find out.

Nationals vs. Phillies Wednesday MLB Network

TBD vs. Kendrick

Interest Level: 4

The Phillies were expected by just about everyone to take the NL East so the fact that they are 5-1 and hanging out in 1st place shouldn't be shock to anyone. The Nationals were expected to drop straight down to the cellar but had a respectable 3-3 first week which was aided by random big games from the likes of Cristian Guzman and Willy Taveras (who did their part to place me in the basement of my Razzball league).

Astros vs. Cardinals

Myers vs. Penny

Interest Level:5

Another game where there isn't too many surprises about the teams respective places in the standings. No surprise at St. Louis at the top. No surprise that the Astros are at the bottom. The one surprise with the Astros is just the degree of ineptitude they have displayed in the first week of the season. They carry the title of being the only team to not win a game in 2010........ouch.

Random Rants Loosely Based Around Padres-Rockies Game

2010-04-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

Alright......the blacked out you can only see 1 game portion of the Saturday MLB schedule and off to 5 PM Pacific Time on Saturday when you can watch several games at once. A few games tonight with fantasy implications for myself that will get primary focus (Padres-Rockies, Pirate-D-Backs, Angels-A's).

Still sorta waking up a bit as I took a lovely 2-hour nap that took me to about 15 minutes before first pitch.

Just realized Doumit is up right now....he's worked the count against Haren to a full 3-2. Showed lots of promise in 2008......off to a solid start....now its a matter of maintaining said start and staying healthy....and not striking out very often like he just did to end his teams half of the first.

Padres-Rockies game playing on the laptop right now. Gonzales is up right now, Blanks is on deck and Tony Gwynn Jr. is trying to argue his way out of a call that got him picked off from second. Gonzales strikes out to end Top of the first....looks like I have to wait a bit longer for Blanks to come up.

Blanks...sees ball....hits ball.....to short for a harmless groundout...the early season slump continues.

In other stuff going on in the bigs........Milton Bradley is in mid-season form as he flipped off some Rangers fans (c'mon Miton we aren't even a week into the season). Bradley has all the talent in the world but c'mon you can't be doing that stuff especially in your first week on a new team when you are 1 for 17. Even with this, he's still better for this team than Carlos Silva.

Speaking of Milton Bradley & The Rangers this reminds me of an incident back in September of 2008. I ended up taking in a Rangers-A's game towards the tail end of what has been Bradley's best season to date. Anyways, somewhere in the middle of the game (4th ish inning) Milton Bradley has one of his standard temper tantrums and gets himself ejected.

At this game, I happened to be sitting in the left field bleachers which gave me a straight view of the Rangers dugout which was on the first-base side and thus a clear view of the tunnel Bradley would be walking towards to get back to wherever ejected players go. The one thing that stuck out ion Bradley's walk was he knew exactly where he was going. This obviously wasn't the first time he got kicked out of a game and from the way he was walking it was obvious this was a walk he's taken mid-game many times before....it was almost like he went on auto-pilot when he got kicked out.

The Rockies-Padres game flashed back to a home run Ian Stewart launched off of Yovani Gallardo on opening day. If his series against the Crew is any indication, my prediction of him struggling this year could turn out to be horribly wrong.....at least the Brewers took 2 out of 3 in the series.

In the I guess it serves me right having a Yankee on my fantasy team department: In the random CBS League, I had been getting pretty good production from my starting pitchers.....then Vasquez made his start Friday....pitched bad enough to get negative points and was one of the catalysts from going from a 30 point cushion I had going into Friday to being down 20 points to my opponent for the week in one day...Seriously I got outscored by something along the lines of 60-8. Obviously it takes a whole team to fail epically like that but giving up 8 runs in 5 innings doesn't help that any......an early indication to not expect the crazy production he gave during 2009.

Just noticed Doumit is up and that he's behind 0-2 in the count. Again, Doumit strikes out to end the inning. A bit creepy how that sequence parallels the sequence from about half an hour ago in the first inning.

It took till the 3rd inning but Chris Ianetta ends Mat Latos' no-hit bid by taking him yard. Just stumbled across a Forbes special report about The Business of Baseball. My take on this, is time for me to give some input on the Randy Levine controversy going on right now. Mark Levine pretty much told Brewers owner Mark Attanasio to stop complaining about the salary mis-balance in baseball.

Needless to say, Randy Levine is not my favorite person right now. Taking a look at the Forbes make it even clearer that Levine is acting like a grown bully. The current value of the Yankees is almost twice as high as the next closest team (Red Sox) and about 5 times higher than the Brewers which obviously makes it a bigger deal for the Brewers to dish out an A-Rod/Jeter type salary than it would be for a team like the Brewers. It's also easier for the Yankees to do this when their revenue runs circles around teams like the Brewers (441 million to 171 million) and runs circles around the next closest team (Mets-268 million) ....To recap, teams from massive markets like New York are easily able to generate revenue and pay players to more lucrative contracts and Levine is ready to taunt anyone who calls out the mis-balances of this system.

Whew, that was a long rant. Time to watch Blanks go to the plate and hit. Blanks finally manages to get on base as he just got hit by a pitch. Will Venable: Clutch Hitter....first Padres at-bat with the bases juiced (according to their announcers) Venable turns a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead within seconds......also Angels-A's are underway as well....despite no fantasy implications, i'm anxious to see how Ben Sheets does in his start tonight.

I guess the Angels had seen enough out of Wood for now to not put him in tonight's line-up as Izturis gets the start tonight. The Ben Sheets era starts out good enough for Oakland as he has induced a harmless line out to second.

What in the name of Billy Beane is going on? The Fox Sports West broadcast just showed a brief capsule of the A's of Low Payroll (What else is new) Young deep pitching rotation (Hudson, Zito, Mulder: The Next Generation) and Small Ball (Small Ball ???!!!!!! your talking about small ball....dude your Billy Beane...the same Billy Beane that tought us about how small ball was a waste out of outs....i don't care how many bases Ricky Henderson thinks Rajai Davis can steal......Jack Cust is still a more valuable offensively player because hey hitting home runs leads to more runs than stealing bases (oh wait--that's right Jack Cust just got DFA'd right before opening day).

It looks like we have a potential Coors Field slugfest on our hands as Hawpe just went deep to pull the Rockies within 4-3. Your classic Coors Field home run as the Hawpe home run has initiated a discussion about how they thought it was just another fly ball that the ball park was going to contain.

Going to the 5th in the Padres-Rockies game...Gwynn, Eckstein, Gonzales due up......another chance for Blanks if one of the above gets on base. Get to see Ben Sheets try to pitch his way out of some trouble as the Angels have runners on 1st and 2nd with 2 gone and and Kendrick coming up the answer to that...so far so good as he induces a fielders choice....good to see Sheets off to a good start.

Tulowitzki is doing his part to postpone Blanks' next plate appearance to the 6th as he makes a nice catch. That's followed by David Eckstein getting the ball out of the infield (good) which led to a running catch by Gonzales (bad).....Padres go down in order......we play the waiting game for the next Kyle Blanks at bat.

Just looked at the interface for my CBS league team and saw Ryan Doumit struck out a 3rd time for the night. This week, my team has struck out 45 times in 171 At-Bats.

A sign that your team isn't contending this year: The broadcast team speculates about your team's chance of being respectable....not good...not contenders....but respectability.

Latos has a nice 1-2-3 fifth....induces a couple of strikeouts leaving us a commercial break away from Kyle Blanks next at-bat.......the cold stretch continues as he strikes out.

Off to the Pirates-D-Backs game as Doumit is on deck......Pirates looking in position to win as they have a comfy 6-0 lead aided by a Kelly Johnson falling asleep on defense....Hideki Matsui welcomes Ben Sheets to the American League by driving in a run to put the Angels up 1-0

Doumit.....racks up his 4th strikeout of the game....back to the Padres-Rockies game which has proven to be much more entertaining......wasn't on the Pirates-D-Backs game very long but long enough to get the quote of the night from one of the announcers "you can train a chimpanzee for 2 weeks to do this job"........classic.......it may have been said as a joke but sometimes it seems there is a kernel of truth considering the following situation has gone down several teams.....Cheddarhead is watching random baseball game on TV and the conversation turns to some observation about the game going on......only to hear the announcers say the EXACT SAME THING pretty much verbatim about an inning or two later

Hawpe just hit another homer to tie it at 4-all during the middle of the previous paragraph.

Sorta spacing in and out of these games Padres-Rockies go into the 7th inning stretch tied.....Angels just broke a tie with the A's---wandering around aimlessly through ballhype looking through what else is going on. Luke Gregerson coming into pitch for the Padres......appearantly the dude was awesome at Petco.....terrible outside of Petco (according to the graphic they just showed).

Tony Gwynn Jr. is doing his part to help Gregerson improve on the road as he just made a really good catch. Looks like Ben Sheets first A's start isn't looking as good as a couple innings ago as he has fallen behind 3-1 and has runners in scoring position.......but he manages to get out without digging into a deeper hole.

The Rockies end the 7th without going deep or scoring a run......bad news which means no free Whoppers for people in the Denver area.

Betancourt comes in for the Rockies. According to the graphic shown on TV, he's pretty good against the Padres. If anyone gets on base for the Padres, we'll get another Kyle Blanks plate appearance. David Eckstein just "grounded out" on a pitch that hit the bottom knob of his bat (below his choked up hands). So let me get this straight, in addition to not being very good at hitting he somehow manages to botch a routine HBP........wow.....

Gonzales rips a single to right.....can Blanks improve on his .062 average now.....stay tuned to find out.....while Blanks attempt to go yard was unsuccessful...he did rip a double to get runners in scoring position for Headley......i'll take it as progress. Headley strikes out.....on a pitch that goes in the dirt......the Padres have a 4th out to play with...bases loaded....Venable gets a chance to make a further dent in the game.....Venable drops to a .500 average with the bases juiced as he strikes out to end the inning......

Even though there are fantasy implications with the Pirates game and the Ben Sheets storyline in the A's game......at this point i've gotten heavily engaged in the Padres-Rockies game and the A's-Angels game has taken a background role.........Mike Adams now in the game for the Padres with Ben Sheets already pitching, Adams is the second injury-prone ex-Brewers player to pitch in a game in the last couple of hours.

Starts off strong as he strikes out Fowler. This shouldn't be shocking as the dude has struck out 9.1 batters per 9 innings in his career. According to the broadcasters, the Rockies are 0 for 16 against Adams so the fact that he's put down the first two hitters should not be a surprise. For a moment, it sounded like Tulowitzki changed that to a 1 for 17 with a homer......however, the ball harmlessly lands in Kyle Blanks' glove instead.

The Rockies are handing things over to Franklin Morales. The in my best interest scenario involves the Padres scoring 1-3 runs in the top of the 9th and Heath Bell coming in to get a save.....will this happen....we'll know for sure fairly soon. The Padres pinch-hit one junior (Tony Gwynn) for another (Jerry Hairston)......I wonder what the single season record for one junior pinch-hitting for another is........regardless the Rockies get out of the 9th and get an opportunity to win in their last At-Bat.

Cesar Ramos' turn to keep this game a 4-all affair. A tall order considering he is making his 8th career appearance. Appearantly Ramos is the Padres LOOGY as he strikes out a couple of lefties and is promptly pulled from the game. It may be the 1st week of the season but this game has a semi-epic intense feeling to it. With this change, it's up to Mujica to force some extra frames. He may not have the best body of work (career 83 ERA+) but he gets the job done.

EXTRA INNINGS!!!!!! Extra Innings De-neh-nuh-nuh-neh. Also, Blanks is due up 3rd....could he be the one to get a game winning hit here.....stay tuned to find out. It also looks like the 4K game by Doumit is official as the Pirates game ended with the Pirates winning 6-3

Matt Daley takes the hill to start the 10th. A couple quick ground outs bring us to another Kyle Blanks plate appearance..with my fantasy team down 22.5 points....a home run would help a lot. Gets a basehit.....that brings him to 2 for the game.....more encouraging in the long term that possibly the slump he's in is relatively short lived.....also has a chance to score the winning run as he moved to 3rd on a Headley single......only down by 21.5 points now.....speaking of right now.....another pitching change.....the Rockies counter with their LOOGY Randy Flores.....again Venable is up with a chance to do some serious damage.....for the second time in 3 innings....Venable is unable to replicate his 4th inning appearance as the Padres squander another opportunity for Blanks to score a run and Bell to come in and get a save.

Jason Giambi is up pinch-hitting.....just realized that he looks pretty old.......old enough to not bite on any pitches not even close to the strike zone.....and promptly gets pulled for a pinch runner.........Giambi getting some pretty intense high fives for standing there and drawing the walk...almost as if he had gotten a game winning hit.....the pinch-runner strategy turned out to be a pretty big fail/non-factor as an inning-ending double play was induced.......11th INNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt Belisle gets handed the task of keepin it at 4-all. I can't tell if the Padres are looking to score runs or if they're trying to engage Brad Hawpe in a game of pepper. Matt Stairs pinch-hitting....let me re-state that; Professional Hitter Matt Stairs.....Stairs penchant for going for the home run swing gets the best of him as he strikes out chasing a pitch out of the zone.........speaking of Matt Stairs....the Padres are team #12 he has played for........my take is that he should just go all in and try to play for all 30 teams before he retires....sure age isn't on his side (he's 42)....but c'mon for that shot of immortality it's worth the shot.

Tim Stauffer's turn to extend the game. Ouch, dude just got slammed by the broadcast team for not having the career of a 4th overall draft pick. File that under signs that things have not gone as planned. His career may not have gone well but he did his part to force a 12th inning.

For what seems like the umpteenth time tonight, Blanks is due up fourth in this inning. In all this focus on the Padres-Rockies game has completely obscured the fact that the Angels and A's are tied in the 9th. Gonzales is getting the intentional pass......Blanks gets a chance to hit with two runners on.....Yes!!!!!!

Kyle Blanks swung at 2 pitches outside the zone and racked up another K........No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not a fan of leaving things hanging like a Lost episode but the reality it's pushing 9 pm on a Saturday Night.....I got places to be................

Cardinals-Brewers Series Preview

2010-04-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

The first series of the season turned out fairly well with the Crew taking 2 out of 3 from the Rockies. As it stands the Crew trails Pirates and Cardinals by 1/2 a game (they'll either be tied or a game back when the series actually starts.

Friday

Lohse vs. Bush

Chico, California product Kyle Lohse gets the start Friday night. Not a star but always finds a way on someones rotation. Historically, this hasn't been enough for him to be effective against Brewers hitters. Gerut, Braun and Counsell have all hit him fairly well....wouldn't be surprised if Gomez and/or Escobar end up getting the night off.

Dave Bush....well there's no way to go but up from his 2009 performance. The reigning NL leader of Hit Batsmen makes his 2010 debut on Friday. Like his counterpart, Bush hasn't exactly dominated the opposition. Pujols, Molina, Schumaker and Ludwick have all hit him around pretty good. In other words, don't be shocked if both terms score runs by the bunch.

Saturday

Carpenter vs. Gallardo

Well, Carpenter has made it through one start healthy. The health thing all about taking it one start at a time. The reigning 2009 NL Leader in ERA, ERA+, Win Pct. and HR/9 gets the start here. Counsell, Edmonds and Fielder have all hit him pretty well but in general Brewers hitters have struggled against Carpenter (then again who hasn't) to the tune of an .580 OPS

The last time (Monday) Gallardo went up against someone on one of my fantasy teams (Jiminez) he ended up coming away with a loss. Considering Carpenter is on one of my fantasy teams, this isn't a good omen. Another bad omen is that Pujols and Molina have hit him relatively well and current cards hitters have rocked him to the tune of a .846 OPS. Based on the past, this game isn't looking too good for the Crew.

Sunday

Garcia vs. Wolf

In this ESPN-televised Sunday night game, the Cardinals are giving Jaime Garcia his 2nd career start (and 11th appearance). The Brewers may struggle against pitchers making their big league debut but Garcia has started before (albeit once) which alone increases the Brewers hopes.

Sunday marks start number 2 of the Randy Wolf era. His start Tuesday didn't exactly go great but the Brewers did enough on offense for them to win (i.e. for this to not be that big of a deal). Wolf has historically struggled against Lopez, Pujols and Holliday. Wolf going against hitters that have hit him well versus a young inexperienced pitcher, we could be in for another high-scorer on Sunday.

Baseball On TV This Weekend

2010-04-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

Braves vs. Giants Friday MLB Network

Hudson vs. Sanchez

Interest Level: 6

Will this be the beginning of Tim Hudson's bounce-back season? What will Jason Heyward do to help his team (As a side note, I am glad that the Braves bypassed the send him down for a couple months to bypass the arbitration rules, realized Heyward was their best option and let him start the season in Atlanta....I wouldn't be shocked to see the Braves awarded karmically with a post-season berth for not trying (poorly) to convince everyone that he needs time to "develop" his game say until late-May/early-June when he would "magically" be ready to face major-league pitching

The Giants counter with Jonathan Sanchez. Had an interesting '09 started poorly, threw a no-hitter, finished strong. Is this the start of a 2010 breakout season? On a side note, the Giants handled their prospect situation (Buster Posey) differently be sending him down to Triple-A despite a strong spring.

A's vs. Angels Saturday MLB Network

Sheets vs. Weaver

Interest Level: 9

This week has seen my first exposure to J.J Hardy in a non-Brewers uniform and it looks like our first exposure to Ben Sheets in a non-Brewers uniform. Of course, this is Sheets first big league appearance since 2008 and this step one of the journey to see whether Sheets is worth the investment and can he actually stay healthy for a full season. He has the talent, just a matter of staying healthy to make a full season worth of starts.

The Angels start Jered Weaver ( who happens to be the best MLB pitcher that I watched in-person while they were still in college---he was the starting pitcher for a Long Beach State vs. Cal Poly game I went to in 2003.....I don't know much about college baseball but I know that he DESTROYED Big West hitting)...and on a fantasy baseball note.....will Brandon Wood break out of his slump?

Yankees vs. Rays Saturday Fox, Sunday TBS

Sabathia vs. Davis Saturday

Burnett vs. Shields Sunday

Interest Level:4

Umpire Joe West made news this week by saying that the Yankees and Red Sox take too many timeouts and are making the length of games longer. Not sure how true that is but the Yankees and Rays took their sweet time determining who would be starting their games this weekend (single-handedly pushing back the posting of this post by a day)....Personally i'm more concerened with the Randy Levine vs.Mark Attanasio dispute over salary distribution. My take: once every team has their own network to run their games (YES Network) and a national network (ESPN) obsessed with their every move.....then he may have a point. Sure these things have nothing to do with the upcoming games but c'mon it's the Yankees, if you miss these games all you have to do is wait a couple of days.

Mariners vs. Rangers Saturday FOX

Hernandez vs. Harrison

Interest Level: 6

With FOX's regional coverage combined with living on the west coast....i'm probably stuck with this game and this game only regardless of personal preference. On the bright side, this should be my first chance to see this year's re-tooled Mariners team in action. Felix Hernandez, the reigning AL leader in Wins, Winning Percentage, Wild Pitches & Hits/9 Innnings gets start #2 of the season.

The Rangers counter with Matt Harrison who is making career start #27 but has yet to replicate the success of his Saturday counterpart. If nothing else, he has shown a high level of endurance as he threw 2 complete games in his 11 starts from '09 (good for 9th in the AL)

Brewers vs. Cardinals Saturday Fox, Sunday ESPN

See series preview post.

If Thursday is the New Friday than this is the preview for some televised early weekend games

2010-04-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

So, originally I planned on previewing all of the weekend action (Thursday-Sunday) in one post but since TBD is tentatively scheduled to make several starts for several teams from Friday to Sunday, I decided to give Friday-Sunday its own post and break down what was left (tomorrow's MLB Network Triple-Header).

Dodgers vs. Pirates Thursday MLB Network

Billingsley vs. Malholm

Interest Level: 5

On paper this should be a mismatch in favor of the Dodgers but considering how the Pirates destroyed the Dodgers on Opening day, that isn't a given. Is this the start that allows Billingsley to bounce back from a weak 2009 season or do his struggles continue?

What to make of Malholm? He was a top-10 pick in 2003 but so far has been a fairly average pitcher. Is 2010 his breakout season? How long do the Pirates stay in first? Will Ryan Church stop driving in runs and allow me to rise above 11th place in a league with only 10 human teams?

Mariners vs. A's Thursday MLB Network

Fister vs. Anderson

Interest Level: 5

Doug Fister starts his first full season in the bigs (pitched in 11 games last year) against AL West Divisional Rival Oakland.

Brett Anderson is the main reason to pay attention to this game. He held his own in his rookie year last year and it's scary how good he could be within a couple of years (he's only 22). As good as he will be in a few years, the A's will be bad this year as they seem to replicate the as little offense as possible model as their neighbors on the other side of the bay, the Giants.

Not sure what Billy Beane was thinking when he DFA'd Jack Cust. He made his legacy/reputation on building a team around guys like Cust....sure other GMs eventually ripped off his strategies/methods making it harder for him to get the players he wanted. Seriously, this team was already power challenged before this DFA and getting rid of a player who's gone yard 84 times in the last 3 years is not going to help any.

Cubs vs. Braves Thursday MLB Network

Wells vs. Hanson

Interest Level: 6

A battle between a couple pitchers who had strong rookie years and are looking to avoid the sophomore slump. Hanson got the upper hand in the Rookie of the Year voting (3rd vs. 6th), came into the 2009 season with much more hype surrounding him......does he make this a clean sweep by ultimately producing more than Wells or will this 6-seed prevail in the end?

Random Thoughts Loosely Based Around The Twins-Angels while completely avoiding Tiger Woods and the NFC East

2010-04-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

So today is the first day of baseball season......a rundown of how my teams have done

Razzball: Well for my Razzball team, today was a pretty epic failure...i have minus 15 points in a league where 2/3 of MLB hitters have positive value (thanks a lot Yuniesky Betancourt and Ryan Church and your combined minus 28 points) it would have been worse but Mike Jacobs did his part by going 0 for 4 and striking out twice....

Cheddarhead: Not sure exactly where we stand since we haven't figured out how to get 2 people to access the same team but Lowe won, Jiminez won (not happy at all about this one) Pujols went deep twice, Blanks went deep

Random CBSSports League that i'm in: Weekly H2H points.......Off to a nice start here....benefitted from solid starts by Halladay and Carpenter the first of several Kyle Blanks home runs and a big day by Ryan Doumit

Which brings me to right now (7:30 Pacific Time) and the current Twins-Angels game that's on my TV (On Fox Sports West)......a solid amount of fantasy implications for this one (Cuddyer starts for both Cheddarhead and Random CBS League) (Hardy starts for Random CBS League and he's a reserve for Chedderhead) and Brandon Wood is a starter in Random CBS League)...whew that's alot of information to regurgitate in a paragraph......also Brendan Harris is starting and Nick Punto is a reserve for the Razzball team

The broadcast team for the game is reminiscing about the Twins coming back against the Tigers last year and referred to the one-game playoff as a play-in game.......usually hear that phrase referred to for the play-in game 64/65 for the NCAA tournament which is about to be ruined in the name of the dollar.........The broadcast team is now talking smack about the Red Sox-Yankees game last night.....about how it's not really opening day.....did that game happen....but turn around and say you get your money's worth because you get 4 hours of baseball....not sure if they're endorsing the game or if they're hating......only the broadcasters know

Sorta spacing out on the Twins-Angels game currently.....the announcers were discussing the Twins off-season restructuring and then Delmon Young goes deep 30 seconds later........an omen that the Twins will be able to overcome not having Joe Nathan?

It's 7:46......time for J.J Hardy's first at bat as a twin....which ends with a harmless ground out to the pitcher........"bacon makes everything taste better even bacon" random Jack In The Box commercial that was on TV

7:48 time for Brandon Wood to hit......ouch Wood strikes out......fail.......why couldn't he be more like Jeff Mathis and go yard.......seriously dude has a 56 OPS+......just looked it up on Baseball-Reference.......anothe side effect of going there was looking at the 2010 standings and seeing the Yankees in last place....the person sponsoring his baseball reference page has a couple of sentences written one of them being "Scoscia says Mathis is one of the Angels most valuable players"

Looking at the data from last year's Angels team and a random sampling of players who had better years at the plate than Mathis:

Gary "got a fat contract off of one decent season and one crazy catch" Matthews

Robb Quinlan

Maicier Izturis

Erick Aybar

The game is cruising along into the 3rd inning...Orlando Hudson hit a double....they're interviewing Angels GM Tony Reagins....the interview with Reagins somehow moved to random Wikipediaing as Mauer strikes out to end the top of the 3rd.......

Random Wikipeida fun-fact of the Week of Monday of the 3rd inning of the 8'o clock hour. His GM predecessor Bill Stoneman, threw 2 no-hitters (both with the Expos) despite a pedestrian career record of 54-85

Another half of the 3rd another guest.....this time Tim Salmon who's talking about how he's able to enjoy opening day more now that he's no longer playing in the bigs....and fielding questions about his take on spring training........not every day that the 1993 AL Rookie of the Year is in tha studio......8:09 Fun Fact: Tim Salmon finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting twice but somehow never got selected to an All-Star game

4th inning....we know what this means....TRIVIA time.....tonight's question who holds the Angels record for most opening day starts.....dean chance and mike witt are the guesses given by the broadcast team.......not giving away the answer but one of those is right......

More importantly, Cuddyer is up right now.....struck out in the 2nd....they just flashed that he was the 9th pick in the 1997 draft....ground out to 3rd......fail.......what isn't a fail is that the Twins were able to get Cuddyer after the teams above them drafted future hall of famers such as Matt Anderson, Jason Grilli, and Geoff Getz.......

Going to the middle of the 4th....Wood due up 3rd in the inning...randomly checking SI.com to see how Butler-Duke is going (Butler down 1 with 5 minutes left) but in general couldn't care less about Basketball at this point....

Kendrick just grounded out to second...which means....time for Brandon Wood to step to the plate.....another strikeout for Wood........double fail

We're on Guest #3 of the night Rod Carew....just mentioned that he thinks Jeff Mathis is a great player......Counter-Point: Random Sampling of players Baseball-Reference finds similar to Mathis

Dann Bilardello

Bob Uecker

Ron Tingley

Tim Spher

Ned Yost

J.J Hardy is up......now if only "productive" outs were a fantasy baseball category.....as Hardy grounds out to second but moves the runner to third........Punto hits sac fly to tie game at 3-all

They just rolled the cameras into the crowd.......to show someone in an Angels hat and Cubs jacket.......awkward/just plain wrong......just showed some footage of Target Field......I wonder if they'll break any single-season records for Snowout Induced Double-Headers.....I could see a retractable roof stadium up in Minnesota but no protection from the weather......fail

Briefly flipped to CBS to see that the Duke Vitales won the national championship.........is anyone outside of CBS, ESPN or Tobacco Road happy about this? I highly doubt it

Things could get a bit interesting.....Hunter just walked 2 on 2 out for Hideki...came within a few feet of making this a 6-3 game.....hooks a bit too far to the right....just another foul ball....but settles for a go-ahead RBI Single...and with that Scott Baker's night is over...just did some image thing listing some of his accomplishments showing Matsui with crazy Godzilla eyes......weird

Jesse Crain is brought in to clean up what Baker left behind.....what can be said about him? He's from canada been in both World Baseball Classics and he was 8th in 2005's Rookie Of The Year voting....oh and he induced a ground ball to get the Twins out of the 5th

Morneau walks...Cuddyer's up......knocks a base hit to center 1st and 2nd 2 out......can this be the catalyst to tying up the game?

Well.....it's 9 o'clock.....as fun as it has been to give whatever thoughts/insight about tonight's Angels/Twins game....the reality is i'm getting sleepy, i'm mis-spelling words every other sentence (and correcting them of course).......

Brewers-Rockies Preview: First Series of the Decade

2010-04-04T09:35:00.001-07:00

With the 2010 season rearing and ready to go, we finally begin to get the questions answered such as can the Brewers return to the playoffs, can their pitching staff actually get anyone out this year so on and so forth.

Monday

Jiminez vs. Gallardo

For several years, I was reluctant to play Fantasy Baseball because of the situations where I would have to pick between the Brewers and the fantasy team. I can't even get past the first game of the season without getting into this situation as Jiminez is a key member of Cheddarhead. I have decided to rationalize this by thinking "it's ok if he pitches well all season but he can feel free to give up 8 runs in 2 1/3 against the Brewers, he has 30-plus starts to actually pitch well"

For the Brewers, Yovani Gallardo will be making the 1st of what should be several opening day starts. If nothing else, at least theres no way he could be worse than last years opening day starter (Jeff Suppan). As the only Brewer pitcher to pitch well last year, it's good to see him leading off the season, now if only he can lay off on the walks.........

Tuesday

Smith vs. Wolf

The Rockies are giving Greg Smith the start on Tuesday. He pitched fairly well in '08 but didn't see any big league action last year. The most interesting things that can be said about him is he's good at picking off runners and he ended up being one of the players that went to Colorado for Matt Holliday.

This is an important game for the Brewers as this is Randy Wolf's first start as a Brewer. On Tuesday, we begin to find out whether Randy Wolf is a good investment or if he is Jeff Suppan Version 2.0. Since Wolf has spent time pitching in the NL West, he should be fairly familiar with most of the Rockies hitters. A few positive indicators here:

1) Some of the Rockies projected regulars have struggled against Wolf (Helton, Tulowitzki and Barmes).

2) In the glass half empty/glass half full line of thinking: He's given up plenty of homers to current Rockies players (9 in 122 at bats) but at the same time they've hit .205 off him.

Wednesday

Cook vs. Davis

The Rockies are bringing Aaron Cook to the hill for Wednesday's MLB Network national broadcast. A fairly steady-slightly above average pitcher--pitching half the games at Coors, no small feat. Out of current Brewers, Counsell, Gerut & Fielder have struggled pretty bad against him but Jim Edmonds has pretty much owned him. If Edmonds is getting any starts this year, Wednesday should be one of those games. Despite Edmonds strong track record, it could be a long day for the Brewers as Cook has pitched fairly well against the current Brewers.

Another day, another first start for a Brewers off-season acquisition. Doug Davis starts his second stint as a Brewer with this start on Wednesday. Doug Davis is the reigning National League leader in Games Started and Walks. Looking at his past performance against the Rockies does give some cause for concern. Both Tulowitzki and Helton have hit him well and amongst current Rockies, they have tagged Davis to the tune of an .880 OPS....ouch.

Finally.....Winter's Over....Here's some baseball games that will count

2010-03-29T18:48:00.001-07:00

Well, it's FINALLY time for the 2010 baseball season. No more winter, no more spring training....time to see how this goes down....how my predictions (and everyone elses will stand up over the season).....and also how Chedderhead/My Razzball team and the random Cbssports.com fantasy league i'm in that I haven't talked about does.......

Yankees vs. Red Sox

Sunday (Sabathia vs. Beckett) ESPN 2

Tuesday (Burnett vs. Lester) MLBN

Wednesday (Pettite vs. Lackey) ESPN 2

On a scale of 1-10 my interest is a: 1

Like a bad TBS movie that they "give you 3 chances to watch" you get 3 chances to watch the Yankees take on the Red Sox. The Sunday game stands out because its the first game of the season that actually counts. In the context of this season, this series is fairly insignificant but i'm pretty sure ESPN is hyping it like the ALCS because to them, the other 28 teams might as well be Triple-A teams for all they care.....as evidenced by this 2007 expose by the Onion.

In all seriousness, I don't care who it is...baseball is back. You have ex-Brewer Sabathia taking the hill against Beckett who is currently in negotiations for a massive extension (will this keep him in contract year blow the world away mode?)

On Tuesday, MLB Network gets in on the fun as they show game 2 of this series. MLB Network gets a pass on the Red Sox-Yankees criticism I give ESPN as they are taking the step of showing all 30 teams within the first 30 days of the season.

Wednesday marks the first Red Sox start for John Lackey....does he justify the piles of money thrown at him last summer or not? We begin to find out Wednesday

Cardinals (Carpenter) vs. Reds (Harang) Monday ESPN

On a scale of 1-10, my interest is: 6

A few interesting things here:

1) First look at a couple of NL Central rivals: The first look at a Cardinals team that just about everyone (except myself....and I don't see them missing by much) against a Reds team that is a perpetual sleeper in the NL Central

2) A first look at whether Chris Carpenter can replicate his strong 2009 season. Talent isn't the issue, the ability to stay healthy....well that's a completely different story......also he's one of my starters in the CBS league (Baseball, Beer and Bahkas) so i'll be a bit more interested in the results

3) Day 1 of Jay Bruce's breakout season: With Cliff Lee and Huston Street injured, someone is going to have to carry Cheddarhead on their shoulders, it might as well be Jay Bruce.

Indians (Westbrook) vs. White Sox (Buerhle) Monday ESPN2

On a scale of 1-10 my interest is a: 4

The Indians have lots of potential in 2010.....to be as bad or as worse than the Royals. If the Indians have any hope of making that last sentence sound horribly wrong, they are probably going to need Jake Westbrook to make more than 5 starts.

The White Sox on the other hand, have reasonable playoff expectations. They may not be a great team but then again they aren't in the strongest division either. Despite Joe Nathan being shelved for the season, I still think the Twins will win the division (barely.)

Another fun fact is that this game matches up 2 of the 3 pitchers who tied for the league in Hits Allowed in 2006. (The third player, Jon Garland gets the opening day nod for the Padres).

Cubs (Zambrano) vs. Braves (Lowe) Monday ESPN

On a scale of 1-10 my interest is a: 8

Well, the Cubs are involved so if nothing else I have a team to root against. Also, with Carlos Zambrano pitching you never quite know what your getting although this tends to equal itself out over each season as his ERA+ the last few years have been eerily similar (117,118,119) Usually an interesting and harmless experience unless you happened to be dressed like a Gatorade machine and Zambrano doesn't like the umpiring on a given day.

For the Braves, the have Derek Lowe taking the hill here. Lowe is coming off his worst year as a starter but I see him coming back strong in 2010....i'm confident enough in this assertion that he ended up on Chedderhead.

Giants (Lincecum) vs. Astros (Oswalt) Monday ESPN

On a scale of 1-10 my interest is a: 7

Good pitching match-up. Anytime Lincecum takes the hill, it's worth watching (right now he's my favorite non-Brewers player) because you never know whats going to happen. The Astros are looking to Roy Oswalt to anchor their staff this year.

From '01-'07 this would have been a fairly sound strategy. However, Oswalt's performance and his health have regressed a bit in the last couple years ......pretty much a microcosm of the Astors as a whole.

Twins vs. Angels

Baker vs. Weaver Tuesday MLB Network

Pavano vs. Santana Wednesday ESPN 2

On a scale of 1-10 my interest is a : 6

It should be interesting to see how the Twins come out of the gate. Will their saavy winter moves and the momentum of locking up Joe Mauer be the catalyst towards another playoff appearance. Or will the downgrade from Joe Nathan to whoever they have closing games bring them back to the pack.

For the Angels, will they rack up another AL West title or will the Mariners off-season moves allow them to overtake Los Angeles of Anaheim of North America of the Northern Hemisphere and be top of the class. To answer some of these questions but raise more questions than are actually answered, stay tuned to find out.

Brewers vs. Rockies Wednesday MLB Network

See, Brewers-Rockies Series Preview Post

A Retro-Active Diary Of My Razzball Team

2010-03-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Alright, a couple weeks ago I wrote a brief post about my Razzball team where the object of the game is to draft the worst team possible and listed who I drafted but didn't get into too much detail........until now. Today, one of my fellow league members dedicated a post to doing a blow-by-blow account of the team they drafted.

Well, this inspired me to do a blow-by-blow retroactive running diary of the trainwreck that I drafted.

Round 1: Jason Kendall

Being a Brewers fan, I was way too familiar with the sheer ineptitude that is Jason Kendall. It got to the point where any positive thing he did, no matter how insignificant (i.e. NOT hitting into an inning-ending double play, hitting the ball out of the infield) was seen as exceeding expectations. In the early rounds, I was improvising but all I knew was that I was taking Kendall if he was still available. Based on his probable .240 hitting with no power and that he somehow gets to start 130 games a year and he plays for a Royals team where he will probably drive in even less runs than he did in Milwaukee, there is no way this pick can go wrong

Round 2: Bobby Crosby

After getting Kendall, my next thought was to get First Base covered as Razzball-worthy hitters become catchers and middle infielders, not first basemen. Why Crosby? Plays for a terrible team? Pirates, check. Versatility at positions associated with offense? First Base/Third Base, check. Sub-.700 OPS/Sub-.240 Average/no more than 9 homers the last four years? Check.

Round 3: Brendan Harris

Got another corner infield player on accident. I was looking towards drafting some good old fashioned middle infield ineptitude here...I was trying to avoid drafting players from teams that are generally pretty smart (Twins) but anytime you can snag some Sub .700 OPS corner infield eligibility, you have to go for it.

Round 4: Gary Matthews Jr.

Matthews Jr. has answered the ultimate question of how you can catapult one above-average season and one You Tube worthy catch into making $10 million a year and making Jeff Suppan's contract look like a wise investment......even though the Mets weren't the ones that signed the contract (this one is on L.A. of Anaheim of California of America of Earth of Milky Way) it doesn't seem surprising that a player of this caliber ended up on the Mets.

Round 5: Fausto Carmona

After going with hitters in the first four rounds, I noticed that more pitchers were coming off the board around this time and started scrambling around to get my own piece of this pitching ineptitude. And what did I come back with? A pitcher whose WHIP has skyrocketed the last two years (1.76) if i'm lucky maybe he can break the 2 WHIP barrier. 70 Walks in 125 innings, 16 homers and an ERA north of 6. The icing on the cake? Carmona is projected to be the Indians #2 starter, making it unlikely that Carmona will lose said job because of his high ineptitude.

Round 6: Bill Hall

Not sure how many ABs i'll get out of Hall but my experience as a Brewers fan tells me that he's gotten progressively worse since his career year (pretty much the hitting equivalent of Fausto Carmona), the dude swings at just about everything regardless of how close the ball is to the strike zone and assuming he gets playing time, should be a valuable source of strikeouts.

Round 7: Oliver Perez

Got myself two pitchers in a three round period that have seen their WHIP skyrocket in the last few years. An ERA that looks primed to break the 7-barrier, a WHIP that is at 1.9.....oh so close to the 2 WHIP barrier and pitching for a Mets team where he shouldn't lose his job as long as he stays healthy.

Round 8: Willy Taveras

A player who has a chance to be a star.....if they ever make it legal to steal first.

Around this time I noticed a lot of the players I was drafting or was looking to draft either play or at one time played for one of four teams (Royals, Team Formerly Known As The Expos, Pirates and Mets). Around the 7th or 8th round, I shifted to a strategy to draft only players from those four teams unless I stumbled across from a player that was such a trainwreck that I couldn't resist. I would have mentioned this earlier but i'm partially distracted by the multi-OT epic that Xavier and K-State are putting on.

Round 9: Chris Jakubauskas

Had to double-check the draft page to make sure I spelt his name correctly. Don't know too much about him but considering the Pirates deemed him worthy, he should be a good source of losses. A high risk of wasted non-talent here as it looks doubtful that he will break camp with the Pirates.

Round 10: Nelson Figueroa

Time to stock up on some inept middle reliever with a slight chance of starting. He made 10 starts last year and logically could back his way into the rotation if the Mets rotation has injury issues (a matter of when not if). Anytime I can benefit off of the ineptitude of someone who pitched 30 games in the same year that the Brewers hit rock bottom and lost 106 times, there's no way I could pass it up.

Round 11: Yuniesky Betancourt

When in doubt, see who the Royals have available. If they have a .689 career OPS a career sub .300 OPS and on a team hopeless enough that that won't necessarily be a deterrent to starting. Now just as long as those 24-run Royals game only happen in spring training, I should be good.

Round 12: Craig Stammen

Young pitcher with an ERA slightly north of 5. A little concerned about his WHIP only being 1.29 and only walking 24 in 105 innings but c'mon he pitches for the Nationals. Their best pitchers are John Lannan and Jason Marquis, how good can he be?

Round 13: Mike Jacobs

On his second stint on the Mets......played a season for the Royals (which was an epic fail) he strikes out about once every four at bats, hits for a low average and comes to Citi Field.....if it can suppress the power of players that are actually good (David Wright), I can't wait to see what this stadium does to Jacobs' numbers

Round 14: Cristian Guzman

Only in a fantasy league like this, you have to worry about your starters losing time due to incompetency. .....I was feeling better about this pick until seeing that he lost his job to Ian Desmond.....fits the profile of someone that the Mets will trade for.....just a hunch

Round 15: Jeff Karstens

Had a near 1.5 WHIP and a 5+ ERA in '09.......he was so valuable in the Razzball world that he got shipped to minor league camp

Round 16: Jeff Francoeur

Banking on him NOT hitting .311 for the Mets again. Banking on pitchers realizing that he will swing at just about anything, banking on an excellent source of strikeouts.

Round 17: Tim Redding

Another player I was excited about until he got sent to the minors today.

Round 18: Mitch Maier

On the bright side, at least I ain't losing him to the minors. On the not so bright side, he's been tearing it up in the spring and his manager is lauding him for developing really quick this spring. On the bright side, talent evaluation isn't amongst the Royals strengths.

Round 19: Evan Meek

Looking at the numbers, didn't pitch that bad last year.....picked him more to a lack of familiarity and the PIT indicating he pitches for the Pirates next to his name.....if he keeps up his 8 to 1 K To Walk ratio he has this spring, he probably won't be long for this team....however, if he maintains his 5.79 ERA, Meek will be a most valuable asset.

Round 20: Ryan Church

Drafted a few rounds below the player (Francoeur) that he got traded for last summer. I actually wrote a post arguing that the Braves got the better of the deal for getting Church. Here's to both players not playing well this year.

Round 21: Jordan Zimmermann

A case of not doing my homework, getting lured by the fact that he plays for the Nationals and not realizing that he's on the 60-Day DL....oh well.

Round 22: Alex Cora

Mets utility fielder.....fine for opening day........658 career OPS.........welcome to Razzball Mr. Cora.

Round 23: Fernando Tatis

Mediocrity+multi-position eligibility+ Round 23= Jackpot

Round 24: Rod Barajas

Pro: Mediocre Batting Average

Con: He has 20 homer power

Pro: He's playing in citi field that has sapped the power of better, more talented players

Round 25: Colin Balester

5.87 ERA in 22 career starts....now if only he can crack the rotation

Round 26: Nick Punto

Protypical dime a dozen light hitting middle infielder

Round 27: Daniel Cabrera

Another player that is too valuable in the Razzball world to make a major league team....I am holding out hope that someone will give him a few starts this year. He drew 42 walks in 51 innings and showed himself perfectly capable of rocking a 2+ WHIP.

Well that in a nutshell is how I constructed the worst Fantasy baseball team that I could construct. I just have to wait a few more days to see how this goes down.

NL East Preview Part II

2010-03-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

Our standings after the first half:

Phillies 17

Braves 22

Nationals 25

Marlins 27

Mets 29

Starting Rotation:

Phillies-4

Braves-8

Marlins-12

Mets-16

Nationals-20

The Phillies by far are best off in the rotation. Halladay ends up in Philly (finally) and it would be shock if he isn't one of the top 5 pitchers in the league. While Hamels didn't exactly light the world on fire in 2009 which was aided more by a high BABIP against and not on him suddenly turning into a mediocre pitcher. Blanton is your protypical mid-rotation pitcher...no better no worse. There's absolutely no way J.A. Happ replicates his breakthrough year but at the same time he's a better #4 option than anyone else has.

The Braves may be weak in the star-power at the top of the rotation but make up for it with depth. There's no way Lowe struggles as much this year as last, Hanson and Jurrjens are likely to come down a little bit from strong 2009 seasons but that doesn't change the fact that both of them are legit pitchers. Hudson pitched well after coming back from injury but 42 innings is too early to tell whether he can stay healthy and whether he can return to his dominant form.

Josh Johnson may not be a household name like Halladay or Santana but if 2009 is any indication, he could be within the discussion for best pitcher in the NL East this year. Nolasco should bounce back after struggles connected more to bad luck than being a bad pitcher. Volstad should hold his own as a #3 but beyond that don't expect much from the Marlins rotation.

For the Mets, its Santana and.....not much else. Maine and Pelfrey are pretty mediocre pitchers, Oliver Perez is an asset to Razzball and anyone that's a fan of pitchers who think the strike zone is a foreign concept.

The Nationals have John Lannan and Jason Marquis as their top two starters......and it gets worse from there......ouch

Bullpen

Mets-4

Braves-8

Phillies-12

Nationals-16

Marlins-20

Not too crazy about what any of these teams have with the game on the line. The Mets do have K-Rod.....while he does make lots of money and racks up lots of saves....i'm not quite sold on him as being elite.....but he has been relatively healthy (Unlike Wagner) and has never racked up blown saves and 7-plus ERAs like they were going out of style (Brad Lidge....cough....cough) so the Mets get this one by default.

Final Rankings

Phillies-33

Braves-38

Mets-49

Marlins-59

Nations-61

No surprises with the top two, no surprise that the Mets are nowhere near the top, not surprising the Nationals are at the bottom....the only difference between conventional thought and the final rankings is how low the Marlins are ranked.

NL East Preview Part I

2010-03-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Last but not least, the NL East:

Catcher:

Brian McCann-1

Carlos Ruiz-2

John Baker-3

Ivan Rodriguez-4

Rod Barajas-5

McCann wins this.....by a lot. The only catcher that you could definitely say is better than McCann is Joe Mauer. Since Joe Mauer plays in the AL Central, McCann is the #1 catcher in both the NL East and on Chedderhead. After McCann, it's the lesser of four evils....Ruiz has some decent upside but if he hasn't broken out already at 31 that's sort of a red light. I-Rod has had a great career and if we were talking about overall bodies of work he would be number 1 but he has seen better days. I could see Rod Barajas working out as a good signing, if he was a left handed hitter playing at Yankee Stadium. However, he ended up on a team that plays their home games at a stadium that suppresses his one strength (hitting home runs) which may explain how he ended up on my Razzball team.

First Base

1-Ryan Howard

2-Adam Dunn

3-Daniel Murphy

4-Troy Glaus

5-Gaby Sanchez

Howard continued to establish himself as one of the elite hitters in the game in 2009. I see no reason why this won't continue into the new decade. Adam Dunn has been and continues to be the Mr. 3TO.......Drawing Walks, Hitting Homers, Striking Out....Dunn has his game down to the basics. On name recognition, Glaus would get the nod over Murphy but a) it's tough to tell whether he will stay healthy all year and b) even if he is healthy, it's unclear whether he will return to form

Second Base

1-Chase Utley

2-Dan Uggla

3-Martin Prado

4-Adam Kennedy

5-Luis Castillo

Another position, another Phillies player amongst the elite of the game. Uggla has established himself as Adam-Dunn lite. Hits for a very pedestrian average, hits plenty of homers (30-ish but not as much as Dunn) he is drawing walks at an increased rate (14% vs. 18% for Dunn) but then again the power standards for second basemen is lower than for first baseman.

Shortstop

1-Hanley Ramirez

2-Jimmy Rollins

3-Yunel Escobar

4-Jose Reyes

5-Ian Desmond

One word.....LOADED. Han-Ram gives you 30-30 potential in any given year and makes a strong case for the best shortstop in the bigs (he even got drafted 1st overall in the league that Cheddarhead plays in). Yes, Jimmy Rollins had a rough season, it still seems odd that he won an MVP and doesn't draw very many walks. However, his struggles look to be linked to low BABIP and he should bounce-back strong in 2010. Escobar is a young talented player and will likely overtake Rollins as a player within a few years, I just don't think it happens this year. Jose Reyes is talented enough to be higher but with the injury problems he is facing/will inevitably face all year and the fact that the Mets fall back plan is Alex Cora, I can't really justify ranking him higher.

Third Base

1-Ryan Zimmerman

2-David Wright

3-Chipper Jones

4-Jorge Cantu

5-Placido Polanco

Seems to be a trend in the NL East where the best player by position is the best by a lot not a little. When that player happens to be the starting third baseman for Chedderhead, even better. Tough to tell what to expect out of David Wright in '10. He's still reliable to hit for a good average but whether his power remains at 2009 levels or returns to historical norms remains to be seen. His hr/fb% dropped last year which also coincided with moving to Citi Field. Too early to tell whether his power drop resulted just bad luck or the stadium. Regardless, this area of doubt is enough to drop him well behind Zimmerman but above Jones whose name recognition has overtaken production, Cantu who had one really good season and many indicators showing that his 2008 level of production is unlikely to replicate himself

Left Field

1-Josh Willingham

2-Raul Ibanez

3-Jason Bay

4-Matt Diaz

5-Chris Coghlan

An overall uninspiring group. I will always associate Josh Willingham as the guy who hit grand slams in consecutive innings off Jeff Suppan (making him single-handedly responsibility for my least favorite Brewers moment of the year). Given a chance to start he has a decent chance to go yard 30-35 times. Ibanez had a nice 2009....his home run totals were inflated by an abnormally high hr/fb ratio and had nothing to do with the weak steroid speculation or the bloggers that Ibanez thinks all live in their mothers basement. Jason Bay is a free agent bust waiting to happen. A combination of decreasing contact percentage (he dropped from 76% to 69% last year......only 3% away from becoming a Bill Hall All-Star) and moving to Citi Field where power goes to die.....a pretty good chance this goes down as another bad Mets contract before all is said and done.....also a generous ranking at 3rd....Also not sold on Coghlan replicating his Rookie of the Year Season.

Center Field

1-Nate McLouth

2-Carlos Beltran

3-Shane Victorino

4-Nyjer Morgan

5-Cameron Maybin

Another less than inspiring crop. McLouth is a decent player but definitely not a superstar. On talent and name-brand recognition Beltran should win this hands down but I have little to no faith in his ability to stay healthy. Victorino (like Bay) is a player i've never been too high on (being the same guy that hit a grand slam off C.C. Sabathia in the 2008 NLDS that made it official that the Brewers playoff appearance was only going to be a cameo don't help either) but get's the #3 spot by default. Not sold on Morgan replicating his strong 2009 season and not sold on Maybin.

Right Field

1-Jayson Werth

2-Cody Ross

3-Melky Cabrera

4-Elijah Dukes

5-Jeff Francoeur

Lost in all the Phillies firepower from players like Ibanez, Howard and Utley the fact that Werth hit 36 homers got lost in the mix. He comes back this year with an epic beard, a contract to play for and secondary numbers that indicate his power spike is legit....could he be dark horse MVP candidate.....not as crazy as it sounds. Cody Ross seems like a slighty improved version of Mike Cameron (at least as a hitter) slighty better average .260 range and 25 homers......but nothing that stands out....(well unless Ross hits 4 of said homers in a game or ever plays drunk and tells the media about it). Speaking of Mike Cameron, the player he almost (and thankfully) didn't get traded straight up for in the winter of 2008-2009 Cabrera gets the #3 spot mostly due to his competition being Dukes who seems determined to not live up to his talent and one of the members of my Razzball team, Jeff Francoeur.

Standings after Part I:

Phillies 17

Braves 22

Nationals 25

Marlins 27

Mets 29

AL East Preview Part II

2010-03-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Our Standings after the First Half:

Red Sox-18

Yankees-21

Rays-31

Orioles-31

Blue Jays-34

Starting Rotation:

Red Sox-4.5

Rays-9

Yankees-13.5

Orioles-18

Blue Jays-22.5

When I started looking at this area, I was debating between placing Boston or New York at #1 but obviously changed my mind. The Red Sox are behind at the ace spot (Lester versus Sabathia) but are stronger at the 2/3 spots (Beckett/Lackey) versus (Burnett/Pettite). The biggest question mark in the Red Sox rotation is Dice-K but I think they get more out of Bucholz than the Yankees will with whatever their 2010 version of the Joba Rules are.

The Rays don't have a full on ace pitcher (which is why they don't get the 1-spot) but they have greater depth in the back of their rotation (Davis/Niemann) who while they may not be as familiar to baseball fans as Javier Vasquez (no way he repeats his 2009 performance) and Joba Chamberlain (not sure what the Yankees will do with him this year but whatever it is is likely to backfire)

Overall, the Blue Jays/Orioles rotations are nothing to write home about. I don't see Millwood repeating his strong 2009 performance....there's no way Guthrie would be the #2 starter for a contender. On the same token, nothing really excites me about the Blue Jays rotation. The Orioles avoid the cellar because the young pitchers they have (Bergesen/Matusz/Tillman) have more talent/potential than the Blue Jays starters and there's a solid chance at least one of them (either Matusz and/or Bergesen) are on the cusp of a breakout season.

Bullpen:

Yankees-4.5

Red Sox-9

Rays-13.5

Orioles-18

Blue Jays-22.5

Who would you rather have with the game on the line.......Rivera or Papelbon? That's a very, very tough question. The Red Sox and Yankees have the back of their bullpen anchored by two of the elite closers in the game, this one is a toss-up. The arbitrary factoid that gives Rivera the nod as tie breaker: He enters the game to "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. That also happens to be the ringtone on my cellphone.

Final Standings:

Red Sox-31.5

Yankees-39

Rays-53.5

Orioles-67

Blue Jays-79

AL East Preview: Part I

2010-03-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Time to head East to the American League:

Catcher

1-Matt Wieters

2-Victor Martinez

3-Jorge Posada

4-Kelly Shoppach

5-John Buck

Tough call at this position. Wieters had a nice finish to 2009 and all signs indicate that he'll take some significant steps forward. Victor Martinez had a solid 2009 but couldn't justify him at #1 for a couple of reasons a) His OPS was 161 points lower at Catcher than at First AND the Red Sox have openly stated they plan to use him primarily behind the plate b) Is the Victor Martinez of 2007/2009 that had 13% of his flyballs turn into home runs or are we going to see the Victor Martinez that only saw 3% of his flyballs and 2 of his 266 At Bats turn into home runs.

First Base

1-Mark Teixiera

2-Kevin Youkilis

3-Carlos Pena

4-Lyle Overbay

5-Michael Aubrey

A Toss-Up between Teixiera and Youkilis. Teixiera has the slight power edge and a right field porch more suited for Little League giving him the edge. Both Youkilis and Pena have a penchant for hitting plenty of homers and drawing plenty of walks. Youkilis has a significant edge over Pena as Youkilis is able to draw his walks and hit his homers while still hitting .300 while Pena is usually south of .250

Second Base

1-Dustin Pedroia

2-Robinson Cano

3-Aaron Hill

4-Ben Zobrist

5-Brian Roberts

An very loaded field at Second. You have tier, 1 (Pedroia/Cano) where their performance is established and you know (mostly) what you are going to get. Could see Pedroia going 20-20, I don't see Cano hitting 27 out again. You have your second tier (Hill/Zobrist) of players who had breakout seasons last year but its still unclear how sustainable their level of production is going to be. Look for these two to settle into a rhythm of hitting from .260 to .280 with around 20 homers.

Shortstop

1-Derek Jeter

2-Marco Scutaro

3-Jason Bartlett

4-Alex Gonzales

5- Cesar Izturis

While Derek Jeter is one of the more over-rated players in baseball, he's still considerably better than the rest of the field. There was somewhat of a bidding war for Scutaro over the winter, i'm still trying to figure out why. That's nice that Bartlett had a great season last year. Too bad, that his home run numbers are not sustainable based on Bartlett's past.

Third Base:

1-Alex Rodriguez

2-Evan Longoria

3-Adrian Beltre

4-Garrett Atkins

5-Edwin Encarnacion

A-Rod may be one of the more unlikable players in baseball. He's also still one of the elite hitters in baseball. Evan Longoria has been a hitting machine ever since being called up in 2008. Longoria looks to move himself deeper into the elite echelon of Third Basemen this year. There is an off chance that Beltre could have a big season considering he's playing for a contract and getting away from Safeco field but this is far from a sure thing.

Left Field:

1-Carl Crawford

2-Nolan Reimold

3-Mike Cameron

4-Jose Bautista

5-Brett Gardner

These rankings are based on a couple of hunches 1-Carl Crawford is in his contract year, a solid chance to explode beyond his baseline .300-20 homers- 60 steal baseline. Nolan Reimold had a nice rookie year and looks to be on the cusp of a breakout season.......wouldn't be surprised to see him hit .275 and 25-30 homers. Mike Cameron is still a solid player, at this point what you see is what you get.... .250 average 20-25 homers striking out every 3 to 4 at bats and multiple hot and cold streaks.

Center Field:

1-Curtis Granderson

2-Jacoby Ellsbury

3-Adam Jones

4-Vernon Wells

5-B.J. Upton

Could see these rankings go a few different directions. Moving to Yankee Stadium should be one of the best things to happen to Granderson's career. He's already shown he can hit 30 out per year and with the little league sized porch that Yankee Stadium calls Right Field should inflate his home run totals.....now if only he can figure out hitting lefties. I'm completely unmoved by high stolen base totals which prevents Ellsbury from grabbing the top spot. Not bought or sold on Jones yet he got lucky in the first half, unlucky in the second half.....Vernon Wells had a chance to hit number-1 but then I remembered there were criterion other than contract size.

Right Field

1-J.D. Drew

2-Nick Swisher

3-Nick Markakis

4-Travis Snider

5-Gabe Kapler/Matt Joyce

One through three are fairly interchangeable sources of .270-.280 average (.250 for Swisher) and 20-30 homers. On talent alone, Drew is on top but as always, there are concerns about staying healthy. Swisher has better power than Markakis but hits for a lower average. Swisher's power was too good to pass up......plus Swisher is a cheddarhead member. Travis Snider is the toughest one to figure out.....I could see anything from struggling for a month and being sent to the minors to having a breakout season similar to what I'm expecting out of Jay Bruce and Kyle Blanks.

Designated Hitter:

1-Adam Lind

2-David Ortiz

3-Luke Scott

4-Pat Burrell

5-Nick Johnson

Skeptical on Lind hitting 35 out this year but could see him hitting .280 with 25-30 homers. Ortiz has the pedigree, and more power but the way his numbers have trended the last few years is a bit discouraging. Luke Scott.....another 20 homer hitter.....Pat Burrell, after last years epic fail anything will pass as progress.....

Standings after First Half:

Red Sox-18

Yankees-21

Rays-31

Orioles-31

Blue Jays-34

A few surprises here. The Red Sox grabbed the top spot despite having less players in the 1-spot than the Yankees (2 vs. 4). The Yankees ranking was dragged down due to weaknesses in left (Brett Gardner) and DH (Nick Johnson). A bit surprised of how far back the Rays were. The O's and Blue Jays are ranked about where I thought they would be.

Introducing my Razzball team

2010-03-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

So, this is the introduction to the bizarro team. A couple weeks ago, I was scrolling through the multitudes of blogs I subscribe to on Google Reader and came across a Fantasy Baseball league that was unlike the typical Fantasy Baseball league. The league, run through the Fantasy Baseball blog Razzball. Unlike most Fantasy Leagues where drafting players like Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Ryan Braun and Chase Utley will help you win, the league that I joined is aimed at purposely assembling the worst team possible. The winner of the Razzball wins a Hot Tub. No word on whether or not this Hot Tub takes you back to the year I turned 3, 1986.

Anyways, here is the line-up I am going with:

Catcher-Jason Kendall

First Base-Bobby Crosby

Second Base-Brendan Harris

Third Base-Bill Hall

Shortstop-Yuniesky Bettencourt

Corner Infield-Mike Jacobs

Middle Infield-Cristian Guzman

Outfield-Gary Matthews Jr.

Outfield-Willy Taveras

Outfield-Jeff Francoeur

Outfield-Mitch Maier

Outfield-Ryan Church

Utility-Alex Cora

Bench-Fernando Tatis

Bench-Rod Barajas

Bench-Nick Punto

Most Commonly Used Hitter (In Reality):

Jeff Francoeur who somehow is starting in 11 percent of leagues.

Number of Starters Starting in 0% of Yahoo leagues:

Pitching:

Fausto Carmona

Oliver Perez

Chris Jakubauskas

Nelson Figueroa

Craig Stammen

Jeff Karstens

Tim Redding

Evan Meek

Jordan Zimmermann

Bench:

Colin Balester

Daniel Cabrera

Most Commonly Used Pitchers:

Fausto Carmona/Oliver Perez (1% each)

Pitchers on 0% of Yahoo Leagues:

Everyone else

Apparently, i'm not the only one not high on Carlos Gomez. Carlos Gomez is allegedly the Albert Pujols of the Razzball world as he was the first overall pick. I was also glad to know that i'm not the only one to see through Michael Bourn's 2009 season as he was the 3rd overall pick. Unlike the last couple years, i'll actually be able to enjoy Jason Kendall's mediocrity as a) he's not on the Brewers anymore and b) he was my first round draft choice.

Another thing to note that 21 of the 27 players I drafted play for one of four teams, all of which could make a compelling argument for being the dumbest team in baseball (Pirates, Royals, Nationals and Mets). My thinking was if any of these teams see something in these players to sign them, 90 percent of the time there is something so fundamentally flawed in their game that they have the potential to become superstars in the Razzball world.

NL West Preview Part II

2010-03-14T16:01:00.001-07:00

So after the first half, the NL West power rankings are as follows

D-Backs 17

Dodgers 22

Rockies 25

Giants 26

Padres 30

Starting Pitching

Giants-4

Dodgers-8

Rockies-12

D-Backs-16

Padres-20

The Giants rotation is the class of the division/league. The concept of scoring runs may be foreign to them but the concept of preventing runs from scoring is something they have a knack on. Tim Lincecum has already won the last two Cy Young Awards and is looking to rack up a third one. Matt Cain looks to build upon his breakout year and continue his ascent towards the leagues elite pitchers. Sanchez and Zito aren't going to win any awards but both will have their moments of brilliance.

The Dodgers don't have any pitchers in the neighborhood of Lincecum/Cain (right now). Kershaw is on the cusp of a breakout season (he needs to stop walking people all the time) and Billingsley should bounce back from his 2009 season. Charlie Haeger is a nice sleeper candidate in the back of the rotation. He had a couple nice starts with the Dodgers after getting called up....his track record in the minors doesn't indicate it but with the knuckleballers, you never really know.

The Rockies have a solid front 3 of Jiminez, Cook and De la Rosa (two of which are members of Chedderhead). On talent alone, the D-Backs should be at least #3, maybe higher but that would hinge on Brandon Webb staying healthy (already not off to a good start). The Padres, they have some young pitchers with potential. They have a possible sleeper pitcher in the back of the rotation in Clayton Richard (part of the package they got from Jake Peavy) but overall, not that impressive.

Bullpen

Dodgers-4

Padres-8

Rockies-12

Giants-16

D-Backs-20

Pretty solid crop of closers/bullpens in the division. Broxton looks to be the most likely to replicate his success. He's still young (26 in June), overpowering 114 Ks in 76 innings and he's proven to be effective at closer. The Padres lost Trevor Hoffman to the Brewers in '09 but Heath Bell made sure the bullpen remained a strength in San Diego......and gained my respect for calling out ESPN for only caring about the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets .

Close call between the Rockies and Giants. Huston Street looks to have another solid year (which should be a given as he's one of two closers for Cheddarhead). Brian Wilson should rack up some more saves and possibly set a single-season record for saves recorded after loading the bases. The D-Backs aren't in terrible shape with their bullpen provided Chad Qualls stays healthy......their bullpen would rank higher in another division but with the depth in the NL West, someone has to be last.

And now our final standings:

Dodgers-34

Giants-46

Rockies-49

D-Backs-53

Padres-58

Nothing like doing the second half of a divisional preview to course correct the projections. While the Dodgers had an inactive off-season, they still have a pretty strong team and should 3-peat in the west. The Giants are on the upward swing but inept offense is going to do them in (again). I've had a sinking feeling that the Rockies aren't going to be as good as most people think so i'm not shocked to see them in third. The questions surrounding the Arizona pitching staff moved them down to a realistic 4th place finish. The Padres, the only reason to pay attention to them is A-Gon (until he's gone) and the newest member of Cheddarhead (fresh off the waiver wire) Kyle Blanks.

NL West Preview Part I

2010-03-13T20:42:00.001-08:00

Off to the NL West....the division I see the most of (outside of Brewers) because why? They show a lot of Dodgers games on TV where I live. Time to see how the West is going to be won:

Catcher:

1-Miguel Montero

2-Chris Ianneta

3-Buster Posey

4-Russell Martin

5-Nick Hundley

Toss-up between Montero and Ianneta for the top spot. Montero a better source for contact/average, Ianneta a better source of power....factor out the Coors bump and he goes in second. Buster Posey was the hardest one to project. According to the Baseball Forecaster, his Minor League numbers equate to a .836 OPS. With those numbers over a full season, Posey has an argument for being 1 or 2 but with the learning curve to adjust to Major League pitching and the likeliness that the Giants will insist he needs some time in Fresno to develop his game (say till late-May/Early June....regardless of whether or not said time to develop is needed).

First Base

1-Adrian Gonzales

2-Pablo Sandoval

3-Adam LaRoche

4-Todd Helton

5-James Loney

As usual, a deep position. Gonzales gets the nod for now (Sandoval will probably get bumped to first when NOT if A-Gon gets shipped out of San Diego). I see Pablo Sandoval having a nice breakout season.......he was THIS close to being a member of Chedderhead but Ryan Zimmerman got the pick instead with the deciding factor being Pac Bell Park. Few things in life are guaranteed Death, Taxes and LaRoche struggling in the first half, surging in the second half and ending with a .270 average and 25 homers. Unlike Sandoval, LaRoche is a member of Chedderhead as he got drafted in the second to last round.

Second Base

1-Freddy Sanchez

2-Clint Barmes

3-Ryan Roberts

4-Jamey Carroll

5-David Eckstein

The wasteland. Clint "Sub .300 OBP" Barmes, Ryan "Didn't Get A Chance Till 28" Roberts and The King of Grit himself David Eckstein. Interesting thing about Barmes......it took me a few years of him in the bigs to realize that his last name was Barmes not Barnes. There were countless times where I would think things like why does Clint Barnes last name look different, why that n looks like an m and finally realizing that oh his last name is Barmes not Barnes.

Shortstop

1-Troy Tulowitzki

2- Stephen Drew

3-Rafael Furcal

4-Edgar Renteria

5-Everth Cabrera

Tulowitzki graduated from promising young player to Star last year. Stephen Drew has shown flashes of promise and hopes to join Tulowitzki at the top of the class in 2010. Furcal and Renteria are interchangeable 30-somethings who have seen better days and Cabrera is in last because I don't care for light hitting middle-infielders regardless of how many bases they steal why? Because you are more likely to score a run when you hit a home run than when you steal second.

Third Base

1-Mark Reynolds

2-Casey Blake

3-Mark DeRosa

4-Chase Headley

5-Ian Stewart

Like Tulowitzki, Reynolds graduated to the top of his class at his position last year. Casey Blake and Mark DeRosa are interchangeable players that will give you between a .265-.275 average and 15-20 homers a year. The musical equivalent is Nickelback. They've been releasing the same album for the last decade with the same songs under but with only slight variations. This applies here because Casey Blake and Mark DeRosa are the same player with slight variations. The tie-breaker....Casey Blake is on Chedderhead so if he does better than expected, that would contribute to Chedderhead's inevitable title while DeRosa playing better than expected won't impact my life what so ever. Why is Ian Stewart last? Well when factoring in MLE equivalent numbers in the Forecaster, his contact rate has dropped 16 percent and in 3 straight years.......he doesn't strike me as a breakout candidate, he strikes me as a candidate for the Bill Hall All-Stars.

Left Field

1-Manny Ramirez

2-Kyle Blanks

3-Carlos Gonzales

4-Conor Jackson

5-Eugenio Velez

Well, Manny Ramirez may be a bit older his bat may be a bit slower after going on a 50-game maternity leave and Manny is still Manny which still means expect Manny to put up some crazy power numbers. Kyle Blanks....well he was the one that got away from Chedderhead. If it weren't for the fact that Chedderhead was drafted while I was hungover and functioning on 3 1/2 hours of sleep, we would have realized he was available in the last round and given him Mike Cameron's position instead of feeling like a complete idiot when he got picked a few picks later. We were even discussing using a pick on Blanks the night before when we were discussing who we wanted, who we didn't want and who we liked but knew they were going to get picked at least a few rounds earlier than we wanted to pick them....point being Blanks has 35-40 Home Run power written all over him.

Center Field

1-Matt Kemp

2-Chris Young

3-Scott Hairston

4-Aaron Rowand

5-Dexter Fowler

Matt Kemp has graduated to the top of the class in 2009. OMG did you hear he's dating Rihanna. In a related story, TMZ needs to go away. Nothing about Young and Hairston inspire me too much. Dexter Fowler gets hype for having a breakout season coming up. I'm not one of those people.....not sure if his high BABIP from last year is sustainable, he could be in for a long year.

Right Field

1-Justin Upton

2-Andre Ethier

3-Brad Hawpe

4-Nate Schierholtz

5-Will Venable

Look for Upton to break into the elite players section this year. Look for Andre Ethier to show that his career year in 2009 was no fluke. Look for Hawpe to quietly go yard 20-25 times this year.

Standings At The End Of Part I:

D-Backs 17

Dodgers 22

Rockies 25

Giants 26

Padres 30

Just finished doing the NL Central preview that produced some unconventional results. After the first half of this preview we have a team (Arizona) on top that absolutely nobody thinks has a chance. Is this just a fluke of being early in the process or am I about to make another risky this may make me look like a complete moron type pick? If i've learned anything from being a fan of Lost, its to leave questions unanswered and to just end

NL Central Preview Part II:

2010-03-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

In the quest to answer the ultimate question of where do the Brewers stack up against their NL Central brethren, it is time to complete the second park (pitching half) of the NL Central Preview:

Our standings after the first half are:

Brewers 22

Cardinals 23

Cubs 25

Reds 29

Pirates 34

Astros 35

Starting Pitching

Cardinals-Carpenter/Wainwright/Lohse/Penny --4

Cubs-Zambrano/Lilly/Dempster/Wells/Silva-- 8

Brewers-Gallardo/Wolf/Davis/Bush/Parra/Suppan's Expiring Contract--12

Reds-Harang/Arroyo/Bailey/Owens/Chapman-16

Astros-Oswalt/Rodriguez/Norris/Paulino/Moehler--20

Pirates-Malholm/Duke/Ohlendorf/Morton/Hart

The rankings for this are fairly relative and contextually based as none of these rotations are without their question marks. The Cardinals get the nod because their question marks are less glaring. For them the questions are Can Carpenter stay healthy ? Maybe Will Wainwright pitch as well as he did last year? Probably not Will Lohse do what Kyle Lohse usually does ? Probably Will we see the Brad Penny that struggled in Boston or the Brad Penny that pitched strong in San Francisco ? Arguments for the latter--He's still in the National League, he had Dave Duncan as pitching coach--Argument against--He doesn't get to make half his starts at Pac-Bell

For the Cubs--Can Zambrano stay healthy AND not be a distraction? Probably and Probably not Will Ted Lilly be an All-Star and be the only representative again? Maybe and Probably not Will Randy Wells sneak up on anyone again? Unlikely Will Cubs fans still rationalize that trading for Carlos Silva was a good idea even though he is one of the WORST pitchers in the league. Regardless of how rocky Miton Bradley's tenure was in Chicago, they reality is that they got ABSOLUTELY FLEECED IN THIS DEAL. Since we are on the subject here are five things the Cubs could have gotten in return from Milton Bradley and have it work out better for them than trading for Carlos Silva.

1) Random AA Player

2) Random A Player

3) $20 Starbucks Gift Certificate

4) CDs from any of the following artists......Nirvana, Heart, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Queensryche, Jimi Hendrix, Soundgarden

5) Matt Hasselbeck......he might play a completely different sport but it's not that hard to top Carlos Silva's "production"

6) A bag of baseballs

On one hand I feel I am being too generous with the Brewers rotation rankings. On the other hand, the rotations ranked below them ain't setting the world on fire. The argument for....Yovani Gallardo has ace potential. He showed many flashes of promise as he struck out 200+ batters last year and he was the only Brewers starter that didn't make me absolutely cringe. I am a bit concerned that he walked 94 batters as well but he's only 24 and he's on the cusp of being one of the elite pitchers in the game.

The argument against--relative weakness from 2 to 5. The Brewers addressed their rotation needs by signing Randy Wolf over the winter. While the Brewers stretched it money-wise with their decision based on his career year, I still see him eating some innings winning about a dozen games and having an ERA close to 4. Not exactly #2 pitcher caliber stuff but an improvement over last year. The Brewers also brought back Doug Davis and its reasonable to expect his performance will be similar to Wolf.

In the 4-5 position it's likely that Suppan will get a spot he does not deserve well because he gets paid a lot of money. The last spot will be between Parra (who is too talented to pitch as bad as he did last year) and Dave Bush while not having the high ceiling as Parra has shown the ability in to put up Wolf/Davis type numbers. Not to be forgotten is that the Brewers have a new pitching coach (Rick Peterson) who does have a sucessful track record in the bigs.

In terms of starting pitching, the Reds are the biggest wildcard in the equation. In terms of how they actually do in terms of starting pitching comes down to 1) Is this the year Homer Bailey lives up to the hype surrounding him? and 2) Is Aroldis Chapman as good as everyone says he is?

For the Astros the question is begged Can Oswalt stay healthy and will Rodriguez pitch as well as he did in 2009? Maybe and Maybe and will the Pirates pitching be as bad as it looks on paper? Dude, it's the Pirates and the last time I checked the calendar it isn't 1992.

Bullpens

Brewers-Hoffman/Hawkins/Coffey-4

Reds-Cordero/Rhodes/Herrera-8

Cardinals-Franklin/Reyes/Miller-12

Cubs-Marmol/Grabow/Marshall-16

Pirates-Hanrahan/Asciano/Veal-20

Astros-Lyon/Lindstrom/Fulchino-24

While the Brewers starting pitching cost them a chance to contend for their second straight trip to the playoffs, the bullpen did what they could. Hoffman had a 2009 season that defied his age. It would be too much to expect a repeat of 2009 but Hoffman is still one of the better closers in the league. Like Wolf, the Brewers stretched a little bit on years and money for Hawkins. Still, Hawkins has shown he can be an effective pitcher as long as the team hes playing for isn't dumb enough to put him in the closers role. Todd Coffey is example one of too many to count of players that seemingly were going nowhere until Doug Melvin picked them off the waiver wire. There's a lot to like about Coffey....the full on sprints from the bullpen....the fact that it took him forever to give up a run when the Brewers signed him. Plus the full on vendetta he has against the broadcast team of the Reds.

The this single-handedly makes Todd Coffey the man story as found via a Google Search for Jeff Brantley Todd Coffey and the first organic result from the Dayton DailyNews:

Former Reds relief pitcher Todd Coffey, now with Milwaukee, pitched a 1-2-3 inning against the Reds then ran into a railing in front of the Brewers dugout because he was staring at the radio booth where Jeff Brantley was seated. When Coffey was with the Reds, Brantley said of him, "It is difficult to pitch with both hands around your throat."

If that's not epic I don't know what is.......

The Reds get the second spot with the back of their bullpen anchored by Francisco Cordero. I'm going to skip talking about the Reds bullpen and discuss a random Francisco Cordero anecdote. So the gym that I work out at has 7 TV screens. Five of them actually have cable (unfortunately one of these...sometimes two is dedicated to the vile that Sean Hannity calls "analysis".....but thats another rant for another day).....Anyways, the two other TV screens run a blatant inundations of local ads on a 5-10 minute cycle and usually there's some recent news and some sports trivia questions that run within the cycle of these advertisements. Anyways, I was working out one day and one of the trivia questions was who won the 2006 NL MVP. The first choice was the winner (Ryan Howard) the second choice (Barry Bonds) while off his MVP-peak would still pass for a plausible wrong answer....the third choice.....Mr. Francisco Cordero.....hmm I wonder which one isn't like the others. The same Francisco Cordero who while having a fine career being a 3 time All-Star and quietly putting up a career ERA+ of 148 but also the same Francisco Cordero who has never finished above 24 th in MVP-voting.

If we were going solely on what happened in 2009 instead of what's likely to happen in 2010 the Cardinals would have a higher rank based on Franklin's career year. I'm definitely not sold on Franklin repeating his career year........I'm not sold on Carlos Marmol getting through the year without giving the Cubs fits at closer.....I'm not sold on anyone that puts on a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform.......Also, if the Astros keep Brandon Lyon in the closers position....wait for disaster.......some people were made to be middle-relievers and not closers....Brandon Lyon fits perfectly within this scope of some people.

Final Results:

Brewers-38

Cardinals-39

Cubs-49

Reds-57

Astros-75

Pirates-79

Wow.....by every other projection and even my pre-conceived notions of this team......best case was second worse case was fourth and probable case was third. If this holds up we could be up for an epic battle for the NL Central title. Of course, this assumes a lot of things go right, i.e. the starting rotation getting their act together, the bullpen being strong all year and what I believe will be the make or break factor assuming little to no change elsewhere....the ability of Rickie Weeks to stay healthy AND effective all year. It will take seven months to figure out whether this is the smartest or dumbest posting I write all year. I'm either on to something that no one else is or I just gave homerism a really, really, bad name......not the avant gard homerism you see given to the Yankees by ESPN but Carlos Silva-bad homerism........now we play the waiting game.

NL Central Preview Part 1

2010-03-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

So there are a lot of important questions to be asked for the upcoming baseball season. How bad are the Royals going to be? How epic is my fantasy team going to be? Who's going to win it all? Isn't dedicating a prime 9 to the Tampa Bay Rays sort of like making a greatest hits album for Vanilla Ice? But all of these questions are inferior to THE ultimate question........Where Can I expect the Brewers to finish in the standings this year?

Only one way to find out.....break it down the NL Central just like it's any other division

Catcher

1-Geovany Soto

2-Yadier Molina

3-Gregg Zaun

4-Ryan Doumit

5-Ramon Hernandez

6-J.R. Towles

Yes Soto had a terrible season last year. Note the emphasis on a terrible season, not being a terrible player. Easily attributable to an obscenely low BABIP. Yadier Molina had another All-Star season last year and he can play defense but I find it hard to associate a Molina brother with being an offensive juggernaut. For the Brewers, having Zaun instead of Kendall allows them to jump from the bottom to the middle of the pack in this position but a sense of reality and perspective needs to be placed in that Zaun is a middle of the pack catcher...no better...no worse.

First Base

1-Albert Pujols

2-Prince Fielder

3-Derrek Lee

4-Joey Votto

5-Lance Berkman

6-Steve Pearce

All I have to say about 1 to 5 is......wow. First Base is deep in this division. It's obvious that Pujols is the best at this position and in the league until proven otherwise....still in a love/hate mode with myself for drafting him onto Cheddarhead but c'mon it's Pujols. Prince Fielder is amongst the top candidates to dethrone King Albert as the best hitter in the league but wanting to be number 1 and being number 1 are two different things. There are talks of a contract extension in place so maybe this will motivate him to go from his status as an already great hitter to being in his own top echelon. Derrek Lee is a great hitter in his own regard but a notch below Albert and Prince. Votto and Berkman are fairly interchangeable. Votto is on the way up and could be in line for a breakout season. Berkman, while still a great hitter is getting up there in years and seems more vulnerable to injury and/or regressing numbers than Votto.

Second Base

1-Brandon Phillips

2-Rickie Weeks

3-Felipe Lopez

4-Akinori Iwamura

5-Kaz Matsui

6-Mike Fontenot

How production from this position actually shakes out is highly reliant on the ability of certain players (Rickie Weeks....cough...cough) to stay healthy. Phillips and Weeks are in the top tier for this division. Both Phillips and Weeks have the talent to put up 20-20 seasons. Phillips gets the nod because as of now, he's been the one to fulfill said talent.

Weeks is definitely a talented player and has been a breakout prospect for a long time but has been plagued by under-performance and health injuries. 2009 was beginning to look like his breakout year but then....BOOM....out for the season. Here's to Weeks fulfilling his potential in 2010.

Shortstop

1-Alcides Escobar

2-Ryan Theriot

3-Brendan Ryan

4-Ronny Cedeno

5-Tommy Manzella

6-Paul Janish

The shortstop position in two words......Paper Thin. Yes, I realize Escobar is a work in progress especially in the Power and Walks department but a combination of his assets (good contact, blazing speed, strong defense) and going up against players that peaked last year and even then didn't peak that high (Theriot) a prototypically bland middle-infielder (Ryan) and three players that despite being on the wrong side of 25 don't have anything screaming about them that they will ever be stars (Cedeno, Manzella and Janish)..leads to a pretty weak crop of Shortstops.

Third Base

1-Aramis Ramirez

2-Casey McGehee

3-Scott Rolen

4-Pedro Feliz

5-Andy LaRoche

6-David Freese

Another fairly weak crop. Despite the injury concerns/issues surrounding Ramirez the reality remains that he is by far the most talented amongst this crop. McGehee is definitely a Major-League caliber starter but how good he ultimately will be is still debatable. On one hand, McGehee's breakout season was aided by a fairly lucky BABIP. On the other hand, he had his breakout season without being completely healthy. While Scott Rolen's ability to stay healthy is highly questioned, hes still a fairly productive hitter. That is more than we can say about Pedro Feliz has overcome hitting double figure home runs on a yearly basis to consistently hit 20 percent below league average.

Left Field

1-Ryan Braun

2-Matt Holliday

3-Carlos Lee

4-Alfonso Soriano

5-Chris Dickerson

6-Lastings Milledge

This field busts out into 3 tiers. Braun/Holliday are in Tier One. If I were to reduce the face of the Brewers to one player, it would be Ryan Braun. All he's done since coming to the bigs is knock the cover out of baseballs. He's asserted himself as the vocal leader of this squad even saying things to the media that pretty much every fan was thinking (i.e. last year's pitching was terrible).

While Holliday is also amongst the elite hitters in the league, he does have the strike against him that he struggled a bit in his stint in Oakland (regardless of how much McAfee stadium is to blame). That and in full disclosure I am a bit biased towards Braun.

Carlos Lee is a distant third. He's become so reliable to hit .300 and go yard about 30 times a year that he's sort of fallen into the background. A great hitter, a solid producer its just that Braun and Holliday are better. Soriano obviously has lots of talent (its sort of hard to be a 40-40 player without it) but things have definitely gone south for him since becoming a Cub. Definitely a make or break year for him.

Center Field

1-Andrew McCutchen

2- Marlon Byrd

3-Colby Rasmus

4-Drew Stubbs

5-Michael Bourn

6-Carlos Gomez

McCutchen was good enough to actually make the Pirates decision to trade McLouth look justifiable. He should continue to improve and progress until the Pirates decide to trade him in the name of continuing their perpetual cycle of losing. Byrd had a nice year in Texas....not sure how the momentum of that and being away from Texas will affect his game this year. Rasmus had moments last year....he's better than the players below him....but haven't seen enough to rank him any higher.

Yes, Drew Stubbs had a nice run after getting called up but I would like to see him sustain that level of play for more than a couple months before signing off on him as a star. Bourn had his career year last year and I wouldn't be surprised to see him struggle at the plate this year....as I've mentioned here before....I am not very confident in the current ability level of Carlos Gomez and he is ranked accordingly.

Right Field

1-Jay Bruce

2- Hunter Pence

3-Ryan Ludwick

4-Garrett Jones

5-Corey Hart

6-Kosuke Fukudome

One of the tougher rankings by position. Jay Bruce may have only hit .223 last year and struggled with injuries. However, he is on the cusp (i.e. a couple months away) from stardom.....he was ridiculously unlucky at the plate as evidenced by a .222 BABIP. In other words, he should have hit closer to .260.....even with this bad luck he still went deep 22 times in 345 at bats. Also, he'll be 23 next month indicating he'll only get better than where he is currently. Even if he doesn't actually improve and the only difference is he doesn't get hurt and he doesn't get horribly unlucky we could be looking at .260-.270 hitter with 35-40 homers.

Two through five are fairly close. There's something about Astros hitters with power that makes them hard to notice. I don't know whether its the hitter friendly park or if its because their team isn't very good but Hunter Pence has managed to go deep 25 times the last couple years without anyone really noticing.

Where to rank Hart, Jones and Ludwick is a bit more ambiguous. That could be because their bodies of work are so similar, they make each others Top 10 lists for similarity scores. Both are average to slightly above average hitters whose reputations are expanded by a career year aided by an inflated BABIP (Hart in 2007, Ludwick in 2008). Both players could potentially drive in 100+ Runs because of pitchers opting to pitch around star hitters in the lineup (Fielder/Braun and Pujols/Holliday). Corey Hart is younger and likely has more years ahead of him while Ludwick has done more with the opportunities given as he has the advantage in OPS+ (117 to 106).

Thus Ludwick is 3rd and Hart is 5th. Why does Hart fall to 5th? Because i'm not quite sure what to do with Garrett Jones. On one hand, his monster season last year would have projected to a 40 homer season. On the other hand, the fact that he was aided by a generous BABIP (.327) and he didn't get his first chance to play regularly until 28 raises a few red flags. I don't think hes going to be total bust (i.e. Michael Bourn) and he's still better than Fukudome but I don't see him hitting 40 out this year. Not sure exactly where he will fall in the context of Hart-Ludwick but I could see him moving to a new normal of slightly above average and thus I am splitting the difference and ranking him 4th.

And our standings after one half:

Brewers-22

Cardinals-23

Cubs-25

Reds-29

Pirates- 34

Astros-35

Some surprises some non-surprises. I am slightly surprised that the Brewers have a lead (albeit slight one). I'm not shocked that Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati occupy the top four positions. However, i'm surprised at the exact order of the four teams. To my absolute non-shock, the Pirates and Astros are not even to the top. In all fairness, the halves are broken down into hitting and pitching and one reason the Brewers are even close to the top (let alone at the top) is that the pitching staffs don't get ranked until the next post. Well whatever helps me sleep easier at night.

Introducing Cheddarhead

2010-03-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

So I have finally joined the masses and officially entered the world of Fantasy Baseball. It has been a long time coming. I'm definitely hitting the ground running as this is the 1st of 3 teams that I am going to be a part of in 2010.

The first team I am on has been a few years in the making. My buddy Diego has been playing fantasy baseball for several years and has mentioned several times that I would be good at fantasy baseball. A couple months ago, the idea of running a fantasy baseball team together came into consideration. With his knack for picking up players in their breakout/one good year (i.e. Carlos Quentin, Eric Bedard, Mark Bellhorn, etc.) and my knack for the numbers aspect of the game we pretty much decided that we have the potential to dominate Fantasy Baseball.

After corresponding over Facebook and agreeing to do the draft on Sunday, it was time to develop our strategy of who we wanted (i.e. Pujols) who we didn't want (i.e. Molina Brothers, Michael Bourn, Juan Pierre) and at that point it was time to play the waiting game. We quickly signed ourselves up for a Yahoo league and scheduled ourselves for an 11 a.m. draft.

After having some drinks the night before, sleeping a few hours and armed with some gatorade, a sick stomach and a hungover brain filled with baseball knowledge, it was go time.

We had the 2nd pick in the draft and were debating whether to take Utley or Mauer with that pick but knowing we wanted to draft Albert Pujols in the unlikely chance he wasn't picked first. For some reason, the person above us picked Hanley Ramirez and Pujols was ours. From, there things got even better as we drafted a juggernaut with so much power it should almost be illegal.

Our starting line-up:

Catcher-Brian McCann

First Base-Albert Pujols

Second Base-Jose Lopez

Shortstop-Alexei Ramirez

Third Base-Ryan Zimmerman

Outfield-Jay Bruce

Outfield-Mike Cuddyer

Outfield-Torrii Hunter

And if any of those players falter, we have plenty of back-up fire power if needed. We have Geovany Soto (no way he plays as bad as he does last year) J.J Hardy (another player who's poised to bounce back....and if the Twins new stadium is hitter friendly........even better....if it's abusive to hitters that's cool too as we have Kevin Slowey).

We have Adam LaRoche who is a good source for 25 homers (and was available in the second to last round......I still find it hilarious that he fell to us because the person before us drafted Juan Uribe). The only regret in the draft was picking Mike Cameron in the last round instead of Kyle Blanks. Overall, I am very happy with this team

Even with a loaded offense, we still have ourselves covered with pitching. We have Cliff Lee who is in 1) his contract year and 2) pitching at Safeco....we have Ubaldo Jiminez who is on the cusp of stardom.....Derek Lowe who was the victim of bad luck last year. We have a strong bullpen with Joakim Soria (who unlike our original choice Joe Nathan didn't get injured yesterday) and Huston Street who was still available late on probably because of his NLDS struggles.

In conclusion, I see Cheddarhead running away and winning it's fantasy league. Victory is ours.

AL Central Preview Part--Two

2010-03-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

Time to finish off the AL Central by taking a look at the pitching.....after part one our standings are

Twins 21

White Sox 21

Indians 26

Tigers 32

Royals 35

Starting Rotation

White Sox--Jake Peavy/Mark Buerhle/Gavin Floyd/John Danks/Freddy Garcia-4.5

Twins--Scott Baker/Kevin Slowey/Nick Blackburn/Francisco Liriano/Carl Pavano-9

Tigers--Justin Verlander/Rick Porcello/Armando Gallaraga/Jeremy Bonderman/Max Scherzer 13.5

Royals--Zack Greinke/Gil Meche/Kyle Davies/Luke Hochever/Brian Bannister-18

Indinas--Fausto Carmona/Jake Westbrook/Justin Masterson/David Huff/Aaron Laffey

Cluster A: White Sox/Twins--Ultimately this comes down to a couple of areas 1) Can Jake Peavy Stay Healthy? 2) Can Freddy Garcia stay healthy and be productive? 3) Can Francisco Liriano stay healthy and be effective?

The White Sox get the nod for a couple of reasons 1) While both teams have decent depth from 1-5, the talent in the White Sox rotation is better 2) Jake Peavy looks more likely than Liriano to stay healthy and even if Liriano stays healthy it is still unlikely we are not going to see the Francisco Liriano that dominated the summer of 2006.

The Tigers and Royals are in Cluster B: Kansas City's ace (Greinke) gets the nod over Verlander however the supporting cast for Kansas City (Meche/Bannister) is not close to the caliber of Detroit's mid-rotation starters (Porcello.....tough to believe he'll only be 21 and Max Scherzer who looks primed for a breakout season.

Cleveland is projected Fausto Carmona as their staff ace.....nuff said.

Bullpen:

Twins- Joe Nathan/Matt Guerrier/Jose Mijares-4.5

Royals-Joakim Soria/Robinson Tejeda/Kyle Farnsworth-9

White Sox-Bobby Jenks/Matt Thornton/J.J Putz-13.5

Tigers-Joel Zumaya/Ryan Perry/Bobby Seay-18

Indians-Kerry Wood/Chris Perez/Jensen Lewis-22.5

Twins have the best bullpen (by far) and the best closer (Joe Nathan) by a pretty good margin. The Royals got their ranking solely based because of Soria and despite Kyle Farnsworth. The Royals aren't going to get many chances to win but Soria will do his part to squander very few of those chances. I'm not overly optimistic on Jenks having a strong year. I get creeped out everytime I see a recent ex-closer (J.J Putz) hanging out in middle relief (this combo screams a red light similar to the Fuentes/Rodney combo from Los Angeles of Anaheim).

If this was a competition of who could throw the fastest fastball or the competition of who struck out 20 batters in a game once, the Tigers and Indians would be ranked higher than they actually are.

Speaking of Kerry Wood, i'm closing this out on a rant where I tie in Kerry Wood and Al Bundy. The career of Kerry Wood and the life of Al Bundy both started pretty sweet. Kerry Wood burst onto the scene in '98 and struck out 20 in a single game. Al Bundy had a pretty sweet life in high school as he scored 4 touchdowns in the same game.

But then luck and circumstances changed things. Wood struggled with injuries for a few years but eventually bounced back and had a few gasps of brilliance (i.e the 2003 season). The struggles in Wood's career and the struggles in Bundy's life can both be placed on external sources (Dusty Baker/Peg Bundy).

Kerry Wood spent the next few years in a world of injuries, simulated games and hanging out at the disabled list before settling into the role of closer for a flailing Indians team. Al Bundy on the other hand ended up selling shoes and being perpetually unlucky. This part sort of messes up the analogy because while Kerry Wood didn't become the superstar/hall of famer everyone expected him to be, it is still 10 years later and he still has a job in the bigs which even if it's not for a great team, your still in the bigs. Sadly, Al Bundy has no shot of redemption as he's stuck selling womens shoes at the mall in syndication.

Anyway, our final rankings:

Twins 34.5

White Sox 39

Royals 62

Tigers 63.5

Indians 71

If this holds up the Twins will be fighting for their playoff lives till the bitter end for the third straight year (and being sucessful for the second straight year). I was surprised that the Royals snuck into third for these rankings but that happens to be more on the strength of Greinke and Soria and based on these rankings it in no way indicates them having any hope of contending.

AL Central Preview--Part One

2010-03-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

Well we got through the AL West, time to move towards the Central.

Catcher:

Joe Mauer-1

A.J. Pierzynski-2

Carlos Santana-3

Gerald Laird-4

Jason Kendall-5

Joe Mauer is far and away the best Catcher regardless of if you are talking about the league or the AL Central. It's a toss-up between Pierzynski and Santana. While Santana has the highest ceiling (he is one of the hottest prospects his Minor League numbers equate to pretty solid MLB numbers but he's still an unsure thing as he's yet to play in the bigs)......at the same time, there's no way he could be any worse than Laird and Kendall.

A side note about announcers and baseball players with the same name as musicians. The one pet peeve I have after watching nationally televised Brewers games is goes as follows: Yes, I am aware the Brewers regular right fielder's name is Corey Hart. Yes, I am aware he has the same name as that guy from the 80's who sang about Wearing his sunglasses at night. No, I do not need to hear announcers make lame jokes about Corey Hart wearing his sunglasses at night. This rant has been several years in the making. Which brings me to my main point, I am already cringing at the Carlos Santana references that are inevitably going to be made (fortunately the Indians aren't going to be very good and not be on TV very often). Point being I don't want to hear about how "smooth" is swing is or how we can say "oye como va" to a ball after he hits a home run (2 cliches that took me about 5 seconds each to make up). There's about at least a dozen cheesy Sports Center made for Stuart Scott cliches that are inevitable going to be unleashed upon the public if the high expectations set aside for Santana turn out to be fulfilled.

If Gerald Laird was half as good at getting arrested at Phoenix Suns games as he was at playing baseball, he may be higher on this list. However, his career to this point indicates that this is not the case. If being a Brewer fan has taught me anything, it's that Jason Kendall just isn't that good.....in fact he's a pretty terrible ball-player. Luckily for him, the Royals have a thing for making bad baseball decisions, are one of the dumbest teams in baseball and somehow made a conscious decision to sign him to a 2-year deal to a player who hasn't even been a league average hitter since 2004. These two were made for each other.

First Base

Miguel Cabrera-1

Paul Konerko-2

Justin Morneau-3

Billy Butler-4

Matt LaPorta-5

This division is LOADED from top to bottom at 1st. Unlike the Catcher rankings which are relatively easy, the Top 3 here was fairly difficult. While there are concerns regarding how last season ended with Cabrera, the reality is he is an elite-class player. If he can get past his drinking-related problems, he looks destined to be one of the greatest hitters of this generation.

The Konerko versus Morneau was a tough decision to make. More of a hunch than anything else, I think Morneau will come back strong from his injury problems from last year but I think that Konerko is going to have a monster season in '10. Even the back end players are pretty solid, Billy Butler was one of the few bright spots not named Zack Greinke in 2009 and I see that being repeated in 2010. Just like the Catcher rankings, the last spot is taken by someone who has connections to the Brewers (while he was traded before seeing Major League action, he was a major reason why the Brewers were able to land C.C. Sabathia in 2008 and is thus made his own contribution to getting the Brewers their first playoff appearance in 26 years). Anyways, LaPorta is definitely a can't-miss prospect he looks headed in the right direction of having a long and productive career and he's going to have a solid 2010, it's just that Cabrera, Konerko, Morneau and Butler are all happen to be really, really good at baseball.

Second Base

Gordan Beckham-1

Luis Valbuena-2

Orlando Hudson-3

Alberto Callaspo-4

Scott Sizemore-5

Fairly weak at second. Beckham seems poised for a breakout season. Valbuena, while not having the high profile like Beckham is a sleeper candidate for a breakout season. O-Hud is likely to give his typical .280 average and 10 homers.....may not be exciting or stand out but it's a lot more than they would have gotten out of Punto.

Shortstop

Alexei Ramirez-1

J.J Hardy-2

Asdrubal Cabrera-3

Mike Aviles-4

Adam Everett-5

Toss-up between whether Ramirez or Hardy will have a better season. Ramirez has had a more consistent last couple years and a higher upside. J.J Hardy, was more unlucky than bad last year. Last year, it seemed like about every other day, someone was robbing J.J. Hardy of an extra base hit. Didn't really think too much beyond until I saw that his BABIP was significantly lower for him in 2009. Despite this, the Brewers still sold him for 50 cents on the dollar for Carlos Gomez. Asdrubal Cabrera is still young at this point he's Orlando Cabrera version 2 at the plate.

Third Base

Alex Gordon-1

Jhonny Peralta-2

Mark Teahan-3

Brandon Inge-4

Brendan Harris-5

A fairly close but fairly weak crop. Gordon and Peralta are probably going to produce similar numbers but Gordon gets the nod since his ceiling is higher. Nothing special about the other three.

Left Field

1-Delmon Young

2-Ryan Raburn

3-David DeJesus

4-Juan Pierre

5-Michael Brantley

Another close call. Young and Raburn are both solid candidates for breakout seasons. Young has the disadvantage of not living up to his potential (yet) Raburn has the disadvantage of being five years older. Juan Pierre has the disadvantage of it being illegal to steal first in baseball......almost put Brantley above Pierre on the sole basis of him being the Player To Be Named Later in the Sabathia deal and thus his minor part of letting me see the Brewers make the playoffs.

Center Field

1-Grady Sizemore

2-Johnny Damon

3-Denard Span

4-Alex Rios

5-Mitch Maier

This field is middle-heavy. Sizemore may have struggled with injuries last year but he should bounce back in 2010. Damon and Span are fairly interchangeable. Damon is the bigger name and still has at least a couple solid seasons in him (but don't expect a 2009-esque power burst....well unless the bring in the fences and turn Comerica park into a little league field). Span might not be the most exciting player but he can be penciled in for a .300 average 10 homers 20 steals and being more valuable to a real team than a fantasy team (or what I refer to as the Orlando Cabrera All-Stars). The only thing big about Alex Rios' game is that monster $77.5 million contract he somehow got.

Right Field

1-Carlos Quentin

2-Micheal Cuddyer

3-Shin-Soo Choo

4-Magglio Ordonez

5-Jordan Parraz

Pretty solid group from 1 to 4. It was a toss-up between Quentin and Cuddyer. Quentin has a question mark around him due to dealing with injuries pretty much every year of his career (even costing him the 2008 AL MVP).

Cuddyer also has a pretty good case for the top spot but Quentin got the slight nod as has demonstrated the ability to carry his team on his back for longer (5 months ) than Cuddyer (although his September was pretty sweet).

A random Mike Cuddyer story/anecdote/me being weird. I was rocking out to "Holy Diver" by Dio earlier today and I mentally started coming up with alternate lyrics about Mike Cuddyer's epic September.

Designated Hitter

1-Jason Kubel

2-Travis Hafner

3-Andruw Jones

4-Jose Guillen

5-Carlos Guillen

Kubel gets the nod as the question marks surrounding him are relatively smaller. For how the rest of these rankings actually go down, it will be a war of attrition of whoever gets hurt last wins.

On pure talent level, Hafner is the best of the rest but staying healthy has been a problem for him. For Andruw Jones, the problem is it isn't 2005 anymore and his peak has come and gone (though he still should be good for about a .260 average and 20 homers).

Exhibit 234 of the Royals being one of the dumbest teams in baseball: They are actually paying Jose Guillen $12 million a year......didn't realize that hitters with an OPS+ of 90 over the last two years were that expensive.

Standings at the End of Part One:

Twins-21

White Sox-21

Indians-26

Tigers-32

Royals-35

Well, the top of the division looks like a re-enactment of the 2008 AL Central. The Indians are closer than I expected them to be and the Royals are exactly where I expected them to be.

AL West Preview Part Two

2010-03-01T19:19:00.001-08:00

So, we did the first part of the AL West preview, yesterday. At the halfway point the power rankings are as follows:

Angels-16

Rangers-19

Mariners-23

Athletics-30

Now off to the Pitchers, First the Starters.

Mariners- Felix Hernandez/Cliff Lee/Ryan Rowland-Smith/Ian Snell/Luke French-4.5

Angels- Jered Weaver/Joe Saunders/Scott Kazmir/Ervin Santana/Matt Palmer-9

Athletics- Dallas Braden/Brett Anderson/Ben Sheets/Trevor Cahill/Vin Mazzaro-13.5

Rangers-Scott Feldman/Rich Harden/Derek Holland/Tommy Hunter/Brandon McCarthy

The Mariners might be a bit short at the back of the rotation but have a couple of things going for them.

1) Felix Hernandez/Cliff Lee is a VERY potent 1-2 punch

2) It's a contract year for Cliff Lee so expect his A-Game (and a possible Cy Young in 2010.

In terms of depth, the Angeles are stronger but i'm not buying Weaver as a staff ace. The A's have a lot of good young talent (Braden, Anderson, etc.) that will make this rotation to be reckoned with in a few years. Anderson is on the cusp on a breakout season but Braden, Cahill, et.al are still a couple years away. The wild-card in this equation is Ben Sheets. If they can somehow get 25-plus starts out of Sheets, they could push themselves into the second best rotation in the division but if being a Brewers fan has taught me anything it's that getting that many starts out of Sheets is anything but guaranteed.

The Rangers.......their rotation hinges on Rich Harden staying healthy (an even bigger IF than Ben Sheets staying healthy) but beyond Harden, nothing about the Rangers rotation is particularly impressive.

If the game is on the line, we are likely to see

4.5 Athletics- Andrew Bailey/Michael Wuertz/Craig Breslow

9- Rangers Frank Francisco/Darren O'Day/Neftali Feliz

13.5 Mariners-David Aardsma/Mark Lowe/Sean White

18-Angels-Brian Fuentes/Fernando Rodney/Scot Shields

Andrew Bailey had a pretty epic rookie year and looks poised to have a strong follow-up. Wuertz and Breslow had solid seasons last year and I see that continuing in '10.

Went back and forth on the positioning for the Rangers and Mariners. I'm skeptical on Aardsma ability to follow-up his 2009 season and that ended up being the deciding factor.

As for the Angels, yes Fuentes racked up a bunch of saves but that seems to be more because the Angels are in the position to win more often than not. Fuentes and Rodney may be familiar to more fans but i've never been blown away by these two pitchers. Add in that Shields is coming off an injury marred year and may or may not be effective and that's why their bullpen ranks dead last.

The total scores for the pitching staffs are:

Athletics -18

Mariners- 18

Angels-27

Rangers- 27

Bringing us to a final tally off:

Mariners-41 1st

Angels-43 2nd

Rangers-46 3rd

Athletics-48 4th

So what do we have here? A division that is pretty close top to bottom and a division where 10 games or less could be the difference between first and last. Looking into my crystal ball that may or may not exist, I see the 1-2 combo of Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez to do enough to mask other weaknesses (back of the rotation) and injury concerns (Milton Bradley...matter of when not if) to win their first AL West title since 2001.

For the Angels, A weak bullpen may cause them to miss the playoffs for the first time since '06. For the Rangers, weak pitching is likely to undermine their offensive prowess (in other words the Rangers are in the same predicament they've been in for the last 15 years).

The Athletics are definitely a team on the rise....I think their time will come in a few years but they still have a few too many holes to put together a playoff run.

AL West Preview--Part One

2010-02-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

So with the Spring Training games starting Today, I felt it was time to preview the season and make some predictions for the upcoming season. I also devised a system for doing this. Starting with this post i'm going to look at each division and see how they stack on a position by position basis from top to bottom. The point system for this will be golf-style (i.e. the lower the score the better i.e. the strongest team by position gets 1 point, 2 points for second, etc......this will be the scoring system for position players......)

For Pitching (Part Two of each divisional post) the scoring will be adjusted to equalize for hitting and pitching. For the AL, the scoring will go 4.5, 9, 13.5, etc. from best to worst for starting rotation and the bullpens (Note: In the NL it will be 4, 8, 12......)

With Further Ado, here are my rankings for the AL West

Catcher:

Kurt Suzuki-1

Jarod Saltalamacchia-2

Jeff Mathis-3

Rob Johnson-4

By far the weakest position area division wide. Ironically, this is also the only position where the A's stand out offensively. Out of the only three the only thing memorable is how long Saltalamacchia's last name is. Kurt Suzuki will have a solid year for the other 3 teams, a glaring weakness.

First Base:

Kendry Morales-1

Daric Barton-2

Chris Davis-3

Mike Carp-4

Not sure if Morales is going to repeat last year (my prediction: about .300 hitter still but homers in the low 20s) but he's still the class of the AL West first basemen. Daric Barton is never going to be a power threat but he's a solid candidate for having a bounce-back season. Chris Davis, is an entirely different story.

As i've mentioned earlier, I received Ron Shandler's baseball forecaster in the mail about a month ago and have taken a look at the numbers for various players that have piqued my interest. I've also came up with an All-Star team that no player want's to be a part of, The Bill Hall All-Stars.

Named after former Brewer Bill Hall. Back in 2006, I was convinced Bill Hall was going to be a star player for the Brewers for years to come. He had a massive power surge (went yard 35 times) sure he struck out a lot (even then) but the sky seemed the limit. If I knew then what I knew know I would have known better. Obscured in his power spike was the fact that his Contact % went from 79 to 70 from 2005 to 2006. After a slight bump up in 2007, the contact rate has crashed to 64% (15% drop in a 5 year stretch).

Based on this info, I invented the Bill Hall All-Star team for players whose contact % dropped 10% or more in a five year period as a way to predict other players whose production is sadly going to spiral downwards.

What does this have to do with Chris Davis? Well factoring in the data in the Baseball Forecaster (which factors in Major League Equivalent numbers with actual MLB numbers) plus data from AA and above shows a 13% drop in contact rate in the last few years. Translation: I'm not buying on Chris Davis having a breakout season now or ever.

Second Base:

Ian Kinsler-1

Jose Lopez-2

Howie Kendrick-3

Mark Ellis-4

Position-wise, the toughest call to make as these players are fairly close from top to bottom. Kinsler has the best combination of upside and proven track record which allowed him to be above his competition.

Shortstop

Erick Aybar-1

Elvis Andrus-2

Jack Wilson-3

Cliff Pennington-4

Aybar, Andrus and Wilson are all players who strike me as more valuable to an actual team than a fantasy baseball team. While Andrus will probably be the best of these players within 2 or 3 years, I still think Aybar is a slighty better player until proven otherwise. Pennington is a distant 4th here as I wouldn't be surprised if he's one of the leagues weakest hitters this year.

Third Base

Michael Young-1

Chone Figgins-2

Kevin Kouzmanoff-3

Brandon Wood-4

The ranking for Third Base was amongst the more difficult one to make (primarily because of Brandon Wood). On talent alone, he would be in the top-2 but on the same token it's hard to justify ranking him above proven players like Young and Figgins before he even sheds the AAAA label. I wouldn't be surprised to see him go deep 25-30 times but we don't know whether he'll actually do it. While Wood's ceiling is higher than Kouzmanoff, he gets bumped to last as unlike Kouzmanoff, Wood has yet to prove he can produce at a big-league level.

Left Field

Juan Rivera-1

Milton Bradley-2

Josh Hamilton-3

Rajai Davis-4

On talent alone this Bradley or Hamilton would have gotten the nod but injury concerns bumped both of them down. I originally though Hamilton was going to bounce back in '10 but the fact that he's already dealing with injury issues gives me second thoughts. On pure talent alone, Bradley would have a good shot at #1 but it's a given he's going to either get injured, suspended and/or incite a brawl to the level of the 1984 Padres/Braves fight and get banned for life.

Center Field

Torii Hunter-1

Franklin Gutierrez-2

Julio Borbon-3

Coco Crisp-4

Torii Hunter far and away stands out amongst this group......he's an asset with both the glove and at the plate. Gutierrez is an asset with the glove but his offensive numbers will likely regress in 2010.

Right Field

Ichiro Suzuki-1

Nelson Cruz-2

Bobby Abreu-3

Ryan Sweeney-4

Went back and forth on this one. Ichiro may not have the power of Cruz and Abreu but is a better all-around player. Despite not placing him number 1, I still see Nelson Cruz having a nice follow-up to his breakout season.

Designated Hitter

Hideki Matsui-1

Jake Fox-2

Ken Griffey Jr.-3

David Murphy-4

I still think Matsui has a couple strong years in his bat. Jake Fox going to Oakland was one of the more under-rated signings this winter and I think he'll be one of the dark-horse signings.

Griffey Jr. has had a great career but he's definitely on the down side of his career.

Well, we have the offensive players ranked by position for each team in the AL West.....at the half way point of the AL West preview, the rankings are as follows (Note: The Lower the score the better)

Angels-16

Rangers-19

Mariners-23

Athletics-30

D-Back On Draft

2010-02-23T19:10:00.000-08:00

So today, the Rockies signed Nick Bierbrodt to a minor league deal. Normally, I wouldn't use the signing of a minor league free agent who hasn't played since the year I graduated from community college (2004) as fodder but Bierbrodt does hold a place in the history/answer to a trivia question arena as he was the first person ever drafted by the Diamonbacks. I decided to take a look back and see how the D-Backs have done with some of their other first round picks. Why? Because it's Tuesday and I have a couple hours to kill until the new episode of Lost comes on

1996: Bierbrodt: Things didn't quite go as planned. He made 5 starts for the D-Backs, and played briefly for the Rays, Indians and Rangers. Despite his struggles on the field, Bierbrodt is someone worth respecting as he's keep on pitching even after getting shot in the chest.

1997: Jack Cust

One of the poster children for 3-true outcomes (alongside Adam Dunn). The D-Backs didn't get much benefit out of him as he only played 3 games for them back in '01. In all fairness, 3 other teams didn't get much out of him before he established himself as a regular for the A's. Coming in to this year, he's the 3-time defending leader in strikeouts and has finished in the top-10 in Walks the last 3 years. He might hit .240 but i'd take his .240 over the .240 David Eckstein hits any day.

1999: Corey Myers:

Out of all the sports, Baseball tends to be the sport where a top-5 overall pick is the farthest from a sure thing. This pack is a classic example of this. Despite being picked 4th overall, he has never played in the bigs. The last year he played (2007) he didn't exactly light AA and the Independent Leagues on fire. He did make it to AAA from 2004-2006 but never lived up to his high draft pick.

2001: Jason Bulger

Like Cust, another player who has proven he can play in the Big Leagues. Like Cust, another player where an AL West time and not the D-Backs are the beneficiary of said ability to play at a big league level. Like Cust, someone who had a cup of coffee (9 games in '05) for the D-Backs. Like Cust, a late bloomer (made the most of his first chance to play regularly at 30 busting a 127 ERA+).

2002: Sergio Santos:

Interesting for a few reasons (other than being born exactly two months after me). Santos was originally drafted as a shortstop and was a bright enough prospect to get top 100 status from Baseball America in '04 and '05. However, if he ever sees any big league action it's going to be on the mound and not at short as he converted to a pitcher last year. If he ever becomes a sucessful major leaguer, it will be for a team other than the one that drafted him (this seems to be a recurring theme). Interesting trivia fodder as well as he was a throw-in in the trade that sent Troy Glaus to the Blue Jays.

2003: Connor Jackson

2003: Carlos Quentin

It took seven years but the D-Backs finally nabbed someone in the first round that's started for the D-Backs. Had a few productive years in '06-'08 but was slowed by valley fever last year. He might not be a star but the D-Backs have done worse in the 1st round.

Quentin played 138 Games for the D-Backs in '06/'07 before being traded to the White Sox for a minor leaguer in the winter of '07. Quentin responded by being a late season injury away from winning the MVP. Quentin is one of those players with the talent to be the star but has trouble staying healthy.

2004: Stephen Drew

The second straight season the D-Backs drafted someone who has gotten significant playing time for their team. In his 4 seasons he has alternated between above-average and below-average OPS+. He's still fairly young (27) and it still looks hopeful that he could turn into one of the better players in the league.

2005: Justin Upton

It looks like the D-Backs figured out this first round draft thing around 2003. With the potential Upton has, he could make the draft failures of the early years nothing more than a footnote. He's only 22, he's already an All-Star, he's improved every year he's in the bigs, it's conceivable that he could be an MVP-Caliber one of the best players in the league by the time he's 25. To put things in context, 3 of his most similar players through age-21 are in Cooperstown (Hank Aaron, Sam Crawford & Willie Mays). Cases could be made for two other players (Ron Santo and Vada Pinson) and another is one of the elite hitters in the game today (Miguel Cabrera). In other words, the sky is the limit.

2006: Maxwell (Max) Scherzer

Moved through the minors quickly making his debut in '08. Showed signs of his potential in '09 as he struck out 174 batters and had an 111 ERA+. The one thing for sure is if he realizes his potential it won't be for the D-Backs as he was traded to the Tigers over the winter.

2007: Jarrod Parker

Too early to tell with him but off to a strong start in the Minors. Just finished his second season in the minors in '09 and seems to be moving through the system quickly as he held his own in AA. 17-11 3.31 era in 44 Minor League starts, doesn't give up many homers and strikes out nearly a batter an inning. Has the stuff to be a star but he needs to recover from Tommy John surgery first. The Sporting News baseball preview that I bought at the grocery store the other day has a high assessment of Parker as they project him to be their ace by 2012.

2008: Daniel Schlereth

Out of all the D-Backs first rounders, the quickest to make it to the Bigs (he debuted last May, a little less than a year getting drafted and after only playing 1 game above AA). While he struggled in 21 appearances last year, it looks like the sky's the limit for him. If he can improve upon his 7.4/BB per 9 innings, the D-Backs could have another star on their hands.

2009: Bobby Borchering

2009: A.J. Pollock

In the wow I feel old department, Borchering was born in the first year I consciously remember following baseball (1990). Way too early to tell what they have in Borchering as he has a whopping 22 games of Minor League experience under his belt (.241/.290/.425).

Another player where its too early. Had a line of .271/.319/.376 in 63 games.

Well, that was an interesting look at the D-Backs On Draft. It splits fairly evenly into two halves where they got relatively little out of the first rounders from 1996 to 2002 but they've gotten more productivity from 2003 on.

Best Pick: Justin Upton

Worst Pick: Corey Myers

Ed Wade's Contract Was Extended: Why?

2010-02-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

It looks like Ed Wade will be the Astros General Manager for awhile longer as his contract is extended through 2012. The timing of this move is a good time to look at some of the moves he made. A sentence-by sentence breakdown of the section of his Wikipedia page detailing the "highlights" of his tenure in Houston (which i've placed in bold) makes me scratch my head and wonder why?

On November 8, 2007, Wade traded relief pitcher Brad Lidge, along with reserve infielder Eric Bruntlett, to the Phillies in exchange for second-year outfielder Michael Bourn, middle relieverGeoff Geary, and third base prospect Mike Costanzo.

In all fairness, Lidge has become unpredictable from year-to-year (i.e. he was terrible in '09). However, Lidge going through 2008 without blowing a save and helping the team he got traded to win a World Series doesn't bode well for Wade's argument for getting an extension. (Event though Lidge's replacement Jose Valverde had a good season). On the bright side, they were able to get rid of Eric Bruntlett who has been a non-impact in Philly

And what did they get in return?

1) Michael Bourn

Getting him may look good now but a closer look shows that he can steal bases and play defense but not much else. Sure, he had a respectable average (.285) and on-base percentage (.354) but he still was a slightly below average offensive player and was aided by a high BABIP .367. In other words, don't expect a repeat of 2009 and don't expect Bourn to carry this team to a title, unlike the player he got traded for.

2) Geoff Geary

Geary has already come and gone. He had one really good season ('08) but struggled with injuries and on-field performance in ('09) at which point he was granted free agency.

The third player that they gave as a throw in (Mike Costanzo) is a non-factor in this process as he was traded to Baltimore in the next deal to be discussed.

Verdict: Epic Fail. I don't care how bad Lidge struggled in '09 or what he does from here on but his contributions in '08 are worth more than Michael Bourn and Geoff Geary.

On December 12, 2007, Wade acquired shortstop Miguel Tejada in exchange for Luke Scott, Matt Albers, Costanzo, Dennis Sarfate, and Troy Patton. The trade was controversial, in part because Tejada was mentioned as a possible steroid user in the Mitchell Report, which was released the day after the trade.

Well, it could have been worse. At least he didn't give Gagne $10 million the week before the Mitchell Report came out. In the last couple years, Tejada hasn't exactly performed like someone worth trading five players for. He's been a fairly average player, (although he has hit .298, its a fairly empty .298 as drawing walks seems to be a foreign concept to him). For what it's worth he has been an All-Star the last couple years but he's still not the same player he was in Oakland and Baltimore. Miguel Tejada Fun Fact: He's led the league in Grounding Into Double Plays in five of the last six years.

What they gave up to get Tejada:

Luke Scott:

Even if this trade was just a straight up Tejada for Scott, this trade would already lean slightly in favor of Baltimore. He's hit more homers the last couple years (23/25), his OPS+ has been higher (111/115), he's still younger than Tejada (31) and doesn't have any steroid controversy surrounding him. While his batting average is lower (.257/.258), Scott is still a better bet offensively and likely has more productive years left than Tejada.

Matt Albers:

He's still young (27), he has shown flashes of promise but the jury is still out on him. He had a strong '08 but struggled a bit in '09. Tough to tell what future brings but Baltimore looks to at least get some productivity out of him.

Mike Costanzo:

Non-factor. Hasn't even played in the bigs.

Dennis Sarfate:

A bit older than Albers with a lower ceiling. He's had a couple pedestrian seasons filling space in the Baltimore bullpen.

Troy Patton:

Hasn't played in the bigs since the trade.

Verdict: Another bad trade. Not as horrible as the Lidge trade but Wade still gave away too much to get Tejada. On the Tejada for Scott level alone, it slightly favors Baltimore but doesn't look too bad for Houston. However, if Albers and Sarfate end up being productive arms for Baltimore this trade could still turn out to be a pretty big fail.

The day after the Mitchell Report, he traded Chad Qualls, Chris Burke, and Juan Gutierrez to the Arizona Diamondbacks for closer Jose Valverde.

While Jose Valverde has since moved on to Detroit, he did have a couple productive seasons closing for the Astros (more than what you could say about the first trades discussed).

What the Astros gave up to get him:

Chad Qualls:

Qualls has had a pretty solid couple years in Arizona. Got his first extended look as a closer last year saving 24 games. His full impact on this trade could still be limited by injuries though.

Chris Burke:

Only played 86 uninspiring games for Arizona with a .194/.310/.273 line before moving on to San Diego. Non-factor as far as this trade is concerned.

Juan Gutierrez:

Pitched fairly well in 65 games last year. Still fairly young (26) and what he does from here on will affect the balance of this trade. For what it's worth the message left by his Baseball-Reference page's sponsor is pretty amusing.

Verdict: As of now, the Astros have the slight edge. However, a few more solid years from Qualls and/or Gutierrez could make this another lopsided trade against the Astros, anyone noticing a trend here?

On June 25, 2008, Wade was engaged in a dispute with Astros reliever Shawn Chacon. After a while, Chacon burst and grabbed Wade by the neck and threw him to the ground. The Astros suspended Chacon indefinitely. This event eventually led to Shawn Chacon

being released. He has not played in Major League Baseball since.

Sure, this has nothing to do with horrible trades but an amusing story of epic-failure on both ends. Looking at what Chacon had "done" for his career (2005 not withstanding) even $2 million seems like a steep price. At current tally this is 2 bad trades, a 3rd trade that could place him at a disadvantage and a player that thought so highly of him he decided to do a re-enactment of the Latrell Spreewell/P.J. Carlesimo incident from the 1990s. Also, coming from a player that wasn't good enough to make this as big of a deal as previous said incident has also got to say something.

In December of 2009, Wade and Astros signed reliever Brandon Lyon to a 3 year/15 million dollar contract. Tom Verducci of SI.com commented,"Two different GMs were aghast to hear the Astros are paying $15 million over three years to reliever Brandon Lyon. Both of them had to have the numbers repeated to them twice, thinking surely they had misheard what will be one of the worst contracts of the winter.

Under the don't knock it till you try it philosophy, it's tough to slam a GM for a move that hasn't even played out yet. However, with his track record from the last few years, any move he makes with this type of reaction needs a bit more scrutiny. Sure, anytime a middle reliever gets signed to 2 or more years it is a stretch but GMs stretch for players all the time.

Looking at Lyon's last five seasons, he probably should have only gotten a year or two but i'm willing to at least give some benefit of the doubt before signing off on this move being an epic fail. A first look at his numbers show that he's had an OPS+ over 120 in 3 of the last 4 years (including 2 seasons at over 160+). If his past history holds up the quality of this signing comes down to how he is handled. If they let Lyon do his thing in middle relief, the pay will still be a bit high but at least the contract won't be a Carlos Silva level atrocity. If they try to put him in the closer's role, then the talk of how bad this contract is will have more than enough merit.

Looking at what the Astros have done on the field since Wade took over doesn't bode well for him either as they have won 73, 86 and 74 games the last 3 years. Based on the trades he's made, the general direction the team has gone in and the way people are looking at moves that haven't had a chance to be a bust yet, it doesn't seem to fit the profile of someone that would get their contract extended. But look at the bright side, at least the Pirates won't be lonely at the bottom of the NL Central for the next few years.

Rod Barajas only getting a big-league deal with the Mets: Smart Move or the Mets being the Mets?

2010-02-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

So, the Mets signed Rod Barajas to a one-year deal today. The Mets were also the only team to offer him a big-league deal. The Mets are also not known for being the smartest team in baseball.

The first question to ask is would Barajas be an upgrade versus the pre-existing options at Catcher.

As it stands, the Mets have options at Catcher just not very good ones.

Option 1: Henry Blanco

Probably the slowest running baseball player I have ever seen. His best-hitting performance which came last year still had him hitting slightly below league average. Generally limited to about 200 At-Bats a year...definitely a player I have never been high on.

Option 2: Chris Coste

Known more for not getting called up until he was 33 and writing a book about it. He hit fairly well in his time in Philly but his time in Houston was a pretty epic fail. Looking at the trusty forecaster, his home run totals should rebound to the 9-ish range but his drop in contract rate is a red light.

Option 3: Omir Santos

Looks to be the most likely option to start. Another player who didn't get to the bigs until fairly late (27) . Had a pretty mediocre season in his first extended shot with the Mets last year. Considering he's already pushing 30, it's safe to say any improvement offensively is going to be limited and if Shandler's forecaster proves right, the previous prediction sounds highly optimistic.

Option 4: Josh Thole

The youngest and most promising out of the bunch. Held his own in a September call-up but it's difficult to prove much over 57 plate appearances. Hits for a decent average but power and defense aren't amongst his strengths.

Looking at the other options, it looks like the Mets are going to be pretty weak behind the plate (unless Thole has a massive breakthrough this spring).....at first blush it looks like Barajas deserves at least a shot.....now time to actually look at Barajas:

Option 5: Rod Barajas

Historically, Barajas has been the polar opposite of Thole as he's historically hit for a terrible average but is a solid source of power. His average will rebound a bit as he had a low .234 BABIP

but expecting him to save the Mets is an expectation nobody has (as reflected by the modest 1-million dollar deal). Despite his pop, he has never had an OPS+ above 100 (something he shares with Henry Blanco).

Still, this is a case of the Mets being the Mets. While Barajas could help a decent amount of major league teams, the Mets aren't the best fit. The one strength of Barajas' hitting (home runs) is likely to be obscured by playing half his games in Citi Field where home runs seem to be suppressed. Pretty much, the Mets aren't better or worse off regardless of whether Blanco or Barajas is the back-up getting 200 plate appearances a year.

Why Signing Chien-Ming Wang is a good move by the Nationals

2010-02-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

So, Chien-Ming Wang just signed with the team formerly known as the Montreal Expos.

While I have been critical about them signing Adam Kennedy over Orlando Hudson and signing Willy Taveras, to a contract, there is a decent chance the Nationals get this signing right.

As a disclaimer, I am fully aware that Wang has been hampered by injuries which could make the following discussion null and void.

One reason I think this is a smart signing is that ghastly 9.64 ERA is highly fluky and there's no way he could pitch that bad for two years in a row. Taking a closer look at his 2009 numbers it looks like he got horribly......horribly....atrociously unlucky last year. Hitters had a .407 BABIP against him. That is 110 points higher than his career total. Whatever comes up must come down and that BABIP should regress to somewhere around that .297 career total (regardless of whether or not he pitches better) which in turn should return his numbers closer to his 2005-2008 totals.

Point being, even if he doesn't pitch any better in 2010, his ERA should drastically improve as a BABIP that off the charts high is not sustainable for the long term. Another reason is he got unlucky with fly balls turning into home runs. While Wang struggled both at home and on the road, getting away from Yankee Stadium should help. Opposing hitters had a 1.091 OPS against him at home. It's clear that he got unlucky with giving him home runs as well as his 1.5 HR/9 innings allowed is twice as high as his previous career high ( and more than three times his totals from 2006 & 2007 when he led the AL in this category).

Also, Wang isn't that old (he'll be 30 by opening day) so I wouldn't write him off as washed out. From his prior body of work, it is clear he knows how to pitch ( outside of 2009, he was an above league average pitcher and as recent as 4 years ago he was second in Cy Young Voting).

My point is don't write of Chien-Ming Wang because the bottom fell out in 2009. He didn't have a bad season because he forgot how to pitch, he had a bad season because he got about as unlucky as a pitcher could be within the scope of 42 innings. The Nationals have made a lot of dumb moves over the year, this move bucks the trend as it is a savvy low-risk high reward move.

Jamie Moyer......looking to break precedent

2010-02-15T19:40:00.000-08:00

To Jamie Moyer, age seems to be nothing more than a silly number. Even though he is 47, an age where most pro ball-players are managing somewhere or moving to the broadcast booth, he is still open to continue his career into 2011 and beyond.

At this point, this raises the question of how much does Moyer need to accomplish in the 2010s to be the greatest 47-and up pitcher of all time.

By even making it to 47, he will pass several pitchers on the all-time oldest pitchers list as several pitchers called it a career at 46. When he makes his first pitch this year, he will be the sixth pitcher in history to pitch in the big leagues at 47 and older. He will join the company of:

Phil Niekro:

A hall of fame pitcher who is in despite what he did after turning 47, not because of what he did. His age 47 year was respectable 11-11 4.32 era 96 ERA+ respectable but not all star worthy. However, his age-48 year the bottom fell out as he went 7-13 6.30 era 72 ERA+ with 3 different teams. An example of being able to use the knuckleball to extend a career deep into middle age.

Hoyt Wilhelm:

Another 47+ pitcher, another knuckleballer (and another Hall of Famer). Wilhelm had a bit more success going 6-5 with a 3.40 era 127 ERA+ and 13 saves in his age 47 year. In limited duty in his age 48 season he was effective going 0-1 2.70 era 122+ before retiring after struggling in his age-49 year.

Jack Quinn:

The first non-knuckleballer and non-hall of famer to make it to 47. Although he is in the unique pitch category, as he was one of the last pitchers legally allowed to throw the spitball. Like Wilhelm, Quinn enjoyed some success after his 47th birthday, leading the NL in saves in his age 47 and 48 seasons.

Nick Altrock:

1 game, 2 innings in his age-47 season.

Satchel Paige:

Pitched 1 game, 3 innings at age-58.

What will Moyer's likely place in history be?

Looking at historical precedent, a pretty good shot to re-write the record books in some areas. Two of the five pitchers (Altrock and Paige) are on the list due to single appearances.

Versus the other three pitchers, Moyer is the only one not to have a specialty pitch that is known for being difficult to hit, although he has a really slow fastball.

It's unlikely he'll be an all-star at this point of his career (like Wilhelm) although it is conceivable he could have the best starting pitching season for a 47-year old (Niekro had a respectable season but Moyer is still capable of pitching at an average to slightly above average level).

A close look at the numbers provided by Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster indicate he could have a solid season. His decreased strike percentage is a cause for concern but his hr/f rate was the highest in 5 years indicating he could give up less homers and thus improve on his disappointing 2009 numbers. Either way, it should be fun to see Moyer strive to make some history in the new decade.

If the Nationals lose 100 times again, this may have something to do with it

2010-02-15T19:28:00.000-08:00

Today, the Nationals signed Willy Taveras to a 1-year deal. Why they signed him is beyond me. Taveras is the ultimate 1-tool (stolen base) player. Yes he can run and steal bases (while limiting how often he gets caught)......but the Taveras signing (even to a modest $400,000) makes me scratch my head and think along the lines of how does he keep finding work?

Despite hitting in hitter-friendly parks the last couple years ('08 in Colorado, '09 in Cincinnati) Taveras' hitting performance has been nothing to write home about (55 OPS+ in '08 48 OPS+ in '09......ouch). On top of that, he's gotten 400-plus plate appearances in those seasons while not even being close to being an asset at the plate.

If nothing else, getting rid of Taveras does seem to improve teams (Rockies went from 74 to 92 wins after he left Colorado and the Reds seem primed to improve from their 78 win season in 2010.) Still, if Taveras somehow gets another 400+ plate appearances and they lose another 100-plus games (again), we at least know where a lot of the blame can get distributed to.

Is there a reason why Felipe Lopez hasn't signed?

2010-02-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

Well, Felipe Lopez did his part towards making baseball a better game by firing his sleaze ball agent Scott Boras. The man who has more than done his part to exacerbate salaries in the game fired for his failure to do so. At first blush this seems like something as second basemen such as Orlando Hudson and Adam Kennedy have signed in recent weeks. Should Lopez have found a team before these two players, lets take a look.

How did he rank to other second basemen recently signed last year ?

2009 Numbers:

Lopez: .310/.383/.427 111 OPS+

Kennedy: .289/.348/.410 101 OPS+

Hudson: .283/.357/.417 109 OPS+

On raw offensive numbers, Kennedy is at the back of the pack (seems natural the cellar-dwelling Nationals signed him) while the offensive contributions of Lopez and Hudson are fairly similar. Lopez hit for better average while Hudson got on base more often. This similarity in performance is not exclusive to '09 as Hudson is 3rd on the list of hitters most similar to Lopez and Lopez ranks first on hitters similar to Hudson. It could be argued that Hudson is historically more of a sure bet as his OPS+ has slowly improved (from 102 to 109 in the last four years). Lopez, on the other hand has gone up and down. On the other hand, Lopez's has jumped from (118, 91, 75, 93, 111) in the last five years and he seems to be a player who does better towards the end of the season as his OPS+ has improved after he got traded the last couple years (In 2008 he had a 64 OPS+ for Washington and a 153+ after getting traded to St. Louis and in 2009, had a 98 OPS+ for Arizona and a 129+ after getting traded to Milwaukee)

What role (if any) did luck have in inflated or deflating player performance ?

For moments such as finding an answer to this question, I am glad that this year's edition of Baseball Forecaster is within arm's reach of my laptop.

Lopez: He did get a bit lucky last year. His BABIP was an unusually high .360 suggesting that his batting average will regress to about .280-ish. He did get a little lucky power wise with 7% of flyballs going for home home runs so this total should stay in the 7-9 range.

Hudson: A couple areas of concern for Hudson was a slight drop in contact% to 82 (his lowest in the last five years) and he also hit a higher percentage of ground balls in comparison to the last five years). Everything else looks stable, he didn't seem to be terribly lucky or unlucky last year.

Kennedy: Kennedy should hit around .280 again this year but a repeat of his 11-home run "outburst", I think not. He went from a proven record of 2-3% hr/fb rate to 7% at his age 33-year. Then again, the Nationals were the team to fall for this. Pretty high likely for him to be a bust both IRL and Fantasy.

Verdict:

While Lopez does have some areas of concern (inconsistent performance and a slightly fluky 2009) he definitely should have signed by now if he wanted to and gave us some faith that there is good in baseball by taking Scott Boras out of the process. While Orlando Hudson signing before Lopez has a legitimate argument, the fact that Adam Kennedy found work before Lopez has to do more with a franchise "wondering" why they've lost 100+ games the last two years than Kennedy actually being a better player than Lopez. The worst part that faith in baseball being a better game was negated when Angels slugger Kendry Morales hired Boras.

Is Johnny Damon worth several teams competing for his services?

2010-02-13T15:31:00.000-08:00

So one of the stories recently is that several teams (especially the White Sox, Tigers and Braves) are competing to sign Johnny Damon to a deal. This raises the interesting question of is he a player worth competing over. It's clear that he's not going to get the 4-year 52 million dollar contract that he got last time but hey that's baseball.

He did have the best season out of his 4 years in the Yankees last year but there are some causes for concern. First of all he's getting up there in years. He is 36 so it's tough to say how long he will be effective for. Looking at his data in Ron Shandler's baseball forecaster indicates a couple of red lights. First, his contact % dropped down to 82% last year (it hadn't dropped below 85% in any of the previous five seasons).

Another red light for Damon is that his Home Run totals were a bit fluky. His hr/fb% was 13% last year which is the highest it has been in the last five years (this figure has ranged from 6 to 12 percent. Also, there is the elephant in the room known as he's not going to have that short porch at Yankee stadium to lodge home runs in to.

He hit significantly better at Yankee Stadium .279/.382/.533 than he did away from Yankee Stadium .284/.349/.446. Point being it's more likely for him produce something close to his road numbers than home numbers in 2010. A solid player you can bank on for a .280 average and about 15 home runs but not someone a team should overpay for in a multi-team bidding war.

Da nah nah nah nah, it's the Eephus Countdown

2010-02-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

I had a request to do a column dedicated to the Eephus pitch. The Eephus pitch is one area that i'm not too familiar with so I went to Wikipedia to look it up because, well that's why Wikipedia exists.

First impression is that it strikes me as a slow version of the knuckleball. I'm not sure why it was extinct but at some point some pitcher or failed minor-league middle infielder will try it out, catch the league off guard and be successful. I mean if the knuckleball allows Tim Wakefield and Phil Niekro pitch well into their 40s there's no reason why the Eephus could extend pitching careers into the 50s and 60s.

It appears that there have been a few pitchers known to throw the Eephus and a good proportion of them have pitched recently, giving hope and reason for the Eephus to rise from the ashes and into the repertoire of pitchers and now the top 10 pitchers of all time known to throw the Eephus:

10- Steve Hamilton

Hadn't heard of him before. Seems like a fairly typical 60's middle reliever. Had a solid career at 40-31 3.05 era 114 ERA+. The only really interesting tidbit I could pull out of his career was that he was a 2-sport player as he played a couple seasons for the Minneapolis Lakers.

9- Pascual Perez

Had a decent career 67-68 3.44 era 110 ERA+ but I get the vibe it could have been better. His career ended prematurely due to drug issues. If you get the chance to see the MLB Network special on the 1984 Padres, you will get a chance to see how he was part of one of the biggest brawls of the decade (pretty much he unintentionally united that team by drilling their lead-off hitter Alan Wiggins. The Padres threw at Perez every time he came up to the plate, many fights broke out, Padres won the National League championship)

Amongst the highlights:

"(Bob) Horner tackled (Champ) Summers with the unsolicited help of two fans who leaped out of the stands."
"On his way back to the Padres' dugout, (Kurt) Bevacqua was pelted in the head by a mug of beer tossed from the crowd. He hurdled atop the dugout to attack the perpetrator but slipped while throwing a punch and fell into the seats."

So, fans getting into the action and player getting pelted by beer. Wow, if this would have happened in 2004 instead of 1984, we would have had around the clock coverage about this fight and we would be making as big of a deal about this as the Malace at the Palace and someone would have been suspended for at least a year. And all because the 9th best Eephus pitcher ever had to drill the Padres lead-off hitter

Another that that sticks out is in 1988, Perez was really good as he pulled off a ridiculous .941 WHIP definitely indicates that he had the potential for a better career than he actually had

8- Dave Laroche

A Decent run as a closer in the 70s and a couple All-Star appearances. Also to note, he is the father of Adam LaRoche who would be known as a much better player if only stats from after the All-Star break were counted.

7- Bob Tewksbury

If there is one thing Tewksbury was known for, it is pinpoint control. He had a legitimate chance to have more wins than walks drawn twice.....16 wins and 20 walks in '92 and 17 wins with 20 walks in '93.....his 1992 season was really good as he finished 3rd in Cy Young Voting but had an otherwise pedestrian career. Ironically, as I am writing this, the replay of Mark Whiten's 4 home-run game on MLB Network is in the background. And who might the beneficiary of all that run support be? The 7th best Eephus pitcher of all time.

6- Rip Sewell

The one pitcher whose name is most associated with the Eephus pitch. The father of the Eephus pitch doesn't even crack the Top five. According to the Wikipedia page, he only gave up one career home run using the Eephus pitching. This leads to speculation that maybe he should have used it more often as he gave up 116 home runs in his career.

5- Orlando Hernandez

El Duque had a nice run for the Yankees. One of the bigger what-if's in baseball will be what Hernandez could have accomplished if he had made it to the states if he was younger. As it was, he didn't make his debut until he was 32 and had a penchant for coming up big in the post-season.

4- Bill Lee

Had a solid career with the Red Sox and Expos. Known more for his quirky "spaceman" personality than what he did on field. Best season was in '73 which was also his only All-Star season. Interesting thing to note is he gave up an unthinkable 320 hits in 1974 (granted it was in 282 innings). Second player on this list (Tewksbury the other) to lead their respective league in hits allowed.

3- Mark Buerhle

Alongside being the only active player on this list, Buerhle is a case of interesting contrasts. In addition to leading the AL in hits allowed (thrice 2005,2006 & 2008), he has also thrown a couple of no-hitters (including a perfect game). Buerhle has been around for awhile and it is hard to believe he still only 30. He still isn't close to being considered a Hall of Famer but that could change with about 5 more solid years under his belt (along with moving up this list)

2- Dave Stieb

What's not to like, 176 career wins, 1 no-hitter in 1990, coming one out away from a couple perfect games in consecutive starts in the 80's and beloved enough by Blue Jays fans to have a blog (The Tao of Stieb named after him).

1- Randy Johnson

Definitely the LAST pitcher I would expect to be known to throw the Eephus, Johnson was all about throwing really fast, long hair and mullets but even Johnson knew the value of throwing the Eephus. Still, he's definitely headed to Cooperstown. Come on pitchers, if The Big Unit can find value in throwing the Eephus, this pitch has got to come back to the mainstream. To verify that this isn't a typo a Google search for Randy Johnson Eephus gives 7,790 results.

Tom Glavine's career in perspective

2010-02-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

It seems like players are retiring left and right. Now, it's Tom Glavine's turn to go under the Hall-Of-Fame Microscope.

Tom Glavine finished his career as a member of the prestigious 300-win club and did so in an era of specialized bullpens, five men starting rotations and in an era that de-emphasized pitching.

Based on the similarity scores index, Glavine has a strong but not rock-solid case. Five of the similar pitchers (Early Wynn, Tom Seaver, Red Ruffing, Mickey Welch and Burleigh Grimes are Hall of Famers).

However, unlike Thomas and Delgado, the similar players not in can't be attributed to still being active, being retired for less than five years or being a poster child for steroid use. Three of the pitchers on the similar pitchers list (Tommy John, Jim Kaat and Jack Morris) have been on the outside looking in regarding Cooperstown and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

This indicates that there may be a case against induction but under further scrutiny it is a pretty weak one. Looking at his body of work, Glavine did more to stand out then the similar pitchers who failed to make the cut.

First of all, he was the only one out of these four to win 300 games. While games won by itself is not the best actual indicator (he was helped by playing on some very good Braves teams), getting past the 300-win landmark is something that will get the attention of voters who aren't sure one way or another.

Another thing helping his case was that his best was better than the best of the other pitchers. In addition to being the only one amongst these four pitchers to win a Cy Young Award (He did it twice) he also had 4 other seasons where he was in the top 3 for Cy Young Voting. In comparison, Tommy John finished second twice and Jack Morris finished third twice. In other words, he was in the top 3 more times than John, Kaat and Morris Combined.

Even the other area (ERA+) that could be used as an argument against shows Glavine above and beyond these pitchers that fell short. His ERA+ for his career was an excellent but lower than I expected 118 +. However, that number is artificially deflated by his age 21-24 years when he was still developing and had yet to peak as a player. Even with those 4 years factored in he outpaced John (110 ERA+), Kaat (107 ERA+) and Morris (105 ERA+) in this department.

Finally, in the 4 metrics to determine Hall-Of-Famers on Baseball-Reference, Glavine makes the cut in 3 of them, Morris only does it twice and Kaat/John make the cut once each.

During my analysis of the numbers, Glavine's resume still holds up impressively but it wasn't as sure of a thing that I thought it was going to be and nothing blew me away like Frank Thomas' 8 years of 174 OPS+ and above.

Still, under further scrutiny, Glavine's profile holds up very well. While wins my be an outdated metric, to pitch good enough to win 300 times is still impressive. Also the neighborhood that his career numbers live in is good enough for five Hall-Of-Famers and his resume stands out from the non Hall-Of Famers living in his neighborhood. Morris may be famous for beating the Braves in Game 7 of 1991 but Glavine looks to be more likely to be famous for getting into Cooperstown.