Official Baseball Thread

Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

I'll be canceling my cable subscription until September. Someone wake me up when the World Series is over.


j/k about the WS (not about the cable). Baseball is my 3rd sport. I don't really have a team per say, but I've been following the Yanks since 95 (for my own reasons*) and have been keeping up with them ever since.

* - reason being, where I'm from everybody and their brother used to root for the Braves. So, just to go against the crowd I rooted for the WS team against the Braves that year (It was the Yanks in 95. I rooted for the Twins in 91 and the Bluejays in 92 too). However, after the 95 Yanks win, they sort of stuck with me as who I rooted for/kept up with. As a kid my favorite player was Canseco (don't blame me, I was 8 years old at the time) so I rooted for the A's, until I was crushed by the Reds in that 90 WS sweep. I didn't watch or keep up with baseball again (aside from the above mentioned rooting against the Braves in the WS) until 95. So that's my story on my baseball fanhood in a nutshell.

I'm more about individual players in baseball than I am a team like football/basketball.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

^^ It was '96 when the Yanks beat the Braves, not '95. '95 the Braves won, defeating Cleveland.

Anyway, I'm a big Houston Astros fan myself. Always have been, always will. Still waiting for that first title. And it likely won't be this year. *sigh*

As far as the steroid discussion goes, what pisses me off most about it is that it's tainting the reputations of players that have nothing to do with it just because they played in this era. There has been no evidence, including testimony, that links Jeff Bagwell used any PED's, and yet the Hall of Fame voters still kept him out this year. Some have even said that suspicion of PED's is the reason. That's crap. If they do the same thing to Biggio I'm REALLY going to be upset.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

While I do like the idea of signing Carlos Pena to fill the gap at first (plus having a big bat in the lineup), I have to question getting Kerry Wood back. He's a pitcher on the downslope of his career and they're thinking of making him a starter again? Not a good idea IMO.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

RIPLIUKANG said:
While I do like the idea of signing Carlos Pena to fill the gap at first (plus having a big bat in the lineup), I have to question getting Kerry Wood back. He's a pitcher on the downslope of his career and they're thinking of making him a starter again? Not a good idea IMO.
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dont get me wrong pena good but his avg what is bad,,,feild great,,power decent,,,avg very scary,,,,,kerry wood good luck bac home with the luvable losers GOSOXGO
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Love Cowboy said:
^^ It was '96 when the Yanks beat the Braves, not '95. '95 the Braves won, defeating Cleveland.
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Good catch. Dunno how I got that wrong.

I agree with you on the steroids, but I guess for different reasons.

#1 - Pitchers were using, hitters were using. Last I heard on the Roger Clemmens case they hadn't proved he used them. I guess the bottom line is, if the going trend being that "if you've used them once you're guilty", we have no idea how many guilty parties there were in baseball. We only know of the people that got caught. I think the usage was/is a lot more rampant than people realize

#2 - The tainting didn't mysteriously start with Jose Canseco back in Oakland. I think there's a very very good chance several users are in the Hall of Fame, but have no reason or incentive to come out and admit it. If that's true, do you throw them out? Or do you reconsider people up for it now? There's no way to prove this of course, but why has public opinion not shifted to current HOF members like it has current or recently retired players?

#3 - Steroids impact on a player making the HOF is minimal. Roger Clemmens would be a HOF pitcher without steroids. Would he have as many wins? Probably not, but I can't see steroids accounting for 54 (or however many he has over 300). In other words, I think he would have been a 300 game winner regardless, and even if he wasn't, he still would have won enough games and struck out enough people to be a 1st or 2nd ballot HOFer. Barry Bonds may never have hit 73 HRs in a season or broke Hank Aaron's record (I question his cleanliness personally), but he almost certainly would have hit enough HR's over a career to get in on that statistic alone as one of the all time great sluggers. I guess the point I'm trying to make is, for those cases where a guy would have been a HOFer anyways, steroids didn't make them a HOFer. They still had to be a lights out pitcher, or an incredible fielder & hitter. The only people I would say this doesn't apply to would be borderline HOF cases. Palmeiro is the closest I can think of to where steroids might have legitimately made a difference. My point is, are those guys guilty of using a banned substance? Sure. But I think you have to try to find some way to quantify or qualify how much it really helped them in their career and, I just feel that if a guy was going to be a HOFer anyways, he should go in with an asterisk or something, but he should still go in.

I don't know if Bagwell would have fallen into any of these categories or not, but I sincerely hope that some of today's heroes do eventually get in. Are they tained heroes? Sure, but they were still heroes none the less.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Well, Andy Pettitte has finally retired. Who do you think will take over as the fifth starter in the Yankees rotation? So far it's Sabathia, Burnett, Hughes, and possibly moving Joba to the fourth spot.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Baseball season depresses me because my Blue Jays never make me smile. They always do good until the middle and then they start to fall down.....I wish it were '92/'93 team again. Not that they had all bad teams after but, man, they are just awful at this point. Not Maple Leafs awful (though I hate the Leafs, they can suck it, while my Red Wings reign superior <3) but they might as well be.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

That's because they're in the AL East. It's not so much that they suck, but any team that doesn't kick major ass in that league (like my Red Sox) ends up looking horrible by the end of the year, after they've been decimated by NY, BOS and now... TB :(
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

K1LLKANO said:
That's because they're in the AL East. It's not so much that they suck, but any team that doesn't kick major ass in that league (like my Red Sox) ends up looking horrible by the end of the year, after they've been decimated by NY, BOS and now... TB :(
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lmao, hey, look at the bright side, your Red Sox are still better than my Blue Jays!
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

If the Dodgers aren't better than they were last year, I'm quitting baseball again.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Yes I intentionally broke the rule of the thread. ;)

I am optimistic the Cubs finish in the top half of the division this year, but I am being realistic when I don't see them going all the way. I gotta see what Quade can do thru a whole season before I can form a more accurate prediction. I have normally bought tickets for around 10 games a year, this year I may only do 1 game in advance (Yankees) and one or two games on a whim.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Patrick McCarron said:
Yes I intentionally broke the rule of the thread. ;)

I am optimistic the Cubs finish in the top half of the division this year, but I am being realistic when I don't see them going all the way. I gotta see what Quade can do thru a whole season before I can form a more accurate prediction. I have normally bought tickets for around 10 games a year, this year I may only do 1 game in advance (Yankees) and one or two games on a whim.
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I do hope the Cubs get at least over .500.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

I don't really root for any particular team, but I like watching teams like the Rockies catch fire near the end of the season and make a push towards the playoffs; though they didn't make it last yr it'll be interesting to see how they do. Also, it'll be interesting to see how the Padres do without Adrian Gonzalez. Also, the AL East of course will be interesting to watch; Boston had the best offseason imo while NY had a down offseason, losing Pettite and the chance to get Cliff Lee. So far it looks like Philly's the team to beat in the NL while the AL is pretty much wide open in my opinion.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

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Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

This is going to be a good season for Tampa Bay.. I dont mind hoping on the bandwagoon early, what can I say I'm a manny fan I go where manny goes
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Tampa gave away their entire team, aside from Longo, and all they picked up was a fading Manny. You can have the cry baby, he's not going to turn the club around after they butchered the staff all by himself. I can't wait to boo the shit out of that guy the first Sox vs Rays game I go to, and all the ones after that!

Maddon has probably been cursing the ownership up and down all off season. The Rays made some very bad moves. Thanks for CC though!
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

I was a Manny fan for like... half a season and the game I went to where he hit a pinch slam. Otherwise he was a pain in the ass. Oh well, you Sox fans warned us and we didn't listen.
 
Re: The MLB season is upon us! (MLB general discussion)

Wow, this one a pretty good opening day imo! Back to back homers in the MIL-CIN game plus the Reds walk-off homer; plus all the other games were great too. Hopefully this season will overshadow the Barry Bonds case, hopefully....
 
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