The MLB Hot Stove Part 2

[Chizip]

 

[Reggie Thee Dog]

'roid user!!!!

Look at his bulging ab muscles!!!

 

[No spoken words]

Man, I hope he's a big fucking bust. I said bust, yes. He's not gonna fail, I honestly expect him to be anywhere from good to very good, but I so want that $$$ to be spent unwisely. If he's good, and Beckett adjusts a little bit better, could be a great rotation. Fuck.

 

[Chizip]

so how would you like to sign a pitcher to a 7 year/126 million dollar contract and then he decides to completely change his throwing motion?

Manager Bruce Bochy said he could not recall a pitcher that successful attempting such a dramatic change without an injury involved. Zito was not entirely clear on why he chose to change his delivery now. Asked if he had broached the idea with his coaches in Oakland, and was told not to do it, Zito said no, "because any pitching coach will agree with me that if you get your weight down the mound more and use less arm and more body, that's what it's all about."

Zito's new pitching coach has his fears, though, whether Zito can keep the proper balance on the mound now that he's stepping back, if the longer stride will wear on his legs and, most important, how it will affect his pitches.

"It's going to change the flight of his ball," Righetti said, suggesting Zito could lose his signature curveball. That is why Righetti said "yes" when asked if this was worrisome and "I don't know" when asked if he might try to talk Zito out of it -- something Righetti would not do until he sees how well Zito progresses over the next few weeks.

When Zito was asked if he would consider reverting to his Oakland delivery if the experiment goes awry, he said, "I can always do that if I have to, because that's ingrained. Right now I'm just seeing where I'm at. I've been pretty adamant about this for the last month, month and a half. I'll play with it and see what happens."

ah good times, good times

 

[No spoken words]

Zito elected to sign with the Giants, that's all you need to know about him.

 

[Reggie Thee Dog]

WTF?!?! Zito wants to change his motion? Look I love Zito (he's a USC boy), but everything kinda goes out the window when you sign with the Giants. He's bound to get hurt...or start abusing steriods...that's all I can say.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

zito's an average pitcher at best when his curveball isn't working. if he loses it all together, then i'm certainly glad the mets didn't sign him.

 

[speedracer]

Eeew.

But if Ronaldo can score two goals in a game while being ~20 pounds overweight, I'm not too worried about a baseball pitcher.

 

[pub crawler]

Meh...I'm not much excited for the coming season.

Why?

Because, I'm not looking forward to another year (the 3rd consecutive) where, in most games, once the team I follow scores its 1-3 runs in the first three innings, they're done scoring for the day. They live and die with those few runs. Every. day.

And the Angels (as well as the Dodgers of a few years ago) are living proof that the maxim that "good pitching always beats good hitting" doesn't mean "a team with great pitching will beat everybody else."

Yes, you've got to have good pitching, but you've also got to have at least two big bats and some continuity (i.e., not too many holes) in the lineup. I don't care how good your pitching is.


F'in Angels.

 

[phanan]

Oh man, Hewson's gonna be all over you with that one.

 

[Hewson]

He's finally seeing the light, no need to add anything.

Unless he's trying reverse psychology on himself.

 

[pub crawler]

He's finally seeing the light, no need to add anything.

Well, I'll say this for the Angels: they've got plenty of youth. The Red Sox just keep getting older.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

picthing? we don't need no stinkin' pitching.

 

[Hewson]

Well, I'll say this for the Angels: they've got plenty of youth. The Red Sox just keep getting older.

Sox starting 9 avg age is 30
rotation avg age is 31.6

Ancient.


Just keep drinking that "we don't need anybody who can hit above the mendoza line beside Vlad" Kool-Aid.

Maybe the Angels will surprise you and contend for .500

The ancient Red Sox went out and reloaded after a disappointing 2006, what did your GM Stan D. Pat do?
Oh yeah, Garry Matthews Jr and Shea "don't call me Shawn, better yet don't call me period" Hillenbrand.

Good luck.

 

[DaveC]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/sprin...jayson&id=2770988&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

Phillies wondering, 'Why not us?'
Stark
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
Archive

"I think we are the team to beat in the NL East -- finally."

-- Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, on Jan. 23

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- If we gathered up all the January pennant predictions that never quite came true, we could probably light a bonfire that could be seen on Mars -- with the naked eye. (Quick technical question: Do Martians have naked eyes?)

But there was something about that prediction last month by Jimmy Rollins, if that's what it was, that separated it from the usual collection of preseason kindling.

And that something would be:

Was this really a Phillie speaking?

Bold, confident statements like this don't emanate out of Philadelphia much, you see -- for lots of reasons. Such as:

• The last time any major professional sports team from Philadelphia won a championship, Millard Fillmore was president. (Oh, all right. No, he wasn't. But we're pretty sure Ulysses S. Grant was president. Or possibly Rutherford B. Hayes.)

• The last time the Phillies won the World Series (1980), 16 guys currently hanging out in their locker room had forgotten to be born yet.

• And over the last 23 seasons, the Phillies have shown up in the postseason a grand total of -- uh, hold on while we fire up the calculator -- well, that would be once (1993). That's even fewer than the Cubs, believe it or not.

So if you were wondering why Rollins used that word, "finally," at least we cleared that up for you.

"Everybody pencils in the Mets. Everybody pencils in the Braves because they've done it every year. But why can't the Phillies win this year and next year and the following year, and be one of those teams?"
-- Closer Tom Gordon

Now there was a time (and not during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, either) when there was a better chance of a Phillies player quitting baseball to join the Mummers than there was of one of them uttering an earth-rattling quote like that one.

And if one of them ever had said something like that, possibly because he was under the mistaken impression the Braves and Mets had been transferred to the New York-Penn League, his teammates would have charged in the other direction at a faster rate of speed than Dale Jarrett.

But these are strange times in Philadelphia. And not just because 76,418 flights out of the Philadelphia airport have been canceled by ice storms in the last week. When we toured the Phillies' spring-training site Sunday, we were fascinated to learn that many of these people actually seemed happy that Rollins said what he said.

• From Rollins' double-play partner, Chase Utley: "In order to be successful, I think you have to expect it. You have to set the standards pretty high."

• From GM Pat Gillick: "Even though those statements kind of put the bull's-eye on you, when they come from players, I like to hear that. It means they feel good about themselves and they feel good about their teammates. So I like to hear those kinds of positive comments."

• And from the most enthusiastic endorser of Rollins' predictive powers, closer Tom Gordon: "I never read the article where he said that or heard anything about it until now. But why not? Why not us? Everybody pencils in the Mets. Everybody pencils in the Braves because they've done it every year. But why can't the Phillies win this year and next year and the following year, and be one of those teams? This team has had an opportunity to see every year what the Braves have done. So now why can't we do just what they've done, if not better? I mean, why not?"

It's an intriguing question, all right -- not to mention an intriguing opportunity for some shrewd South Philadelphia entrepreneur to print up about 100,000 "WHY NOT?" T-shirts.

This is, after all, a team that went 41-24 down the stretch last season (tied with the Dodgers for best finish in the NL); a team with the most productive offensive infield in baseball (Rollins, Utley and Ryan Howard combined for a ridiculous 112 homers, 335 RBI, 362 runs and 256 extra-base hits last year); and a team that added former White Sox inning-digester Freddy Garcia and ex-Padres tantalizer Adam Eaton to the rotation over the winter.

So this is a group that has every reason to ask, "Why not?"

Of course, if these men dare to ask, the world has every right to give them an answer, too. It just might not necessarily be the answer they want to hear.

One of those answers, obviously, would be: What, have the Mets decided to forfeit their first 50 games or something?

The Mets did, after all, win 97 games last year -- 12 more than youknowwho. And they did allow 81 fewer runs than the Phillies. And they clearly have much deeper pockets than the Phillies should any prominent salary-dump opportunities come their way in July.

Oh, and, in case anyone at ESPN is looking for reasons to pump the first Mets-Phillies telecast of the year, the Mets (shockingly) don't seem to agree that that club down the Turnpike is the team to beat.

Speaking for the Mets' defense counsel, here's David Wright, in a recent interview with WFAN: "I read in the paper that Jimmy Rollins thinks nobody else has a chance. … When you read that, it irks you a bit and makes you want to go out there and beat them that much more."

We'll let the misquote police inform Wright that that isn't exactly what Rollins said. But it's still comforting to know the Mets' bulletin boards won't be empty this spring.

The Braves, meanwhile, haven't surrendered, either. And Gillick was the first to bring that up.

"I think, in our division, Atlanta is the one that got better," the GM said. "They went and got [Mike] Gonzalez for the back end [of the bullpen]. And they've got [Bob] Wickman back there and [Rafael] Soriano back there. So I think, from a pitching standpoint, Atlanta has probably improved as much as anyone in our division."

Agreed. And the Marlins still have all those young studs who helped them charge from oblivion to contention last year. They were also, by the way, a team that had a better record than the Phillies as late as Sept. 11.

So given all that, should the Phillies be considered the team to beat?

Well, the gambling portion of the universe doesn't think so, for what that's worth. We checked bodog.com, vegas.com, gamblerspalace.com and betus.com. All of those sites listed the Mets as the favorite to represent the NL in the World Series. The Phillies were rated as either the fourth or fifth pick, behind the Dodgers, Cubs and/or Cardinals.

But when we surveyed one GM and one assistant GM from outside the division, we got a different reaction.

"I've been picking the Phillies for three years," the GM said. "I really like that team. Howard and Utley are unbelievable. Jimmy Rollins is a really good player. They've got the best rotation in the division. Like I said, I've been picking them for the last three years. I've got to be right one of these years, don't I?"

The assistant GM wasn't as effusive. But when we ran Rollins' words past him, his response was: "I'm not sure I disagree" -- for similar reasons.

What this race is liable to come down to, in the simplest terms, is whether the Mets' biggest worry (starting pitching) will turn out to be less of a liability than the Phillies' biggest worry (bullpen). The assistant GM's take on that was: "I don't think so. The Mets' rotation, obviously, has a lot of questions."

'07 PHILLIES BULLPEN
RH Tom Gordon
RH Antonio Alfonseca
RH Geoff Geary
RH Ryan Madson
LH Matt Smith

Nevertheless, even Gillick freely admits he's uneasy with a bullpen that has no clear set-up path to Gordon -- and added only Antonio Alfonseca and a couple of Rule 5 Draft arms (Alfredo Simon and Jim Ed Warden) over the winter. The Phillies will try to market Jon Lieber for an impact set-up man this spring. But they appear to have nothing substantial percolating on that front at the moment.

"We still need work in our bullpen," Gillick said, unequivocally. "We need to get better back there."

Nevertheless, this team is clearly better than it's been in one critical area -- above the eyebrows. Unlike the 2004 and 2005 Phillies, two teams hyped to end the Braves' reign, this group actually seems to think expectations are a good thing. What a concept.

"You know, sometimes it's tough when somebody says, 'We're the ones to beat,'" said hitting coach Milt Thompson. "Then everybody tries to look at you and come after you. But the mentality of this team is, I think they want to be the ones where everybody is going to try to come after them."

Hey, if that's true, we have good news for them. Jimmy Rollins' state-of-the-Phillies address pretty much guaranteed they're in everyone else's sight lines. But in a clubhouse that seems to have undergone a personality transplant since the trade of the laid-back Bobby Abreu, life in those sight lines doesn't sound so scary.

"On our ballclub, I think guys want to feel, 'Know what? Let's challenge each other to believe we can be the team to beat,'" Gordon said. "We know all about the Mets. Great ballclub. We know about the Braves -- great every year, year in and year out. But the bottom line is still, why can't it be us?

"And I think that's what Jimmy was saying, in a respectful way: Why can't it be the Philadelphia Phillies? And the bottom line is, it can be the Philadelphia Phillies."

And if not, well, at least they tossed one seriously massive redwood onto the bonfire -- finally.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

 

[Chizip]

The Phillies sound like somone buying a lottery ticket. Hey someone's gotta win, why not me??

 

[phillyfan26]

The Phillies sound like somone buying a lottery ticket. Hey someone's gotta win, why not me??

Normally I'd be annoyed by it, but after the past 13 years of nothingness I'll take it. Although it was mostly Tom Gordon saying that. Over and over again.

I'll always prefer the Chase Utley method.

 

[MrPryck2U]

I think a number of teams in the NL East have a chance. NY, Philly, Atlanta and Fla. could all be in the hunt. I think the Mets will win the division, but the Phils could win the Wild Card.
I don't care though, because I'm hoping that the Yankees, of course, win it all. Another month and a half and the games count.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

the phillies...

haven't they been the next great NL team for like the past 5 years now?

 

[MrPryck2U]

I betcha all the Philly fans are pissed at Rollins. He just jinxed the Phillies. Meanwhile, the Mets couldn't care less.

 

[MrPryck2U]

Hey did anyone read about the commish not wanting any new players into the league? I just read this over at Yahoo. Apparently he thinks MLB already has enough players. I even read that MLB has cancelled the June Entry draft.

 

[Chizip]

link?

 

[Reggie Thee Dog]

Hey did anyone read about the commish not wanting any new players into the league? I just read this over at Yahoo. Apparently he thinks MLB already has enough players. I even read that MLB has cancelled the June Entry draft.

Is it a story from today? This doesn't make any sense, how could you NOT have a draft? It's essential....right

 

[Chizip]

i was gonna say that sounds like something that the onion would write, so i checked the onion, and yup, there it is

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/mlb_no_longer_accepting_new

 

[MrPryck2U]

Thanks, dude!

 

[phanan]

So were you purposely trying to throw us off with that or what?

 

[MrPryck2U]

No

 

[phanan]

Then why did you say it was on Yahoo, thus making it appear to be a real story?

 

[MrPryck2U]

You know what? I went to My Yahoo and read it there. Mistakenly, I credited the story to Yahoo. It seemed pretty absurd, but then again, I asked anyone if they had heard about it so I wasn't certain about it myself.
But, don't you worry now, it's gonna be ok.

 

[phanan]

No worries here. Just making sure you knew the difference.