Posts Tagged ‘Reds’

1/2 over.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I remember a few weeks ago thinking there was over 100 games left to the season. I couldn’t believe that there was so much left. Now that it’s past the half way point it seems like it’s time to get ready for 2011.

So how’s everything going? I’d have to say worse than I expected. Although the past week was pretty good, the Pirates were playing the Cubs and Phillies, two teams in huge declines. Then the rest of this month there are a lot of games against the Astros and Brewers, so the next few weeks shouldn’t be too terrible. After a very rough start for Pedro, he’s started to turn things around the last week. Milledge has picked things up, although he still lacks power. Tabata is doing as well as can be expected for a 21 year old and both McCutchen and Jones continue to do well. What’s really killed the team this year is the starting rotation. The team is getting killed by the 5th inning a lot and then they’re wearing down the bullpen. So clearly, pitching is a problem that needs to be addressed by the start of next season.

I think that JR actually made a good point last week. The Pirates are making a lot of mistakes due to youth and inexperience. If they can avoid that, then maybe they can have a decent second half.

Meanwhile, like I predicted before the season, the Reds and Cardinals are leading the division, although both the Brewers and Cubs aren’t doing as well as I thought they would and the Astros are doing better than I thought they would.

The big problem with the Cubs is that they’re old. Looking at their starting 8, only two are under 30 right now, Geovanny Soto and Starlin Castro. Besides Castro, they are an aging team that’s only going to get worse as they get older. And even worse, they aren’t going to be able to trade most of the guys on the team as a lot of them have huge contracts that last a long time. The Cubs went all in for 2007 and 2008 and now they’re reaping the consequences of not planning long term past 2008. Also Carlos Zambrano is being a bit of a jack ass, which doesn’t help anything. However they did get lucky with Carlos Silva, but that isn’t going to last forever either.

Overall, right now, I think the Pirates have a much brighter future than the Cubs do at this point.

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Mets already in Mid-Season sucking form?

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Some thoughts from the first week in baseball. Of course it’s early and there’s something about small sample size that can fool you, but I think one week can tell you a lot about the coming season.

1. The Mets suck. Even though they threw money away on Jason Bay, they still suck. Dur.

2. The Astros are the worst team in baseball this year. I think the fight to stay out of last place in the NL Central will be a dog fight and it’ll be one the Pirates win and the Astros lose. The Astros are terrible. They’re without Lance Berkman and their pitching has been terrible. The only guy so far who’s actually carrying his weight with the bat is Michael Bourn (not good). They’ve walked a total of 5 times and have struck out 50 times. They’ve hit a total of 2 home runs (Garrett Jones has more than that). Meanwhile, Roy Oswalt is the only starter who’s performing. Otherwise, they’ve given up 42 runs in 62 innings. The Pirates might be bad, but I think the Astros are worse.

3. The Atlanta Braves are good, but probably not good enough to be a playoff team. Likewise, Jason Heyward is probably gonna live up to the hype.

4. I still think that the Reds are this year’s sleeper team. I think they’re gonna contend to get in to the playoffs if not make it. They’re certainly better than the Cubs.

5. As for the Pirates, they could be a good team if their top 4 starters can get it together and all pitch deep in to games with low pitch counts. I think the hitting is gonna be good enough to be National League average. And while some of the pitching suckiness can be blamed on “The Mustache of Sadness” and not having a true fifth starter since Kevin Hart can barely muster pitching a AAA game at this point, I think the Pirates are going to have a tough season scoring enough to make up for their obvious pitching deficiencies. As much as Smizik and others have focused a lot of time and complaining on hitting, it’s the pitching that’s probably gonna make the 2010 season another long season.

Also, watching the Judge Judy from yesterday made me glad that when I rented a limo for Sean’s wedding that I rented from a real company that had more than 1 limo and the driver wasn’t an old man who didn’t know where the spare tire was and all that. Although, getting the trolly stuck at Eric’s wedding was pretty fun. Although, looking back, I wonder if it was a good idea to pay them all in advance, it doesn’t sound like SOP.

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Posted in Major League Baseball, Pirates, Stuff on TV | Comments Off

A snowy game day.

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Everyone should go to a baseball game once in their life with Bill James. This is my favorite part of the article:

And yet … that’s what the Royals (and other small market teams) do. They play the game conventionally. They fall back on old ideas. They hire old school managers and preach old school baseball values and scout players on the same 20-80 scale that players have been scouted for 50 years. Bill pulls out his spiral notebook — he always brings a spiral notebook to games — and on a page he draws two ladders, one on top of the other. The higher ladder is the “professional” ladder. The lower ladder he calls the “amateur” ladder. He then draws a picture of someone dangling from the bottom rung of the professional ladder. That, he says, is the Kansas City Royals.

“It’s so important for them to be considered professional,” he says, “that they are unwilling to try anything that might make people think they’re amateurish.”

And that’s the big problem with baseball these days. The fact is that there are small market teams like the Pirates, Royals, Reds and Orioles that for most of the last decade think they could compete with the Yankees, Angels, Mets and Cubs by doing it the same way that they do. Essentially for the entire decade, all those teams have been failures.

Meanwhile, other small market teams like the Marlins, A’s and Twins have figured out a long time ago that trying to put their teams together the same way as the big guys in the game wouldn’t get them anywhere. So that while the Pirates, Reds, Orioles and Royals have been shut out of the playoffs this decade, the Twins, A’s and Marlins have combined for 11 playoff appearances and a World Series title (03 Marlins).

The Twins for example, traded away Chuck Knoblauch and Johan Santana and let Torii Hunter leave through free agency. But that really didn’t hurt them long term because while the Twins are back in the playoffs, Santana is probably at home. The Twins are probably the best run team in baseball. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how many players are traded away or leave through free agency, they always have more talent ready to go in the minor leagues or they make trades that will get them the talent they need. The hard part for the Twins, however, will be keeping Joe Mauer in Minnesota instead of letting him leave and become another Bronx Bomber…

But speaking of the Twins….

Fuck. Up 3-1 in the 9th, A-Rod  hits a run homer. Fuck.

Twins get the bases loaded with no outs in the 11th and couldn’t get even one run home. Fuck.

Then Teixeira hits a hr in the bottom of that inning to end it. Fucking Yankees.

But, I did find this article hilarious. The guy goes 0 for 4 two nights ago and suddenly that’s the story the next day? Not “A-Rod produces” or “CC Produces”. It’s “Tex doesn’t produce”. Teixeira clearly wasn’t going to let some idiot sports writer get away with that again, what with getting the walk off home run tonight. Reading that article almost made me happy for Teixeira. Almost.

I still think 1991 was the greatest year in baseball history. The Yankees finished last. The Twins won the World Series. The Pirates finished in 1st place, 14 games ahead of the 2nd place Cardinals. The Pirates were so dominating that year, they won the division title on September 22nd and the regular season didn’t end until October 6th. Even in that 12 game span between wrapping up the division title and the last game of the season, the Pirates went 7-5 and had the best record in the East. I like 1991 so much, I bought the page for it.

Finally, I heard it’s gonna snow tonight. I wonder what the shortest amount of time between snow melting in the spring and the next snowfall in the fall is for here in Iowa. Even if it snows a bunch, it’s not gonna stick around, it’s supposed to be 50 something out tomorrow and then in the 40′s the four days after that. Welcome Mr. Snow, Enjoy the Heat!

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Posted in Crappy Weather, Major League Baseball, Pirates | Comments Off