I absolutely cannot get a handle of this season so far at this point. All of the teams which were in the playoffs last year appear very underwhelming this year, opening the door perhaps to a sea-change in the established AL order.
My Red Sox are as maddeningly puzzling as ever. First the pitching staff starts uncharacteristically walking everyone in sight, then the offense wakes up for a dozen games and scores oodles of run, only to completely die for the last 6 games at the exact same time that the starters all throw some real gems. I don’t know if all the veteran hitters on this team all got old at once, or what; in all I really have no idea how good they are going to be for the rest of the year.
The Yankees have exactly two people in their rotation that they can count on. Their offense also appears to be aging badly, with two of their best hitters on the DL. Yeah I thought they were toast last year after that 22-31 start, but one year they won’t be able to rally themselves out of an early funk.
The Indians and Tigers have both been very underwhelming, but have managed to get within 1.5 of the division lead despite their indifferent play.
The Angels are 18-12 yes, but their opponent’s OPS is 12 points higher than their offense’s.
It may be that the small market Rays win the East, and the White Sox, Tigers, and Indians all fight it out for the Central, while Billy Beane’s s*** works once again in the West after yet another fire sale.
Seems like when Jamey Carrol and Asdrubal Cabrera are in the Tribe lineup, the Indians win. Wednesday, they both started and we won a solid game. Last night, Asdrubal was in and then Jamey came in as a pinch runner in the late innings and we ended up winning.
Just sayin’…
Also, we only play the Yanks 7 times this year. The last 3 games against them are next week. We totally luck out if all their dudes are still on the DL. Yay!
Yes. I was going to be late for an appointment so I didn’t have time to discuss them. My short summary of the Senior League is that it will still likely be the Mets, Phils, and maybe the Braves in the East, but none of them excite me much at all, the Cubs may have finally put together a pennant-winning-quality squad (i.e. not one which meekly bows out in the first round even if they make the playoffs), and the D-Backs are oozing young talent out their wazoo. It’s been awhile since a young team has had almost all their kids develop like mad at once (mid 80’s Mets? But they had a goodly number of vets too)-only happens once every 30 years or so but is wondrous when it does.
Just curious, anyone know a way to find out exactly which Fox game my local area is going to get in advance? I know there are web sites which show the NFL games a local area will get and they’re usually updated by Wednesday of that week.
A whopping two of our original starting pitchers for the season are still in the rotation. We’ve had more injuries, call-ups, and send-downs in a month than… well, it seems like we’ve done a lot more this year than we did in April 2007.
I guess we should just be happy that now we get a whole season to evaluate our young talent! (And everybody else’s, in preparation for trades…)
The Rays just came off their best month ever and started off May with a win over the Orioles who also had a very good April. It will be interesting to see how the Boston series goes this weekend.
I’ve tried to become a Rays fan, since I live here, but they’ve generally sucked as bad as sucking can go. Now it’s like a miracle: they’ve found pitching, defense, relief and hitting all at the same time. The big question is can it last? I hope it can for a while at least, since I’d really like my son to become a fan of our hometown team, even if they’ll never be able to compete with the Yankees, Sox or Orioles in terms of salary.
While i understand that Tampa is a low-budget team, the Orioles aren’t exactly a financial powerhouse, with a 2008 payroll in the bottom third of all major league teams. Putting them in the same category as the Yankees and Red Sox is a bit of a stretch.
Don’t make excuses. Baltimore use to compete with the other two. As recently as 1998 their payroll was near the top with Yanks, Red Sox, Dodgers and Braves. The O’s owner has mismanaged his team and ruined a great money maker. At least for a while.
That Baltimore has chosen not to spend does not mean it cannot. Tampa cannot spend.
The Cubbies managed to slip out of first place yesterday thanks to the runs given up by Kerry Wood in the 9th inning, but tonight we begin the real series…second place Cubs against first place Cards. There will be blood…
ETA- Geo Soto is shaping up to be one more of the increadible players coming from our farm system. The kid has lots of good things going for him.
The fact that Peter Angelos is a giant asshole and refuses to spend money on the team is incidental. Whether the lack of money is due to lack of means (Tampa) or lack of will (Baltimore), the consequences are the same for the people trying to put together a team.
If you enter the baseball market with a limit of about $70 million to spend on a team (about what Baltimore is spending this year), then the team you build is restricted by that amount of money. It doesn’t matter whether the restrictions on the amount are arbitrary or not.
Look at it this way: if i hire you to run my baseball team, and tell you that you’ve got to build a team on $70 million dollars, what difference does it make to you, as the person looking for talent, whether i actually have more than $70 million in the bank or not? If i have $150 million, and only give you $70 million, it might make me an asshole, but it doesn’t change the challenges you face in trying to construct a team.
The fact is that, for whatever reason, Baltimore is a $67 million team, and Boston and New York are $130+ million teams. As long as this situation persists, it’s silly to compare Baltimore with those teams just because the owner is a selfish asshole who mismanages the team and keeps as much money as possible for himself.
It’s kind of clunky, but if you go here on the Fox sports site and choose your provider, choose a date and then choose your sport, you can see what is playing on your local network (only if your local network has a game for the day chosen will it be in the dropdown).
I was able to see that WJW in Cleveland is showing the Cubs/Cardinals on May 3.
OK, that is fair. I thought you were being another dumb O’s fan claiming your team was a small market team. I have gotten sick of hearing it and made assumptions I should not have about your post.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, most Orioles fans i know are well aware of where the blame lies for the ongoing shittiness of the team, and none of them blame it on a “small market.”
Like me, many of them were pissed when MLB handed Angelos a big wad of cash and control of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network in compensation for bringing the Nationals into “his” media market. They should have told him to go screw himself. The metro DC-Baltimore area is plenty big enough to support two teams, and if he put together a decent team, he might get more than 10,000 people on nights when the Red Sox or the Yankees are not in town.
I was there for a Rays game the other night, and while the official attendance was about 11,500, there’s no way there were more than about 4,000 people in the ballpark. It’s pretty dismal.
Whew! What a nail-biter. The Cardinals beat the Cubs in the bottom of the 11th, in the battle for the NL Central. This is turning out to be a very interesting season.
Cubs fans: How do you feel about Alfonso Soriano now?
I wish I coulda seen the game. I had to settle for reading about it this morning and catching a couple of the free highlights on mlb.com. Yikes, Soriano looked bad on that “ground-rule double”. I’m worried about the closer situtation now, though. Isringhausen hasn’t been sharp, and I dunno who is poised to take his place. McClellan has been good, but is he ready to vault into the closer role after a month in the big leagues? Villone? I’m waiting for the old Ron Villone to return any day now. But, aside from that, the Cards are looking tough. How about Shumaker’s hitting lately? Wow. He’s not a big guy, but he put a helluva a swing on that homer last night.
Given that the Cubs were only in the 11th inning because of Soriano’s home run off Isringhausen, I’m quite happy to have him back!!
I WOULD, however, like to get into Piniella’s mind and implant the very serious suggestion that he NEVER EVER EVER take Wood out of the bullpen to close a game again. :smack:
Four more runs today… amazing! Frodo’s doing his best to ensure they lose today, 0-for-2 plus a costly error. But Halladay refuses to lose easily.
Honestly, is there a more overrated player in baseball than David Eckstein? Aww, it’s so cute that the little short guy’s playing in the major leagues. I guess it’s just the cynic in me that tends to notice the .248 average and the dreadful fielding.
