Results tagged ‘ Baseball ’
MLB 2013 Season Predictions
AL East: We all know everyone is discounting the Yankees completely and already trying to anoint the Blue Jays as World Series favorites, but for what exactly? I have been saying since December that Reyes and Buehrle didn’t exactly do much to create wins in Miami and Dickey & Johnson give them a nice 1 – 2 at top of the rotation (provided Johnson stays healthy) but this is still a team that needs its previous players to take that next step.
Nope, it is going to be a tight race with all five teams in the mix but I like teams with great starting pitching…and that ain’t Toronto.
1. New York 2. Tampa 3. Toronto 4. Boston 5. Baltimore
AL Central: Tigers – Do I even need to explain this one? Unless the Royals see HUGE leaps forward by three or four guys AND find a legitimate No. 2 & no. 3 starter between now and opening day nobody will come within a half-dozen games of them this year. And don’t be surprised if it is more like 10 games.
1. Detroit 2. Chicago 3. Kansas City 4. Cleveland 5. Minnesota
AL West: The Angels made a big splash this off-season by signing Josh Hamilton away from their division rivals, but none of that is enough to overcome the fact that their pitching is just not good. Weaver is fantastic, though he comes up short versus better teams (his ERA versus Yankees, Rangers, Rays & Tigers is in the mid-4.00′s), but beyond that they have a lot of hopes & dreams. Wilson is a stat compiler who owns an abysmal playoff record and has even worse numbers than Weaver versus the cream-of-the-crop. Blanton & Vargas are cast-offs. Bottom line, this team’s pitching just isn’t good enough.
1. Texas 2. Anaheim (I refuse to call them anything else) 3. Oakland 4. Seattle 5. Houston
AL Wild Card Numero Uno: Rays
AL Wild Card Numero Dos: Angels
AL Champion: It’s a crapshoot but I’ll say Yankees over Rays. It’s all about the pitching and these teams have the deepest staffs from their ace to the closer.
NL East: The Nationals have tons of pitching and just enough offense to get it done. The Braves will keep them honest, but their outfield is so over-rated it hurts. You have a young group full of potential but also full of questions about attitude, work ethic and mental fortitude. Side note: B.J. Upton has his first full blown “idiot” moment by Memorial Day.
1. Washington 2. Atlanta 3. Philadelphia 4. New York 5. Miami
NL Central: It’s hard to bet against the Reds. They have decent pitching, Chapman is a monster as a closer and they can put up runs in bunches. Cardinals will, as always, be in the mix but I don’t think they can hang over a full season.
1. Cincinnati 2. St. Louis 3. Milwaukee 4. Pittsburgh 5. Chicago
NL West: The Dodgers have spent a ton of money but I think they have done little more than line themselves up for a metric truckload of ridicule when it is all said and done. Crawford, League, Eithier, Beckett & even Adrian Gonzalez are all grossly overpaid. Kemp needs to show he is A. healthy and B. the monster of a player he has only been for about one & a half seasons.
1. San Francisco 2. Los Angeles 3. Arizona 4. San Diego 5. Colorado
NL Wild Card Numero Uno: Atlanta
NL Wild Card Numero Dos: St. Louis
NL Champion: Washington over San Francisco in a close NLCS.
World Series: Yankees over the Nationals in a pitching fan’s paradise.
Baseball, PEDs and a level of hypocrisy that knows no bounds
Craig Calcaterra @ Hardball Talk comes through again (seriously, he and I tend to line up on this kind of stuff nearly 100% of the time) on the whole PED front:
Dan LeBatard offers the most intelligent and mature take on PEDs in sports I’ve seen in ages. He asks us to take a step back and ask ourselves why it is we are so hung up on a certain, narrow kind of performance enhancement in sports when we never question it — indeed, we openly praise it — when athletes do insane things to their bodies, all in the name of staying on the field? Often things that could cause massive harm.
Stuff like Ronnie Lott cutting his finger off. Lomas Brown playing with a catheter. Players having ligaments taken from cadavers and inserted into their own bodies. Drug therapies and medical procedures that are wholly unnecessary for a normal quality of life but are accepted in the name of athletic performance. We are totally fine with these. We are not totally fine with others:
We are OK with Kirk Gibson hitting one of the most famous home runs ever on one steroid (cortisone), but we slam the Hall of Fame door on the face of everybody else who might have used the anabolic kind. Granted, cortisone is not a banned performance enhancer, but it certainly enhanced Gibson’s performance, which wouldn’t have been possible without it. Lost in the shouting of “Cheater!” and “Fraud!” from a pill-popping America is how often athletes have to go through the pharmacy for the healing properties of hormones — not just to hit home runs but because what they do for a daily living really hurts.
Great points indeed.
For the life of me I cannot see why HGH is banned in professional sports.
These are highly paid athletes who amount to substantial investments for their teams. It makes little sense to me to deprive them of certain medical regimens while allowing others.
Anabolic steroids have a certain “healing property” but more in the sense that it allows you to regen faster for additional workouts so I tend to feel they should still be banned, however HGH should be “A-OK” to me.
If it is actually required to come back from an injury and a doctor is prescribing, administering it then have at it fellas.
As much as we like to play the role of raging hypocrite as we look down our nose at PED users our “positions” on them are just one giant clusterf*** of contradictions when it comes down to it.
At What Point Does Joe Girardi Realize Cory Wade Is Horrible?
Cory Wade was a pleasant surprise last season. Hell, he was a pleasant surprise for the first month of 2012, but that ship has sailed and he has been horrible… no, God-awful for the last two months and change.
Yet somebody, ahem Joe Retardi, hasn’t seemed to have noticed.
Don’t believe me? Check out these disgusting numbers from the 14 days/28 days:
| Split | G | PA | AB | R | H | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last 7 days | 1 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | .667 | .667 | 1.333 | 2.000 |
| Last 14 days | 3 | 27 | 26 | 13 | 15 | 1 | 3 | .577 | .593 | 1.154 | 1.746 |
| Last 28 days | 8 | 42 | 39 | 16 | 21 | 3 | 5 | .538 | .571 | 1.051 | 1.623 |
Batting averages against around .600?
On-base percentages against around .700?
Slugging percentages against near 1.200?
OPS (on-base + slugging percentage) against near 1.800?
Seriously, the only thing more pathetic than that stat line is the fact a supposed major league manager keeps sending this sap out there to lose game (after game after game).
Need more? Here’s his game log for that time period:
| Rk | Date | Opp | Rslt | Inngs | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | BF | Pit | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May | Opp | Rslt | Inngs | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | BF | Pit | |||
| 9 | May 1 | BAL | L,1-7 | 6-7 | 1.1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1.50 | 6 | 24 | |
| 15 | May 14 | @ | BAL | W,8-5 | 8-8 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1.59 | 1 | 3 |
| 16 | May 17 | @ | TOR | L,1-4 | 6-7 | 1.2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.41 | 7 | 22 |
| 17 | May 20 | CIN | L,2-5 | 8-9 | 1.1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2.25 | 6 | 18 | |
| 18 | May 22 | KCR | W,3-2 | 7-7 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.18 | 2 | 6 | |
| 19 | May 26 | @ | OAK | W,9-2 | 8-8 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2.08 | 3 | 15 |
| 20 | May 28 | @ | LAA | L,8-9 | 9-GF | 0.0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2.49 | 1 | 3 |
| 21 | May 30 | @ | LAA | W,6-5 | 7-8 | 1.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2.35 | 4 | 20 |
| June | Opp | Rslt | Inngs | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | BF | Pit | |||
| 22 | Jun 1 | @ | DET | W,9-4 | 8-8 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.28 | 2 | 5 |
| 23 | Jun 2 | @ | DET | L,3-4 | 8-8 | 1.0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2.55 | 4 | 13 |
| 24 | Jun 7 | TBR | L,3-7 | 9-GF | 0.2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.84 | 5 | 16 | |
| 25 | Jun 9 | NYM | W,4-2 | 7-8 | 0.2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.77 | 3 | 14 | |
| 26 | Jun 10 | NYM | W,5-4 | 8-8 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2.67 | 4 | 21 | |
| 27 | Jun 11 | @ | ATL | W,3-0 | 9-9 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2.63 | 1 | 4 |
| 28 | Jun 16 | @ | WSN | W,5-3 | 8-8 | 0.2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2.89 | 4 | 14 |
| 29 | Jun 20 | ATL | L,5-10 | 7-8 | 0.1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.18 | 3 | 20 | |
| 30 | Jun 22 | @ | NYM | L,4-6 | 7-7 | 1.0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.38 | 4 | 20 |
| 31 | Jun 24 | @ | NYM | W,6-5 | 6-6 | 0.1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3.34 | 3 | 14 |
| 32 | Jun 26 | CLE | W,6-4 | 9-9 | 0.2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4.45 | 6 | 21 | |
| 33 | Jun 29 | CHW | L,7-14 | 7-9 | 2.1 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5.79 | 15 | 58 | |
| July | Opp | Rslt | Inngs | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | BF | Pit | |||
| 34 | Jul 7(2) | @ | BOS | L,5-9 | 7-7 | 0.2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6.48 | 6 | 26 |
| 33.1 | 42 | 25 | 24 | 8 | 34 | 6 | 6.48 | 150 | |||||||
