2014 MLB Season Discussion

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n8rockerasu said:
Yeah, Sabathia is just at that point in his career where he needs to learn how to pitch. I feel kind of bad for him because he lost all that weight...probably hoping it would bring his fastball back. But it just isn't happening. He's 33 years old and that arm has a lot of innings on it. He's not going to throw 95 anymore. Time for him to study some tape of Greg Maddux, or Mike Mussina, or hell, just go talk to Andy Pettitte.
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He knows how to pitch. His control and command are already pretty good. We had this discussion last year, about Halladay, another guy who had excellent control and command but had lost his top gears. If losing velocity weren't a big deal, you'd see guys pitching into their 40s while being effective. Typically, when guys lose velocity it's because their body is breaking down in some fashion, or the parts needed to operate to throw the ball are worn out. Once that's gone, it isn't coming back. Guys who already relied on command may also lose that, since their arm/body isn't able to repeat the exact same motion it could years earlier.

Mussina shouldn't be used as an example for successfully pitching with diminished velocity. Of all qualified starters in 2008, his contact rate was third worst in baseball, 'bested' only by Aaron Cook and Livan Hernandez. Guys like Nick Blackburn, Greg Maddux, Paul Byrd and Zack Duke all allowed fewer contact than Mussina, and the best K/9 from that group was Maddux's 4.55. Mussina somehow pulled a 6.74 K/9. That was a total fluke.

And it's not like Greg Maddux was Jamie Moyer when we was in Atlanta. At his peak, he was in the low 90s and occasionally 93-94 with the Cubs, and still consistently hit the low 90s while pitching for the Braves. Once he hit his late 30s and lost the ability to get into the 90s with his fastball, he became fairly hittable.

 
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Seems like it's been forever since the Yankees got off to a hot start. It's not necessarily indicative of anything, because they've rebounded plenty of times. But it would really be nice to see players come out of spring training ready to play. New players, same story. L-O-B. 7 hits and 3 walks...and the team manages 1 run. They matched their 10 runners on base with 10 strikeouts though...so that explains a lot of it.

Texeira fell back to earth quickly too. 3 strikeouts and an error. Giambi-esque, haha. I swear, if the team struggles to score this year, Kevin Long's ass needs to be gone.

 
The fact that Daniel Murphy actually needed to defend missing the first 2 games for the birth of his child is sickening.
 
Cmon Reds these slow starts have killed us. I think our window has passed with Shin gone but we have to take division games.

 
burritoman said:
Sorry dude. I don't think we won 2 in a row all last season.

I wish we were beating the rangers, angels, or red sox instead.
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Hehe, thanks. At least we took Game 3 and avoided the sweep. Good luck to ya guys this year, it is fun to see an up and coming team like them, so even with the ups and downs, it should be a fun ride.

DNukem170 said:
The fact that Daniel Murphy actually needed to defend missing the first 2 games for the birth of his child is sickening.
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Sickening may be a bit strong, but I definitely found it odd. It happens all the time in sports, but I guess this was a little different since its Opening Day.

Reds303 said:
Cmon Reds these slow starts have killed us. I think our window has passed with Shin gone but we have to take division games.
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Yea, tough when you're losing division games, but there is no shame in losing to the Cards either.

 
Yanksfan said:
Yea, tough when you're losing division games, but there is no shame in losing to the Cards either.
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As much as I respect the Cards and think they have done an awesome job of building up their farm system and keeping their team stocked, they tick me off in the sense that everytime the Reds play them I wish the Reds would use their model. The Cardinals have a ton of prospects and I think Yadier can turn any pitcher into a stud, he's just that good behind the dish.

 
Reds303 said:
As much as I respect the Cards and think they have done an awesome job of building up their farm system and keeping their team stocked, they tick me off in the sense that everytime the Reds play them I wish the Reds would use their model. The Cardinals have a ton of prospects and I think Yadier can turn any pitcher into a stud, he's just that good behind the dish.
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Every fan of every team wishes they'd use the Cardinals model. Hi Phillies.

 
Cleveland signed a six-year extension for $52.5 million with Jason Kipnis, which is great to see. I hope they can work out something with Justin Masterson at some point so they can keep all of their good talent around for a while.

 
tcrash247 said:
Every fan of every team wishes they'd use the Cardinals model. Hi Phillies.
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Heck, the Phillies could use the model they used from the mid 90s until 05 or so. Rolen, Rollins, Burrell, Utley, Howard, Hamels, Madson, Myers. As good as Gillick was at fitting complementary pieces around an existing core to win a title, he does have a bit of a track record of leaving a team's system in poor shape after a tenure as GM (see Toronto, Baltimore and Seattle). I know he's still with the team in a senior adviser position, but no idea how much input he has (the Howard extension doesn't seem to be something he would've done). Kansas City seems to be a young, up and coming team. I wonder how much Mike Arbuckle had to do with that.

 
Bloomy said:
Heck, the Phillies could use the model they used from the mid 90s until 05 or so. Rolen, Rollins, Burrell, Utley, Howard, Hamels, Madson, Myers. As good as Gillick was at fitting complementary pieces around an existing core to win a title, he does have a bit of a track record of leaving a team's system in poor shape after a tenure as GM (see Toronto, Baltimore and Seattle). I know he's still with the team in a senior adviser position, but no idea how much input he has (the Howard extension doesn't seem to be something he would've done). Kansas City seems to be a young, up and coming team. I wonder how much Mike Arbuckle had to do with that.
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The only thing I have to question about Kansas City is the trading away of Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery and Wil Myers, to an already contending team in the Rays, no less. Yeah, they got James Shields, but where did it get them? Even when that trade happened, I was scratching my head why KC would do that -- and I'm a Rays fan.

 
KCs rotation was so poor that they felt they had to overpay to get a good, proven SP. They definitely did. Shields is good, so it's not a bust, but they gave up way too much.

I think they also believed that Wade Davis could develop into a solid back end of the rotation guy, so they essentially envisioned getting two SP out of the deal. That just didn't work out.
 
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tcrash247 said:
Every fan of every team wishes they'd use the Cardinals model. Hi Phillies.
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That is the best part of being an Astros fan right now. Luhnow seems to be doing a good job of building the team, instead of the old plan of "pay a shitload for Carlos Lee, watch his slow, painful decline." It wasn't the worst deal ever, but it was just for too much and too long. Pretty much like all those massive deals. I never really thought Lee was worth that kind of money. It was a win now move for a team that was a few years past the expiration.

@Yanksfan you got one last night. Hope your bats come to life here soon man. That 3rd baseman you guys got may end up pretty good.

 
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Man, ESPN's site was already cluttered but this new layout takes the cake. A gigantic Game of Thrones ad at the top of the page, another one underneath the headlines, and there's now an even bigger video table between the splash pages and the actual content. Is ESPN.com going broke or something?
 
DNukem170 said:
Man, ESPN's site was already cluttered but this new layout takes the cake. A gigantic Game of Thrones ad at the top of the page, another one underneath the headlines, and there's now an even bigger video table between the splash pages and the actual content. Is ESPN.com going broke or something?
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No, just getting greedier. After you weed through all that advertising though, you get to read such fascinating articles such as player x likes to eat pizza before games and player y is upset at player z because he didn't get him a birthday gift. No wonder they keep putting out pointless stories, they need people to keep clicking to draw in all those advertisers.

 
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Reds303 said:
No, just getting greedier. After you weed through all that advertising though, you get to read such fascinating articles such as player x likes to eat pizza before games and player y is upset at player z because he didn't get him a birthday gift. No wonder they keep putting out pointless stories, they need people to keep clicking to draw in all those advertisers.
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Don't forget all the useless articles about what Lebron thinks of Jose Canseco eating chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing, or virtually any other useless commentary.

 
I haven't been on ESPN for years except to play Fantasy Football.

I've used si.com for general stuff since about the day i got the internet.

 
Tex officially sent to the DL. That Yankee infield might be one of the worst in baseball right now. And more importantly, the Yankees have shown no power yet, and now they lose a big bat in the middle of the lineup.

 
bigdaddybruce44 said:
Tex officially sent to the DL. That Yankee infield might be one of the worst in baseball right now. And more importantly, the Yankees have shown no power yet, and now they lose a big bat in the middle of the lineup.
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Shocking. But Tex already had 2 errors of his own anyway. Again, it's sad that I miss Jason Giambi.

The team is really going to have to rely on their pitching. It's weird, but I almost feel like they're built like an NL team at this point. Going to need strong pitching and timely hitting. Waiting on the 3 run homer just isn't going to work this year. At least Tanaka looked like a stud, even after giving up a HR to the first batter he faced. It might sound crazy, but I was almost more encouraged by that than I would have been if he had just blown through everybody. That's a kind of composure we never saw from AJ Burnett.

Also, this was really nice to see from Thursday night:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/derek-jeter-plays-keepaway-with-obnoxious-adults-so-young-girl-can-get-souvenir-ball-044800913.html

 
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I don't know if I can hold out for premium to go on sale. No baseball is killing me. I made it through basketball season without biting on league pass, but no baseball is eating at me pretty bad.
 
burritoman said:
Astros win #3!

Yes, I am celebrating, things are looking up this year.
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Wait until Singleton and Santana get the call. The Astros could be a really interesting team in the next few years, and if they want to spend money to go with their prospects I could see them contending. I took them as my team in OOTP 15 when it releases lol.

 
Billy Hamilton tagged up and scored on a popup to shallow right field today, and he was safe by a pretty good margin. I wish he'd get on base more often so we could see him do more of that.

 
Josh Hamilton is going to miss 6-8 weeks after sliding into first. The man is a dumb injury machine. 

Oh and Neal Cotts needs to get back to being 2013 Neal Cotts real soon. He is geting owned this month. 

 
burritoman said:
Astros win #3!

Yes, I am celebrating, things are looking up this year.
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I have to say, with the Astros out of the NL Central I am rooting for them this year. It's early in the season, but I think they can still finish at about .500 even with the 3 game slide. From a GM perspective, they have little salary commited so if they can put together a solid team I expect their owner to spend when the time is right.

 
Reds303 said:
I have to say, with the Astros out of the NL Central I am rooting for them this year. It's early in the season, but I think they can still finish at about .500 even with the 3 game slide. From a GM perspective, they have little salary commited so if they can put together a solid team I expect their owner to spend when the time is right.
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I don't see them spending any big dollars on any outside free agents though. They already attempted to sign their top hitting prospect George Springer long term but he declined. It's best for them to keep doing what they're doing: keep it small market, developing in-house until all of their younger talent comes up, and keep the cream that rises to the top. As long as they don't fall into the Royals' way of doing things, they will be just fine.

 
DNukem170 said:
Yea, I don't think the Houston area can get their games yet.

MLB really needs to get rid if this blackout crap.
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While the blackout rules are a problem (though I think the overreaching coverage areas are the biggest problem I have with them), I think the Astros bigger problem is Comcast wants more money from providers to carry CSN Houston local providers want to pay, so they aren't carrying the channel. Cited link on Wikipedia says only about 40% of the Houston market has CSN Houston.

Comcast has been playing games with Phillies games for years, too. Withholding their game feeds from MLB Extra Innings because they didn't broadcast over satellite and thus didn't have to make them available. There's been a long-term standoff with DirecTV and Dish over the price to carry CSN Philly. With the new TV contract the Phillies signed, the number of games available on over-the-air channels drops from ~45 to ~12, and Comcast wants local cable providers to pay more for CSN Philly because they're getting the extra 33 games. Some cable providers in Eastern PA have said they'll eat the rate hike for now, others are threatening to drop CSN Philly.

 
Don't look now, but the Uptons are heating up. Chipper was at the park the other day working with BJ on his swing, and it's showing.

 
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Good for the Orioles to hang on and win in extras. Hunter blew the save, but that was more Rasmus than Hunter on the HR. That, and the 3B umpire blew an obvious call that should've ended the game.
 
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