The Giants and the Reds may clash. Matt Latos is our secret weapon.
Latos pitched well today. He’s a stud. The Reds have a strong team this year. Good luck to you guys.
The Pirates are now 5 losses away from being the first team in major North American professional sport to have 20 consecutive losing seasons.
As much as I would like the Yankees to have a much bigger lead over Baltimore, it helps that they’ve opened up a bigger lead on Oakland. That lead stands at 3 games with one left in the series.
Its amazing given the high tide they were riding a month and a half ago.
Dare I say … Big Red?
I agree, it was such an amazingly stupid trade, I’m glad it is not paying dividends even this year.
I am telling myself this tight race is putting the Yanks in better shape for a real post season run when the team itself hardly looks like world beaters this year.
I didn’t understand it at the time, you can see the evidence in the relevant MLB thread, and I don’t understand it in the future. Maybe they’ve made some other excellent moves, but paying $270 million for a first baseman (and a broken outfielder and a fat, lazy pitcher, if you even care about them) does not seem smart to me.
The Orioles are looking very good now for a place in the Wild Card playoff. They lead the Wild Card race, two games ahead of Oakland, 4.5 ahead of the Angels, and 5.5 ahead of Tampa.
I’m not willing yet to say that they have a lock on a Wild Card playoff spot, because last year’s wild final week shows that just about anything can happen, but they’d really have to fall in a hole now, with only 11 games left to play.
Of course, they are only one game behind the Yankees, and so still have a chance to win the division. After this weekend, Baltimore faces the Blue Jays (4 games), Red Sox (3), and Rays (3), while the Yankees have the Twins (3), Jays (4), and Red Sox (3). Slight advantage to the Yankees there, i think, with the Twins instead of the Rays.
What would really annoy me is if the Orioles get the top Wild Card spot and get bundled out in the Wild Card playoff game. I was opposed to the change in playoff format from the beginning, and i’ll be incredibly pissed if Baltimore gets what would have been the Wild Card spot in previous years, but then gets eliminated from the playoffs by the new system.
At least, the way it stands now, they would get to play that game at Camden Yards. If that happens, i’ll be wishing i still lived in Baltimore.
The new format has its ups and downs.
I’ve gone back and forth on this and have come to the conclusion that, really, the previous format with a more balanced schedule is about as good as it can ever get with 30 teams.
My preference, to be honest, would be to massively expand the major leagues (like, to 40-48 teams, including at least 2 more in the NYC area) take 12 games off the regular season, and go to a 16-team playoff format with a first round that’s extremely weighted towards the higher ranking team, but you have to consider the fact that I am utterly insane.
I disagree. I don’t know that I am 100% on board with the trade, but I am maybe 75% of the way there. I think it is only amazingly stupid if you look at it as 1) going all in to win now, which it wasn’t 2)look at it under the current financial paradigm of the MLB and the Dodgers ownership just isn’t operating that way. Even with the addition of the salary they fall below the 2013 luxury tax. Then look at free agency at 1st base and left field and tell me that they could do better than AGon and Crawford who even considering how horrible (or non existent) they have been this year are still better than what they had. Becket was a throw in that they had to take to get the other guys.
And lest you think I am just being a homer, here is Johna Kerry writing something similar for Grantland a little while back.
Hmm. Mariners have taken 2 in a row over Texas. Sweep today?
They solved all of the Red Sox’s money problems in one blow but yet gave up actual prospects. That is one strike for any deal and a big second one if you happen to hate the Red Sox.
Crawford is a seriously and grossly overpaid player with a really long contract. That is if he even recovers to what he was for Tampa. No one can be sure he will. For what he has been the last 2 years his contract is a travesty for a team to carry.
A-Gon is the only valuable piece the got and even his salary is probably too much, much like Teix for the Yanks though not as bad as Pujols for the Angels.
It was a terrible trade. Johna Kerry is just plain wrong.
Did either of you read the article by Jonah Keri?
Crawford is at this point no more valuable than any one of a dozen outfielders you could get. He was never a really great player, and now he’s hurt and of questionable value, period.
What the Dodgers appear to have ended up with is Adrian Gonzalez at a cost higher than Albert Pujols. I am struggling to see how the trade makes any sense.
The Jonah Keri argument seems to be that it doesn’t matter at all, that upgrading from James Loney to Adrian Gonzalez is worth it at any price because the Dodgers can pay any price. But while the Dodgers can afford a lot, there IS an upper limit, and they sure as hell can’t afford $30 million per year per position, which is now fundamentally what first base is costing them, unless Carl Crawford makes a hell of a comeback in late 2013/2014 or Josh Beckett returns to form (which could happen.) And we’re assuming Gonzalez plays well. So far, Gonzalez in a Dodger uniform has been utterly disastrous.
What’s funny is the Baseball Prospectus guys have done this before, said the same thing, when the Dodgers were bought by FOX in 1998. “Holy crap, now there’s an owner who can pay anything they want for players!” But they didn’t, because there IS a limit as to how much money anyone is willing to burn.
Yes, it is silly.
I hadn’t really been following his progress, but i looked it up and he really has been bad. He hit a homer in his first game for the Dodgers, and has done basically nothing since then.
Yanks and O’s both lose today. On to the last 3 series of the season!
Indeed, his line looks just like, well, James Loney.
Which is a good point, and there is no doubt that AGon has been bad, it’s been a crazy slump. I have to trust ownership when they say that they won’t really concern themselves with payroll any time soon. They are looking to make more on their TV deal than the Angels did and were able to pay for the ball club in cash so they are clearly starting from a point of being flush.
I have to believe that AGon will be better than James Loney in the long run (though it is hilarious that he hasn’t been so far), and I don’t think there is anyone else out there in free agency, there sure isn’t anyone in the farm system which has* tons and tons* of arms, but no bats. If you take the money out of the picture Carl Crawford just needs to be better than Shane Victorino or…no one. They had negative WAR players in LF before Victorino, and Victorino has been awful but still an improvement. The bar isn’t high for Crawford to make the team better and if you take money out of the picture that’s all this is about, making a better team.
Think of it this way, if this was a fantasy trade the whole league would have vetoed the trade because the Red Sox got suckered and destroyed competitive balance. If the money doesn’t matter that’s essentially what happened here too. Maybe it does matter, but right now they are saying it doesn’t, who are we to disagree?