Duty calls to preview the MLB season. In the spirit of that, we'll have 30 bits of notes and errata very tangentially related to each team, in reverse order of PECOTA projection. At bat: the San Diego Padres.
Call when you trade Adrian Gonzalez: The Padres better not drag this out longer than The Office did with Pam's pregnancy.
Just send Gonzo and his redonk park-adjusted OPS from the hitters' graveyard that is Petco Park to some bandbox in the AL. The only reason to keep him in San Diego an entire season is to see if he can draw 162 bases on balls.
What bandbox would that be? Padres GM Jed Hoyer is used to work under with Boston's Theo Epstein. Just sayin'.
He is San Diego's answer to Dany Heatley, or Vince Carter: At least former Cy Young-winning ace, Jake Peavy, is playing in another league. Padres diehards are less than impressed Peavy is apparently pushing his new team, the Chicago White Sox, to trade for his former club's best player.
They'll be bad for a while: A thin farm system, an ownership change and a dried-up free-agent market will do that to a franchise. They're basically the Blue Jays with a real ballpark and year-round beach weather.
Ridiculous spring training optimism, thy name is: Tony Gwynn Jr., the Ben Mulroney of leadoff men (he's gone a long way on a surname and taken that as evidence of actual talent), says, "A .400 on-base percentage is my target."
His famous father might have a better shot at doing that this season. Gwynn Jr.'s lifetime on-base is .331.
Simile time: Kevin Correia being a team's best starter is like having Kevin Corrigan be the lead in a movie. Both are good in a secondary role, but can't carry the whole show.
Correia was a nice redemption story last season after being cut adrift by San Fran.
Come on, Stairsy: Canada's own Matt Stairs, still swinging at 42 years old, would be the first position player in modern baseball history to play for 12 teams if he can make San Diego's Opening Day roster.
Not exactly the Miracle speech: The Wall Street Journal had an article on author David Shenk and the idea, "the new science tells us that it's equally foolish to think that mediocrity is built into most of us, or that any of us can know our true limits before we've applied enormous resources and invested vast amounts of time. Our abilities are not set in genetic stone."
That's too complicated to work as a motivational slogan for the talent-deprived Padres. However, the article references Red Sox Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams, who played for the original minor-league incarnation of the Padres.
They're kind of under the radar: L.A. Lakers forward Ron Artest did a radio interview last year wearing a Padres hat. When it was pointed out, he said he didn't know there was a baseball team in San Diego.
Some dead spots in the lineup, like six of them: They hit only 141 home runs last season, and 40 came from one guy. Their second-leading four-ply swatter, Kevin Kouzmanoff, was traded to Oakland.
If you believe in luck: Rookie outfielder Aaron Cunningham (.382 on-base, .493 slugging in the minors) turns 24 on April 24, so it's his lucky year.
Good thing Petco is a pitchers' park: Their starting rotation had a 4.78 ERA last season. That's like 6.00 in another park.
Not up for discussion! Tony Gwynn was marginally better than Tim Raines, but got elected to the Hall of Fame with almost 98% support and the latter has needed three years just to crack the mythical 30% barrier in BBWAA balloting.
Gwynn, the quote-unquote best hitter since Ted Williams, usually batted third, where his career OPS was. 860. Tim Raines' career OPS hitting third? .856. Almost exactly the same.
Root for this guy! SD has a 20-year-old outfield prospect named Jaff Decker who on-based .442 last season in Single-A ball. His body type is described as resembling John Kruk and Matt Stairs, so there's a visual.
Perish the thought: Remember the sad story of Matt Bush, the former No. 1 overall pick who bombed out spectacularly? Yeah, the Padres took him ahead of Justin Verlander, last season's AL Cy Young Award winner.
The No. 1 pick rotated between leagues then. Verlander's Detroit Tigers should not have been picking second in 2004 after losing a league-record 119 games the previous summer. What happened might have been just, plus the Padres went for the signable guy who didn't have Darth Vader for an agent.
Now it's just sad: Infielder David Eckstein was the 2006 World Series MVP just days before the Republicans got hammered in the U.S. midterm elections. Both have had similar fortunes since.
Third base to outfield conversions? When will people learn? Chase Headley, one of the team's few league-average hitters, is back at his regular fielding position.
Discuss: Shortstop Everth Cabrera is entertaining, if you like shortstops who call to mind the days when teams lived with erratic fielding, low stolen-base success rates and utter lack of plate discipline.
One simple request: Will Ferrell's Anchorman sequel should include some reference to the Padres' 1984 pennant.
Record watch: Stairs is one pinch-hit home run from tying former Jay Cliff Johnson's record of 20.
Drawing a Blanc to come up with 30 things about a struggling small-market team: Left-hander Wade LeBlanc shares a birthday with Sidney Crosby, Aug. 7.
Smart guy: You might have heard Dick Enberg is calling Padres games on TV. He even hired an aide to help him communicate with the Latino players. How many broadcasters do that?
Only saying this once: It is officially passe for sportswriters to refer to a coach or GM who is under 40 as "Doogie Howser." That show was cancelled 15 years ago and some would say it's in use among sportswriters who have hangups about answering to someone who's younger than them.
Hoyer, the Padres' 36-year-old GM, has the Doogie tag. It gets dragged out with the 40-year-old Ottawa Senators coach Cory Clouston.
Granted, the latter is allowable. Cory Clouston bears more than a passing resemblance to Neil Patrick Harris, and as a hockey coach, probably has a special room just for his suits.
Fun fact: Leftfielder Kyle Blanks, who is 6-foot-6, 285 pounds, is the heaviest player to ever hit an inside-the-park home run. There's no truth to the rumour the Chargers are signing him as a blocking tight end.
Fun coincidence: The Jays have Buck Martinez, who once went from the broadcast booth to managing the team, back as their TV guy. Coleman did the same thing in 1980. He lasted one season.
Now you know the rest of the story: Why does San Diego's NFL team consistently underwhelm in the playoffs, while its baseball team disappoints. Blame the desperation that inspired the San Diego Sockers of indoor soccer fame to make a very 1980s music video:
Do you need a winning team for a winning town? Did they rent Edmonton's inferiority complex?
Plus we all know he'll end up in Boston: It's a violation of the "renovating the restaurant you don't own, or spending the 200 million dollars you don't have" rule to suggest a trade destination for Gonzalez.
Duty calls to preview the MLB season. In the spirit of that, we'll have 30 notes and errata on each team (20 plus 10, eh), in reverse order of PECOTA projection. At bat: the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Bucs bandwagon: The time is now for an AL East widower to adopt the Pirates, as much as one can support a team in the National League, the other white meat of MLB.
The Pirates will turn it around eventually. They have a lot of history, are a reasonable driving distance from southern Ontario and play in a beautiful ballpark. Besides, Pittsburgh teams, such as the NFL Steelers and NHL Penguins, are a go-to for the kind of fan who needs you to know her/his team was picked organically. This kind of fan also wants to feel blue-collar, without ever doing blue-collar work.
Pittsburgh is the safest place for that out of all the northern U.S. sports markets. Philadelphia fans can sniff out a poseur at 75 yards and are quick to anger. Aligning with the Buffalo Bills and/or Sabres carries a high risk of having your heart ripped out repeatedly, for real.
GeraldM on Yahoo!, would you like to present the rebuttal? "Why again are you writing about the Pirates ? NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE FREAKIN PIRATES !!! The have sucked for their entire history and will continue to suck for generations to come. I GUARANTEE they lose between 125 and 140 games this season. They have NO TALENT of any kind, anywhere, they never have and they never will."
Keep payroll low, build slow: The Pirates, 2-3 years away from being a competitor, do not seem like a repeat of the Florida Marlins, a team which cuts back to the bone to protect its profits at the long-term expense of the product. Pretty much any everyday player of note (Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez, Nate McLouth) has been traded over the past two seasons, but they weren't going to be around long enough to be part of the solution, ergo, they were part of the problem.
McLouth'scomment when jokingly asked whether all the traded players should start a newsletter: "No. You don't want to pay that much for postage."
Crazy's all they got until he arrives: Cleanup hitter of the future Pedro Alvarez posted a .914 OPS in his first full season. That makes him like the Jesse Jane of prospect porn.
Cutch is clutch: Centrefielder Andrew McCutchen on-based .365 and slugged .471 as a 22-year-old rookie. There is more where that came from; think Carl Crawford-lite.
Why run a Pirates preview? Why do it today? Because the NFL's salary cap expired at midnight and the Pirates' 17 consecutive losing seasons goes to show what can happen in uncapped leagues. You're also owed one Pirates preview where their skein of suck is not the first point of reference.
Zach Duke: good bad-team pitcher or just an underachiever like most of us? The left-hander was Pittsburgh's all-star rep and kept his ERA just north of 4.00, but it's going on five years since he was a bright hope. The longer the wait ...
To second chances! First baseman Jeff Clement, whose career as a catcher stalled due to knee injuries, is trying to get it together with the Pirates. He was drafted No. 3 overall in 2005 ahead of Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Ricky Romero, Troy Tulowitzski, McCutchen and Matt Garza, whom most people have actually heard of.
Speaking of ... There's outfielder Lastings Milledge, on his third organization.
No sense of marketing: New shortstop Bobby Crosby should have been forced to wear No. 87. A Pirates jersey with "Crosby 87" on the back would be the team's best seller.
Why there is optimism: The Pirates' farm system used to be the 26th-best in MLB, according to Baseball America; it has already risen 10 spots to 16th.
Makeover magic: The Pirates remodeled the clubhouse of their spring training facility. That should singlehandedly change the culture. Bill Simmons is writing a 20,000-word thesis on the effect of clubhouse remodelling on team performance. It will in no way be axiomatic.
The starting pitching is actually not bad: Duke, Princeton-educated righty Ross Ohlendorf (3.92 ERA, 1.23 WHIP in '09), lefty Paul Maholm (4.44, 1.44) are an adequate front end of a starting rotation. They're so spectacularly adequate that NBC is giving them a late-night talk show.
Strange but true: Last season's preview noted,"MLB.com's Pirates beat writer is Jenifer Langosch. She has one N and about 100 Ls to cover this season." The Pirates lost only 99 games, but remember, one was cancelled.
Oddly enough, Langosch's blog now refers to her as "Jen."
Fantasy baseball is designed to break your heart: Just check what outfielder Garrett Jones (21 homers in a half-season last year) did in high-leverage situations last season. Someone will take a flier on him on your draft day, and you will hold your laughter.
He's average-sized in Japan, but big here: Second baseman Akinori Iwamura is fast becoming the Pirates' most popular player.
The difference was signability: The Pirates' first-rounder from 2007, Daniel Moskos, isn't even rated as one of the team's Top 20 prospects. At least they signed him, right?
They might keep losing, but not with the same guys: Only eight players on the 40-man roster were there when GM Neal Huntington was hired.
Not that you needed proof ex-GM Dave Littlefield really ached: The Pirates' second-rounder from three seasons ago, the awesome named Duke Welker, had an 0-11 record with a 5-plus ERA in Single-A balll last season. Oh, and he was repeating that level.
Tough call: Celebrate the 50th anniversary of their unlikely 1960 World Series win over the Yankees, or the 20th anniversary of Barry Bonds' first MVP season in '90?
Another anniversary that will pass unmarked: It's been 20 years since the Pirates finished in the top half of the league in attendance, and 30 since the franchise did so during a season where it didn't make the playoffs. Yet they're still around and the Expos are gone.
Keeping it positive, though: There's plenty of good seats available on the bandwagon.
Roberto Clemente. That is all.
A commentary on American history: Former Pirates pitcher Jim Bibby's Associated Press obit mentioned that he threw a no-hitter, but left out that he served in Vietnam.
Time and fevers: Bibby, who died last month, is the fourth member of the Pirates' 1979 World Series-winning team to shuffle off this mortal coil.
They have the No. 2 pick in the June draft: And right on cue, the best college pitching prospect, Louisiana State's Anthony Ranaudo, has come down with a sore elbow.
Not so long ago, he was in Ottawa: Former Lynx manager John Russell is in the last season of his contract. Russell was a candidate to manage the Texas Rangers, who are a favourite to make the playoffs.
Other stories about famous people: The comedian Lenny Bruce was at Forbes Field when the Pirates' Bill Mazeroski hit the winning walk-off home run off the Yankees' Ralph Terry in the ninth inning of the '60 World Series.
It was the first major-league baseball game Bruce ever attended. It was also the last. What could top it, really?
Basically, he joined another farm team. Ohlendorf interned with the U.S. Agriculture Department during the winter.
It's the time of the year when you sit on a couch for hours with a baseball preseason magazine, a bag of sunflower seeds and your old glove, at least until the manager of The Brick politely asks you to leave before he calls the cops. There aren't enough hours to chew over all the minutia of baseball, but duty calls to preview the MLB season. In the spirit of that, we'll have 30 notes and errata on each team (20 plus 10, eh), in reverse order of PECOTA projection. First up: the Toronto Blue Jays.
'Lex saves the world. The 32-year-old rookie GM, Alex Anthopoulos, is right on time for a franchise who finally had a moment of clarity and realized it cannot build a winner from trades and free agency.
Anthopoulos will have as much of a honeymoon period as he needs, since he's both Canadian and pretty smart.
So subtle: The Jays are running a series of TV and radio promos voiced by new play-by-play man Buck Martinez, who was a Blue Jays catcher and broadcaster during the glory days. It's hard not to notice that when Martinez points out "it didn't happen overnight," there's footage from the 1977 home opener followed by a clip of Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar's iconic home run off fellow Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley in the '92 playoffs.
Judging from that 15-year jump in time, that must mean look out for the Jays in 2025. By then, they'll be in another division and manager Cito Gaston might even be ready to hit Travis Snider as high as sixth.
Lots more to come: Second baseman Aaron Hill (36 homers last season) and Adam Lind (35, plus a .932 OPS) deserve all the superlatives they get. This is not a set-up for a cheap joke about how between Aaron, Adam and a GM named Alex, the Jays are a great Triple-A team.
Why they will not leave Toronto, in four words: They're. Cheap. Cable. Programming.
Why you're scared they will, in five words: Who wants to own them?
Rogers Communication is a bad corporate parent, but outside of them, it's hard to imagine anyone stepping up to buy the team. (By the way, if you do a Google News search and see a Detroit News headline that says "no Rogers," don't get your hopes up.)
Pre-emptive defence of Vernon Wells: One can already anticipate what might get written during the dog days of summer if Wells is scuffling along like last season, when he on-based .311 and slugged .400. He would have a hard time being that bad again (although the power is gone).
Let's just point out there's some irony in Wells taking heat over a bad contract signed during the reign of former Jays president Paul Godfrey, from journalists who collectively have been affected by deals brokered by Paul Godfrey. Yep, same guy.
You can never have enough young pitching: No one on the Jays roster has ever twirled, tossed or thrown 200 innings in a major league season. Funny, that same factoid came up last season with the Washington Nationals.
That's the Cito logic: Jose Bautista's career split vs. right-handed pitching is .260/.316/.366. That's what you want from a leadoff hitter.
What to look forward to: Lind winning another Silver Slugger Award. Whiny articles from dilettantes who need the "Joe Carter is not walkin' through that door" speech. Overhearing people at Rogers Centre ask if that's the same Alex Gonzalez at shortstop that the Jays had back in 2000. Following centrefield prospect Jake Marisnick's Twitter updates.
Better days:Imagine a Shaun Marcum-Kyle Drabek-Marc Rzepczynski-Brandon Morrow-Brett Cecil starting rotation someday. Don't forget Zach Stewart and Chad Jenkins.
Keeping us on the hook: Marcum and Dustin McGowan are said to be making progress in workouts after both missed all of last season following surgery.
One Harper campaign which cannot wait.If the Jays are as bad as predicted, and if power-hitting phenom Bryce Harper waits to enter the draft in 2011, it could redeem the whole season. Any and all snarky alliteration (Bottom Out For Bryce?) will be entertained.
Also, a Harper home run should be called a "Bryce rocket."
Details: Keep an eye Hill's walk rate. He tends to be see-ball, hit-ball.
Codebreaking 101: When a team talks about being more aggressive on the bases, it's code for admitting they'll try to be exciting while scoring precious few runs. Baserunning is about 2 per cent of what makes a winning team.
Brandon is out west:Mop Up Duty figures right-hander Brandon Morrow, the pitcher acquired from Seattle during the Roy Halladay deal, should start the season at triple-A Las Vegas.
ZZ tops: Multiple high fives to the first fan who shows up at Rogers Centre in a Zech Zinicola replica jersey.
The Rule 5 acquisition would be just the fourth player with a Z surname to play for the Jays.
Proof cheapness is not a sense: Five of the Jays' top seven prospects, according to Minor League Ball, were acquired from other organizations. That's what happens when your corporate parent gets rids of scouts and is slavish to the slotting system.
With that being said: There is every reason to be excited about Brett Wallace.
Save the date: Halladay and the Phillies visit Toronto from June 25-27. Would a Halladay return draw a larger crowd than the 24,000 and change which showed up for one of his last starts before the non-waiver trade deadline last July?
The best pitcher in the game, the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum, also visits for an interleague series in June.
Please, 300 at-bats for Randy Ruiz. Is it too much to ask that a guy who does nothing but hit get a chance to do it in the majors for a full season?
More nostalgia: It's the silver anniversary of the Jays' first playoff team in 1985.
Can't let this slide: The lily-gild Martinez does in those aforementioned spots: "When Roy Halladay first came to Toronto, we didn't know how good he was going to be." True, other than the fact he was a first-round draft choice and made an Opening Day roster at age 21, no one had an idea Halladay would be a good pitcher.
No one gets out without a HIMYM reference: There's a recent episode where Marshall Eriksen travels back in time to punch out his 13-year-old self for smoking.
That is just like is an alternate reality where 33-year-old Neate Sager travels back to 1990 to tell his 13-year-old self: "Oh, and in 2010, Cito will be managing the Jays and Larry Mavety will be general manager of the Kingston Frontenacs! Deal with it!"
And in case Paul Beeston reads this: Queen's 43, Western 39.
.jpg)
Duty calls to preview the MLB season. In the spirit of that, we'll have 30 bits of notes and errata very tangentially related to each team, in reverse order of PECOTA projection. At bat: the San Diego Padres.
Granted, the latter is allowable. Cory Clouston bears more than a passing resemblance to Neil Patrick Harris, and as a hockey coach, probably has a special room just for his suits.
Posts
