The official 2008 MLB thread
 

Ask and you shall receive Ksyrup

Astros are gonna rock teh w0rldz!

Should be a good offensive year. And we have Oswalt. Then we have the 42 year old pitcher who isn't Clemens and isn't on steroids, in the rotation. Goodluck Woody.

Go White Sox, please don't suck again!

Someone please plunk Billy Crystal.


Thank you.

Yuck the Fankees and Joe Girardi. Trying to bean Longoria, threw right at his head and then spike Aki. And this was all premeditated because he started a prospect instead of Pettitte and left ARod and Jeter home so they wouldn't be involved.It should be a fun season between them and the Rays

Girardi was looking for something to "set a new tone" with the Yankees, jumped on the first opportuinty he saw, and totally got it wrong. Hard to make the most hated team in the world even more hated, but...good job, Joe!

Here's that SABR primer I posted in the other thread. This is a really good read:

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008.../stats-i-like/

Anybody else realize that Kauffman Stadium will be the 5th oldest stadium in the majors once the current new stadiums under construction are complete? Granted, Kauffman is getting a $250M facelift over the next couple of years, but I was surprised at how much stadium turnover has occured in the past 20-25 years. There's been some stadiums that were built after Kauffman that have already been replaced by another stadium.

Go Nats!

Can somebody tell Sandy Duncan to shut the fuck up? Seriously, his "wha, me?" horrendous acting job pisses me off. Just own up to it. Even if it lengthens your suspension, who cares? You're fucking Sandy Duncan - your team doesn't need you. In fact, that's probably why you got chosen (along with some no-name pitcher) to retaliate in the first place, because they won't miss you.

From Olney's blog:

• Multiple talent evaluators are saying that Houston shortstop Miguel Tejada looks absolutely terrible this spring, and they can't see him finishing the year at his current position.

So, Felix Pie has a testicular torsion. WTF? I could swear that's a Cradle of Filth B-side!

haha. one at bat crystal. suck it.

Too bad they weren't playing the Rays so Kazmir could've stuck one in Crystal's ear.

I don't get the outrage over Crystal. I saw Tom Selleck take an AB with the Tigers years ago. What's the big deal? Didn't Garth Brooks log over 40 ABs with the Royals?

Just rubbed me the wrong way when I saw the coverage. It's not a big deal. Just not a big crystal fan and find it funny all the hoopla over a one at bat. Geez at least let him DH for a couple at bats.

And I would have found it ultra funny if someone plunked him.

Yeah, they should have let him play in the field and get a couple of ABs. I almost thinnk they shortened it because of all the attention.

I think they got the attention they wanted, got people to show up and ripped them off with one lousy at bat. Of course most of the people there probably thought it was so charming that it didn't matter.

Of course that's kind of the whole theme of preseason baseball anyway. Money making machine.

Yankees should have Jim Carrey show up as Horton for a couple at bats.

Yankees sell out every game they play in ST - although I don't know, was today a home game or not? Usually they sell out regardless.

And Jim Carrey would have been outside the batters box with those feet he was wearing.

The Cardinals signed Kyle Lohse, but don't seem too happy about it.

Nothing new about Crystal playing, goes back at least to 1974 when country music HOF'er (and father of MLB'er Curtis) Charley Pride went 1-2 for the Rangers against the Orioles, singling as a DH against Jim Palmer.

http://www.planetgarth.com/news/article.php?cid=01093

Should help max out Lohse's confidence!

Shameless Joe plug. Easily one of the best writers in the country. Unfortunately, with him splitting time between the blog and articles, it seems like the quality of the newspaper articles has gone down a bit.

SI

Mika and Mike reporting the Red Sox players may boycott the Japan games because the players and coaches were supposed to get 40K each and the coaches now aren't getting that much.

Fat Boy About To Get PAID!
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3307289

Can someone explain to me the BoSox/Dodgers schedule? I know the BoSox play the A's in Japan. Then they fly to LA to play one game. Why? And then they go to Oakland to play 2 starting the very next day. The BoSox/LA game doesn't make sense.

Being played in the Coliseum. In front of 100,000 fans. With the setup similar to the warped setup they had when the Dodgers played in the Coliseum in the late 50s and early 60s before Dodger Stadium was built.

Plus, it's Dodgers-Red Sox--even with interleague now, they don't play too often.

But why not play a series (like the two with the A's)? Sounds like they are treating this like an exhibition game that counts. Odd.

They're playing 3 games against the Dodgers and they are exhibitions.

I think that's the point here, going to Japan to start the season IS a disadvantage (at the risk of starting that whole argument again), so the traveling teams get to call a lot of the shots. If I'm the Red Sox, I want some exhibition games back here before I start up the regular season.

And it's good for MLB, in that they'll be able to encourage teams to take these crazy trips in the future. If the Sox started the regular season right away, and went 0-3, it'd be blamed on the Japan trip, whether that was the reason or not. That would make teams more reluctant to go in the future.

I'm pretty fired up about 4:00 AM baseball in the mountain time zone.

The view from my seats for this year: http://www.santantonio.net/photos/holding/135b.jpg

Ok, I'm confused. You mean to tell me that they play the A's in Japan to start the regular season and then they play more ST games?

They'd be at a disadvantage in their first games back from a road trip like that. So they get to shake off the jetlag and rust in a couple of spring training games (and note that they also have far less spring training games than any other team because of this trip, so that's another potential disadvantage).

Maybe you disagree, but that's why they're doing it. It's part of the negotiated deal for the trip, a condition surely asked for by the Red Sox and/or Oakland.

Sorry to belabor this but I am not questioning opening in Japan and the schedule adjustments as the result, but here's what I see in viewing the BoSox's regular season schedule:

Played games
Regular Season
DATE	OPP.	RESULT/TIME	RECORD	WIN/LOSS	SAVE
Mar 25	@Oak	6:05 AM
Mar 26	@Oak	6:05 AM
Mar 30	@LAD	4:10 PM
Apr 1	@Oak	10:05 PM
Apr 2	@Oak	10:05 PM
Apr 4	@Tor	7:15 PM
Apr 5	@Tor	1:07 PM
Apr 6	@Tor	1:07 PM

Cool. Thanks.

Hoy Crap!

I expected the train wreck that is Mike and Mike to be on ESPN 2 when I woke up and instead got real baseball. Woohoo!!

That's the fun thing about having Papi and Manny right next to each other in the lineup :)

Dola: And a not-quite-bad-enough-which-means-good-enough performance from Papelbon means that the Sox are 1-0 on the year.

(BTW, Fuck DirecTV. They had a problem with their NESN signal for the first seven innings, which torpedoed me Tivoing the game)

Amazing. I just logged on to the computer and went to GameCenter just in time to see the final out. Sounds like they gave the fans their yen's worth.

That wasn't the only channel there were problems with today, so sounds like it was a bigger issue then that.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out the DTV thing for quite some time. Watched the first inning in HD in the living room, but couldn't get it on the regular channel in the bedroom. I was having problems with getting any kind of signal on the DVR in the bedroom, not just ESPN2. Finally, they restored other channels and put a message up about 209, but by then I was already at work. I'd have been pissed if I didn't have HD and was trying to watch the game on the regular ESPN2.

Sunspots!

(I'm not really kidding.)

I going to go out on a limb and say that Jason Varitek didn't enjoy his trip to Japan...

0-for-8, 6 Ks

Ortiz was 0 for japan as well.

Tek needs to learn how to get hit by pitches.


Nice job not trading for Santana. Sox had a chance to be dominant for a few years. Now they are the same as the Yankers.

Let the preseason hype begin. Royals are 15-11 in spring training! Woot!

I bet my friend $50 that the Pirates would lose 100 games or more this year...easy money!

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03262008...nue_103510.htm

The Mets are enticed by Claudio Vargas, the human rain delay. He won't be a horrible fifth starter but the Post makes it look like the cheap Brewers were just dumping his salary which is not the case at all. Claudio was our 7th best starter, that's why he was released. Why pay a guy $3 million to pitch in AAA?

If the other option for the Mets is Jorge Sosa, I can definitely see the merits of picking up Vargas. But I'll warn any Met fan that on Vargas' best of best days, 6 innings is all you'll get. Usually it was 5 innings strong before imploding in the 6th.

On the plus side, Vargas showed up to camp in great shape and had a decent spring. But I still think he'd be better served being a long reliever. But he can pass as a 5th starter.

BTW Met fans, Guillermo Mota has looked fabulous :)
And you won't regret non-tendering Johnny Estrada.

Let the games begin already!