These footballers, american or otherwise, monopolise sports talk. I propose a weekly baseball thread. Now that 2 weeks have passed, and we’re entering week 3, let’s talk about our teams.
My Athletics seem to have picked up where last year’s team offensively left off. Thank god for pitching and defense. The Yankees came to town and rookie sensation Travis Buck tripled off the wall in extra innings to win the game. Saturday, not so lucky. Another extra-inning affair with Jason Giambi hitting a home run to end things
Sunday is Harden vs. Pettite, I think. Should be a great game.
I will participate if you make this a weekly ritual.
Both teams showed a lot of great relief pitching the last two days. That was a great way for Giambi to get of the snide. I was happy Bruney got to come back a get a win after taking the loss.
The Red Sox’s rotation is looking really good (7 quality starts in 10 games). The Yankees
had better hope their rotation will shape up, or they may be in trouble. Pavano? Hah. Mussina
is getting old and injury prone (could say the same about Schilling too I guess tho). Pettitte
doesn’t look all that hot either. Wang is on the the DL (non-arm injury), but I have a hunch
that he will be remembered as a member of the Mark Fidyrich Flashes-in-a-Pan (young hurlers
who have one big season not striking anyone out, then proceed to flame out in a hurry). If
anyone can buck that trend tho it’s Wang. Igawa (5th starter) is very much an unknown
quantity but I think it very likely that he isn’t nearly as good as Dice-K.
Tigers are in first place after chipping the ice away to start the season. Verlander is showing how over rated he is by starting at 0-0. His ERA is a towering zero. They have shown the ability to win the tight games. Todd Jones has started very well. Could be a fun season.
White Sox are down to 4th. I feel sorry for K.C. They have to compete in a very nasty division.
B.J. Ryan looked either awful or injured in blowing another save yesterday. If you blow a save by making a mistake pitch and someone lights you up, well, shit happens, but Ryan had no control and no stuff. At 6-5, Toronto is hardly in trouble, but if Ryan is hurt that’s almost $40 million down the drain.
With the way the team’s salaries are structured, they must win something in 2007 because they’re not at all built for the future. the Blue Jays are actually one of the major leagues’ oldest teams. Having Ryan ineffective or on the DL (and with Reed Johnson and Brandon League down, they’ve already had two major injuries) does not bode well.
There is little question that Igawa is not in Dice-K’s class. Dice-k is projected to be an ace & Igawa is projected to be a good 4 or 5.
Wang threw 55 great pitches yesterday, getting through 5 inning extremely efficiently. He should be back in 2 weeks. I doubt he is another ‘Bird’ and many think his Ks will go up over the next two years.
Moose and Schilling are a toss and Andy looked much better in his second start.
Pavano is scary, all Yankee fans expect him to be on the DL again at any moment.
Rasner pitch surprisingly effectively yesterday. I wonder how much of this was the A’s vs. Rasner?
Right now the Yankee strength is without question the Bullpen. It is much better than the Red Sox’s bullpen.
Dodgers have been trading games with the Padres. Our vaunted new powerhouse pitcher (Schmidt) got his ass handed to him last night, lasting all of 2 innings and giving up 6 runs in that amount of time. We’ll see if he settles down or goes on the block mid-season with someone who can deliver with some regularity. OTOH, our feilding has been solid, and we are getting the hits (see Friday’s shellacing of the Padres as evidence). It’s still early, and the Dodgers usually do well up until the All-Star break, at which time the wheels come off. We shall see…
They had better, but despite the low K’s he throws hard. A good comp is likely
Scott Erickson, who eventually developed a strikeout pitch or two.
Stat of the day: Yankees starters’ K/W ratio: 22/18. Red Sox: 49/14. Wang likely
won’t improve on those numbers too much. I am in agreement about the pens-
Theo may need to swing a trade for a good setup man to get the game to Lil’
Papi.
For what it is worth, take a look at Bruney and Rivera*. They appear to be trying to make up for the Starters.
However the fact the Yanks only have 49 total is part of the trouble. Boston has 69 already. Mainly the starters problems has been injuries and lack of innings. This has made for a slow Yankee start.
BJ Ryan’s on the DL, AJ Burnett still looks terrible, Halladay is as good as ever and the rest of the rotation – well, let’s not even go there. It’s going to be a long season, especially while we’re forced to dress Lind or Stairs at left field(less Gold Glovers than lead glovers) and have two automatic outs at the bottom of our lineup while Glaus is out.
The only good news for Toronto is that the offence is still managing to carry the team while Frank Thomas, Troy Glaus and Lyle Overbay have yet to get it going. Without pitching, though, that’s a cold comfort.
My husband and I tried to go to the home opening weekend in Cleveland. Four games snowed out. Then he wanted to go to Milwaukee, but I couldn’t bear the thought.
In any case, good start for the Indians. They’ve won all three series they’ve played, two against the White Sox and one against the Angels. I’m pleased.
CC Sabathia finally managed to start a season 3-0. Paul Byrd is pitching very well. And Jake Westbrook got a big contract (for Cleveland) which gives me hope that they’ll really try to extend CC and Travis Hafner’s contract for good money.
The White Sox hitting looks really bad. Any White Sox fans with insight?
The Mets are off to a good looking start this season. Our defensive potential has been the biggest concern for many but it looks pretty good so far. We have allowed the second lowest total for runs scored in the league (the lowest total belonging to Boston). To me this is a comforting stat. My main concern this season is pitching. I am not too worried about our ability to bring home runs however.
Well Moose and Pavano are on the DL. Chris Britton and AA pitcher Left-hander Chase Wright were called up.
Wright will start Tuesday. Britton is a good bullpen guy, I suspect if a starter is needed Henn will get a start. Wang and Karsten are making good progress and should be back within two weeks.
Today the Yanks had some more defensive issues in the first that help lead to two runs scoring. Andy has settled down very well and completed 5 with 54 pitches. It is time for the Yankee offense to kick into gear.
To my absolute amazement, Towers was great today and they pulled one out. Now 7-5, still sort of in “first place,” inasmuch as that matters in mid-April. Technically Boston’s ahead on percentage.
I wasn’t all that fussy about the Ryan and Burnett signings, but as of right this moment they look like franchise killers. Burnett is just a scatterbrain who has lots of velocity and not a clue what he’s doing with it, and now Ryan is hurt. That said, the team has good young arms if they’re smart enough to use them, instead of recycling has beens like Tomo Okha. Why is Dustin McGowan pitching for Syracuse?
Prior to going out of the lineup, Glaus was hitting .333 with two homers and six walks against just 24 at bats.
Toronto faces Boston and Daisuke Matzuzaka on Tuesday. I’m sick of hearing about the guy already.
The Braves are doing really good so far, starting out with a 8-3 record. Even better is that is against our own division. Our offence isn’t the best, but our starting pitching and bullpen are doing great. Hudson is having the type of season so far that we wished when we signed him. So far we have only one pitcher who isn’t doing that well, Redman. Two of our three losses are because of him.
I would rate our pitching as excellant and our offence at average at this point. But remember, hitting wins games, pitching wins champonships.
Another Tribe fan checking in. God what a strange start to the season. We just went 4-2 on our opening 10 game homestand spread over 2 cities. I’m sure it will be a trivia question someday, like our double header a few years back against 2 different teams. Also strange, we won today despite getting 1 hit by the Sox.
Speaking of cities, Milwaukee showed themselves as a baseball town. They did a great job hosting the Indians vs Angels games and the fans showed up in droves.
The starting pitching has been pretty good and hopefully will get better when Cliff Lee comes off the DL. Other than Hernandez, the bullpen has been OK. As long as they’re OK, we’ll be fine.
The Offense started hot, but then Victor Martinez got hurt, and then the long layoff because of snow and it cooled off considerably. Playing at Jacobs Field in temps under 40 with 25 mile an hour winds probably didn’t help either. (sure didn’t help the White Sox haha)
On to the Bronx, to start a series against the Bankees on Tuesday.
