Today at 1:05, the Jays face off against the Phillies. It's a great game for new-Jay spotting: R.A. Dickey will start, followed by Josh Johnson a handful of innings later. The game will be televised, radioized and internetized, so tune in whatever way floats your boat. I'll see if I can convince my kids to watch with me. Maybe I'll bribe them with chips or popcorn.
Shameless self promotion alert: I have created a deliberately terrible and impossible fantasy baseball league. While I have enough teams to run it right now, I feel that it will be even more terrible and impossible if we have a ridiculously large number of owners. If you'd like to play in a fantasy league where you score zero points for the week unless you're carrying at least one injured player, and where Hit By Pitch is a major offensive category, click on my name to drop me a line and I'll add you.
I want to see the best players play for their countries and the WBC is the only chance. Injured players can obviously be excused but I think MLB should step in and put pressure on the players during the next CBA. The players should also get a huge cut of the WBC revenues.
Here is my proposal:
Players who are selected for WBC but decline will be put on a 7-game DL at the start of the major league season.
Which means I lost the pool. I had: "weaksauce, bro".
I don't understand why all these people who seem to abhor the TV broadcast crew continues to watch. The radio broadcasts all spring have been great.
You'd think an appearance by The Faulds would warrant some kind of comment, just based on history.
The biggest surprise for me was #3 - Robin Roberts 40.5 WAR. Roberts admits he basically threw 1 pitch - his fastball. He threw a massive amount of them also, averaging 327 IP during that 5 yr peak. Wow.
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/33407/the-best-five-year-pitching-peaks
Roberts was a helluva pitcher. He could have easily won the NL Cy Young every year from 1950-54, and certainly would have won at least three of them. Which might have made it much less surprising. Alas, the award didn't exist at the time. Bad timing.
Roberts challenged everybody with his fastball, and gave up an enormous number of home runs (he's still second all-time, and it took a guy pitching in today's game until he was 50 years old to pass him.) I've often wondered if that type of pitcher could succeed in today's game when every hitter is trying to hit the ball out of the park. It was much easier to succeed with that approach when each team only had a couple of power threats.
It's being preceded by Game 2 of the 1993 series. I was there! And while the Phillies won this one, I don't care. I can't wait to see my man Tony Castillo.
I was too. Twenty years goes by in a heartbeat, don't it?
oh god I'm having a flashback to 2004
Hmm. So..theoretically, the Expos could have had the top 2 WAR guys..at about the same time.
One can reasonably assume Pedro would have been Pedro whether he spent the bulk of his peak in Montreal or as it turned out, in Boston.
But would Randy Johnson have overcome his massive control issues if he had stayed with the Expos?
In 1993 Gillick asks Seattle for Randy Johnson and acquires Ricky Henderson instead. Do we go back-to-back with Johnson and not Henderson?
Hey everyone, long, long, long time reader here, first time commenter. Love the site and the discussion, it's always been my first stop for Blue Jays related news.
I thought I'd chime in with some observations I've made from watching yesterdays game and spring training so far in general.
Put me in the camp that thinks Bonifacio as an everyday middle infielder is not a good idea. Not to say he can't or shouldn't start there once in a while, but his instincts, especially timing his throws, seem very unnatural, like he wants to get rid of the ball too fast. (The double play ball he threw away most notably, he really rushed that one) It may just well be rust of course, as he is playing somewhere he hasn't played in a while. Interestingly, via Baseball Reference, I noticed the infield position he's played most in the majors is third base, where you've got to be a little bit quicker getting rid of the ball.
Does anyone remember Adam Lind being this slow? Maybe all the back injuries have affected his running somehow but geez. His swing looks good so far but you know, it's March.
Loved Santos' play to catch Betancourt (I think) leaning too far off third and tag him out. Gotta think being a former middle infielder helped him read that just a little bit quicker than an ordinary pitcher would have.
I really believe the speed of the ballclub is going to be an enormous factor this year. Obviously guys like Bonifacio, Davis, Reyes and Gose (if he's around) have to get on base first to best utilize those good wheels, but just imagine in a close game how much of a distraction to the opposition they will be. Good speed can disrupt everything: infielders know their throws have to be quicker and also have to be ready to cover a base, catchers have to divide their attention between pitcher and baserunner, and it severely affects the flow and comfort level of a pitcher, who now cannot just primarily focus on making good pitches to the batter. It is an intangible by the pressure it puts on a defense. While I don't believe you can build a team around speed, I'm sure most managers of any team at any level would rather have it than not have it.
Anyways, it's always great to read all of you and keep up the great work! (insert "I've never been this excited for a season before" cliche here)
I was thinking about the speed today too. Every time Gose was up, you could feel the infield tensing up. That distraction is going to help the hitters too
I love small ball. When I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of the expos (tim Raines, Lafleur, Dawson, etc). It makes the game exciting and puts the oposition at edge. It is going to be an interesting year.
Shi Davidi talks with Aaron Sanchez today. Sanchez has seen a speed boost.
Working in the Blue Jays' favour is that Sanchez actually increased his velocity over the course of last season, sitting 96-98 M.P.H. at year's end while occasionally touching 100.
"When I finally started pitching at those velocities every start, every start, every start, it just became more natural with the arm slot, release point. Everything started falling into place," says Sanchez.
"I got to a point where I dialed in 93-94, and then the next thing you know, 94-96, and I had a couple of starts there where I was dialed in and got 96-98. It's a lot tougher than people might see. They're happy about the velocity but it is a little different trying to control that jump."
What's a Lafleur or a Leflore between friends?
I don't know if this says anything about the logic of a child's mind (or simply my own), but Ron Leflore was my second favourite baseball player for several years.
It was based based almost completely on the surname similarity to Guy Lafleur - who was at the time my second favourite hockey player (#1 being Ken Dryden). This was before i learned the backstory/before the LeVar Burton film about how Leflore was discovered playing baseball in the prison yard. Great basestealer in his time and perhaps the best pop-up slide (a lost art - thanks for that Pete/Rickey) I have ever seen.
My favourite baseball player at the time was Cesar Cedeno. My favourite team was the Astros - somehow I LOVED the rainbow jerseys - and Cedeno was the most exciting player on that team. My little league baseball number was always 23, in honour of Cedeno.
It was based based almost completely on the surname similarity to Guy Lafleur - who was at the time my second favourite hockey player (#1 being Ken Dryden)... My little league baseball number was always 23, in honour of Cedeno.
Eerie. My favourite hockey player growing up was Ken Dryden. My second was Guy LaFleur. I often wore 23 in honour of Bob Gainey.
I attended many, many Expo games in the summer of 1980, LeFlore's only year in Montreal.
Did you also play goalie in street hockey, leaning on your stick Dryden style when the ball was near the other net, like I did?
Did you also play goalie in street hockey, leaning on your stick Dryden style when the ball was near the other net, like I did?
Absolutely. In the mean streets of Montreal's West Island, we all did.
Two (unexciting) Dryden stories.
A friend of mine had an aunt who was friends with the Bowmans, so he got to attend many Habs' practices. The spoils from one included Dryden's stick, which my friend dutifully gave to me (he also got Cournoyer's strangely curved stick which we used for road hockey). Where is the Dryden stick today? Damn good question. There was a family move while I was away at University and the stick was somehow lost in the shuffle.
Like a jillion people, I got Dryden's autograph at a book signing when The Game was released. I believe he quoted Joseph Heller in the book and I asked him about it, being a Heller fan myself. Years later, Dryden wrote a work of fiction that was released with a great deal less fanfare. Just by chance, I was browsing in a London book store one day at lunch and he happened to be there for a signing. But it was a small bookstore, the book got little press, Dryden was no longer as famous (and not yet the president of the Leafs), so literally nobody was there. I felt bad for a man who was my childhood hero. Did I go over and talk to him and tell him of my life growing up in Montreal and admiring him (to say nothing of my Ken Dryden scrapbooks)? Nope. Years later I refuse to forgive myself. He would not have found it creepy that a grown man had been a childhood fan and was telling him so. But in your 20s you're a great deal more self-conscious about things than you really should be.
Scary thing though. Imagine if that happened here - losing 3 all-stars for almost a third of the season. That would just kill the team.
Hard to think he won't be the starter by some time this season.
Sergio Santos has a sore tricep, he is out until Saturday.
Colby Rasmus has a sore shoulder, out until Thursday.
Dustin McGowan threw off a mound today and didn't break. Breaths will be bated until tomorrow.
No offense intended to you dirty scumbag Yankees fans out there. :D