Baseball's Back!

Opening weekend of the 2011 baseball season is drawing to a close and you know its early in the season because games are postponed due to snow!  


As a Red Sox fan, I am not exactly thrilled with the way this season has begun.  With all the hype surrounding the Red Sox offense throughout the offseason and spring training, I was not expecting my team to get swept by the defending American League Champion Texas Rangers.  However, run production was not the obstacle facing the Red Sox in their first series of 2011.  The Sox scored 11 runs in their first three games, but gave up 26 runs, including 11 home runs, to the Rangers.  Ian Kinsler, the Rangers' starting second baseman, and professional James Franco look-a-like, hit a home run in each game of the series, including one in his first at-bat of the season.       

Not James Franco

                                                        
The Red Sox pitchers need to step up, hit their spots, and not throw the ball right down the middle of the plate.  Also, if you ask me (and no one is, but when has that ever stopped me from voicing my opinion) the Red Sox rotation should be as follows: Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Josh Beckett, John Lackey, and Daisuke Matsuzaka.  I don't care that Beckett and Lackey have more experience than Lester and Buccholz, at this point the veterans are not pitching well, and that needs to be reflected in the rotation.  Also, I am sick of Jonathan Papelbon.  I'm sorry, but I am.  At first I put up with his ridiculous stare down to home plate and the five hours (literally) he takes between pitches because he got the job done and ended the game.  Now, however, Papelbon seems incapable of ending a game without making it exciting.  Today, he gave up a run and loaded the bases before striking out the side and he does not seem to be as effective as he used to be.  Maybe this will correct itself as the season goes on, but if not, the Red Sox seriously need to consider using the hard-throwing Daniel Bard as their every day closer.  Lastly, Carl Crawford has been off to a not quite abysmal, but also not so great start, in his first year with the Sox.  This season he is 2-9 with one RBI, and went 0-7 in his first two games.  Crawford will not go through the entire season with a .200 batting average, and will no doubt step up to the plate (as usual, pun intended) and live up to everyone's expectations.  All in all, I am not too worried about the Red Sox, and have confidence that they will make the playoffs this season.  After all, its a long season and there are still 159 undoubtedly exciting games left to be played.


In other opening weekend news, I found the following three extremely different stories to be equally and incredibly intriguing.  


First, after the Dodgers home opener against the Giants, a Giants fan was beaten by two Dodgers fans and is now in a medically induced coma.  The man, a father of two, is said to be in critical condition.  Stories like this are incredibly disheartening.  While rivalries are fun (and the Dodgers and Giants have a great one) baseball is just a game and there is no reason for the violence that took place last Thursday.


Changing gears, while reading the sports section of the New York Times today, I spotted a story that caught my eye.  Everyone who knows me knows that I love mountain climbing, so when I saw that R.A. Dickey is planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro this offseason, my first thought was "COOL!" and my second thought was, "is he contractually allowed to do that?"  Well, Dickey scoured his contract and found that mountain climbing is a-okay, so he is going to climb the highest peak in Africa this January.  Part of me thinks this is awesome, but the other part thinks, if I work in the Mets' front office or root for the team, I don't want the man who is emerging as the Mets best pitcher to climb an almost 20,000 foot mountain just a month before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.  It seems, however, that Dickey is going to climb the mountain, so one can only hope that he is accompanied by a team of people who can keep him free of the many illnesses that can plague a Kilimanjaro hiker.  


While we are on the topic of the New York Mets, an SportsNet New York (SNY) employee played this Family Guy clip over Gary Cohen on the Mets postgame show after the team lost on opening day.  Apparently SNY executives were not very happy, and you can see why:

All in all it has been an eventful start to the 2011 season and I cannot wait to see how it all unfolds.

My Postseason Musings aka I Want a Rangers vs Giants World Series

The 2010 American and National League Championship Series are, in my opinion, the most captivating postseason series Major League Baseball has had in years.  With the Phillies' Roy Halladay and the Giants' Tim Lincecum on the mound in game one of the NLCS (one of the greatest postseason pitching match-ups ever), it is impossible to predict which team will be victorious, but one thing is for certain, these two pitchers know how to make history.  Furthermore, the camaraderie and chemistry in Texas (i.e. the ginger ale celebration and the support the Rangers showed their manager) is what being a great team is all about and is a story that captivates fans and keeps people tuned in to playoff baseball.  While most people are predicting a repeat of last year's Phillies vs. Yankees World Series, neither team is a shoo-in for the title of repeat league champion.  Here is how I think the Giants can beat the Phillies and the Rangers can beat the Yankees:

(stats courtesy of http://espn.go.com/mlb/)

San Francisco Giants vs. Philadelphia Phillies:

After sweeping the Reds in the NLDS, most baseball enthusiasts are in agreement that nothing can stop the Phillies from going back to the World Series for the third year in a row.  I am not writing the Giants off that quickly, however, and believe that San Francisco has a decent shot at going to the World Series this year.  It is safe to say that the Giants have one of the best pitching staffs in all of Major League Baseball.  San Francisco's three main starters, Tim Lincecum aka The Freak (who, by the way, dropped an F-bomb on live TV twice in one week), Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez, had an ERA of 1.23 in the NLDS, and Sanchez was the only one of those starters to give up an earned run to the Braves.  While the Phillies are definitely a better hitting team than the Braves were this season, Philadelphia only hit .212 with one home run against the Reds, whose starting three pitchers had an ERA of 3.94 in the regular season and 8.36 in the NLDS.  If the Phillies could not hit for power or average against the Reds rotation, how are they going to score runs against a much superior Giants staff, whose three NLDS starters had a combined regular season ERA of 3.21?  While the Giants, who batted .212 in the NLDS against the Braves, are not going to be hitting balls out of the park against the likes of Halladay, Hammels and Oswalt, they can play small ball to get base runners.  If leadoff man Andres Torres can bunt up the third-base line, a 34 year old, injured Polanco, might not be able to make a play.  Torres is a threat to steal bases and he can set up potential RBI situations for the big bats, Buster Posey and Pat Burrell.  With the three pitching match-ups planned for the first three games of the series, one run can mean the difference in each game.  Unlike in the steroid years of the past, the 2010 NLCS will be all about the pitcher and playing small ball.


  Texas Rangers vs. New York Yankees

A big question mark for the Yankees this year has been the team's starting pitching.  Their only consistent pitcher has been CC Sabathia, and while they swept the twins in the ALDS, the Texas Rangers offense is much more threatening than the anemic Twins lineup (one that was missing 2006 MVP award winner Justin Morneau).  With the fantastic pitching of Cliff Lee (who is undefeated in the postseason), and Cliff Lee Jr. (oh, I mean CJ Wilson), all the Rangers have to do is get Josh Hamilton, who batted .111 with no home runs in the ALDS, back to his pre-September form, and Texas is in good shape to blow the Yankees out of the water.  The question of how to get Josh Hamilton's bat back is an easy one to answer.  With Vlad Guerrero having a sub-par ALDS, batting .263 with no home runs and one RBI, Hamilton was not getting any pitches to hit. If a powerful bat follows Hamilton in the lineup, he will see better pitches, more strikes, and less junk.  No pitcher will want to pitch around the number three hitter, Hamilton, to get to the clean-up hitter if the number four batter is a threat to blast one out of the park.  The lack of good pitches to hit, combined with a month of sitting on the bench, left Hamilton with little hope of putting up big numbers in the Division Series.  Now that Hamilton has gotten the opportunity to warm-up, his bat should be all ready for the Championship Series against the Yankees.  What manager Ron Washington needs to do is rearrange the batting order so that his number three hitter is protected.  Move Guerrero, who is not hitting for power, down to the number six spot in the lineup, and move Ian Kinsler, who batted .444 with 3 home runs and 6 RBI in the ALDS, to the clean-up spot, with the always dangerous Nelson Cruz, who batted .400 with 3 home runs and 3 RBI, hitting fifth.  With those changes and a great pitching rotation, I believe the Rangers are unstoppable, even against an all-star lineup like the Yankees.

Humor(dor) the Skeptics, Bring in a Third Party

I have to apologize for the amount of time that has passed since my last post.  I went on vacation, I have been looking for a job, and quite frankly, I did not have that much to talk about.  Things were pretty uneventful in the world of Major League Baseball and everything was running smoothly.  However, while watching both the Red Sox vs Yankees and Giants vs Rockies on Friday night, two incidents occurred that gave me incentive to start blogging again. 

I will start with the near heart attack I suffered as Mike Lowell got hit in the face, and subsequently hit the dirt, while trying to field a ground ball that took a terrible hop.  The baseball gods need to give Lowell a break. The poor guy fought to get playing time the entire first half of the season, is only playing now because half the Red Sox starting lineup is on the DL, is retiring at the end of the year and is playing the last few games of his career.  Now he is sitting on the bench indefinitely along with the rest of the 2010 Red Sox, but hopefully he will be back in the starting lineup tonight or tomorrow.  Mike Lowell brings a lot to the table for the Red Sox.  He is definitely a better than average hitter and although his range in the field is not what it used to be, he gets the job done at first base.  The Red Sox need him right now.  Although it is unlikely that the Sox will be making the playoffs this year, they are not yet mathematically eliminated from securing the Wild Card, and I'm an optimist.  If this series with the Yankees is any indication, there is a slight pulse in the injury-ridden body that is the 2010 Boston Red Sox.  As the great (Yankee) catcher Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over till its over."

Moving on.  All season there has been an interesting rumor circulating throughout the Major Leagues concerning the Colorado Rockies.  A rumor started by Giant's broadcaster Jon Miller in this interview: http://www.knbr.com/portals/3/podcasts/murphmac/0708jonmiller.MP3.  Due to the high altitude and thin, dry air in Denver, baseballs dry up and shrink, allowing them to travel greater distances, which in turn increases the home run frequency at the Rockies' home park, Coors Field.  To combat this, the Rockies began storing baseballs in a humidor in 2002 to moisten them up and weigh them down.  According to USA Today, the number of home runs and runs scored at Coors Field has greatly decreased since the beginning of the humidor era.  However, a rumor that the Rockies are using non-humidor balls in opportune moments is now being disseminated by many in baseball, including the San Francisco Giants.  The rumor states that the Rockies will mix non-humidor or "juiced" baseballs in with the mandated humidor balls and then use those "juiced" baseballs when they need to score runs in the later innings of a game.  At first I thought the rumor to be completely ridiculous, but I did some research nonetheless.  While I do not believe this rumor to be 100% true, this is what I have discovered: There is no third party responsible for putting all the baseball's in the humidor and then making sure only those baseballs are used in the game.  It is up to the Rockies organization to be honest and only use humidor balls, meaning it is only too easy for them to cheat.  Furthermore, according to the Rockies official web site, the team has hit 167 home runs this season and 103 of them have been hit at Coors Field.  While home field advantage could be one explanation for why the Rockies have hit 103 home runs at home and only 64 on the road, hitting almost twice as many home runs at home is quite an advantage.
What really makes this rumor worth talking about after an entire season is Friday night's Giants vs. Rockies game, which took place at Coors Field.  Tim Lincecum was pitching a perfect game into the 6th inning, when he gave up a bloop double to Seth Smith.  The Rockies knew that this lead-off double was probably going to be their one scoring opportunity, and according to the Giants, the Rockies attempted to score that run from second by giving Lincecum a "juiced" ball.  When Lincecum was thrown the new ball, he could tell something was wrong with it right away.  Take a look at this video where he throws the new ball back to the umpire and makes a comment about juiced baseballs.  Unfortunately I cannot embed the video, but you can check it out at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StY_mGM-lU4

Lincecum is one of the most laid back guys in the game.  I have watched almost every single game he has ever pitched and, even on bad days, I have never seen him get visibly angry.  This is what convinced me, not that the Rockies are definitely cheating, but that Major League Baseball has to do something.  According to sportingnews.com, MLB umpires will be keeping a close eye on the all the balls that come in and out of the humidor, but is this solution enough?  To really eliminate the doubts people are having about the Rockies, a third party needs to take over the task of placing balls in the humidor and giving them to the umpires.  Until the Rockies have no control over the balls being used in their home park, speculation about whether or not they are cheating will continue.