Passionately undeveloped opinions on the state of baseball, the shifting landscape of stats and analysis, and the opiate power of El Pato tomato sauce
We are about a quarter of the way through the season so by now we have a general idea of what the hell is going on this year. Not necessarily why said hell is going on, but what is understood. Generally. Anyways, I enjoy the ole’ “if the playoffs ended today” arguments, so let’s see what we’ve got.
In the AL, the Rangers have run away with the West, up 5 games on .500 A’s and owning a +84 run differential. They are in good shape. In the Central, it’s the Tige…no! Cleveland, come on down! The surprise Indians are 5 game s over .500, but do own a negative run differential. In fact, the only team with a positive differential in the division is the White Sox. Go figure. The Tigers are a game below .500 and at -5. In the East the world has turned upside down. The fracking Orioles have the 2nd best record in baseball and lead the division by 2 games. Next is the Rays 2 games back and with the same differential; they earn a wild card. And the last wild card goes to our one Northern team; the Blue Jays are third and own the best differential in the division (+34).
AL Wildcard Playoff: Rays vs. Blue Jays
AL Divisional Matchups: Orioles vs. Rays/Jays, Rangers vs. Indians
The NL is seemingly more cut-and-dry, but still pretty damn fun. Just like the AL West, the NL West is being stolen like….whatever gets stolen a lot. 1995 Honda Civics? The Dodgers own the best record in baseball (can I just abbreviate that as BRiB from now on? Cool) and a +44 run differential. Sorry Giants, you’re going to have to do better than hover around .500 and 0. The Central is a tight race between the Cardinals and Reds, but as of writing the Cardinals have a 1 game advantage and +58 run differential. They have lost 7 of their last 10 though; probably wishing the playoffs could start now. That leaves us with the NL East, where los Bravos have stormed back from a early slump to hold a 1.5 lead over the Nationals (Merry Strasmas). Somehow the Mets are tied for third with their terrible run differential (-31) with the schizophrenic Marlins. And that brings us the Wild Card fun. The Nationals get the first wild card spot easy. But the Marlins and Mets are tied, and if I’m reading the MLB tie rules correctly that instigates a 1 game playoff to get to the actual 1 game playoff. Baseball’s blowing up! It would absolutely terrific to see the Marlins and Mets battle it out for the right to play the Nationals…for the right to play the Dodgers. So cool.
NL Wildcard: Nationals vs. Mets/Marlins
NL Divisional Matchups: Dodgers vs. Nationals/Mets/Marlins (lol), Braves vs. Cardinals
So there you go. No Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Phillies, or Giants. Man I wish the season was over so we could actually see this.
-High Pockets
As Baseball Think Factory (via HardballTalk) reminds us, today is the 100th anniversary of Ty Cobb flipping his shit and attacking some bystander in the stands. Take it away oddly non-serious baseball recap:
Cobb gets in touch with a fan…pugilistically.
Oh Detroit, you really haven’t changed. Applauding Ty Cobb for pummeling a man during a baseball game. I honestly can’t decide if my favorite part of the recap (written in The Sun (NY)) is the matter-of-fact language or the references to food: mill, fracas, commotion, coarse (as in language) vs. delectable and grilling.
Hopefully the next time someone tried to butter Cobb up instead of getting under his husk….
…
…(sorry, I just really wanted to make a food metaphor tag, a la Fire Joe Morgan.)
High Pockets is “busy” in the middle of a well deserved honeymoon (mazel tov), but it couldn’t really have been worse timing considering the Friday-Sunday baseball schedule. I guess we’ll all see where his priorities lie, or if it registers with him at all.
It has been an admittedly good early season to follow this game of bases and bats, but with ~1/4 of the games down, it all is starting to finally feel like a competition rather than a ceremony. Some stories so far:
What we have to watch this weekend:
Tune in, amigos.
This post is paraphrased from and inspired by the transcendent broadcast that Vin Sculley gave during the bottom of the 9th inning of tonight’s Braves/Dodgers game. I’ll have to check the numbers but I believe Sculley has now crushed 200,000 consecutive innings of baseball commentary:
Craig Kimbrel had nearly every bone in his left foot broken when he was in high school. He was helping his dad with some home improvement and 800 lbs. of sheet rock fell on him. Not to be deterred by things like “absence of usable limbs,” Kimbrel’s post-injury rehab included playing catch while crouched on his knees. Pretty soon he was able to play long toss from this position, and could throw it roughly the length of a football field. The exercise led to Kimbrel developing a profound sense of coordination of his upper body muscles. Once he could start throwing while standing again, it felt like cheating.
At this point I spoiled my own enjoyment and had to look this up. It is of course true. Here’s a link to a Sports Illustrated profile, including the above genesis myth and the following gem of a quote from the legend himself:
“It’s kind of weird to say that breaking your foot is the best thing that could happen to you, but it seems like it ended up working out that way.”
Preposterous.
Great quality headshots of deadballers
We probably should have linked to this a long time ago.
One of my closest friends is a guy I went to high school with, lost contact with during college, and then started hanging out with again about 3 years ago like we hadn’t missed a step. I reflect upon our friendship much more than a man should be willing to admit, mostly because I find so many similarities within our lives and our outlooks. Anybody that knows both of us probably thinks it’s absurd for me to compare our disparate paths thus far, and at first glance that’s a fair observation. But the truth of the matter is that our friendship is based almost entirely on similarities. We both get far too wound up about the general state of things, the failings of our regional and national society, inequality, etc. We both fret far too much about what we’re ultimately going to do with our lives, whether these advanced degrees reflect even a little bit on how we hope to see the future unfold, how much of our actions are motivated by the expectations of others, etc. We both go absolutely insane when we bear witness to the vast majority of our high school peers, baffled at their priorities, how unimportant our lives would feel if we were concerned about whateverthefuckitis these people feel the need to tweet about or post on Facebook. We also catch ourselves deep within these hypocrisies, just as incomplete and unfulfilled as our targets because we seem to care about what they care about, browsing the social networks for things to get enraged about.
Most importantly, we seek each other out when we just need to blow off steam. At various points in the last 4 years we’ve helped each other digest serious relationship issues, worries about sudden onset health problems, thoughts and strategies on how to deal with poverty, and how to avoid the feeling that our lives evaporate when we do work that we don’t find important. Generally, we get blitzed drunk and go to a concert or a baseball game. I have a health and physiology background and suspect that this isn’t the healthiest way to deal with it, but I’ve also got about 3 years worth of data suggesting that it’s the healthiest things that we do. When you wake up with a hangover and are able to laugh, the coworkers you were yelling about and the politicians you couldn’t stand just 12 hours earlier seem comically insignificant.
Anyway, yesterday was a day to see a baseball game, and of note we didn’t have to drink too much to have the desired effect. It’s not important what we were fretting about this time, and I’m not even sure that I could say for certain that we had specific things that had us so agitated. But we both knew that a couple of bleacher seats and some sunflower seeds would probably smooth things out. The Braves were in Phoenix for a 5:10pm start, and there was a festival being thrown by a local brewery beforehand, titled “Randomonium.” Perfecto.
As I write this I realize that yesterday was the first time in a while that I got any significant amount of sunlight. My skin is a bit itchy and red, which it hasn’t been for some time. We got thoroughly dehydrated as we watched little kids roll around in those giant inflatable hamster balls, drinking overpriced margaritas dispensed by barely dressed coeds. It made me feel super old. I thought I’d probably hurt myself if I tried out one of those hamster balls. This chubby girl in a bikini serving margaritas was trying so hard to be sexy for tips, but she just looked like such a child. Was college really that long ago? But the difference between fretting about your wasted life in the real world and observing it passively during a couple hours of insanity is the difference between feeling your heart race and feeling your heart slow down. I was at ease.
The game was nothing spectacular except that we were there. Check out the twitter feed for some real time observations, which are decidedly unimportant. The right field bleachers were excellent because we could see how much of a monster Jason Heyward is in real life, and also be part of the escalating clash between “Lets go DBacks!” and the omnipresent Tomahawk Chop. It was the passive racists who would prevail on this day after Kimbrel and Venters sent down the last 6 batters on Ks. My friend asked, “What’s different about that little short dude’s (Kimbrel) body that he’s able to do things like that?”
I had no answer, and it is a question I’m still pondering. What is so different about one body versus the next? How can two brains process such different observations? Are we the lucky or the unlucky? None of this brooding may sound like very much fun, but it really is relaxing and empowering for my friend and I.
Do you like baseball? And text walls? Then you have come to the right place. We here at Deadballers: Ducky and High Pockets Presents… present (?) our belated week 2 roundup of all the action from Major League Baseball. [Editor’s Note: All action we saw in game, in highlights, or gleaned from boxscores and Baseball-Reference. Thanks, internet!] Forth, and fear no darkness! [2nd Editor's Note: All standings were before last nights games. Deal with it.]
NL East
Nats (8-3, +15 run differential)
Mets (7-3, +5)
Braves (5-5, -4)
Phillies (5-5, +4)
Miami (4-6, -6)
I guess the Nationals just don’t much enjoy giving up runs, which is nice for their fanbase. I’m still incredibly skeptical about their prospects for this year, but this is an obviously dangerous team for the next few years. As a Braves fan, I sort of feel like the Louis CK joke about being White: enjoy it while it lasts and don’t apologize, because when the tables are turned, it’s gonna get ugly.
I continue to have a perverse attraction to the #lolmets. As a team, there just really isn’t anything to be attracted to unless you are attracted to chaos and failure the way I am. Jason Bay hit an opposite field home run, which I suspect was a nice surprise. Johan Santana is no longer injured, which is a nice surprise while it lasts. I suppose the ultimate attraction to all of this for me is that I know it’s an extremely tenuous success, even by the standards of professional baseball.
As a Braves fan, fuck the Mets. 0-4 against the asshole neighbors upstairs. Jason Heyward has looked terrific so far, but the bullpen situation has been too much to handle. Relatedly, funnier people than I have developed some very accurate flow charts. And who doesn’t love a good flowchart joke? It will be fun to watch so many young pitchers get better and better, and every time Chipper Jones goes 1st to 3rd without falling apart will be a victory. But there’s so much more potential than that.
I guess the Phillies don’t much enjoy scoring runs, which is not so pleasant for their fanbase. I imagine it doesn’t taste too great to lose a couple walkoffs to the Pirates and drop a couple to the aforementioned #lolmets early on. I also suspect that they’re gonna be teasing a hundred wins and laughing off the press of a 5-5 start. “Oh no! ESPN has us 12th in the week 3 power rankings!!!”
We couldn’t fight off the Marlins nonsense forever, much to my personal chagrin. They hit a couple of homeruns and watched the slow motion dolphin sumersault occasional water ejaculation machine.* After seeing it twice on replay, I’m pretty safely over it. Back to pondering the willful disregard for public policy and public wellness by continuing to demand public financing for this kind of crap.
*I believe the official name is “home run sculpture,” as if anybody will refer to it as such.
NL Central
Cardinals (7-3, +23)
Astros (4-6, -1)
Reds (4-6, -9)
Brewers (4-6, -14)
Pirates (3-7, -11)
Cubs (3-7, -8)
I rooted for the Cardinals really hard throughout the World Series because I hate having to deal with victory in my Texas and Milwaukee based friendships. It’s not pleasant and I’m not proud of it, but there you go. I thought they were kind of a shitty team that dramatically overplayed for like 7-8 weeks at the right time. But damn, the kids are playing well. I guess now we’ll call it a 10 week hot stretch.
Big moment for the ‘stros when they were above .500 for the first time since they were 51-50 on July 21st 2009. When you digest that length of time, Being 3-1 feels like a big deal. Who am I to take that away from them?
(Note that I started writing these this morning. Astros are now 4-7, which feels about right. Also, I guess this is very much taking away the success of the start after saying I wouldn’t.)
I have no idea what to think about the Reds at this point. They’ve played Washington and StL, two teams I just got done slobbering over, and played them pretty mediocre. So who knows. I know Chapman is getting screwed by Dusty Baker, but everybody knows that. Stay tuned for more developed thoughts.
Milwaukee can still swing the bats pretty ridiculously, and they’ve got 3 pitchers with ace potential that also have the potential to blow up on any given weeknight. Based on how 10 games have gone there looks like a huge gap between StL and the Brewers, but I think the season prospects are right about even.
There are way too many teams in this division. Pittsburgh sucks. Walkoff wins twice in 3 games against Philly was pretty tight.
The Cubs are going to be really bad for a long time. Stay tuned for more developed opinions. I’m shooting for September 2014.
NL West
Dodgers (9-1, +17)
DBacks (7-3, +11)
Giants (4-6, -3)
Rockies (4-6, -10)
Padres (3-8, -9)
I think the Dodgers consist of a terrific hitter, a terrific pitcher, and 23 scrubs. They deserve a 9-1 start more than anybody else. Kemp has WAR’d 1.2 in 10 games, which is hilarious.
I think the DBacks are the best team in the division by a margin, but they haven’t really wowed anybody yet. Chris Young is having a hell of a month and they’re 7-3 with Justin Upton basically in neutral. They’re also giving Collmenter starts, which very few teams should be able to justify.
San Francisco operates under a non-budget. I’m excited to see what kind of cash they offer Buster Posey, but besides that there’s not very much interesting to me about this team. But I’m also not looking very hard.
As I continue to write this, I’m aware of how little I know about a team on average. I know CarGo and Tulowitzki have been instrumental in my posting a 14 game Beat the Streak on mlb.com, but otherwise I need to start doing some research.
Tell you what, I have a major paper and presentation due the first week of May. So after maybe 20 more games I’ll unload something insightful. In the meantime, High Pockets has the AL locked down. I’ll blame it on the DH and 2 fewer teams.
Signing off,
Ducky
AL East
Baltimore (6-4, +6 run differential)
Toronto (5-4, +12)
Tampa Bay (5-5, -19)
New York (5-5, +2)
Boston (4-6, +3)
These are the bizarro standings for the final day of pretty much every season for the past decade. Baltimore responded to a sweep by the Yankees by taking 2 of 3 from Toronto and Wieters hitting a game-clinching grandslam in the 10th against the ChiSox last night. The O’s have received good pitching so far, other than Brian Matusz, though scoring 5 runs a game is most likely not sustainable.
Toronto, meanwhile, has 4 starters with WHIPs below 1.10 and an offense that is slightly underperforming. If they can stay healthy they might pose a legitimate threat to the powers-that-be. They get 3 against Tampa, then go on a nice 9 game run on what is a not great Baltimore team, struggling KC, and mediocre Seattle. They could be in first at the end of the month.
Tampa Bay was on the receiving end of some Red Sox angst but squeaked out yesterday’s Patriot Day game thanks to some generous strike calls. Their -19 run differential looks terrifying at first glance, but they did just finish a week against Detroit and Boston. I’ll cut them some slack (generous of me, I know), though a DH for Sean Rodriguez (39 OPS+) might be more effective than one for the pitchers.
New York swept the O’s as mentioned, took 2 of 3 from LA, and then lost yesterday to the Twins and Carl Pavano. I don’t get it. Their best hitter? Derek Jeter (190 OPS+). Teixeira is off to his typical April start (read: slow) and not one of their starters has a WHIP below 1.35. This kind of feels like a mid-00s Texas team; they can absolutely mash, but their pitching is in batten down the hatches mode. After 3 more games against Minny they run the gauntlet of Boston, Texas, and Detroit.
And then we get to Boston. Aside from Bobby V being Bobby V and Cody Ross getting rung up on balls to end the Patriot Day game (see above), this team has had a decent recovery from their 1-5 start. Taking 3 of 4 from Tampa is definitely something to be proud of, and losing to Los Tigres is no shame. The offense could use a boost, especially from Valentine’s current favorite Youkilis, and from everyone’s favorite breakout player Jacoby Ellsbury. The cinderella outfielder is currently hitting .192/.300/.269. Oh, and Josh Beckett has given up 5 home runs.
AL Central
Detroit (7-3, +15)
Chicago (5-4, -1)
Cleveland (4-4, +2)
Minnesota (3-7, -16)
Kansas City (3-7, -11)
Justin Verlander is an amazing and devastating pitcher. The Tigers have to be hoping he can keep this up all year, because the rest of their staff is looking thin. Porcello is the only other bright spot after Fister got hurt and Scherzer became ineffective. The offense is doing what they are paid to though: 5.1 runs a game and a 114 OPS+. 2 more against KC this week and then a big 4 game rematch against their ALCS foes from last year, Texas.
Chicago took 2 from Cleveland (and had 1 postponed) before taking 2 of 3 from Detroit. I really wasn’t expecting them to do alright, but they have. The pitching has been decent to good, but the offense has been either awesome (Pierzynski, Konerko, Viciedo) or awful (Beckham, Morel). Seeing as they are relying on 2 players over 35 to hold their offense afloat currently, I can’t imagine it will last. They get Baltimore, Seattle, and Oakland for their next series though.
Oh, Cleveland. If it weren’t for the Cubs you’d most likely be considered America’s lovable loser. After what was a very frustrating opening week (multiple blown saves/extra innings losses) you recovered to sweep the Royals. Shelley Duncan and Travis Hafner are playing out of their minds (unlikely to continue), but so is Carlos Santana! And you got the good Derek Lowe (for now). The Indians can make a big push up the ladder with 9 games against Seattle, Oakland, and KC.
It’s sad to see that a 3-4 week is an improvement, but after getting swept by Baltimore any win is a good win. That those wins came against LA and NY is even better. They got swept in between by the awesome Rangers (more on them in a bit). Mauer and Morneau look kind of like their old selves, which is actually really cool. Plus Josh Willingham and Denard Span are crushing the ball. They just need a comeback from Liriano, now.
The Royals had such promise, but then they went and lost 5 straight. They are -15 in run differential in those games, giving up 40 runs. So the pitching needs work. It can’t just be Bruce Chen out there. Unfortunately the offense is being led by Billy Butler (who is good, to be fair) and Humberto Quintero. Lots of growing pains ahead this summer.
AL West
Texas (8-2, +21)
Seattle (6-5, -2)
Los Angeles (4-6, +1)
Oakland (4-7, -13)
Texas had the easy starting schedule of Chicago, Seattle, and Minnesota, and capitalized on it. They have the best record and run differential in the AL. The starting rotation has been tremendous, other than the one guy paid to be tremendous, Yu Darvish. Darvish’s control has been spotty and a possible lack of confidence has made him a nibbler, but I’m willing to give him a month to adjust to real games. He’s got the ability. The offense isn’t firing on all cylinders yet, but Josh Hamilton did hit 2 home runs in the daytime. Google it. The schedule now gets much tougher: Boston, Detroit, New York, Tampa, Toronto.
If the Mariners have proved anything over their 2 weeks of playing baseball it’s that they are better than the A’s. The M’s are 5-2 against their divisional rival, and also 1-3 against Texas. The offense is still rough, with only one player above 100 in OPS+. On a related note, who is Kyle Seager? The pitching staff looks more than capable of holding its’ own though. An interesting week ahead with Cleveland and Chicago scheduled.
What can I say, I’ve been loving the first 2 weeks of Angels baseball. There’s been a little bit of everything: bad pitching, bad hitting, bad coaching. Weaver got them a little more on track last night with a dominant performance…over the A’s. Pujols is hitting .684 OPS and has no home runs. Vernon Wells is making $21million this year and 2 years after this one. This is a good baseball team that hasn’t played like one yet. I’ll enjoy it while I can. Hosting Oakland and Baltimore for the rest of the week should help right the ship.
And that leaves me with Oakland. Yoenis Cespedes is the only regular with an OPS above .700. It’s at .895. He has a .212 average and .267 BABIP. This is the essence of Yoenis. The A’s have 5 (5!!) regulars with slugging percentages below .300. How is that possible? I’ve gone from feeling sorry for Brandon McCarthy never being healthy to sorry that he’s healthy and pitching for an abysmal offense. Oakland will not score 450 runs at this pace. I’m excited to watch.
-High Pockets
1) Kansas City and Cleveland Scrum
I tweeted that I couldn’t wait for the Midwest media bias to blow this one out of proportion, with the joke that it would be a total non-story between two teams that draw less attention than the facial hair in the Giants bullpen. But it was kind of fun to watch. I’ve never heard Shin-Soo Choo speak, it’s slightly racist of me to say that I have an idea of what he sounds like. So to watch him mouth “Throw it over the fucking plate! Over the FUCKING PLATE!” Brought me some joy. I’ve been rooting for Choo his whole career. It was enough that he played for Cleveland, but compound that with the fact that he played his way out of Korean military time and I’m sold.
2) Chipper Jones
While writing this, Chipper Jones went deep off Narveson. By the end of the inning, he still looked totally gassed. If he gets up to 300 at bats this year, he will likely be the most valuable Atlanta hitter. I say this with equal parts admiration of Chipper’s career and abilities and also hostility towards the rest of the Atlanta offense.
In unrelated news: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-dumbfounded-as-to-why-littleleaguers-favori,2716/
3) #lolmets
The kids are playing good ball! First place alone as of this writing! Looking to sweep the Phillies! This headline! Keep it coming out of Flushing!
-Ducky
Well it took a week and a half but we are finally at a point where everyone has played at least 3 games. I’m still not sure why Bud thought we needed 4 opening days. Nonetheless, we had them. After this weekend we are left with 5 undefeated teams (Baltimore (huh?), Tampa Bay, Detroit, NY Mets (wha?), and Arizona) and 5 unvictorious teams (Boston, NY Yankees, Minnesota, Atlanta, and San Francisco). Everyone else falls somewhere else in that boring middle ground. Look, it’s a bell curve!
THE AL
Baltimore (3-0) vs. Minnesota (0-3)
I’m fairly certain this series could’ve started with either team sweeping and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Are the Twins terrible? They seem to be, as the Orioles had 3 quality starts thrown by Jake Arrieta, Tommy Hunter, and Jason Hammel. The Twins got the bad Francisco Liriano and a 37 OPS+ for the weekend. On flip side of small sample sizes: Ronny Paulino has a 549 OPS+ for the O’s. I hope that’s sustainable.
Tampa Bay (3-0) vs. New York (0-3)
Nothing like starting the year with a first inning grand slam off Carsten Charles. Mr. Pena, claim your prize at guest relations. Shields was pretty meh, Price was ok (but a winner), and Hellickson was uber-effective. The Yankees countered with their 2 best hitters of the weekend: Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher. I still don’t understand the love for this Yankees team. Yes they won the East last year and have great names on the roster. But duct tape is holding the entire thing together. Yankee starters went 16.1 innings, 21 hits, 13 runs, 4 HR, 9 walks, and 14 Ks. Obviously, the Rays hit very well.
Toronto (2-1) vs. Cleveland (1-2)
These two teams love baseball. 36 innings for 3 games (do the math), 2 blown saves by 2 different Indians relievers, and 1 homerun for the Jose Bautista hit parade. 2 dingers for Carlos Santana on his birthday. I can’t imagine how cool that would be.
Boston (0-3) vs. Detroit (3-0)
Two Red Sox starters (Beckett and Buchholz) gave up 7 earned runs (as in both of them did). Cabrera, Fielder, and Aviles hit 8 home runs in Comerica. 8! There were 158 hit in Detroit last year by all teams. Downside for los Tigres? Scherzer and Valverde struggles. Upside for Boston? They should have won 2 of those games if not for a terrible bullpen. That’s a positive, right?
Kansas City (2-1) vs. Los Angeles (1-2)
lolz, the Angels lost 2 to the Royals. The Royals pitching (aside from the bullpen) was spot on, including 35-hundred-year-old Bruce Chen. Where have you gone Alex Gordon? (.000/.071/.000) Pujols was adequate but is still on the homerun schnide. Haren and Santana got rocked, Weaver was sharp.
Chicago (1-2) vs. Texas (2-1)
The White Sox did not look terrible for 2 of the 3 games, which was surprising. Danks is still capable though, and Dunn’s bat speed appears to be back. For the Rangers, Kinsler is playing with house money right now (literally, most likely. Man is going to get paid) and the young guns looked good. Plus Darvish throws tonight!
Seattle (3-1) vs. Oakland (1-3)
Our Japan openers came back stateside for 2 more games. Winning 3 games without a good performance by King Felix is encouraging, as is Chone Figgins not being a blackhole offensively. The A’s are all about Brandon McCarthy and Yoenis Cespedes. Lord that man can hit the ball. Take note:
Yoenis Cespedes hits the ball far. Very far.
(hat tip to SB Nation and Jeff Sullivan)
-High Pockets
THE NL (by Ducky)
Giants (0-3) vs. DBacks (3-0)
The first two of these games felt incredibly similar with the DBacks unloading a string of homeruns on Lincecum and Bumgardner, then going quiet as the Giants crept back into it, then having Putz slam the door in the 9th. Sunday’s game was a bit stranger with a slew of kicked grounders, missed force outs at home and wild pitches let the DBacks steal one. A lot more excitement and optimism in Phoenix than I’ve seen in a decade. They might actually have an incredible lineup, lots of good young arms, and no longer a historically bad bullpen.
Cubs (1-2) vs. Nats (2-1)
Just an overwhelming number of people take Washington as a sexy pick this year. I don’t quite see it. How can I stretch the sexy analogy to the Cubs? They might be the equivalent of the 20 year old who’s acing his accounting major, setting aside a Roth IRA rather than trying to build a trebuchet capable of throwing your roommate over his frat house. Not many people going home with him now, but he’s gonna be crushing it 2 years after graduating. This analogy sucks, but I’m unwilling to abandon it at this point. Somehow Theo’s getting laid in a few years.
Braves (0-3) vs. Mets (3-0)
@deadballers is gonna try and get the #lolmets tag trending. I hate this fucking team so much, but there’s an anarchist in me that would love to see them in first for an extended period of time. Just feels really, really funny. The Braves looked absolutely horrific in all facets of the game, which is no laughing matter.
#lolmets
Padres (1-3) vs. Dodgers (3-1)
I honestly have nothing to contribute to this series. I read the recaps, watched the highlights on mlb.tv, and just didn’t absorb anything. 5 runs scored on bases loaded walks, 3 more on errors/wild pitches. Just felt kinda gross. Plus Kershaw had Montezuma’s Revenge, so he must not have liked what he saw either.
Brewers (1-2) vs. Cards (3-1)
Cards get the bonus win for spoiling the strangeness that was Miami opening night. Watching that nonsense makes the show Dexter seem plausible, so that’s a plus.
Greinke is filthy and the Crew still has a lot of power. The Cards, who I still think are going to suck this year, have looked pretty damn sharp over 4 games. Since a quarter of that is Lohse pitching like he has a clue, I remain skeptical. Beltran looked good. Like, generally attractive as well as athletically impressive.
Pirates (2-1) vs. Phillies (1-2)
The weekends safest prop bet was that the Phillies would lose twice in Pittsburgh on walk offs. Naturally. When you put up a Braves level of offense, bad things tend to happen even when you’re showing such a stacked rotation. I can’t help but root for Pittsburgh. The rest of the division just irritates me, down to the fact that 6 teams are squabbling over flat, tornado prone cattle country. All the shitty American brew you can drink isn’t gonna make it any better.
Rockies (1-2) vs. Astros (2-1)
Jamie Moyer age jokes are easy and they will find no refuge on this blog. I just know he’s younger than my dad, who, while incredibly paranoid that his iPhone is tracking everything he does (probably true) and that there’s too much sex on television (absolutely false), is still very spry and has a full head of non-gray hair. So keep on keepin’ on, Mr. Moyer.
Astros are above .500 for the first time since July 29th, 2009. This can most easily be explained by the fact that they were facing one of America’s last surviving veterans of the Pacific Theatre of WW2. Because Jamie Moyer is, in fact, old. He is a very old man. Like, really old. So old as to warrant its mentioning on a regular basis.
Reds (2-1) vs. Miami (1-3)
I think Joey Votto should sue for the rights to the Joey Bats nickname. Get off it, Jose.
Cinci looks like they could make some noise this year. They’ve spoiled the potential of Aroldis by jerking around his development plan on a regular basis, so we should just get used to him striking out 5 people over 3 innings a few times a month. Which is certainly all we should expect from a guy who can throw 103 mph and is getting paid 30 mil to do it.
Miami should chronically underperform the high expectations made of them, and look incredibly foolish doing it. #lolmiami doesn’t have as good a ring to it, though.
I’m going to start doing little micro recaps. Never of a full day, every game situation. Not until someone starts paying us per word. It’ll be mostly sarcastic shit I think of when watching highlight clips. For example:
1) MLB might have it’s Blake Griffin figure
This is one of the most unreal hits I’ve ever seen. I’ve been to Oakland. It’s not tiny. This makes the park look incredibly small:
I’ve recently done some reading about what exactly Cuban baseball is. It sounds like it’s about 1/4 elite athletes, and 3/4 old dudes trying to throw knuckleballs past them. The formula means you get some McGwire-esque rainmakers, and the in-between feels a lot like a Golden League matchup between the Outlaws and the Scorpions (RIP Toros). We may be describing A’s baseball in 2012. Importantly, the A’s website describes their style as “Green Collar Baseball!” Which must mean something.
2) Saves and Wins continue to be idiotic
See: Jose Valverde.
3) Angels marginal wins/$ = lol
You can spend a third of a trillion dollars during the offseason, but it ain’t gonna help you get by Bruce F’ing Chen. I actually watched a lot of this game. The elation in Los Angelaheim when they finally got to Crow and Holland was real entertaining, particularly for the Texan who contributes to this blog. This is the ultimate small sample size, but the headline for the game did read “Pujols hitless in debut.” I would enjoy seeing a lot of heartburn out of LAA this season. But that may just be because I enjoy seeing heartburn in most everybody.
Onward.
