The Official 2008 MLB Thread

Spring has sprung in training camps across two states as Pitchers and catchers and early arrivals are showing up to get the game rolling again.

the Boys of Summer will hopefully put that nasty doping distraction in the rear view and produce a discussion worthy season.

I, for one, have exceedingly high hopes for my team - in fact, I'll go so far as to say that I think the Jays are slightly better than the Yanks and as good as the Red Sox right now, assuming all my boys are healthy. I've got a real good feeling about this season.

Can't wait to see this magic in a Jays uniform...




Let the games begin....

Something is wrong with an American rooting for an Canadian team.

And once again, hope springs eternal for the Cubs....

Smoltz. Glavine. Hudson. Hampton.

If everyone stays healthy and the bullpen doesn't blow games in the 9th inninng, there is hope for the pitching this year! That combined with hitting potential this season, the Braves'll be back where their suppose to be, on top of the East

Sorry to say it Shep, but the Blue Jays are definitely not better than the Yankees at this point. They're much closer to the Devil Rays (I refuse to call them the Rays) than to the Yankees. The Yankees offense rates to be down a couple of notches from last year as Posada returns to earth and the outfield continues to age not entirely gracefully--only Cano can be expected to really improve on offense, though Girardi might get more out of 1B/DH than Torre did with some better managing of the lineup--but their pitching should be considerably better as Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy continue to develop. The Yanks and Red Sox should still both win 90+ this year. Given the Devil Rays' rapid improvement on top of that and Toronto's in for at least two to three years of rebuilding. The Jays are decent but aren't good enough to have much chance of competing this year, and even if the Yanks and Red Sox come back to the pack the Jays will be well behinds the Devil Rays next season and at least a couple of years to follow.

If two out of the Red Sox, Indians, Yankees, and Tigers falter due to injury or really bad luck then the Jays might sneak into the playoffs this year, but it's not likely. Still, I guess you've got more hope than does an Orioles fan (Hi Bulldog!).

Diamondbacks will take the NL West again, and will contend strongly for the NL title.

Expect the D-Backs to win more than 90, as they are an improved club over last year.

How come you cheer for the Jays Shep?

Go Mariners!

The Orioles are in a rebuild (again) if Angelos can keep his mitts off the team and let MacPhail do his job. The next step is trading Brian Roberts for more prospects.

If the O's can improve at all over last year in the number of wins (maybe 75-80 wins) and avoid the usual August and September swoon, then that will be progress. I think they really need to go back to the Gospel According to Earl Weaver- Pitching, Defense and the Three Run Homer. Stay away from washed-up sluggers and big-name free agents, grow your own talent and GET SOME PITCHING!

He's a disloyal American who will be shipped to a local "Re-Education Camp" for proper rehabilitation.

My team may be a loser but at least they're American!

Well, after the Bedard and Tejada trades I don't know that improvement this year is in the books, but even if the Tejada trade was not all the Orioles could have gotten for him, consensus seems to be that the Bedard trade was a big Orioles win. The Orioles are definitely in rebuild mode, and they seem to have done more good than harm so far.

Adam Jones will be a bust.

Mark my words.

If the Tigers can remain healthy, it's not a matter of if they can make it to the World Series.

Tejada would have been a drag, with his being named in the Mitchell Report. The O's don't need any more of that (hello, Rafael!) And the O's didn't go anywhere with him. Just as well to send him to Houston.

I'd rather see the Birds get pitching over an outfielder, but oh well. We supposedly got a good closer in the deal.

What's the difference in that and 23 Americans playing for it?

and an American manager, GM, etc.

I don't have a local team so I have even less reason to think geographically.

You're just grumpy because the O's are gonna suck so VERY hard this year.

BWA-HA-HA!!

Rebuilding? this team is built to win now, over the next three years - good or bad there's no more building to do.

Pitching? You got a new manager who build a reputatin for Dusty-Bakeresque pitcher abuse in Florida, you got a creaky old guy who MAY be done (Mussina) and decent mid rotation lefty, three unproven kids (the best of which didn't pitch as well as any of the Jays three young pitchers last year) two of which you are gonna have to handle with kid gloves because you can't pitch them anywhere close to 200 IP this year without risking injury or ineffectiveness.

Your second best reliever is Latroy-friggin-Hawkins who couldn't even MAKE the Jays as an 8th reliever.

Doc > Wang
AJ > Petitte (check the OPS against for McGowan and AJ)
McGowan > Moose
Marcum (at least) = Hughes (Marcum had a 3.91 ERA as a starter)
Janssen > Kennedy (I'll thank Ian and Joba to show me something as a major league starter before I'm overly impressed...3 total starts between them isn't much of a sample)

Ryan (if healthy) = Rivera
Accardo = Joba
All other Jays relievers > Rasner > than than the rest of the Yanks pen

Jays 2007 ERA: 4.00 (Towers is gone now, so is Okha, and League and Ryan are back with lower ERAs...this number likely goes down)

Yanks 2007 ERA: 4.49 (Moose is another year older but I don't think his ERA will go up any more, might come down - Joba nad Kenedy will have higher ERAs but they had so few innings it shouldn't matter. LaTroy isn't any better than this - I don't see an argument for this number getting any better)


Hitters? Yeah, the Yanks have a better lineup but not enough better to make up for the difference in pitching:

Zaun < Posada (by a lot even though Posada will regress)
Overbay > Ensberg or whatever other scrub stands at first
Hill = Cano (might be a slight edge to Cano but it's only a handful of singles)
Eckstien < Jeter (duh)
Rolen < Rodruigez (Rolen will be huge playing healthy but A-Rod is the best hitter in the game)
Stairs/Johnson < Matsui (slightly, depends on Matsui's knee and Johnson back and how much Stairs regresses to his career line)
Wells > Cabrera (by over a hundred points of OPS - enough to make up the difference in Rolen/A-Rod nearly)
Rios = Abreu
Thomas = Giambi

Plus, the Jays have gold glove caliber defense at 4 or 5 spots and 6 is McDonald is at short - pretty much every review says it's the best D in the league....none of the Yanks are known for defense except Jeter and a lot of fans say that's more star power than results.


No....I understand the arrogance of Yanks fans makes it hard for them to admit it, but if both teams are healthy, my boys can most assuredly play with yours. And with Boston.

Doc = Beckett (at least - Beckett should regress a bit)
AJ > Matsuzaka (I'll have to see him live up to his clippings)
McGowan > Wakefield (laughably so)
Marcum > Lester
Janssen > Tavarez (the Red sox have to coddle Buchholz like the Yanks do Joba)

Ryan = Paps
Accardo = Okajma
Downs = Delcarman
Tallett = Romero
League = Lopez
Frasor = Timlin

Zaun < Varitek
Overbay = Youklis
Hill = Pedoria
Eckstien > Lugo
Rolen > Lowell
Stairs/Johnson < Ramirez
Wells > Crisp (Ellisbury too until he proves it over a full season)
Rios = Drew
Thomas < Ortiz

Manny and Papi make their line-up better than ours, and the bullpens are even but our SP could be considerably better


The Rays?? Seriously - the DEVIL RAYS???

IN-SANITY.

fuckers can't catch the ball for one thing but beyond that:

Doc > Kazmir (kids coming along though)
AJ > Sheilds
McGowan > Garza

The other two spots aren't worth the keystrokes to compare the huge difference

Ryan > Percival (dude had to work hard to even find a job despite a good line in St. Louis)
The rest of their pen isn't worth sneering at.

Zaun > Navarro (significantly)
Overbay < Pena (hands up everyone who expects Pena to do THAt again)
Hill > whoever, Inawura probably
Eckstien > Bartlett
Rolen > Longoria (or maybe Aybar or even *snark* Hinske!)
S/J < Crawford
Wells = Upton (though Upton is on track to grow past him this year)
Rios > Baldelli
Thomas > Gomes (by a lot)

Sorry, BA clippings are nice and all but I'd like to see them win, of, I dunno, 71 games before i start anointing them anything.

they need to concentrate on passing Baltimore first.

Not so. I think the tigers are probably the best team in the AL.

but in the playoffs, it's anyone's game and a team with three Cy contenders in the rotation (Jays) and the best defense in the game (Jays again) is a serious threat in the playoffs.

I might change that assessment if Bonderman and Willis get there crap together - your whole season probably turns on those two guys (and whether you can squeeze one more decent season out of Jones)

kind of a long story but...you asked (it's similar to how I became a Patriots fan)

I have no local team so I can root for who I want...when I was in high school I really didn't much like baseball but my best friend was a big Phillies fan and he insisted i pick a team....so since I loved Tim Raines I picked the Expos and then, as luck would have it, got to laugh at his ass soon when the Expoes eliminated the Phillies in the playoffs in that strike year.

So I was kind of broken in on the point of taking Canadian teams seriously. As I got more into the game, I noticed I was surrounded by Braves fans (real long suffering folk in the 80's) Cardinal fans (the closest thing besides the Braves to a regional team) and the brain dead zombies who rode the Yankees bandwagon.

Since I have a firm rule to NOT follow the "popular" teams, and since I hated the Yankees, the possibility of rooting for an AL East team was fertile ground even though I didn't have "my team" yet.

In 1984 I was invited into a "MicroLeague" league on a friends Comodore 64 to take over an abandoned team (actually a pair of teams one in each league since there were not enough of us to have an owner for each).
This team(s) SUUUUUUUUUCKED. It was like 7 really great players and a bunch of really bad scrubs.

One of the other owners was one of those guys like every league has who seems to win every trade and he had really good players he had the rights to that he couldn't even fit on his team - not stars but above average guys.

So he offered to deal me 23 above average players for those 7 great ones.

I took the deal, used the players to build up my AL franchise (which happened to be the Jays and whom the other dude had neglected since he was an NL fan) because I wanted a chance to beat the Yankees (which was the AL franchise of the dude I made the deal with)

among the players he traded me (his offer, I didn't even ask because I didn't know many ballplayers at the time) were Steib, Key, Fernandez, and Henke.


I turned the team around to .500 that season and won the next two Micro League World Series (the second time over the guy I had dealt with since he had switched his emphasis to the NL due to my team being so good).

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway....

Because I got to know those players and that franchise through MicroLeague....and since they were an up and coming young team who were regularly kicking the Yankees in the ass, it was easy for me to become a fan.

and of course, becoming a fan in 1984 and catching them on the upswing meant I was in a position to gloat when they started winning all the time.

Beating the Braves with all the bandwagon Braves fans around me was some kind of sweet!


I guess the bottom line is, I understand a geographical allegience if you can jump in the car and go see a team play 10 or 12 times a year or more.....but if you live anywhere where you are 5-6 hours or more away from the stadium, geographic alligences are silly, IMO.

I tend to agree, though it will be interesting to see what torre does now that he doesn't have a billionaire payroll.

I personally THINK he's an ordinary manager, but if I'm wrong, you guys might face a threat there.

For all Leit's talking about the D'Rays, I like Arizona's youth movement potential a lot better in terms of success over the next 4-5 years.

Long story....I wasn't really THAT interested, btw.

JUST KIDDING....haha....pretty cool.

I guess I grew up in Washington State, so the Mariners have always been my favorite team despite now living in Canada.

Y'all are taking up a collection to buy walkers for starting rotation, right? Sorry, but the East is going to be all about the Mets and the Phillies.

And probably not so much about the Phillies because their pitching starts and stops at Cole Hamels.

We going to go Wrodforge fantasy baseball? Since I have an ESPN the Mag subscription I can set us up with one of their sweet leagues at no charge, been itching to try all the new stuff they offer over places like yahoo.

I'm reading the Sporting News baseball annual right now and noticed a pretty goofy error in the Baltimore Orioles section.

They have a little sidebar for each team that lists the franchise's three best second basemen of all-time. The guys for the Orioles (with a career highlight) are:

1. Roberto Alomar (1996-1998) 10-time gold glove winner
2. Dave Johnson (1965-1972) 4-time all star
3. Ski Melillo (1926-1935) 1931 AL singles leader



I think I'd be inclined to put Bobby Grich in there somewhere.

I usually read the Street and Smith's yearbook, but it merged with the Sporting News this year and it took the Sporting News name.

R.I.P. Street and Smith's

I'd be up for a non-yahoo league.

Do you have to pay to be part of it?

Because I would be willing if I didn't have to pay.

You do not have to pay to be a part of it.

Well in that case start something up.

Would you guys object to a rotoleague scoring system? I was thinking of using six categories each.

For Hitting : AVG, HR, HBI, SLG, OBP, SB
For Pitching : W, KO, KO/9, WHIP, Saves, ERA

Sounds good to me.