Baseball Thread May 2008

The Game Room
81

[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
The Reds offense is in some kind of a funk. They are getting quality pitching from their starters (except Arroyo), but they simply CAN NOT SCORE! It’s driving me nuts! Last night, lost 3-0, despite a good outing by Aaron Harang.

We are awful.
[/QUOTE]

Rubber match this afternoon and with Leiber pitching you might be able to reverse that whole not scoring thing. Was it me or does Aramis Ramirez have some sort of a cast on his arm? I had to watch last night at the hospital as my sister in law had a baby and only caught the game in bits and pieces.

82

[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
The Reds offense is in some kind of a funk. They are getting quality pitching from their starters (except Arroyo), but they simply CAN NOT SCORE! It’s driving me nuts! Last night, lost 3-0, despite a good outing by Aaron Harang.
[/QUOTE]

The Toronto Blue Jays have a team ERA of 3.32.

And they have a losing record.

Tell me about it.

83

[QUOTE=silenus]
As long as we keep Ethier off the field, we will never be playing “our best players every day.”
[/quote]
Couldn’t agree more. I think Pierre deserves to play every day. Just not on our team. Ethier needs to be on that field as much as humanly possible.

What bugs me is that having both Pierre and Jones on the squad keeps Ethier and Kemp from playing daily. It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever wished for the DH in the NL. Let Pierre swing his Nerf bat and run the bases and leave Jones in center field.

There’s probably something seriously wrong with me for even thinking this, but I have this feeling Schmidt is going to prove valuable in the second half this year. If/when Loaiza falls apart, I like keeping Kuo in long relief if Schmidt can handle being a starter again. Honestly, Loaiza hasn’t been bad in middle relief himself. And as you say, if Schmidt can’t make it, Kershaw is no Edwin Jackson and will likely do just fine.

While I think most of your points regarding the DeWitt/LaRoche comparison are valid, this quoted statement isn’t quite true. DeWitt has been ranked twice as the 8th best prospect in the organization and 43rd overall in the minors. He was listed by Baseball America as a top ten “cream of the crop” prospect in the organization just last year. I’m not saying that makes him superstar material, but he’s not a nobody, either. So while LaRoche is clearly ranked higher, DeWitt is not exactly an accident himself. I’m not recommending that LaRoche be traded, but I would not be surprised to see DeWitt perform well at third if he continues to see a lot of playing time.

84

[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
Rubber match this afternoon and with Leiber pitching you might be able to reverse that whole not scoring thing. Was it me or does Aramis Ramirez have some sort of a cast on his arm? I had to watch last night at the hospital as my sister in law had a baby and only caught the game in bits and pieces.
[/QUOTE]

Congrats Uncle! Do the right thing and have the child avoid a life of frustration, don’t raise the kid a Cub fan, raise a Cards fan! :smiley:

85

[QUOTE=cards]
Congrats Uncle! Do the right thing and have the child avoid a life of frustration, don’t raise the kid a Cub fan, raise a Cards fan! :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Case in point: Cubs are currently down to their last two outs, losing 9-0 to the mighty Cincinnati Reds. Maybe the Cards can pick up a game tonight.

86

[QUOTE=cards]
Congrats Uncle! Do the right thing and have the child avoid a life of frustration, don’t raise the kid a Cub fan, raise a Cards fan! :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Too late, we start them early around these parts. My girlfriend stopped by the Cubs store on her way to the hospital and got him a Cubbies onesie, booties, bib, and skull cap, but thanks for the contrats!

ETA- Bah, fucking Reds. :smiley:

87

[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
Too late, we start them early around these parts. My girlfriend stopped by the Cubs store on her way to the hospital and got him a Cubbies onesie, booties, bib, and skull cap, but thanks for the contrats!

ETA- Bah, fucking Reds. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Wow. SEVEN homeruns! THREE by Joey Votto!
Edison Volquez, our new pitcher, he’s now 5-1 and today he had four hits, no runs, 10 strikeouts and SIX walks!
Crazy beatdown.

I hope the Reds can now make some hay against the recently struggling Mets. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we want to entertain the idea of catching up to those Cardinals…

88

Probability is coming back to bite Baltimore, as expected.

After going 8-3 in one-runs games to start the season, the Orioles have just lost 3 games by a total of 4 runs to the Oakland A’s, including two one-run games (both of which went to extra innings).

The Birds are now back where they belong, in the sub-.500 zone, and at the bottom of the AL East, having lost 8 of their last 10.

I say this with no (well, not much) rancor. Baltimore is in such dismal shape that, even without a jerkoff like Peter Angelos calling the shots, they would need a few years to get back to winning. Even at just below .500, they are doing better than most people expected, and i would very much like it if they could continue to defy expectations. But i don’t think it’s going to happen.

The Blue Jays pitching continues to be amazing, having given up 19 runs in their last 10 games. While the offense has, to be charitable, continued to stink, they did manage 6 runs against the Rays yesterday, and have won 5 of their last 6.

The Yankees are also struggling a bit, and last night even perennial winner Chien-Ming Wang couldn’t save them from a loss, after Cleveland’s Cliff Lee held them scoreless. Lee’s 0.83 ERA is amazing enough, but he also has a WHIP of about 0.60, having issued 25 hits and 2 walks (!) in 44+ innings of work.

Boston continues to steam along, and pulled off a great comeback against the Tigers last night, only to be denied the win by some extremely lucky Tigers bounces in the bottom of the 9th. A couple of infield hits, followed by a broken bat bloop single, gave Detroit what was probably an undeserved win.

89

Well, your birds are in Kansas City this weekend. So unless last night was a genuine wake-up call for Royal bats rather than a fluke, you stand a pretty good chance of winning a few. And you won’t have to face Zach Grienke at all (barring freakishly long extra-inning games).

90

Apparently the WSox can’t put two wins together. I wouldn’t have minded the loss, but 1) the game should’ve been PPD; and, 2) 13-1? WTF? Clearly, they did not come to play.

91

[QUOTE=mazinger_z]
I wouldn’t have minded the loss, but 1) the game should’ve been PPD
[/QUOTE]
Why?

Sure, they started 1 hour and 44 minutes late, but with the way the schedule is in Major League Baseball, they have to get the game in if they can. They have about 185 days during the regular season, in which each team has to fit in 162 games. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare days, especially when travel is taken into account.

The White Sox already have a suspended game against Baltimore (April 28) to complete, and a postponed game against the Twins (April 10) to play. Letting even more of these pile up early in the season would make things difficult down the road, and a delay of under 2 hours is not especially unusual, nor that much of a hardship.

92

[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
How come Ankiel can throw strikes from 200 feet when he couldn’t from 60 feet, 6 inches?
Yes, I know there’s no real answer, but still …
[/QUOTE]

From personal experience ,I understand. I had a big arm when I was growing up. I played outfield and could throw accurately to home plate and other bases with little trouble. Every now and then a coach would try to move me to pitcher. I couldn’t throw strikes to save my life. Anyone batting would have been in danger. I tried and tried but it would not go where I aimed.

93

Looking forward to seeing the A’s and the Rangers tomorrow night. The Rangers actually seem to be playing a bit better although their pitching is still close to the bottom of the majors. The A’s are coming off a sweep of the O’s and I’ll predict they take at least 2 of 3 from Texas this weekend.

The D-backs have come back down to earth. Still, I’d rather see them playing .500 ball than go on a long losing streak.

94

Well, the Braves continue to be a team of opposites. 13-4 at home, 4-11 on the road. They’ve allowed the fewest runs in the league, yet are 0-9 in one-run games. The injuries to the pitching staff have been too numerous to list, but they have the best ERA in the NL.

Oh yeah, Chipper’s hitting .430-ish, with an OPS well north of 1.200. If you watch any of his ABs, he’s waiting for that one pitch he can handle, and He Is Not Missing It. Obviously he has to cool off, but for now, I don’t recall anyone being this hot for this long since Pudge Rodriguez a decade or so back.

95

[QUOTE=mhendo]
Why?

[/QUOTE]
Purely personal reasons. Also, I didn’t have much confidence in their ability to win as the temperatures grew colder and the day drew on. All hunch and instinct and no actual facts behind it. I understand the schedule, but putting off a loss later is much better than getting one now, imho.

96

A couple observations. The umps seem to be calling checked swings differently this year. i see more strikes called on what appears to be a checked swing than in previous years. Did they change a rule somewhere?
Broken bats. They break like crazy and I have seen a couple incidents where the bat narrowly missed hitting a player. Once a pitcher . But our second baseman had to avoid a piece of a bat to catch a slow grounder a couple days ago. Some one is going to get hit with a bat shard.

97

I’m not sure how he is doing it, I guess he has turned into a Righty version of Jamie Moyer, but Moose keeps racking up wins. He is 5-3 now despite another not very good game. 3 runs in only 5 innings.

He looks very hittable and yet seems to just get by.

Jim

98

[QUOTE=cmkeller]
Well, your birds are in Kansas City this weekend. So unless last night was a genuine wake-up call for Royal bats rather than a fluke, you stand a pretty good chance of winning a few. And you won’t have to face Zach Grienke at all (barring freakishly long extra-inning games).
[/QUOTE]
Well, the Birds got a win tonight after an excellent complete game, 1-run, 3-hit performance by Daniel Cabrera. When he doesn’t walk people—he only issued a single base-on-balls tonight—he really has the stuff to be a great pitcher.

KC pitcher Hochevar actually pitched pretty well too, giving up only 5 hits and two walks in 7 innings. Unfortunately for him, one of those walks and one of the hits came early in the 3rd inning, and were followed by Markakis’ three-run homer. That was really his only bad inning, although the other Baltimore run did score on a pretty bad wild pitch.

The Orioles are now 22-5 in KC over the past few years, and hopefully the next couple of days will add to the record.

99

Lord, but the Blue Jays offense is terrible.

I wonder what the record is for the worst team to have a really good pitching staff.

Tonight’s game was particularly galling, as they went something like 1-for-89 with runners in scoring position, including three strikeouts after Rios tripled to lead off the tenth. The first, Shannon Stewart, was just an unbelievably terrible at-bat; Stewart just didn’t look prepared to hit at all, and on a 2-2 count watched an 89-MPH fastball go right down the pipe. It was inexcusable that a major league hitter would strike out that way. What function Stewart serves, I cannot discern.

100

Houston with Oswalt, Clemens and Pettitte were pretty limp hitters as was Arizona with Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and a couple other guys. There’s been plenty of teams with that trouble.