Official 2010 Baseball Season Thread

Well, here we are again at the beginning of another fantastic season.

Opening day is Friday the 2nd here and when the dust clears on the far end here's hoping the Astros take the pennant this year.


Let's play ball!

Sadly, I think the Yankees got even stronger, though I'm interested to see what the Red Sox' newfound interest in defense will do for the bottom line.

In the NL - it's all about the Phillies baby. I'll be watching to see if Doc can win 30 games against those inferior teams!


(Can't say much about the Jays...rebuilding isn't the sort of things one discusses in a general interest thread and I'd just end up bitching about Cito anyway)

The Cardinals beg to differ!

Hey, the Cards have always been my favorite NL team - but if Doc can't get a ring as a Jay, then I'm rooting for him to get 1 to 5 with the Phillies.

It's about time the rest of baseball figured out he's the best pitcher of his generation.

There is only one real baseball team: the Detroit Tigers.

If the Tigers don't have a good season, then baseball didn't have a good season.

Anyone who supports any other team doesn't have a right to an opinion, for supporting an inferior team.

I have spoken.

You and Chris agree on that. which should tell you something

It figures that you'd fetishize the year 1984.



Anyway, I'm sure that at least one ex-Tiger will have a good year. Maybe someone on the Yankees staff can even teach Granderson not to phenomenally suck against left handed pitching. What's up with that anyway? He goes so far beyond the normal platoon split. Hall of Famer against righties, drunken Rey Ordonez with two broken legs against lefties. Did he sign some pact with the devil that requires him to weakly pop up as often as possible against left handed pitching?

Hey, don't diss the Tigers!

They were also good in 1968.

(You people have no idea what kind of patience you can develop, with a team like the Tigers...)

Cubs fans agree!

Eh. For most of my life it's seemed that Cubs fans actually enjoy the losing and wouldn't know what to do without it.

I am required to hate the Tigers for 1987.

I have no choice.

Given the way the Mets are collecting albatross outfielders and the hate they have for Luis Castillo, maybe the Cubs can trade Soriano for Castillo and a bucket of chicken wings. That would be a really good start.

Owww, it hurts. Quit it!

Giants are kicking ass. Unfortunately it's ours.
Berkman is sorely missed atm.

Braves are 1-0!! Perfect season if they quit right now!

Or maybe not. So far, and yes, I know it's a small sample size, Granderson's batting .125/.222/.125 against lefties and .375/.375/1.125 against righties. Five strikeouts against lefties, none against righties. His swing is just painfully ugly against lefties. I've never seen anything like it.

How is it that managers who have their #3 batter sacrifice bunt in the top of the first inning with no outs don't find themselves immediately unemployed with the bench coach finishing off the game?

Can the Nationals move back to Montreal?

At least the Expo's were a farm team of amazing talent to the rest of the league.

I guess I'll geographically support the Twins, might even head down to check out a game in the new stadium in a few weeks.

Might want to wait a few months rather than weeks, unless you're in a position to make a gameday decision about going. I can't believe Carl Pohlad was such a cheapskate billionaire that the Twins ended up with a new stadium without a retractable dome. I think he died before the new stadium could open just so he'd never have to live with the shame of it all. The new stadium will be an attractive novelty for a season or two, then it'll be a place fans avoid in April, May, September, and, if the Twins are lucky, October.

Umm...I'm born and raised from Winnipeg.

Anything above 10 degrees Celsius is shorts and t shirt weather. I go to Winnipeg Blue Bomber Games outside in November at -25. Minny fans will have to man up!

At worst some April games every year will be chilly and some playoff games in the fall, but really it's easy to dress up for a chilly spring night with some flurries, you can't escape the heat in July in Dallas or Washington (The worst game I ever watched was a August Nationals game with crazy hummidty that made my Canadian soul angry and sweaty. What a shitty place to build a capital city.)

Unexpectedly, the Jays are 5-1 and looking good (except for some interesting defense)

Fortunately, I need look no further than 2009 to avoid getting sucked into an unrealistic excitement about the start.

Still, every day they win in spite of Cito pulling some total "WTF?" maneuver is a blessing

A no-hitter and a 20-inning game on the same day. Cool.

I should have commented the other day on the White Sox getting RickRo'ed

Damned Dumbass AJ Peirzynski and his cheating. i hope that Rios' homer wasn't the result of Rick losing focus for a tic but i prefer to think it was and blame that ass AJ.

This is college, not MLB, but I've never seen anything quite like it in a baseball game . . .

[yt=I wonder who taught him how to slide that way . . .]RW0bb2wxH5Y[/yt]

I've been hoping for a while that Robinson Cano learns to take a walk. If he keeps this up, I may have to relent and just not care about that. .396/.441/.780. Not that I expect him to keep that up, but .330/.375/.550 would be enough to make him a monster, even if he'll swing at almost anything . . .

So how much does Albert Pujols get on his contract extension, now that the Phillies have overpaid Ryan Howard at $25M/season? Basically I think the Cardinals ought to just cut out all the waiting and posturing, and sign him now @ $30M/season for 7 years, with club options at lesser $ for a couple of years beyond that.

Even before news of the Howard fiasco broke that would have been a fairly cheap extension for Pujols. Now it's probably sub-minimum. Pujols is a slick fielding first baseman and the best right-handed hitter who ever played the game. His play has been worth about $35,000,000/yr the last four years. Howard is a top-ten first baseman in MLB and will be a D.H. playing in the national league by the time his extension's up. His play has been worth about $20,000,000/yr the past four years. Throw in that Pujols rates to age much better than Howard, and 7/245 for Pujols starts to look cheap in comparison to the Howard deal.

Jerry Manuel is officially fucking retarded. I can't even point and laugh anymore.

Bottom of the eighth, Mets down by a run. and the 9-1-2 hitters due up. 9 is Luis Castillo who came in on a double switch and 2 is the pitcher's slot. There are two mediocre-at-best position players left on the bench.

Castillo singles; so far, so good. Then it goes off the rails. The Mets have their leadoff batter sacrifice bunt, with the pitcher coming up and no capable pinch hitters on the bench. You don't have your leadoff batter sacrifice to bring up the pitcher's slot without a real hitter to come off the bench and pinch hit; that's just dumb. Then Manuel burns through both pinch hitters at the 2 slot when there's a pitching change after the first pinch hitter is announced, leaving no one left on the bench with one out in the eighth inning of a one-run game.

Managers have been shot for less.

edit: David Wright was ejected with one out in the ninth and a man on second for arguing after being called out on strikes. If the Mets had managed to tie the game up after that--very likely in a one run game with one out and a man on second--they'd have had to put a pitcher in the field batting clean-up for the tenth inning. Fortunately for the Mets, they avoided that embarrassment by having the next two batters strike out.

Man, it sure would be nice for the bullpen to keep up so our pitchers aren't going down with a loss.

Not sure where you pull those figures from (the link didn't work for me), but I'd hardly call a 7-yr, $210M contract "fairly cheap". While you can throw all the stats that you want at it, I say you determine the realistic market value thusly: He's the Best Player in Baseball. You pay him as the Best Player in Baseball. $30M per does just that. No need to go all "A-Rod/Texas Rangers" on it, and jump past several significant salary milestones.