Results tagged ‘ Washington Nationals ’
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.
In case you hadn’t heard it yet, Bryce Harper is a “conservative hero”
Craig Calcaterra has found himself an “interesting” piece online.
Okay, it isn’t interesting. It’s just more mindless drivel from a racist passing himself off as a “conservative”, but here goes:
Know what? You can read politics into too many things. Like this clown from the Daily Caller, who has decided that Bryce Harper is symbolic of some conservative rebirth, because he hustles and Jason Heyward is symbolic of liberalism because he’s lazy and complacent.
Normally that kind of construction is indicative of some sort of racism too — look at the industrious white man and the lazy black man! — but I think this guy is so enamored of seeing the political in everything that race isn’t even on his mind.
No, his idiocy is pretty much monomaniacally political:
“Bryce Harper is a conservative hero. The star rookie for the Washington Nationals has woken up Major League Baseball, and watching it unfold has reminded me of nothing so much as the collapse of the old political paradigms and the inevitable and upcoming rebirth of conservatism in November …”
Harper is “scrappy” — yes, he uses the word scrappy — because he took an extra base when he hit a single to right against the Braves. Heyward is some old awful liberal because he was slow getting to the ball:
“To me, the play carried even greater symbolic importance. Heyward’s bungle showed a complacency, if not indolence, that Harper threatens to destroy, but it also could be a metaphor for the collapse of the old liberal order. Heyward was like one of those public school teachers who, because they are a union member, can’t be fired and so are relegated to the “rubber room” to sit and read the paper and gather a check for the rest of their lives.”
Craig danced around it some, implying that this was purely politically motivated.
I disagree and think he hit the nail in the head with the other stuff. What the guy really was saying was “that white kid hustled his ass off and quite typically the lazy n***er slacked off”.
So I guess all those times Derek Jeter (of a mixed marriage), Ichiro Suzuki or any other non-white player hustled their ass off for the last decade it didn’t happen, huh? Harper just “invented it” I suppose.
Best of all, the clueless dolt overlooks some BIG points in the landscape of professional sports (you know, like revenue sharing).
As expected this one got some great discussions going on, as one Hardball Talk reader going by “fearlessleader” points out:
There’s no shortage of awesome comments on this article, but this may be my favorite:
“The Nationals picked Harper first overall because they had the worst record in baseball. They didn’t earn that pick through hard work, in fact they worked the least and were rewarded for it. That sounds like income redistribution to me. Bryce Harper is a socialist hero.”
Great Moments in Misspelled Names on Jerseys
Rofl, Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk comes through again:
When I worked in offices and someone’s key card stopped working we just to joke that it was a sly way of the firm telling them that they’ve been fired.
I wonder if baseball teams do this with jerseys. If so, Jeff Manship, you should probably update your resume.
But as good as this is, it still doesn’t beat the “Natinals”:
