Baseball Thread July 2008

What happened to the Twinks in Boston, now that there’s some good ol’-timey slaughterin’ for ya.

See you in October. Maybe.

You know who got slaughtered this week? The Rays were slaughtered 3-in-a-row (so far) by the Indians.

boggle

To be fair, for his first two seasons in Seattle Sexson performed as expected. He started off poorly last year, but he’d historically been a slow starter so everybody assumed he’d pick it up as the season progressed. By the time it became apparent that he wasn’t picking it up, the team was in a quandary.

The team as a whole was playing much better than expected, which allowed them to keep Richie around and hope he snapped out of it. There were a ton of fans calling the postgame shows asking why the Mariners didn’t just trade him, and the basic answer they always got was, “Who’s going to take him, hitting the way he is and with the contract he’s got [$14 million in '07 and $15 million in '08], and what are the Mariners going to get in return? Nobody and nothing.” It wouldn’t surprise me if they decided to take the chance that he might get off to a good start in '08 and then trade him while they had the chance. But once it became clear that it was going to be more of the same this year they finally decided to just write him off.

This article on the Mariners Web site provides a good, candid explanation behind the decision to finally release him.

Me, I wonder if his eyes have gone bad. I normally listen to games on the radio — I rarely watch TV and don’t even have cable at home — so I haven’t actually seen Richie batting very many times. But I was housesitting for my sister the last couple weeks and caught a few games on TV there. I could clearly see that Richie was squinting during his at-bats. It could have been because of the sun, but none of the other players were squinting like that. Maybe the squinting is normal for Richie, but I couldn’t say since this was the first chance I’d really had to see his face during an at-bat. I suppose if the squinting was something new that somebody on the coaching staff would have noticed.

They went 7-in-a-row this week, slumping back down the second place. The Sox are back on top to stay. :slight_smile:

Eh, f*** that. Now that our 4-game sweep of the Rays is over (the Indians love to toy with fans by beating really good teams after 11-game losing streaks), I’ll be back to rooting for the previously-worst-team-in-the-AL to crush those stinky Sox!

Do you know how weird that bolded part looks to me?

Could the mysterious individual beating up on the Dodger voodoo doll please, for the love of God, give it a rest? Did you really have to take down Saito, too?

I have a feeling that the series against the D-Backs right after the All-Star break will tell us everything we need to know about the remainder of the season in the NL West. I’m not sure it’s going to be good news for the Dodgers.

I think it’s great, the Rays really have a good team this year and they’re playing extremely well except for this last week. I still think the Sox will win the division this year but Tampa is certainly on the map.

Where’s my pincushion? :smiley:

Holy shit the Rangers can pile on runs. I was hoping their pitching would be bad enough to let the Sox win, but it was just bad enough to toy with us, eventually giving us the loss. I’ll take my revenge when they come to the Cell. Why couldn’t the Tigers win their series against the Twins? (Or for that matter, why won’t the Twins go away?). Sox still appear to be crap on the road, especially in the AL West.

The first three games were one-run games. The Tigers could have taken the series, or at worst split it (barring a game-killing error).

The Twins are good and they’ve flown under the radar. The Tigers only play the Twins one more series the entire year. The White Sox (and Indians and Royals) need to do their part and beat up on the Twins.

Sexton reminded me of Sheffield. Great history and no future. Both are swinging slow bats. Sheff and Sexton swing at terrible pitches now. I see no hope for either one.

I can understand all that. What I can’t understand is how the Mariners, after seeing him play all of last year, decided that he would be an adequate first baseman this year. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if the team prepared for the possibility that perhaps Sexson would still suck. Instead they went with a backup plan of Miguel Cairo and Jose Vidro, two people who would have little value even if they could play shortstop, let alone an offensive position. This team is spending over $100 million on payroll, traded away its top prospect to win now, and somehow didn’t foresee this could be a problem.

On the positive side, the Mets’ Mike Pelfrey threw eight shutout innings last night. This has nothing to do with the Mariners or Richie Sexson, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

Watch yourself, or I’ll be forced to play my Dan-Haren-and-Conner-Jackson-and-cash-for-Chin-Lung-Hu-and-Jason-Schmidt magical trade card.

Good points. I don’t think any Mariners fan is happy about the way the Bedard trade has turned out. If they’re like me and a couple of my friends, they’re actually less concerned about losing Adam Jones (.281, 5 HR, 41 RBI, 8 SB) than they are about losing George Sherrill (4.08 ERA, 28 saves).

Erik Bedard? Sure, he’s got a 6-4 record and a 3.67 ERA. He’s also averaging only 5-1/3 innings per start and has apparently decided that he’s not going to throw more than 100 pitches (contributing to wearing out the bullpen), and is now on the DL for the second time. He hardly speaks to the press after a game, and it sounds like he hasn’t made much of an effort to fit into the clubhouse.

Catching: Signing Johjima to a big 3-year extension apparently wasn’t a very popular move in the clubhouse. Especially when the entire pitching staff prefers to pitch to Jamie Burke.

Yuniesky Betancourt: Trying to be Ken Griffey, Jr. when he should be emulating Omar Vizquel. He’s probably the second fastest guy on the team behind Ichiro, but so far this season, with 326 AB he’s drawn a grand total of 6 walks and stolen 1 base, and scored 34 runs (hitting in front of Ichiro!). Meanwhile utility man Willie Bloomquist, with only 111 AB has drawn 18 walks, stolen 11 bases, and scored 23 runs.

The up side of the currently disastrous season is that it finally gave ownership the balls to cut away some serious dead weight in the management department. That Bavasi hung on by his fingernails, idiotic decision after idiotic decision and mediocre season after mediocre season, is an object lesson in indecisive leadership.

Let the rebuilding begin! :rolleyes:

So this passage makes me think of a discussion my father and I had a few days ago, to wit:

Of all the fanbases in Major League Baseball, which is currently suffering from the worst mismanagement on the part of ownership and the GM? Seattle has finally fired Bavasi. Brian Sabean hasn’t really sucked and it is becoming evident that some of his recent sucking might have been a misguided attempt to build around Bonds at all costs. Pittsburgh has what appears to be a sharp new GM, and while it may take some time to turn things around there, at least there’s call for optimism. The Dodgers have a terrible and not-very-bright General Manager, but they have a good roster in spite of him so they’re not eligible.

So what think? Which fanbase is most deserving of our sympathies, now that Seattle has exorcised Bavasi?

It is an interesting question. Most of the hopeless teams in the game have at least started to move in the right direction. Are you just considering from this point forward, or does the past come into play as well. For example, I don’t think the Astros will be very good for a very long time, but they were in a World Series not too long ago, which prevents from feeling too bad for their fans.

All factors are included, so as you say, the Astros, who were good not long ago, probably aren’t eligible. Which team is the team that, if someone came up to you right now and said, “I’m a die-hard XXX fan,” you’d respond with an audible wince?

Washington seems like the easy answer, but I don’t know. Are there die-hard Nationals fans?