2011 MLB Thread

[kingfc22]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

The Giants offense (and the fucking corpse of Tejada) is ridiculous. They've made the Pirates look like Bob Gibson circa 1968.

I was hoping Bochy would pinch hit Cain or Jonathan Sanchez for Tejada. The whole ballpark knew he was going to hit into a DP to end it in the 9th.

[stevew]

Regression to the mean for Macdonald.

[Logan]

Jose Reyes flipped his shit last night after being called out at third after sliding in safely for a triple...when the Nats' Jerry Hairston faked the ump into thinking Reyes' hand came off the bag. Great call in a 1 run game in the 8th, you clown. Luckily Dan Murphy took care of the rest.

[Suicane75]

Ben Zobrist (10) has almost as many RBI's TODAY as Mauer and Morneau (11) have all season.

[dawgfan]

Michael Pineda is exceeding my optimistic projections. M's might have themselves a pretty awesome 1-2 punch in the rotation for the next several years...

Also nice to see Smoak off to the great start. If Ackley also meets expectations, the M's might just have a chance at making some noise in the AL West in the next couple of years...

[JonInMiddleGA]

Braves pitcher Derek Lowe arrested for DUI *| ajc.com

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

And for those who were wondering why the Royals fans were so excited about their start, look at the last six games to understand why. We don't get good 15 game stretches very often. They're something to be celebrated.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Home from AAA game as Columbus gets three in the 9th to sweep Gwinnett in a battle of division leaders. Nice ballpark, great seats, but honestly if those two are among the best of the minors then a lot of systems have been pillaged.

[lungs]

Something is wrong here, Yuni Betancourt walked twice last night and his OBP is now over .300.

[stevew]

Ubaldo has to be fucked up or something if the Pirates got to him for 4 runs.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by stevew

Ubaldo has to be fucked up or something if the Pirates got to him for 4 runs.

THE PIRATES ARE JUST THAT GOOD

DON'T BE HATIN

[stevew]

The last time Yuni walked was cause there was a "no running" sign around the hotel swimming pool.

[sovereignstar v2]

Microcosm of the Twins season thus far:

[sovereignstar v2]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

Ben Zobrist (10) has almost as many RBI's TODAY as Mauer and Morneau (11) have all season.

gfy

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar v2

gfy

2011 Home Run Challenge

Darwin Barney: 1 Home Run
Justin Morneau & Joe Mauer: 1 Home Run



Stay tuned for updates.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by stevew

Ubaldo has to be fucked up or something if the Pirates got to him for 4 runs.

Something is wrong with Ubaldo, but nobody on the Rockies wants to admit it. His velocity is still WAY off. He touches 95 or 96 occasionally now, but he's living with his fastball at about 92 or 92. His average fastball last year was over 96 MPH.

Now, I understand he could still pitch at 91 or 92 and be effective, but I think the velocity drop is a sign of other things. He has no command, his splitter is hanging more than it is dropping and it's also being thrown far slower than the fastball which is giving hitters more time to recognize it. I said a couple of weeks ago I thought he should have went down and had some rehab starts and I still feel that way.

The Rockies better hope it's just his arm getting back into shape from the cuticle injury. If he's going to live with this type of stuff all year, he's not going to be very good.

Beyond that, the Rockies bats need to get going sometime soon. They've scored 5 runs or more in a game 2 times in the last 11 games. Once was when they got to Cain, the other was when the Cubs gifted them their runs with 4 errors. The weather has been horrible outside of their Florida trip, but the hitters simply have to swing the bat better than they are now.

[Logan]

Don't worry, you have another Mets series coming up soon.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by TroyF

Now, I understand he could still pitch at 91 or 92 and be effective, but I think the velocity drop is a sign of other things.

Significant velocity drops are never a good sign - he almost certainly has something wrong in his shoulder and/or elbow. Which is not to say that he might not be able to learn how to be effective at a lower velocity, but I'd put the odds at 99.9% that he's injured.

[stevew]

I hate these 10:15 start times on the West coast. Thank god the Pirates only have to play one series a year in each one of those parks.

How did it used to work when the Braves were in the West Division? Were they playing a ton of late games as well? Seems like those type of starts would have been bad for buisiness.

[cougarfreak]

Originally Posted by stevew

I hate these 10:15 start times on the West coast. Thank god the Pirates only have to play one series a year in each one of those parks.

How did it used to work when the Braves were in the West Division? Were they playing a ton of late games as well? Seems like those type of starts would have been bad for buisiness.

Yep, as were the Reds. Late games make for late nights for me.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by stevew

How did it used to work when the Braves were in the West Division? Were they playing a ton of late games as well?

Yep, I recall them both well & fondly. This came up on my FB wall last week actually, for a number of us the west coast games have always been favorites, felt special somehow.

Braves fans have always included a pretty good chunk of retirees, those games were my grandfather's favorites and I remember very well looking out my bedroom window growing up & watching the light go out at a neighbor's home a few minutes after the last pitch ... she was a widow in her 90's at the time.

The TV numbers really didn't fall off as much as you might think. Those games aired against virtually no competition whereas for more normal times they were up against Dallas or MASH or whatever.

[cuervo72]

I used to love when the Phillies took trips to the west coast* - you'd get a full night of TV and still have a game to look forward to (once I was old enough to stay up, that is). Often it would make for a viewing double-header, with games from ESPN or NYY/NYM (our cable got both WOR and WPIX).


* They still take the trips obviously, I just don't get the games. And it's just not the same with the Orioles or Nats.

[MizzouRah]

They call him... BIG PUMA.

What a signing Berkman is turning out to be, wow.

[fantom1979]

Berkman went undrafted in our 12 team fantasy league. Usually as a league we roster right around 160 batters.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Berkman went undrafted in our 12 team fantasy league. Usually as a league we roster right around 160 batters.

I picked him up in our FOFC league.

[rowech]

Brandon Phillips with one of the best plays I've ever seen.

[Scoobz0202]

And Fox Sports Ohio hasn't really shown it since. Fuckers.

[stevew]

If you own Liriano in fantasy, now is the time to sell.

[stevew]

Dola-
The 123 pitches.

[Chief Rum]

Angels: 16-8 versus every team in baseball not stationed in New England.
Angels current record: 16-14

[molson]

Red Sox once again get back within a game of .500 - they were there last week and slipped a bit. After all that talk that they needed to play .680 baseball just reach .500 by July or whatever it was - this has been a rather quiet and much faster route.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by molson

Red Sox once again get back within a game of .500 - they were there last week and slipped a bit. After all that talk that they needed to play .680 baseball just reach .500 by July or whatever it was - this has been a rather quiet and much faster route.

Hey molson, I'll be watching the game tomorrow night at a bar with a recent transplant friend from New England. Should be an interesting experience.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Hey molson, I'll be watching the game tomorrow night at a bar with a recent transplant friend from New England. Should be an interesting experience.

The transplants are usually pretty well-mannered, as far as Boston fans go.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Well, the thing is, a 4 game deficit with 156 to play isn't insurmountable, no. You're right about that.

But you also made my other point for me at the end of your first paragraph - the hole the Red Sox find themselves in isn't just comparative to the rest of the division, but comparative to where they need to be in order to compete. I remember a few years ago, the Braves played out of their minds for a period of 2-3 months, where their winning percentage was in the high .600s. That's doable in the short term, but markedly difficult to do over the course of an entire season.

The math in terms of getting to 97 wins (roughly a .600 performance over the course of the season), isn't awful right now, but the longer they struggle, the tougher it gets.

I chose 97 wins, offhand, because that's the midpoint between the Red Sox's win totals in their two championship years this century. They won 98 games in 2004, 96 in 2007, so my off-the-cuff guess is that they need to be roughly in that ballpark to win the pennant.

Right now, they need to play .622 ball the rest of the way in order to get to that 97-win mark. Offhand, the last time Boston played at that level over the span of a full season was, conveniently, 1949. They went 96-58 (with a 'tie' also according to Baseball Reference) in 154 (or 155, if you count the tie) games played. They have 156 ahead of them currently, so it's a nice neat comparison.

Just sayin'.

Originally Posted by molson

Red Sox once again get back within a game of .500 - they were there last week and slipped a bit. After all that talk that they needed to play .680 baseball just reach .500 by July or whatever it was - this has been a rather quiet and much faster route.

Just thought I'd cite the relevant post. It wasn't "needing to play .680 ball to get to .500 by July." It was needing to play .622+ the rest of the way out to reach 97 wins.

And in case you're curious, at 14-15, that leaves 133 games in the season. They need 83 wins in 133 games to reach 97.

That's a .624 winning percentage from *here* on out. Some of that is attributable to going 2-4 after I did the math originally, for a 2-10 start (and rebounding to go 12-5 since then is quite good). But some of that is just days off the calendar.

There haven't been many teams get off to a start that poor and still finish above .500 (2, I think?) so that the Red Sox have been able to get close to the breakeven line again so quickly is remarkable.

But at this point in time, they still lack any reasonable margin for error. If they go 12-5 over the next 2 1/2 weeks as well, that changes, obviously. But the last 2 1/2 weeks they've been playing .700 ball to make up for their pisspoor start, and they need that to continue for at least another while longer, or else they need to have several such stretches in them this season to balance the inevitable slumps.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by molson

The transplants are usually pretty well-mannered, as far as Boston fans go.

Yeah, he's nice enough to even own an Angels hat and he wears it when he thinks he'll be in too deep.

[molson]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

But the last 2 1/2 weeks they've been playing .700 ball to make up for their pisspoor start, and they need that to continue for at least another while longer, or else they need to have several such stretches in them this season to balance the inevitable slumps.

Or, if they just win 4 in a row, and the Yankees lose 4 in a row, they're tied for first place. (Not particularly likely, but my point all along is that when we're just dealing with the first 2 weeks of the season, the long term winning % projections can be a little misleading. You can play .700+ baseball over a couple of weeks. Heck, you can play 1.000 baseball over a week. Just like you can play .000, or .100 over a stretch that short.)

Edit: After that terrible of a start, they had a chance on April 26 to reach .500. They just had to win 8 out 9, hardly historic stuff. Then they dipped again for 5 games, and now they're back at the doorstep again, 4 games out of first. The margin for error is not as as tiny as it seems this early. The next two months will be far more important than those first 12 games. They could easily have a huge lead in the division in two months, only to blow it in traditional Red Sox style late. There's a ton of games, there will be a ton of streaks yet to come. They're 1 game behind where they were last year after 29 games (when they got to one-half a game out by July and then faded badly after that to an 89 win season). I'd much rather be where the Red Sox are than where the White Sox are - and the White Sox were 7-5 after those overrated and over-analyzed first 12 games.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by molson

Or, if they just win 4 in a row, and the Yankees lose 4 in a row, they're tied for first place. (Not particularly likely, but my point all along is that when we're just dealing with the first 2 weeks of the season, the long term winning % projections can be a little misleading. You can play .700+ baseball over a couple of weeks. Heck, you can play 1.000 baseball over a week. Just like you can play .000, or .100 over a stretch that short.)

Edit: After that terrible of a start, they had a chance on April 26 to reach .500. They just had to win 8 out 9, hardly historic stuff. Then they dipped again for 5 games, and now they're back at the doorstep again, 4 games out of first. The margin for error is not as as tiny as it seems this early. The next two months will be far more important than those first 12 games. They could easily have a huge lead in the division in two months, only to blow it in traditional Red Sox style late. There's a ton of games, there will be a ton of streaks yet to come. They're 1 game behind where they were last year after 29 games (when they got to one-half a game out by July and then faded badly after that to an 89 win season).

And you're still misrepresenting my point.

I never said 0-6 meant they could never get to first place anymore than 2-10 meant that.

What I said is that:

a) They probably need to win 97 or so to have a shot at making the playoffs out of the East. In addition to my previous comment about the # of wins the Sox had in their championship years, I'd point out that the Rays and Yanks won 96 and 95 last year. Boston was the wild card with 95 wins in 2009. Yankees won the division with 103. Rays had 97 wins in 2008 en route to the World Series. Boston won 96 when they won the Series in 2007. Yankees won 97 in taking the East in 2006.

I think that's a fairly reasonable assertion - winning the East will take around 97 wins.

b) The math to reach .500, or to get into 1st place, at any point this season is absolutely irrelevant next to the larger point: that to win 97 games this season, the Red Sox need to go 83-50 the rest of the way. That's just basic math. Can they win the division without winning 97? Certainly. But given the level of performance from AL East winners in recent seasons, that implies all sorts of other things happening that you simply cannot count on.

If the Red Sox win ~97 games, they'll be right there in the mix for the East and possibly the AL pennant. Getting to 97 wins requires a .624 winning percentage over the next 4 1/2 months, and every day that they hang around .500 makes it that much harder to reach that benchmark.

The task isn't just "catch the Yankees," and it isn't just "win ~97 games." Realistically, it's probably both of those.

Right now, just as it was 2 1/2 weeks ago, the math to do that isn't their friend. If they keep playing well for another 2 1/2 weeks, as I said earlier, that changes. The benefit from getting off to a hot start is that you can weather slumps more easily. Having your slump to start the season means that you don't really have the room for another 2-10 stretch.

[stevew]

If you lose 1 game, win 2. If you lose 4 games, win 8. If you lose 16 games, baseball not your sport.

[molson]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

And you're still misrepresenting my point.

I never said 0-6 meant they could never get to first place anymore than 2-10 meant that.

What I said is that:

a) They probably need to win 97 or so to have a shot at making the playoffs out of the East. In addition to my previous comment about the # of wins the Sox had in their championship years, I'd point out that the Rays and Yanks won 96 and 95 last year. Boston was the wild card with 95 wins in 2009. Yankees won the division with 103. Rays had 97 wins in 2008 en route to the World Series. Boston won 96 when they won the Series in 2007. Yankees won 97 in taking the East in 2006.

I think that's a fairly reasonable assertion - winning the East will take around 97 wins.

b) The math to reach .500, or to get into 1st place, at any point this season is absolutely irrelevant next to the larger point: that to win 97 games this season, the Red Sox need to go 83-50 the rest of the way. That's just basic math. Can they win the division without winning 97? Certainly. But given the level of performance from AL East winners in recent seasons, that implies all sorts of other things happening that you simply cannot count on.

If the Red Sox win ~97 games, they'll be right there in the mix for the East and possibly the AL pennant. Getting to 97 wins requires a .624 winning percentage over the next 4 1/2 months, and every day that they hang around .500 makes it that much harder to reach that benchmark.

The task isn't just "catch the Yankees," and it isn't just "win ~97 games." Realistically, it's probably both of those.

Right now, just as it was 2 1/2 weeks ago, the math to do that isn't their friend. If they keep playing well for another 2 1/2 weeks, as I said earlier, that changes. The benefit from getting off to a hot start is that you can weather slumps more easily. Having your slump to start the season means that you don't really have the room for another 2-10 stretch.

The big stat thrown around 2 1/2 weeks ago were how no team has ever made the playoffs after a 2-10 start. But has any team ever made the playoffs after going only .500 in their first 28 games? I'm guessing quite a few have. The microscope on the first 12 games was enormous and misleading. The Tigers have lost 7 in a row, but I don't think we can rule them out yet in a weak Central division. But if they had lost those 7 games to start the season, I'm sure we would have heard the stat that no team has ever started 0-7 and made the playoffs. But it's just an arbitrary period of time. Has a team ever made the playoffs going 0-7 between games 102 and 109? What are the odds of that? But still, as it is, the Tigers have to have whatever higher winning % over their other 155 games. No biggie, they have the next 3-4 months to get hot, and for the Indians to fall to earth, it wouldn't be a surprising at all.

If the Red Sox meet their potential on paper (a big if), they SHOULD have a 50-70 game stretch of playing .700+ baseball. Most playoff teams will have that. That really wouldn't be that amazing. They might already be in that stretch right now. And because of the nature of the game, it would be expected that they'll have a couple of down weeks, or a couple of bad back-to-back weeks as well. Having a bad stretch in the start of the season did reduce their margin of error slightly, but the first 12 games of a 162-game baseball season is the equivalent of about one game in an NFL season, or 6 games in an NBA season. It's really not that big a deal.

And whether it will take 97 games to win the East depends on the Yankees. It would be very surprising if the Rays or anyone else is even it that ballpark (it would also be surprising if an AL wild card team was anywhere near that - the Red Sox are currently TWO games out of a Wild Card.) But the Yankees could win 90, or they could win 105. I do see it as 2-team race in the East, subject to a potential Rays run, which most people would consider very surprising. There's a huge clump of teams around .500 in the AL right now, and there's a lot of baseball to sort it out. All of those teams will have good stretches and bad stretches this season.

The bottom line for me was, the importance of the first 12 games was grossly overstated. The fact that they still haven't been that great, but are now only 2 back of a wild card currently, I think supports that point.

[stevew]

So-
Brandon Wood walks-Unreal
Of course we bunt him over....hey, we only have 3 outs left, why not waste 33% of them
Then Wood gets caught stealing 3rd on a ball in the dirt....still.
Then Doumit strikes out, ball in the dirt, and he gets thrown out cause he doesn't remember to run to first.

FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK you clint hurdle, fuck you Pirates

[MrBug708]

*sigh* Broxton sucks

[molson]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

so that the Red Sox have been able to get close to the breakeven line again so quickly is remarkable.

That's the biggest disagreement/different perspective I think. The Red Sox have now gone 11-5 in their last 16 games (.688) That's hardly remarkable. Every playoff team (and a bunch of non-playoff teams), will have stretches like that this season. .688 SEEMS remarkable, from the perspective of a 162-game season, but over a couple of weeks, it's no big deal. Both the Red Sox and the Yankees will probably have several stretches like that (and better) this season. The Yankees, may or may not have a 2-10 stretch at some point (and other playoff teams may or may not have a 2-10 stretch at some point), but they'll all have bad stretches (maybe 3-9, or 4-8), and the fact that the Red Sox' bad stretch was a couple of games worse than would be expected means that they'll need to make up a couple of games at some point along the way. It's relatively insignificant over 162 games, if you compare the Red Sox bad streak to other playoff teams' bad streaks - as opposed to the Red Sox' bad streak v. the full season Red Sox expectation - which I think people have been doing.

[BishopMVP]

My biggest disagreement with Sack's posts is the idea that the Red Sox need to win 97 games to "compete". Considering 1 of our 2 WS, and 3 of the last 10 overall have been won by a Wild Card, all we need to do is make the playoffs. The WC winner has won >95 games once in the past 8 seasons (and, oddly, exactly 95 in 6 of them), so already we've knocked off 2 wins. Now, since it doesn't actually matter how many games you win a wild card by, it's essentially the 5th place AL team+1, which for the last 8 seasons provides the following:

2010: 90
2009: 88
2008: 90
2007: 89
2006: 91
2005: 94
2004: 92
2003: 94
2002: 94
2001: 86

I don't know if there's any reason other than SSS why it's changed after that early-2000's run, but no team with >90 wins has missed the postseason since 2005 - and that actually holds true for the NL too. So all of a sudden, there goes the idea we "need" to play .624 baseball (83-50), replaced with a much more manageable .571 clip (76-57 - or exactly 4 out of every 7).

Maybe 2 teams in another division will catch fire and we'll need to do so ourselves, but until we're 5 or more out in August, I'm looking at it like Molson is - 4 out in the division, and 2 out in the WC with 133 games to go. BP gives us an 80% chance to make the playoffs, 2nd in the majors, and while I think that's maybe a little high I think our odds are well above 50%.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

My biggest disagreement with Sack's posts is the idea that the Red Sox need to win 97 games to "compete". Considering 1 of our 2 WS, and 3 of the last 10 overall have been won by a Wild Card, all we need to do is make the playoffs. The WC winner has won >95 games once in the past 8 seasons (and, oddly, exactly 95 in 6 of them), so already we've knocked off 2 wins. Now, since it doesn't actually matter how many games you win a wild card by, it's essentially the 5th place AL team+1, which for the last 8 seasons provides the following:

2010: 90
2009: 88
2008: 90
2007: 89
2006: 91
2005: 94
2004: 92
2003: 94
2002: 94
2001: 86

I don't know if there's any reason other than SSS why it's changed after that early-2000's run, but no team with >90 wins has missed the postseason since 2005 - and that actually holds true for the NL too. So all of a sudden, there goes the idea we "need" to play .624 baseball (83-50), replaced with a much more manageable .571 clip (76-57 - or exactly 4 out of every 7).

Maybe 2 teams in another division will catch fire and we'll need to do so ourselves, but until we're 5 or more out in August, I'm looking at it like Molson is - 4 out in the division, and 2 out in the WC with 133 games to go. BP gives us an 80% chance to make the playoffs, 2nd in the majors, and while I think that's maybe a little high I think our odds are well above 50%.

I agree with this.

The other thing I keep coming back to is just how bad most of the Red Sox are playing now.

I mean looking through their lineup, I see exactly two guys who is playing above his career norm. Jed Lowry and Ellsbury. Even in Lowry's case, he's only slightly up in OPS over what he did last year. Ellsbury is only slightly up over his OPS in 2009. (injury plagued year last season)

Gonzales and Ortiz are below their norms, but not greatly.

Then you look at some of the other key guys.

Pedroia - .711 OPS, career .824
Youkilis - .895 OPS, averaged .960 the last three years
Crawford - .512 OPS, career 775
Drew - .674 OPS, 793 last season (ALWAYS a slow starter in April)

I believe 6 of the nine guys in the lineup will improve from what they've done thus far and two guys will slightly come down from their April. (then you have the black hole at catcher)

On the mound, Lester is pitching above his norm, but I think most people expected he would pitch pretty good this year.

The start was horrible, but despite history, baseball teams are built for the long haul. While all of the "no team as ever started 0-x and went to the playoffs" stuff may be true, I don't think a lot of teams with the talent of this team have started off that way. It's why it was such a shock.

Anyway, I agree with you, they don't have to win 97 games. They likely only have to win 90 or 91 games. I know the history of the AL wild card is 95 wins or so, but 95 wins is a .586 clip. How many AL teams are doing that right now? That'd be 2. After that, the best clip is a .552 or right at a 90 win pace. (and one of those two is the Royals, so I wouldn't be too worried there)

[fantom1979]

Mark Teixera:

vs. Tigers: 6 for 18 (.333), 4 HR, 8 RBI
vs. rest of the teams: 18 for 74 (.243), 4 HR, 10 RBI

[Suicane75]

What is Larussa doing with his pen? Boggs gets 2 saves then suddenly he's pitching the 6th inning. Sallas gets 2 saves then suddenly he's working the 6th inning. At this point I wouldn't be shocked to see Franklin get another shot.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

What is Larussa doing with his pen? Boggs gets 2 saves then suddenly he's pitching the 6th inning. Sallas gets 2 saves then suddenly he's working the 6th inning. At this point I wouldn't be shocked to see Franklin get another shot.

I think that's his plan. He's a stickler for veteran players and probably bunks with him on the road.

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

What is Larussa doing with his pen? Boggs gets 2 saves then suddenly he's pitching the 6th inning. Sallas gets 2 saves then suddenly he's working the 6th inning. At this point I wouldn't be shocked to see Franklin get another shot.

You missed Sunday's game.

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Atlanta Braves - Box Score - May 01, 2011 - ESPN

[Butter]

Reds with one hit through 8 innings, then in the ninth....

Walk-single-single-single-double, Reds win 3-2.

They have been even streakier this year than last offensively, which I didn't think was possible.

[stevew]

The Dodgers are taking "playing for the love of the game" to the next level