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[OFFICIAL] 2008 Major League Baseball Thread (pg. 14)
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| jonze |
July 1, 1990
The White Sox defeated the Yankees, 4-0, in Chicago even though right-hander Andy Hawkins tossed eight hitless innings. The White Sox scored on five walks and four errors, including three in the eighth inning that led to all four runs.
i remember that game. it was hilarious.
appearently larussa was pulling out his pedo smile
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| Zewad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zewad
well we beat the astros on a walk off double and puts us half game back of the sox... we'll finish up against teh stros tomorrow then a couple roadies against the marlins and the pirates then a crucial home series vs. teh sox....
those cunts.. |
of those 10 games we won 8 of them... :)
3 games up on teh sox.. with a 4 game home stint vs the royals.. i like our chances... although we usually lose against the crap jobs.. |
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| Magnetonium |
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...radio-show.aspx
| quote: |
Jays notebook: Ricciardi trashes Adam Dunn on radio show
Posted: June 19, 2008
Slugger Adam Dunn lacks a passion for baseball and definitely will not become a Toronto Blue Jay, general manager J.P. Ricciardi said Wednesday night.
Dunn, who plays for the Cincinnati Reds, is often mentioned in trade rumours, but Ricciardi was adamant that the Jays have zero interest in the 28-year-old outfielder.
Ricciardi slammed Dunn on his Wednesday night phone-in show on The Fan 590, a Toronto radio station. His comments came after a caller suggested the Jays acquire Dunn, who is hitting .227 with 18 homers and 43 RBIs with the Reds.
“Do you know the guy doesn’t really like baseball that much?” Ricciardi said to the caller. “Do you know the guy doesn’t have a passion to play the game that much? How much do you know about the player?
“There’s a reason why you’re attracted to some players and there’s a reason why you’re not attracted to some players. I don’t think you’d be very happy if we brought Adam Dunn here …
“We’ve done our homework on guys like Adam Dunn and there’s a reason why we don’t want Adam Dunn. I don’t want to get into specifics.”
Ricciardi was generally sympathetic as callers vented following the Jays 5-4 loss to Milwaukee. But Ricciardi’s demeanour changed when a caller mentioned Dunn as a hitter who might “save” the Jays’ moribund offence.
“He’s a lifetime .230, .240 hitter that strikes out a ton and hits home runs,” Ricciardi said.
“Yes, he hits home runs, which none of the Toronto Blue Jays are doing,” the caller replied.
That retort triggered Ricciardi’s shot at Dunn as a player who “doesn’t really like baseball that much.”
In his seven-year career, Dunn has averaged 40 homers and 96 RBIs while batting .247. He has also averaged 181 strikeouts. His current salary is US$13-million.
Three callers asked Ricciardi why he does not fire manager John Gibbons. In each case, the caller also asked other questions, which the general manager focused on while ignoring the question about Gibbons.
But for those looking for a signal, Ricciardi did suggest that he is open to “doing some things different” — whatever that might mean.
“We are underachieving and we should not be,” he said. “This is too good a team, and this is a team that should be playing better. So we’re going to continue to watch it and probably have a little bit more of an open mind to doing some things different.”
The Jays have lost four straight and occupy last place in the American League East, 10 games behind the first-place Boston Red Sox.
“This year we thought would be our best year … I think it’s salvageable. I think there’s still some baseball left in us that we can turn some things around. But we've got to get going,” Ricciardi said.
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Not that often you hear these days a GM lose his cool like this.
http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/446197
| quote: |
Jays GM JP Ricciardi claims Cincinnati Reds outfielder Adam Dunn "doesn't have a passion to play the game that much."
Dunn counters by referring to Ricciardi as a "clown."
Let the war of words begin.
"I know nothing about this clown, I have no idea who he is," Dunn said today in response to Ricciardi's radio call in show in Toronto Wednesday in which the Jays GM questioned Dunn's character.
Dunn was shown transcripts of the radio call in show in which one caller peppered Ricciardi about Dunn and the value of bringing him to Toronto to bolster the Jays offence, which is second last in the majors in homers.
Dunn has hit 40 or more homers a season over the past four years.
Dunn initially expressed indifference, but quickly changed his tune to one of anger.
"It (ticks) me off, to be honest with you," said Dunn, who is in the option year of his contact, and will become a free agent after this season.
"He doesn't know anything about me other than what he sees on whatever Sports Center they have up there."
Ricciardi became engrossed with a caller on his regular phone in show with the FAN 590, and explained that the team has "done its homework" on players like Dunn.
"Do you know the guy doesn't like baseball that much? Do you know he doesn't have a passion to play the game that much?" Ricciardi said in response to persistent but unfounded rumours that the Jays are interested in Dunn.
"We've done our homework on players like Adam Dunn. There's a reason why we don't want Adam Dunn."
Dunn, who is due into Toronto Tuesday when the Reds visit the Jays for an interleague series, said he can now cross the Jays off his list if he should become a free agent this winter.
"I can eliminate one team," Dunn said. "I'm not changing dollars to loonies and toonies just yet." |
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| Magnetonium |
Steroid era is officially over?
http://thespec.com/Sports/article/375486
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Suddenly, baseball is ... normal again
Tainted homers are down, but is too much of a good thing really good for the game?
May 27, 2008
Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON (May 27, 2008)
Ever since baseball returned from its strike in 1995, the game's aesthetics have been out of whack. For 13 seasons, home runs have been out of control, while scoring ranged from high to ridiculous. The game's traditional statistics, based on more than a century of broadly accepted standards about what constituted sensible balance between offence and defence, were tortured and, in the case of many landmark numbers, rendered obsolete.
Now -- in a Roger Clemens minute, in a Barry Bonds blink -- the problem may be fixed.
This spring, for the second straight year, home-run totals, like the game's conspicuous muscles, have shrunk dramatically. Last season's 8 per cent drop in home runs was welcomed, but with caution. Would the tater barrage simply resume? But now, in the wake of the Mitchell report, home runs have fallen this spring by another 10.4 per cent.
Suddenly, a sport that produced 5,386 home runs in 2006 is on pace for 4,442 this year -- a 17.5 per cent drop, or a loss of almost 1,000 home runs in just two seasons.
If the current trend continues, baseball might return to the levels at which many students of the game think the sport has been healthiest and most pleasing: an average of a bit more than nine runs and slightly less than two home runs per game.
This season, major league teams have scored 8.98 runs per game. Since 1871, there have been 1,750,230 runs in the majors, an average of 9.11 per game. Warm weather, when fly balls carry farther, might bring the game almost exactly back to its long-term scoring trend.
"That's good news. No, it's great," said the Nationals' Randy St. Claire, chuckling because he's a pitching coach.
What is the cause?
"Just say that guys look like ballplayers again, like they looked when I was growing up, not like musclemen," said St. Claire, 47.
If the arrival of the Steroid Age was gradual, arriving full-blown in the late '90s, then peaking with 5,693 homers in the insane season of 2000, when 47 players hit at least 30 homers, then its reversal might come quite quickly. This spring, only 24 players are on pace for at least 30 home runs.
"A 'cold spring' doesn't account for an almost 20 per cent drop in home runs in two years," Orioles president Andy MacPhail said. "It's foolish not to think there's some correlation to more drug testing and all the (legal) attention (on steroids). There are still people out there trying to cheat. There will always be people who try to get around the rules one way or another. But there are not as many now."
We'll have to let the season play out before victory is declared. Nevertheless, last year was the first season since 1997 when baseball had fewer than 5,000 homers.
And, to find a season with a home-run pace comparable to the first 50 games of 2008, you must go back to 1993 -- before the strike, before "Chicks Dig the Long Ball," before the game turned its eyes away from steroid use and practically condoned any abuse of chemistry.
Of course, there's a flip side to any cleanup. Will the sport that sets revenue records every year remain rich with a return to the run-scoring levels of a long Golden Age, when players from Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt to Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan put their names in the record book?
Though several National League players, helped by their league's new parks with cosy dimensions, might hit more than 40 homers this year, only one American League player (the unlikely Carlos Quentin) is on a pace for more than 38 homers. After 73 by Bonds, asterisk or not, will that be enough? Will Lance Berkman, on pace for 55, carry the load?
"From a personal and aesthetic point of view, I like this kind of baseball better," MacPhail said. "I like a well-played game more than a slugfest. But plenty of fans like runs."
Even the most power-loving fan might lack a perspective on how insanely homers have exploded since 1997. First, let's get a sense of what, for decades, the sport considered normal in a great home-run hitter and what it considered truly unique.
In the first 35 seasons after the Second World War, the average home-run champ had 42.4 dingers. That's "normal." What constitutes off-the-charts for a great slugger? From 1939 until the steroid eruption, just three players had more than 52 homers in a season: Ralph Kiner (54) in '49, and Roger Maris (61) and Mickey Mantle (54) in '61. That's the ceiling.
Then came designer steroids as well as human growth hormone for which baseball still has no test. Over the past dozen seasons, the average total for the home-run champion in the American League and National League has been 53. So, as cheating flourished, what once was the stuff of legend, a total higher than Mays ever achieved, became the norm for league leaders.
For a sport that established statistical norms over a century, this was a nuclear blast. After generations of patting itself on the back for an almost ideal game in which rules seldom needed more than tinkering to maintain an equilibrium, baseball suddenly bore little resemblance to itself. Brady Anderson hit 50 homers; Ted Williams never had 44.
If baseball truly has reduced its homer totals by something like 17.5 per cent over the past two years -- and by a bit more than 20 per cent since the loony peak of 1999-2001, when an average of 5,560 homers a year were hit -- then it's probably a blessing. If the current pattern holds, then the average home-run champ's total would drop back to 44.
"I think this trend is a good thing, independent of what may have brought it about," MacPhail said. "It's more like baseball."
Those words, dropped casually, speak volumes when they come from a man who has built two world champions, whose grandfather ran the Yankees and whose father was American League president. MacPhail was raised on what baseball should be.
But he also has to meet a payroll -- a high one. If 1,250 fewer home runs than 2000 make him happy, then 2,000 fewer might make him faint. Shrink the players, shrink the sport?
"There's not just one reason home runs went up. The strike zone got smaller. Players lift weights more. New parks were smaller," MacPhail said. "Now, you're seeing some new parks being built that are normal size, like Washington, that help the pitcher a little. But this has always been a game that paid off on the big home-run numbers."
For the moment, there appear to be few worries. Home-run totals always inch up in summer, so the eventual drop this season likely will be similar to last year's 8 per cent fall. Few developments could be better for the game. Crowd-pleasing home-run totals still are a hair high by historical standards while runs scored are, generally speaking, where they've been since '71 -- 1871.
Now, if warm weather will please arrive to boost every blast. After all, there's one thing worse for baseball than too many tainted home runs: a scrawny sport with too few. |
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| Magnetonium |
Its not in the papers yet, but I just heard that Brew Crew acquired CC Sabathia for 3 decent prospects (including Brew's best minor leagues hitter).
The news will become official tomorrow morning.
Milwaukee is an official power house NL team now. NL Central takes the world series. |
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| Zewad |
we are 5 games up...
thanks yanks.. a split is exactly what we needed..:) |
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| verndogs |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
Its not in the papers yet, but I just heard that Brew Crew acquired CC Sabathia for 3 decent prospects (including Brew's best minor leagues hitter).
The news will become official tomorrow morning.
Milwaukee is an official power house NL team now. NL Central takes the world series. |
NL Central is the only bright spot in a pathetic league.
I'm glad he went to the Brew Crew instead of the Phillies |
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| jonze |
| wow, that's a lot of info about the blue jays and adam dunn that no one really gives a about. :p |
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| sean5 |
| quote: | Originally posted by jonze
wow, that's a lot of info about the blue jays and adam dunn that no one really gives a about. :p |
:haha: :haha: :haha: |
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| Magnetonium |
I wonder if anyone gives a rats ass about this - Cubbies just responded to the Brew Crew's call:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp...t=.jsp&c_id=mlb
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OAKLAND -- After days of trade talks circling the A's clubhouse, Oakland made a deal official on Tuesday by announcing the trade of pitchers Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin to the Chicago Cubs in a six-player deal.
Harden, the centerpiece of the transaction, has posted All-Star numbers in the first half of the season, with a 5-1 record and a 2.34 ERA in 13 starts. The right-hander heard the news around 3 p.m. PT and has already been in touch with Chicago general manager Jim Hendry.
"I had heard talk about it, but it's still always a surprise," Harden said just minutes after learning of the move. "It's a bit of a shock. But they're a good team, and they have a chance of doing something special."
In return for Harden and Gaudin, who is 5-3 with a 3.59 ERA in 26 games (six starts), Oakland received right-handed pitcher Sean Gallagher, catcher Josh Donaldson, infielder Eric Patterson and outfielder Matt Murton.
The 26-year-old Harden leaves the A's with a 36-19 career record over a span of five-plus seasons. Gaudin, 26, was in his third season with Oakland. Both will be with the Cubs by Wednesday, but it is not known when Harden will make his first start in a Chicago uniform.
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| jonze |
i'll post my response from messenger:
ty |
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| trunks1022 |
| quote: | Originally posted by jonze
i'll post my response from messenger:
ty |
forgot to respond to you, i'll be down for cubbies games when you're in town. |
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