Baseball

>_< sorry.  I didn't get to watch the games and i got the series vs Detroit confused with the series vs St. Louis.  the final game against Detroit was awesome!  And they didn't lose horribly vs St. Louis.

and that's when you know you pay too much attention.  I like baseball but I don't get depressed when my favorites lose.

Whoa! Did he ever get his ring back!?

I was surprised Braun won, I figured the media would go for Kemp. But I think Braun is the better choice.

We picked up Joe Nathan. Great move, since Feliz will go into the rotation, we become better in both the bullpen and starting rotation instantly.

Pujols and Wilson to the Angels? Thoughts?

Prediction: The Texas Rangers will start kicking themselves before too long for committing to a 31 year old, injury-prone addict-recovery project instead of Prince Fielder.

Good God. Man up, buddy. This is a baseball thread, the Rangers are a team everyone has their eyes on, and I had an opinion on them. This may come as a huge shock to you, but I have no interest in personally baiting you. I will also not apologize for how I feel about Josh Hamilton as a player. He's often inured, makes questionable on-field decisions, has serious off-field issues, and is on the wrong side of 30 for franchise-building. If me not liking him for those reasons causes you personal anguish, you might want to re-evaluate a few things. Like how much you're emotionally invested in a professional athlete who doesn't know or care about you. Have a nice day.

From the Dallas Morning News last month:

Bob Simpson, who along with Ray Davis is the co-lead investor and co-chairman of the Rangers ownership group, said Friday might that he agrees with general manager Jon Daniels' assertion that signing free agent first baseman Prince Fielder is unlikely. Simpson said the Rangers biggest offseason strategy was trying to find a way to sign Yu Darvish. Mission accomplished. And while fans will continue to dream about adding Fielder, Simpson has at least one other priority in mind. "We've got guys, frankly, like Josh Hamilton that I would love to see re-signed," Simpson said. "And frankly, my personal preference at this moment would be to re-sign him instead of helping Fielder. We (the ownership group) could all debate that."

The above is courtesy of Fannation.

I'm not "actively rooting" against Hamilton. If he was 26, less injury-prone and didn't have to have his father-in-law follow him everywhere for fear of relapsing into drugs and alcohol, I wouldn't have any problem with him. And my problems with him are centered around what he likely to produce on the field at a premium pay rate--his personal problems don't really bother me aside from their ability to affect his on-field performance. When he's healthy with his head on straight he can rake in that park, but I'm not convinced those other issues won't continue to pop up. I don't allow my emotions to override players I have an attachment to, either. Mark Buehrle's 2005 post season, his 2007 no-hitter, and his 2009 perfect game are all some of the best moments of my baseball life. But he wasn't worth re-signing this year. I'm glad the Sox aren't paying him millions upon millions for things he's already done and not likely to repeat.

I usually ignore ESPN in favor of actual news outlets, but I will agree that Texas is probably the best prediction for the pennant THIS year, although several teams like Anaheim and Detroit have reloaded considerably. Unless the Angels surge this year, the Rangers will take the West at the very least. My money is on Philadelphia for the NL. I'd say both Boston and Tampa Bay have a better farm system than Texas.

There was a lot of Albert Pujols discussion last night on WSCR so I just looked up the Angels roster on their website. Holy crap. If that pitching rotation is healthy, they are going to mess some fools up.

On the other end of the AL West spectrum, what the hell are the A's doing? Unless Texas or Anaheim die in a plane crash, Oakland will most likely not be competing for a few years. So why sign Cespedes? They also signed that worthless bastard Manny Ramirez.

WIth Manny serving his 50 game suspension before he can suit up, we are down to about 3 90's sluggers who are considered free of steroid suspicion: Ken Griffey, Frank Thomas, and Jim Thome. Do these guys get in to the Hall of Fame? I think all three of them have compiled Hall worthy careers. Griffey is probably the most obvious choice for most people, but I think Thome has set himself up as one of the best home run hitters in the history of the game, and Frank was the best hitter in the American League for almost a decade, putting up Ted Williams-like numbers from 1990-1997, and again in 2000. He's also been the most vocal proponent of mandatory steroid testing since the early 90's, and was the only player to willingly cooperate with the Mitchell Report.

Teams like San Francisco have proved you can ball even without hitting. The Angels have pooled a lot of their assets into a few players, but with the new tv deals Texas and Anaheim have, they don't actually need the on-field product to turn a profit to be well in the black financially. "Moneyball" was Beane's specific incarnation of a sabermetric approach to talent evaluation. Beane's emphasis on OBP alone combined with Oakland's lack of payroll put a ceiling over his head. For a more holistic, cohesive model of sabermetrically-informed talent evalutation, look to Theo Epstein. Boston won 2 World Series during his time there and he helped set them up to be competitive for years to come. Theo's biggest contribution was his aggressive signing of draft picks that Boston's superior scouting department picked out. You get cost-controlled stars who are let go before they hit the big paycheck, who are then replaced by good draft picks. When they sign elsewhere after turning down Boston's crap arbitration offer, Boston gets a sandwhich pick from the team that signed the guy. The new CBA has taken these weapons away from Epstein, but I'm very interested in seeing what he is able to do with the Cubs over the course of the next 3-4 years.

You can't know 100%, but there are clues to look for in players, including types of injuries, regression of their abilities in the face of age, how their peaks match historic players, how long they take to recover from devastating injury, etc. Griffey, Thome, and Thomas all fit those seeing eye tests, haven't been implicated, and in Thomas' case, has been belligerently demanding of mandatory testing to the point that he once tried to get the entire Sox locker room to opt out of a randomized test to force mandatory regular testing as per the current CBA agreement. It's technically possible he was using at this time, but people with something to hide don't usually walk around with their pockets hanging out of their pants. Some teams and managers carry with them the culture of steroid using, like Tony LaRussa. Most of the guys in his A's locker room were being injected by Conseco, McGwire continued the tradition in St. Louis, and I'm very skeptical as to the legitimacy of Pujols' abilities. LaRussa also prefers his players liquored up and behind the wheel. Dusty Baker likes to make excuses for these kinds of players, as does Buck Showalter, having managed quite a few users from 03 up through the present. The Orioles were a juice magnet before he got there, too.

I'm not holding my breath for the guys widely suspected. Especially Sosa. He really was useless aside from his homeruns. Like David Kingman 2.0. Hopefully the cloud surrounding them will allow players like Tim Raines to get this next year before the BIG NAMES start appearing on the ballot. He doesn't have a whole lot of support because his peak years were in a city no one cares about and they happened to coincide with Ricky Henderson's best years.

It will be interesting to see how the sample collector and MLB react to Braun's press conference in the legal realm. He went hard and scorched earth on the guy for basically following policy (the sample was double sealed in tamper-evident containers and were next to several other anonymous players' samples---did they guy's refrigerator introduce large amounts of synthetic testosterone to their's too??).

Mandatory HGH testing prior to every game would be great, but the player's union is so adamant about ensuring against false-positives that 8 vials of blood have to be drawn per test. If they could get it down to 1 or 2 for testing prior to every game I think you make it a lot harder to cheat.

Brewers fans around here have been circling the wagons in a most embarrassing fashion. They aren't as creepy or detached from reality as the Joe Paterno supporters, but they have that cult-like mentality that only college towns can provide.

I'd say after tonight, there's very little doubt he will be worth the money. If he continues to improve at the rate he's going at, he'll throw a no-hitter sometime mid-season.

Well I think the article made a valid point, before last night's start against the Yankees. It's true that many Japanese pitchers in the past have had trouble being too fancy with their off speed pitches, not locating their fastball, yada yada. And Yu had that problem off and on for three starts, but it was getting better every game. That's where I think the article kind of flopped, it failed to point out Yu's improvement when it came to his control, through each of the first three games.

But yeh then he pitched a gem last night, 8 1/3 shutout IP, 10 K's, 2 BB. He threw 82 of 119 pitches (68.9 percent) for strikes, above his 56.8 percent average entering the night. He started 21 of 33 hitters (63.6 percent) with a first-pitch strike. So it's pretty clear that the problems they point out in the fangraphs article, Maddux knew them too and they fixed it.

Then also there's this: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2012/04/yu-darvish-texas-rangers-strike-zone/1#.T5iSaatYuIA Apparently, Yu was getting his strikes called balls by umpires more than any other pitcher in the American League. Some of that's him nibbling the corners I guess, but his luck was bound to improve as well.

People forget he's essentially a rookie. Yet last night he threw a Halladay/Verlander type of game. So I am trying to temper my expectations, but suddenly I think the word Ace should come to mind.

Oh and congrats on Umber's perfect game!

EDIT: One other thing, I know it's early but I'd like to point out my post above where I said I thought everyone should just slow down on the Angels love-fest. As Red Sox fans can clearly attest, you don't get any trophies for winning the Off-Season!

Edited by Anna Raven - 26-Apr-2012 at 1:20am