Under 48 hours and counting. Some random thoughts.... *Look for the Rays to Regress, somewhere from 7-10 games. They are a good team but played well over their head last year in terms of wins. *Yankees should be better but they strike me as fragile *The AL West looks strange; The Angels have 3 starters on the DL, the A's are pitching Dallas-fuggin-BRADEN on opening day fercryinoutloud, and the Rangers never have any pitching. *My Jays are long shots but they are NOT the sad-sack no-hope team many suggest. Travis Snider has a good shot at ROY. *I like what the Braves did with their SP but the rest of their team doesn't impress me as much *I suppose you have to like the Cubs in that division, but for some reason I can't put my finger on they seem vulnerable to me *Arizona and LA should be one of the better races this year, and the Giants might have a puncher's chance with that starting staff. what talking points have ye to offer?
Yeah, different mindsets for everyone this year. It's gonna be rough for them, I expect. Hopefully they won't go too sour. Could it be because they're the CUBS?
If the Mariners play half decent baseball out of the gate, they could jump ahead for first place and chug along all year long in the same spot. I hope.
I'm skeptical about the M's BUT I think they got a relative steal in Branyan. If they hand him first base and don't screw with him all year I'm interested to see if he can still come up with a career year.
NL West will be interesting with the Diamondbacks and Dodgers fighting for 1st place. The D-Backs have been playing terrible baseball all spring though . Hopefully they'll snap out of it when the games count. The Giants could be interesting with that starting rotation. They'll be in a lot of 2-1 type games.
The Jays are a good team. Their problem is that they play in the AL East with three teams that are better than they are. The Jays would be likely to contend in every other division except the NL Central, and they'd be in contention for the NL wildcard as well. Sitting in the AL East the Jays have to hope that Tampa seriously regresses and that the Sox or Yankees suffer with multiple serious injuries.
Also, I hope someone takes the opportunity of the All-Star Game to shame the Cardinals a little over Ballpark Village.
Half decent is right--81 wins could easily take the AL West. Not that the Mariners are likely to win that many. The Mariners got really lucky season before last and put together a good won/loss record with a crappy team, paid for it last year when they didn't bother trying to improve their crappy team, and are going to continue paying for it this year. This is going to be a season of Griffey sentimentality and lots of losses for the Mariners.
All the more reason to fix the stupid division crap. Top team from each division has the first 3 spots, and the top 3 teams from all the other the divisions make the playoffs. 3 series instead of 2. Would even make the MLB more money.
All true except I disagree that the Rays are better than we are, they were virtually the same team last year except that the Rays preformed abnormally well in close and late situations and one-run games while the Jays performed freakishly poorly for half the season w/RISP those things tend to be one year aberrations. I could see the argument we are worse than them THIS year because of the absence of McGowan and Marcum...but that's a temporary thing. Still, I think we have a dark horse chance, but as you say we need two of the three in front of us to disappoint so that alone makes the odds long against us. Still, one only needs to look over a few years of MLB history to find stranger things.
Here's an interesting reflection on last year's Blue Jay offense. They scored 714 runs, better than only three AL team. The average AL team scored 775 runs. And we added no free agent hitter (save the lowly Kevin Millar) bad news, right? Not so fast. In the 74 games John Gibbons managed, the Jays scored 297 runs, which rojects to 650 over a full season. Almost as bad as the astonishingly bad A's offense. BUT In the 88 games managed by Cito Gaston, the Jays scored 417 runs - which projects to 867 runs over a full season...enough to have ranked second in the AL to the Rangers, and over 20 runs better than the Red Sox. And that's without Vernon Wells for 27 games, and with Rolen spending 3 weeks on the DL (and the month previous to that hitting .150 or so), and without Aaron Hill for even ONE of those games and the astoundingly bad bat of Brad Wilkerson in Vernon's place. This year besides presumed health from Hill Wells and (hopefully) Rolen, we have replaced Wilkerson's ineptitude with Travis Snider. As strange as it may sound, the jays could have one of the most productive offenses in the league...but who knows what will happen with the young pitching.
That's a fair assessment. If the Cardinals were able to win that world series . . . . I wouldn't be shocked to see the Jays in the playoffs, but they need to play near their best and get some help too. They could also end up winning 90-92 games, having the fifth best record in baseball, and still come in fourth in their division.
1st game of the season going nicely, my Braves are silencing the Phills 4-0, (the Phils only hvae 2 hits!!) headed to the middle of the 7th in Philly!! If this game (and hopefully it is!) all these jokers saying the Braves not having the Homerun power it has had in the past can shutup. Francouer, McCain and Schafer have all homered! Chipper Jones and Escobar both have groundrule doubles (whens the last time you heard a game with 2 GR-Doubles!?!???) On the HR Note, Congrats Jordan Schafer, the homerun was his first major league at bat! So far this game, the rookie is 2-2, a homerun, a single and an intential walk!! edit: wahoo! Braves hold on to win 4-1 Derek Lowe pitched a masterpiece, 8 inninnigs, 2 hits, 0 walks and 4 Ks Mike Gonzalez gave us a 9th innining scare, his totals 2 hits, 1 run, 1 walk and 2 strikeouts. He had runners 1st and 2nd 2 outs and a 3-2 count before striking out Ibanez to finish the game. Go Braves!
M'Boys off to a nice start....clutch hitting, power from the younger guys, executing the fundamentals, three good pitching starts in 4 games (including Ricky Ro looking very good today) - and we start three with the winless Indians tomorrow.With any luck they'll still be winless on Monday.
Aargh. Dan Haren is 0-3 with an ERA of about 2. He's getting no support whatsoever. He pitched 7 innings and gave up 1 run yesterday but took the loss.
So far the best team in the American League is still cooking along. 9-4 after today's win and a chance to gain a fourth consecutive series win tomorrow. but more importantly, the Yankees got the shit beat out of them buy thr last place Indians today - 22-4!! Chin Ming Wang now has an ERA over 34 This was just about as good as a day of baseball can get for a Jays fan.
My wife and I were having lunch in a pizza place yesterday and I kept glancing at the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. ESPN was showing some crappy spring college football game. It was nice to see that run number keep going up for Cleveland in the 2nd inning!
So I'm playing in a fantasy baseball league on Facebook (no draft, shared players, 250m cap). My knowledge beyond teams doesn't really extend all that well past the AL Central and is virtually nothing in the NL (it's a shame but we only get Tigers games). SP Armando Galarraga SP Adam Wainright SP Francisco Liriano SP Justin Verlander RP Mariano Rivera C Victor Martinez 1B Joey Votto 2B Placidio Polanco 3B Chipper Jones SS Jhonny Peralta OF Jermaine Dye OF Bobby Abreu OF Magglio Ordonez DH Miguel Cabrera The pitching is where I'm most concerned; Verlander's having a tough season but I think he'll have himself sorted out shortly. Thoughts?
A major consolation for all Detroit fans: No matter what happens, the Tigers will do better than the Lions!
They're playing small ball, which is exactly how Leyland likes to play it. They've got a first-rate defense, a multi-faceted offense, well-stocked bullpen, and a decent farm system to help the starters along. I'm stoked. I don't think there's a team that can consistently beat them (The Jays were early and not every piece was in place). Yankee Stadium is a home-run factory without the abysmal Yankees pitchers helping, the AL Central is anemic this year, and Comerica, as always, is forgiving for a defensive ball-club.
You better figure out what the heck is wrong with Verlander if you are going to make good use of the rest of that. Meanwhile, the best team in the AL continues to be just a bit to your Northeast....
Angel Stadium has a freakishly good groundskeeping staff, and the Blue Jays are on a hot streak by fueled by an easy schedule. Watch and see them erode by the end of May.
