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Baseball season 2007

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#361
millahh said:
Maybe, maybe not...his innings limit for the year is supposed to be around 155, and after last night he's sitting at ~140, I believe. They know they have something special in this kid, and they don't want to fry his arm. So unless one of Beckett/Schilling/Wakefield/Matsuzaka get seriously hurt, I don't see him being a starter the rest of the way.
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Good point - I didn't know about the overall innings limit.

Last night would have gotten interesting if he wasn't so efficient in the 8th and 9th. Theo said that they probably would have pulled him at 120 pitches even with a no-hitter intact. He finished with 115.

Wake's back is acting up again - he had to skip his start Friday which created the opening last night for Buchholz. He is scheduled for Wednesday IIRC. Schilling is coming off the DL; but he did look strong in his last outing. Actually, Schill looked fresher than Dice-K who may be tiring a bit from the long season. It may not be a bad idea to have him skip a start.

You really can't have too much quality pitching. At minimum, Lester and Buckholz will give them some flexibility the rest of the year and I wouldn't be surprised if both are in the rotation next year.

Here is a little flashback from one of my July posts -
"As promised the scouting report from Pawtucket:
Buckholz pitched pretty well - at one point he struck out 5 in a row. He is hittable though - had one bad inning when he gave up like four straight singles in one inning to give up a few runs. From where I was sitting I couldn't get a good idea about movement or location; but he does have pretty good command of his off-speed stuff - there were a lot of called strikes and awkward swings. I hope the Sox keep him, but I don't think he will be any help this year."

I was right about the command of his off-speed stuff; :smug: but wrong about whether he will be any help this year :rollno: He just stopped a 4 game losing streak and helped buck up a wobbling fan base - myself included. That alone is huge.
 
#363
GrooveWarrior said:
Let me add a new flavor to this discussion.

Without looking at my location, guess the team I am talking about.

- Left fielder has 36 home runs.
- Right fielder has 29 home runs.
- Second baseman will end the year as a 30/30 man and be in the top 5 in hits in the NL.
- Their number one pitcher has 14 wins, is second in the NL in strikeouts, is in the top 10 in ERA.
- Have won 12 of their last 17.
- 4th in the NL in runs scored this year.

You wouldn't have guessed the Cincinnati Reds, would you?

Watch out. They are making a run like the '78 Yankees!
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Milwaukee is my team in the NL Central - but it is good to see signs of hope in Cincinatti - it is one of those great historic franchises that should be in the hunt. The NL Central seems to have a bunch of pretty evenly-matched and evenly-salaried teams; if you don't make it this year, just keep up the momentum and get them next year.

What happened to my favorite g**tar-playing pitcher, Bronson Arroyo? Was he hurt, bad luck, NL hitters figure him out?

You probably know that Wily Mo is back in the NL - nice kid with huge potential but didn't really work in Boston and we got two guys coming up in Ellsbury and Moss that are going to be fine ML outfielders.
 
#367
Yesterday's Red Sox lineup had 3 recent callups:

Ellsbury - 2 for 3 with a homerun into the Sox bullpen; great diving catch in center - the kid is even faster than Crisp
Moss - two nice defensive plays: a catch that rattled the scoreboard in left and a nice throw to the cutoff (I love fundamentally sound players) that Lowell turned into an out as Millar rounded second too far.
Cash - backup catcher called a good game; nice block of the plate with Tejada tagging up.

Two rookie of the year candidates that have been doing it all year
Pedroia - 2 for 4 with 2 runs scored and another highlight reel defensive play.
Okijima - a scoreless eight thought he did have to work around a leadoff double

Two second-year pitchers
Jon Lester worked in and out of trouble but only 2 runs over 6 innings on a day that the Sox only scored 3.
Papelbon - 7 pitch perfect 9th inning for the save.
 
#368
Geez, that Sox/Jays game was a marathon last night. Sox up 10-1, then the jays come back and score 8 runs in the 6th....***??? Dice-K needs to take a good long look at his performances from this past year in the off season. I just don't get what the problem is. He obviously has the stuff to be great, but then it seems there is always one inning where he just throws batting practice.
 
#369
xgabriele said:
Geez, that Sox/Jays game was a marathon last night. Sox up 10-1, then the jays come back and score 8 runs in the 6th....***??? Dice-K needs to take a good long look at his performances from this past year in the off season. I just don't get what the problem is. He obviously has the stuff to be great, but then it seems there is always one inning where he just throws batting practice.
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I hear you. Usually its the first inning that he has trouble and the Jays did nick him for a run early - I went to sleep before the 6th and I was surprised about the score when I looked in the morning paper. He finally gets some run support then almost gives it away. I think he is tired and skipping a start or juggling things to give him 6 or 7 days rest would be a good thing. Even in the early innings, his fast ball didn't seem to have as much zip and the breaking pitches were not as sharp.

However, I think you may be a little too critical of his overall performance. He has been better than I expected. Look at his last 10 starts http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=7906 - he pitched well enough to win 7 of them and ended up with 4 W's. With slightly better run support he would have had 18 wins by now easily.
 
#370
dangnewt said:
However, I think you may be a little too critical of his overall performance. He has been better than I expected. Look at his last 10 starts http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=7906 - he pitched well enough to win 7 of them and ended up with 4 W's. With slightly better run support he would have had 18 wins by now easily.
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I do agree with this. It is like last year for Wakefield. It seems like one starter a year always gets lower run support than the rest. However, I am not a big fan of the win/loss column for pitchers. I mean, last night he gives up 7 runs in just over 5 innings, yet he still gets the win. I think that is a useless stat, and prefer to look at ERA, strike pct., etc. Yes, Dice-K does have the leading strike out total for the team, and is in about 4th place or so in the American league in that category, so I do see the potential. Other than that though he hasn't been effective getting "in-play" outs.
 
#374
Joshua said:
Well, at least the offense kicked to life.

Red Sox won as well though. I expected more from the Beckett-Holliday matchup!
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What more did you expect? Both pitchers went 8 full innings, and overall it was a great game to watch. Matt Stairs has been on fire lately and took Becket Yard, but the Sox were able to get ahold of Halladays slider that kept staying up in the zone and tacked on a few runs. Papelbon's save in the 9th is always exciting to watch. Overall it was a great game in my eyes.
 
#375
No, certainly not. The Red Sox for the most part have Halladay's number though. It seems like every Sox/Jays series, Halladay is pitching. After a while, you just figure a guy out.
 
#376
Joshua said:
And I did not mean to imply that it was a horrible performance, but especially from Halladay, 9 hits and 5 runs do not a dominant pitching performance make.
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Figure him out eventually the Sawx did.

yoda.jpg
 
#377
dangnewt said:
This is one of the reasons I love the wild card - you get games like tonights Yanks-Mariners which will have a real playoff atmosphere in early September. While none of the divisions are set in stone - the 3-way AL wildcard chase will create a ton of big games for the rest of the month.
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any win is a good game to be at.:) great pitching by Wang last night and the bats once again worked in unison (they also tend to sleep in unison)
seats were great, 4th row off the field right behind the first base tarp.
on another note, could Yankee Stadium be any less fan friendly?
 
#379
xgabriele said:
What do you mean?
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if you've been there, you probably know or have had some sort of incident yourself...............
but for those who haven't.........
parking for most people sucks, I'm fortunate because we use a private lot right off the Major Deegan, so we get home in 25 minutes.
going back to my seat at one point, I had my ticket in my left hand, a beer in my right and another beer being held by my teeth. I have to show the ticket because the area is chained off. so I show it to the guy/attendant, who's just sitting there, and he asks me to unchain the chain so that I can get in. that's annoying.
in the area where we sat, there was food service available. the 2 guys next to us had to wait 40 minutes just to place an order, pre-paid for the food and then never received it! despite numerous complaints to the waitress type of person. they had to go buy other food. needless to say, they left early.
passage ways were, last night, and as usual closed off so that people had to use certain routes.

the list goes on, but the general idea is that the hired help at Yankee Stadium couldn't give a crap about any one at the game.
I sure hope that it changes at the new stadium.
 
#380
The Crusader said:
if you've been there, you probably know or have had some sort of incident yourself...............
but for those who haven't.........
parking for most people sucks, I'm fortunate because we use a private lot right off the Major Deegan, so we get home in 25 minutes.
going back to my seat at one point, I had my ticket in my left hand, a beer in my right and another beer being held by my teeth. I have to show the ticket because the area is chained off. so I show it to the guy/attendant, who's just sitting there, and he asks me to unchain the chain so that I can get in. that's annoying.
in the area where we sat, there was food service available. the 2 guys next to us had to wait 40 minutes just to place an order, pre-paid for the food and then never received it! despite numerous complaints to the waitress type of person. they had to go buy other food. needless to say, they left early.
passage ways were, last night, and as usual closed off so that people had to use certain routes.

the list goes on, but the general idea is that the hired help at Yankee Stadium couldn't give a crap about any one at the game.
I sure hope that it changes at the new stadium.
Click to expand...

Hmm...no wonder New York fans are always mean then ;)
 
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