Let's make it so no teams had any weaknesses, then every team would finish ahead of every other! :p

I think J.A. Happ has officially clinched the #5 spot in the rotation.

Also, nice to see Mayberry Jr. have a nice day. Not an elite prospect, but he could be a decent future option for Ibanez in a few years.

Damn Lidge!

Sorry, my fault. I drafted him in my fantasy baseball league.

Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?

Yeah Lidge is just... bad right now. From a pure misery standpoint, having a closer who blows is it hurts as much as anything.

Holy shit! I just saw what the Mets did... from Santos teeing off on Papelbon to the great defense in the bottom of the 9th. :eek:

Joe Mauer just surpassed his 08 home run total in 78 at bats this year. 10 so far to 9 total last year

now hes 3 away from his career high in a season.

Bet I'm not the only person who had a first reaction of "better have him piss into a bottle".

Nothing against Mauer but that's where we are I think.

It's the era we are in, I honestly truly doubt hes on the juice. but those were my exact thoughts.

Absolutely horrendous call today in the Reds-Indians game. Sizemore drills one to RF, Bruce bobbles it for a while, but gets it into the relay man. Relay goes to 3rd, but it goes through Rosales's legs. Sizemore breaks for home, but Johnny Gomes came in from LF to back up the throw. Gomes throws him out at home with a excellent plate.

But wait. 3rd base umpire rules that Rosales interferes with Sizemore and awards Sizemore home plate. Watching the replay, Sizemore makes no contact, nor does he make any motion to run out of the basepath. He proceeded toward home as if nobody was there.

I can't embed MLB videos, so here's a link to the play: Baseball Video Highlights & Clips | CLE@CIN: Sizemore is awarded home on interference - Video | MLB.com: Multimedia

Was at the park to see the Braves complete a sweep of the Blue Jays. First Braves game I saw this year.

It was pretty cool to see that Chipper's mere presence in the on deck circle seemed to have an effect on the Blue Jays bullpen, because they went and walked a .207 hitter to load the bases, certainly the last thing you want to do in that situation.

Jair didn't look too good, but he still managed 6 IP with only 2 ER. Still worried about the outfield. I don't understand why Diaz isn't starting.

Just saw the box score for the Sox-Mets. I know Papi is a legend in Boston now, but how long can you wait for a guyt o produce before you conclude that he just doesn't have it?

0-5 with 8 LOB today. Now batting .195.

Wait wait......I learned this from the Favre threads. He has earned the right to be in there as long as he wants to be.:D

I wonder what Papi would have to do for Red Sox fans to turn on him like Packers fans did on Favre. Demand a trade to the Yankees after being benched for an above average young hitter?

Well, that tune's been played before. Just knock around the travel secretary, malinger for a bit and generally act like an ass, particularly right before the trade deadline. And take female fertitlity drugs. ;)

hahaha, how could I forget. Gotta love the fickleness of sports fans.

Hey, it's easier than that! Just accept a free agency contract with the Yankees, a la Johnny Damon (of course he was just a mercenary when he went to the Yanks, but not when he signed a FA contract with the Red Sox ;))

Sox fans can turn on their players. Fast. It's all about the team. I don't think a Favre situation is possible.

The red caps look horrible with the Yankee uniform. If they must have the special caps for memorial day, why not use the regular colored caps with a stars and stripes logo?

The bitterness is strong in here today ;)

Ah how beautiful. Angels' Santana only lasts an inning and gives up 7 runs thanks to a 3 run HR by Dye in the 2nd.

White Sox up 7-3. :)

Yay ugly hats!

17-3 sox win. yay hopefully we start rolling now.

I didn't know you were a White Sox fan too :)

One hell of a day for baseball

-There's a 6 for 6 (Freddy Sachez) and 5 for 5 (ARod)
-Indians down 10-0, rally to win 11-10 with 2 in the 8th and 7 in the 9th
-Padres win their 10th straight on a great rally, down 7-1 going into the 8th
-Great pitching between Cards and Milwaukee with a 1-0 10 inning game, only 5 hits the entire game and Carpenter going perfect game into the 7th but being matched with 0's by Gallardo
-Or, if you like offense, aside from the 11-10 game, 5 other teams scored 10 or more runs

If you were a neutral observer and couldn't find something to like today, you just weren't trying

Man, I wish I had been watching MLBN rather than being stuck at work this evening :)

SI

White Sox fan since 1990 , Thats when I started watching Baseball at 6 years old

Ok seriously...Victor Martinez delivers the game-winning hit as the Indians rally from 10-0 down against B.J. Upton's Rays.

Wonder what his thoughts are on insurmountable leads today.

How bush league of the Indians to continue trying when down 10-0

Really? Are you still talking about this? I love all the Indians hatred in this thread.

I don't think it's Indians hatred, but rather continued (and deserved) ridicule of the idea that a team should stop trying to win when it's losing by a large number.

EDIT: Especially in baseball, a game that has no clock or time limit, where you could conceivably score an unlimited number of times.

The Indians aren't important enough for anyone to hate.

I don't think anybody would accuse me of hating them when I picked them to win the World Series this year :)

It's not much to do with the Indians as it is Victor Martinez.

I never said that a team should stop trying to win.

Interesting story at Citi Field tonight. Jose Reyes and Ryan Church were placed on the DL and Carlos Beltran will miss the next three games as he finally takes some time off to heal his leg. Top prospect Fernando Martinez, 20 years old, will make his debut tonight.

That leaves David Wright and Luis Castillo as the only opening day starters in the lineup tonight.

...as long as said team is not taking advantage of their opponent's glaring weakness. We get it.

Eric Gagne to the Can-Am League.

Nope. Never said that either. I said I had Martinez's back on his "Upton broke an unwritten rule" argument. That's all I said. It's over with now so there's really no point in keeping this thing going.

He's done.

I love the Pirates. Their game got pre-empted, in the 6th inning, to show post-game of the Penguins' conference championship win.

Zack throws a complete game but gave up a little dunker run in the first inning and his ERA goes up (from 0.82 to 0.84). 9 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K and improves to 8-1

SI

He's not showing any signs of slowing down.

Chi Sox up 3-0 in the 7th , and Colon looking pretty good so far.

Well, it's bound to happen just on the grounds that no one can keep doing that for an entire season. 0 HRs is insane for him so far this season, for instance. That said, who knows what his final stats could be. I know the answer is "not as good as he's been so far" but beyond that, I don't want to try to handicap.

The one thing I'm a bit worried about is the mileage he's getting on his arm. This is his 5th CG already this year while no one else in baseball has more than 2. And Trey will just keep running him out there while he doesn't trust the bullpen because, while he's not Dusty Baker, he's shown a tendency to abuse SPs he trusts, in particular Greinke and Meche.

SI

Yeah, we made Colon look like Cy Young tonight. :rolleyes:

Welcome to our world. It's a running gag over at RR about the Royals- Cy Lohse, Cy Wellemeyer, Cy Pavano, Cy Outman, Cy Cahill...

That doesn't include nice performances by legitimately good pitchers like Verlander and Lee. And that's just going back the last 2 weeks over the guys who put up quality starts to near unhittable performances against the Royals offense...

SI

I hear ya. Not that we're a Murderer's Row or nothing, but the Angels have been putting up some runs of late, and when they're not getting runs, they're still getting a lot of hits (and just not being clutch, what a shock).

But yesterday and today, we've just hit some weird wall. Maybe it's the Kobe effect except for Vlad, who just came back. As in, before everyone stepped up to play because they knew Vlad wasn't around to save them. Now that he's back, everyone's standing around and waiting for him to take it to the hoop...or something like that.

At least Abreu finally got a HR. How weird. Has a legit 20-HR (min) guy ever taken two months to get a dinger without suffering an injury? Never seen that before.

Ian Snell, man, that dude sucks. It was a heavy rain delay, if you're not trying to make a joke.

Rain didn't stop the Rangers from taking down the Yankees and going another game up on the halos. I can't wait til I go to the double header on Friday!

Wear isn't really a concern. Pitch counts have been very consistent and controlled on Zack. He's been pulled regularly with between 95-110 pitches in most starts. His delivery is pretty smooth and shouldn't cause any additional wear. Also, remember that he sat out a year a couple of years ago. That does wonders for a pitching arm.

On the side, I find the unearned run rule when a pitcher commits an error to be absurd. Detroit's Jackson had two brutal throwing errors last night which lead to two unearned runs. If the pitcher's doing the throwing, it shouldn't be unearned.

Agree. I also think there should be some sort of extra category between unearned and earned runs, something that accounts for runs that come on plays after the initial error. I mean I understand that an inning is prolonged so doing it this way says that the runs shouldn't have happened, but if a pitcher goes on to allow 6 additional baserunners and 5 more runs, to allow him off completely free is crazy IMO.

I know its the Nationals, but I'm really, really impressed with the Mets winning with, basically, a collection of spare parts and grit. I think this run will help them throughout the season.

Just noticed today that Chris Davis has struck out 44.2% of the time. That's impressive.

That would only happen with 2 outs, the theory being the error prevented the third out from occurring and the runs that came after would not have scored. I don't have a problem with that.

If ERA accounted for a pitcher's fielding, I think we would just use a modified ERA formula that was independent of fielding. Isn't that the trend in modern stats? Trying to take out variables that go beyond what we're trying to measure?

(muffled laugh)

So a $140 million payroll only gets you spare parts and grit nowdays? I'm thinking the Royals could get a whole lot more than that with $65M in additional payroll.

While realizing fully that it will never change, my impression is that the runs aren't counted against you if you weren't the reason that the runs were scored. Evidently, the actual definition is that you aren't charged for the runs if a run scores via an error, even if it was by your own hand.

Uh... you may have missed the numerous injuries on the Mets mayhaps?

Everyone has injuries. Royals have been missing two key players for most of the season, but it's nothing but an excuse to say we'd be better with them. Fact is that it's a whole lot easier to weather injuries when you have a $140M payroll than a $70-75M payroll. Small market fans don't want any pity, but they don't want to hear any tales of woe from a fan base who is unfortunate enough to root for a team with a $140M payroll. I'm guessing that's why Mets fans created their own thread. They could bellyache amongst themselves.

Two key players, LOL!

The Mets have 5 out of their starting 8 position players out.

All he said was that he was impressed with his team. Then you started going nuts about payrolls. You brought it up. There's no "bellyaching" going on. Just completely unprompted whining from you.

This thread is like 90% Royals talk. One Mets fan wants to make a comment and you start bitching "payroll, payroll, whine, whine!!"

:D

Then why does this conversation keep coming up, year after year?

True dat. Seriously, it isn't like I haven't been an advocate of the small market teams on various baseball threads. Or are you just a johnny-come-lately on them because the Royals are actually doing good? :p

Hey I can join the misfortune competition.

The Braves have a GM so incompetent he couldn't get Joan of Arc to play for France, but they're still somehow over .500.

Doesn't matter, they have way higher revenue than the Royals. Their accomplishments are meaningless. The Royals would be undefeated with the Braves' payroll.

Yeah, I've not been a Royals fan until now.

:rolleyes:

Which is obvious a stupid overgeneralization. There's no question that any given team has a higher chance of playing winning baseball the higher their payroll is. We could roll out the numbers, but we all know that's a waste of time because we've seen the numbers before.

And Missouri basketball has an unfair advantage over smaller, private schools.

Life's unfair, get over it and stop whining. People DO feel sorry for the Royals until their fans go over-the-top painting themselves as victims, and everyone else born in larger metro areas as villains. People otherwise root for the Royals to do well.

No one painted the Royals as victims. You can take down the strawman now.

Really six, either by counting Beltran who's out a few days, or Schneider, who technically was the starter.

You could have a team with a $500 million payroll and it would still have difficulty winning consistently with those level of replacements. A bench is utilized on a game to game basis for pinch-hitting, defensive replacements, and spot-starting. If you're lucky, you have one or two guys on there who you wouldn't mind to start everyday more than 4 times a week. Take five $10 million players, put them on your bench, and I'll show you a shitty bench.

When you're using more replacements than you typically even carry on a bench, it's a good job.

Prove it or shut the fuck up.

This is hillarious coming from someone who considers it a "tale of woe" and "bellyaching" for someone to be impressed by their team.

You're a bitter troll, and if anyone else (other than a Royal fan) expresses the slightest bit of happiness, you want try to bring them down by bitching about payroll.

I assure you though, ISiddiqui, nor any big-market fan performed any evil deeds for their teams to have been fortunate enough to exist in large metro areas, so don't take out your sad, pathetic bitterness on them.

You're absolutely right. I shouldn't have gone to that degree. I apologize.

Bixler of the Pirates struck out over 60 percent of the time till he got sent down. Granted it was like 30ab.

interesting article on cnnsi.com the other day talking about how in order for someone to hit .400 these days they'd have to put the ball in play more than hitters today too, and it essentially boils down to striking out in less than 4% of your AB's.

The man with perhaps the best chance to do that would be Pujols, and he still strikes out 8% of his AB's. So it'd take a normal-BABIP year from him plus a significant reduction in his strikeouts to even come close.

I think Cards fans would rather Pujols have a few more K's and keep up a very high SLG% :D.

Its great to be a Mets fan and have the financial flexibility to pull Fernando Tatis out of a hut in San Pedro to come play baseball and get the Tigers to pay Sheffield's salary. Not to mention the bank Omar Santos and Ramon Martinez are making right now.

I do wish they would have passed on all those guys and given that money to Willie Bloomquist, though.

Cabrera just mashed a homerun into the left field seats. It was a great swing for those that want to catch it on the highlights.

LOLz!

Ha...very true my friend.

Yeah, I can't think that the Mets would have any use for a player batting .371.

:rolleyes:

Of course you would fixate on that, and not that he blew away your original argument.

Who is batting .371?

Heheheh.

Certainly not Bloomquist.

lol.

That's his OBP.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/player...?playerId=4603

There's comedy, there's high comedy, and then there's what MBBF will post next.

You would think, being such a huge Royals fan, he might know whether a guy is hitting lights out or mildly above average.

.298. Fair enough. So the Mets don't need a .300 hitter who can play multiple positions?

As a comparison, a MUCH cheaper Gary Sheffield has an OBP of .430 and a SLG of .535

He didn't blow away anything. He pointed out the few examples of trash heap finds, while pretending that the multi-millionaires on the team don't exist.

And destroys team chemistry everywhere he goes. No thanks.

You mean the multi-millionaires who mostly happen to be hurt?

Yeah, he really is messing up the Mets right now.

You know nothing.

He has been nothing but a blessing for the Mets and Wright openly campaigned to bring him in.

I realize the guys past is sketchy, but he is no TO. And chemistry is so stupidly overrated in baseball.

I don't know, for a career .394 hitter, I'd be willing to put up with a lot.

Exactly right...the Mets do that fine on their own ;)

But seriously like a few of you said, Manny hasn't killed any teams and I think at what the Mets are paying Gary, it's a steal.

Couldn't disagree more with this. Chemistry is very important. Spats in the clubhouse can ruin a team.

Must've hit well of late.

Which ones were ruined by clubhouse spats?

Uhhhh, yeah he did. You stated it's so easy to find replacements and build a solid bench with a $140 million payroll. He showed how the guys contributing now are being paid salaries that are eclipsed by some advertising execs living in NYC. Not only that, but they basically came from nowhere and were still able to contribute. That's good personnel management.

Oh, and since I know what your typical "I'll ignore 95% of the facts and focus on the outlier" response is going to be, I'll go ahead and answer:

Sheffield might make $14 million but it sure as hell wasn't the Mets who gave it to him and any team could've had him for the minimum salary.

My God you are amazing.

Baseball is wrought with histories of teams that hated each other and were successful.

I guess he ruined the Marlins in 1997

86 Mets?

Oh wait.