MLB 2011

[Zar]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    

[Ginaz]

I think the TV broadcast could have used more shots of Nolan Ryan, esp. when the Texas pitchers choked the series away.

Only thing I don't like about the Cardinal win is Chris Carpenter winning.  That guy is a dick.

[stu]

There were definitely douches on both sides of the ball, but all of those shots of Nolan Ryan's sour puss warmed my heart. At the end of the day, the less douchey team won and that's ok by me. Even though Carpenter is a gigantic douche.

[ghost]

Well, La Russa's retiring.  It' the right move, and I certainly applaud going out on top.  He's definitely one of the all time greats, and it will be sad to see him go but it's the way everyone should end their career, if possible.

[Paelos]

The Braves decided to banish Derek Lowe to Ohio!

 

[HaemishM]

I think LaRussa's retirement signals one thing. Albert Pujols will not be a Cardinal next year. As an ardent Cubs fan, I can only hope so. That team is likely to be terrible next year. Probably not as bad as the Cubs will be but who knows?

[Paelos]

Maybe the Braves can afford Pujols since we dumped all that salary! 

[Ingmar]

I cannot get enough (ok actually I can) of Giants fans demanding we go out and sign Pujols or Fielder. First base is like, the least of our problems hitting-wise. We just need to stick Belt there full time and wait.

[HaemishM]

I'm hoping like hell the Cubs go after one of those two. Pena was a goddamn trainwreck with the bat last year, not nearly good enough with the glove to make up for it. What we'd lose in defense with Fielder, we'd gain in runs back on the board. I'm not sure either of those guys would go to Chicago though.

[JWIV]

God damn chuckleheads.  You know your GM is leaving at the end of the year, and instead of actually having a successor in place you fuck around to such an extent that you lose your FIRST choice to another organization, and 1 god damn day before the start of free agency, your second choice turns you down to stay as an assistant in Toronto.  Even though he was set to accept, you somehow continued to fuck around and piss him off.   Fucking Orioles magic indeed.

 

[caladein]

The Toronto GM does have magical mind control powers so I wouldn't rule that out.  Just look what he made the Angels do last year!  

[WayAbvPar]

God damn chuckleheads.  You know your GM is leaving at the end of the year, and instead of actually having a successor in place you fuck around to such an extent that you lose your FIRST choice to another organization, and 1 god damn day before the start of free agency, your second choice turns you down to stay as an assistant in Toronto.  Even though he was set to accept, you somehow continued to fuck around and piss him off.   Fucking Orioles magic indeed.

 

Orioles are proper fucked until Angelos dies or sells. Much like the Mariners with Lincoln and Armstrong fucking things up.

[JWIV]

God damn chuckleheads.  You know your GM is leaving at the end of the year, and instead of actually having a successor in place you fuck around to such an extent that you lose your FIRST choice to another organization, and 1 god damn day before the start of free agency, your second choice turns you down to stay as an assistant in Toronto.  Even though he was set to accept, you somehow continued to fuck around and piss him off.   Fucking Orioles magic indeed.

 

Orioles are proper fucked until Angelos dies or sells. Much like the Mariners with Lincoln and Armstrong fucking things up.

I'd say that'd be soon, but bad owners seem to fucking live forever - sustained by sucking the life out of their franchise most likely.

[Paelos]

HEY HAEMISH, THEY FIRED YOUR MANAGER! 

[HaemishM]

Goddamnit, they're going to bring in Francona, aren't they?

/le sigh

I can't say I blame anything of this year's abysmal performance on Quade. The team's pitching fell apart, their clutch hitting evaporated and they were saddled with a lot of big contracts from players that just weren't performing when healthy (Pena, Soriano, Byrd and Ramirez the first two months of the season).

[ghost]

Yeah, but who didn't see this coming.  The initial thing I read about Epstein with the Cubs was about how he "loved Ryno". 

[HaemishM]

I love Ryno too, but I'm not sold on Ryne Sandberg as a major league manager. The one positive he'll have is time in the minor league managing developing players. Since they need a serious rebuilding process, maybe that'd be for the best.

[caladein]

Pretty scary news out of Venezuela, the Nationals' Wilson Ramos was kidnapped from his home yesterday.  Not a lot of details, but this ESPN story does describe how it went down:

[The spokeswoman for the Aragua Tigers, his Venezuelan League team] said Ramos was taken at 6:45 p.m. at his home in the region 95 miles west of Caracas. She said police were notified.

A person close to Ramos' family, who asked not to be quoted by name out of safety concerns, said the catcher was at home with his father and brothers when several men "entered the house and took him away."

"As of this hour, there has been no contact" between the kidnappers and Ramos' family, the person said.

Also somehow not one of ESPN's top stories, which is kind of .

[Ingmar]

It was a top headline yesterday when I was reading about it. Pretty damn scary.

[Margalis]

It seems like every year some South American player is involved in a murder, a kidnapping or something like that. (Sometimes as perpetrator!)

Hopefully it's a ransom thing and he will be delivered back safe.

[Rasix]

He's safe now, apparently.

Source.

[ghost]

Well this is interesting.  The sale of the Astros has been approved but MLB only approved it if the new owner would agree to take them to the AL. 

Source

I personally like this because I would be much more likely to go watch the 'Stros if I could see an AL opponent.  Watching them play the Marlins just does nothing for me.

[Paelos]

I hate the idea. The whole purpose of having even number leagues is so we wouldn't be supporting MORE interleague than we already are.

Seriously, fuck interleague play. Either play them all or don't play any of them, but half-assing it just makes whoever draws the AL East take one in the pooper for the year.

[WayAbvPar]

They need to realign and get Seattle playing with LA/SF/Oak/Ariz/Colo teams instead of having to fly to goddamned Texas 4 (now 8?) times a year for divisional games.

[ghost]

I'm not a big fan of interleague play either, but I do like the idea of both Texas teams being in the AL.  I'm not a big fan of the NL game style.  I do think they should do a better job of splitting things up so that, like you said, the northwest teams don't have to fly to Texas all the time and vice versa.

[Paelos]

They need to realign and get Seattle playing with LA/SF/Oak/Ariz/Colo teams instead of having to fly to goddamned Texas 4 (now 8?) times a year for divisional games.

Or just move the team to OKC. I hear there's a market there for pro sports now.

No offense to the Seattle fans, but the team is 100+ games under .500 in the last decade. Seattle was the number 1 attended mlb franchise in 2001 with 43,000 a game average. It's dropped steadily every year, and last year they barely topped 23,000 fans a game. They barely edged out Toronto, which is another AL team I wouldn't mind putting a bullet in.

[WayAbvPar]

Moving the team to Shitheap, USA won't make it magically better.

[Paelos]

Moving the team to Shitheap, USA won't make it magically better.

Didn't the NBA team like, make the playoffs and win the division over the last two years?

I'm not saying it's the same, but it certainly got better.

[WayAbvPar]

You're right, it must be the moist marine air. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the fact that they moved the team 1 year after drafting the most dominant scorer since Kobe/LeBron, or that they had several drafts in a row with lottery picks (and at least one with 2 top 10 picks). Or the fact that they fucking fired Wally Walker and brought in someone who could successfully fog a mirror AND run a basketball team.

How about this? Quit being a goddamned troll.

[Ingmar]

OKC is the #48 market in the country, compared to Seattle-Tacoma at #13, and note that the Mariners also serve Vancouver's market as well. No ownership group in their right mind would move out of that, they just need to stop failing at the player development/acquisition part of their business and they will easily turn it around.

Besides if you believe David Stern, OKC is almost certainly one of the "23" teams that are losing money.  

EDIT: Also note, that the MAXIMUM CAPACITY of the Thunder's arena is less than the average attendance at Mariners games even with the low this year of 23,000, and the NBA plays half the number of home games. The idea that OKC could support a MLB team is pretty ludicrous all around.

[WayAbvPar]

The two guys running the team (Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong) have little interest in building a winning team; they want fan friendly players and warm fuzzys. But then they overlook that and bring in gems like Milton Bradley. It is fucking infuriating. I think Zdurencik is on the right track, but the team is still hamstrung by horrible contracts and bad luck.

 Ideally someone in the pantheon of owners would sack up and buy everyone else out, and then run the team like they gave a shit about winning and not about paying off their stadium bonds and selling goddamned bobbleheads. Attendance has plummeted the past few years, so they might have to actually try winning something for a change, since their soccer mom/kid friendly marketing campaigns and stadium experience ain't paying the bills.

And to utterly enrage me, they will somehow sack up and sign Prince Fielder to a franchise-destroying contract and then watch his weight balloon until he collapse into a black hole eats the entire organization.

[Paelos]

How about this? Quit being a goddamned troll.

Well for one, I am picking at you a bit. OTOH, the Mariners have the longest drought of a playoff berth in their division, and the only teams that have a longer session of missing the playoffs are KC, Baltimore, and Toronto. Baltimore and Toronto you can sort of forgive because they play in the most overloaded division in baseball. KC has no fucking excuse. The Central has changed hands to the four other teams in 5 years.

The only thing saving KC is that it's in the middle of the country and they won a world series a quarter of a century ago. Seattle's in the middle of nowhere, been around for 30 something years, and it's the only team besides the Nats who've never even been to a world series.

[Ingmar]

Fielder is a good risk IMO. He's barely missed any games in his career and he has that whole I HATE AND LOATHE MY DAD AND NEVER WANT TO BE LIKE HIM AT ALL thing to motivate him to stay (relatively) svelte.

A better question for the Seattle/Fielder question (and one the Giants have trouble with too) is how do you talk big bats into going into extreme pitcher's parks that will depress their raw numbers?

In any case I haven't heard much in the way of Fielder-to-Seattle rumors. Hearing a lot of Cubs/Marlins/Nationals.

[Paelos]

There's no way the Nats can afford him.

[Ingmar]

They also said they weren't kicking the tires but that never stops the rumor mill. The Os and Angels are the other ones that occasionally crop up.