As I am sure everyone has now heard the Jim Leyland rant about his team. Priceless. I wouldn’t want to have been Jason Grilli after that one. I also loved how everything he said rang true. He didn’t blame the umps, he didn’t throw anyone (other than Grilli) under the bus. But we all know it’s coming soon if this “horseshit” continues.

Here’s the link in case you need it

Wrong one.

What I want to know if where the hell is Gibbons on this? I mean other than attacking Ted Lilly or Shea Hillenbrand we never see his passion. He waddles to the mound slower than the fucking Penquin to pull a pitcher. Always has this aw shucks attitude when asked why his team can’t hit. I mean this is a team that last night had them loaded in the 8th, down by 2, nobody out and scored 0????!!! In the 9th they were loaded with 1 out this time and they scored 0???!!!. Seriously. What the fuck. It’s beyond fucking ridiculous now. Where’s Gibbons? Where’s Riccardi? Where’s someone who fucking cares? This is a precarious baseball town at best. We have a terrible stadium, an inhuman love for the Maple Leafs, nutso passion for the TFC, and the Raptors have some of the best fans around. Where does that leave the Jays? I’ll tell you. If they don’t start the season well every year they get quickly shit on and forgotten. Their window of opportunity is small. Once the Leafs and Raps are eliminated everyone starts to pay attention to them. If they shit the bed as they so often do then we stop watching. Then it’s patio and cottage season and bango! It’s hockey season again. They simply cannot afford to suck this much. You want 15,000 at a game again? Max? Well it’s gonna happen.

Shit or get off the fucking pot.

Does anyone care? Buehler?

I accomplished Jack squat today at work and instead started farting around with ESPN’s stats page to look at just how awful the Jays offense has been.

completely off topic but that whole Bill Russell/Kevin Garnett thing make me want to puke in my shoes. How fucking staged can shit be? Two men sitting in a dark room with only the camera lights on them, Celtics memorabilia on the walls, and Bill makes an offer….

You have one of the classiest athletes ever. One of the best basketball players ever. And if I’m not wrong the man with the most rings ever. What does he do? Well he says that if Kevin keeps playing like he’s playing he’ll win 2 or 3 rings. If not, well he’ll share one of his. What the hell does that even mean? How the fuck do you share a ring? Don’t you have to win a ring to have one. So by being classy, trying really really hard, and being nice Bill Russell will share a ring with you. I like sports for sports. Sports is unscripted. That’s what makes it exciting. This was ESPN (nay Disney) getting far too fucking involved and making two classy players look fucking stupid.

Here’s the link in case you want to vomit

At the beginning of this season Evan Longoria was the consensus ROY and in seemingly everyone’s opinion a star in the making. Much was made of MLB’s contract rules whereby Longoria would have been kept under contract for an extra year had he been kept in the minors for the first 5 weeks of the season. With pressure coming from fans and the team alike he was called up. Now it was fairly controversial at the beginning b/c all they had to do was keep him down for a few weeks to gain a year of controlling his rights. Tampa has historically been bashed for screwing up young kids and it potentially looked like it was beginning all over again. Yet they actually signed him to what looks to be a great long term deal to keep him in Tampa. Now it could all blow up in their faces but Longoria looks to be not only a great hitter in the making but a great glove and great character.

It’s worked too as Tampa is sitting in 2nd in the AL East and tied for the AL wild card.

And now for something completely different.

Bill Bavasi runs the Mariners. Bill Bavasi has a lot of critics. I think Bill Bavasi is an idiot. I also think that Bill Bavasi is desperately clinging to his job and is making kneejerk reactions.

Jeff Clement and Wladimir Balentien were both just called up to the bigs. Had they stayed down for another week the Mariners would have controlled their rights for another year. The Mariners are in last place in the AL and have the 2nd worst record in baseball. Only the shocking San Diego Padres are worse right now. Bavasi sold his best prospect in Adam Jones and his best middle reliever in George Sherrill to get Bedard. Now he’s been terrible but no one saw this coming so you can’t knock him too much for it. The one thing about Bedard though is that he’s 29 and never thrown 200 innings. Big risk to take. Essentially by trading for Bedard they were saying this is our year to take a run. We can beat the Angels and once you get to the postseason who knows what happens. The King and Bedard is certainly ridiculous enough that they might win a series on those arms alone. Of course they have a lot of other problems. Their infield has needed work for some time yet they keep rolling out Sexson who will hit 25 bombs with a .240 avg at best, Lopez who is a decent but convincingly unspectacular 2B, Betancourt who ain’t bad but that’s it, and Beltre who is their best infielder but costs a fortune. So Bavasi panics and calls up a catcher to DH, waives Wilkerson who he has to pay out millions for, and brings up Balentien.

Unless they can turn this around and he can sign Clement and/or Balentien to a long term deal at a reduced rate like the Rays did with Longoria you have to wonder how much damage he’s done to the team by telling ownership how close they were to competing for a title (not divisional). If Jones becomes a superstar, Bedard continues to be an injury risk and one of those prospects bolts he’s done a ton of damage.

First off I’d like to apologize to Gavin Floyd. He was working on his first career no hitter and what would have been the first of the season when I arrived home last night. Turned on Sportsnet to the breaking news that he was in the 9th with the no hitter. Having Extra Innings I immediately turned to the game to find 1 out and Mauer at the plate. Well, we all know what happened. I only watched one batter that entire game and it was the one that got a hit off Floyd. Sorry Gavin.

My second piece which does go against the only AL moto here is Jair Jurrgens. I watched him pitch a couple of times last year for the Tigers and had identified him as someone that I wanted coming into this year. Now I’m no scout and I’m sure that someone will call me an idiot but he reminded me in a little way of Carmona the year that Cleveland made him their closer in that short but disasterous time. Everything I read on Jurrgens coming into the season said he was either a) not ready yet or b) 4th or 5th starter material at best because with his stuff he had to live on the margins of the strike zone to succeed. The similarities I saw between the two pitchers are that everything has movement and it’s late. If your pitches are darting around I don’t care who you are it’s gonna be tough to make solid contact. That was what I couldn’t understand watching Carmona two years ago was how he couldn’t succeed with his pitches. The ball was moving everywhere but he developed homeritis whenever his fastball or sinker straightened out. So far this season Jurrgens is succeeding in a way few predicted. Of course moving out of the AL helps but one lesson I am taking is that in watching pitchers like him even if the results don’t come at the beginning and even if the experts don’t predict big things I will take a $1 flyer on someone like that.

I suppose I am just sticking my head right in the lion’s mouth with this one but for the bloody life of me I haven’t understood a goddamn thing coming out of Beane’s mouth lately. Perhaps I misunderstood the point of this but I thought it was to talk about fantasy baseball in the AL and baseball in general. Never did I read “let’s all yip about our private AL keeper league on the internet”. Yes you’re in third, yes I have Scutaro, yes he’s useless, and yes I wanted Cano. Anything else? Would you care to tell me I’m done? Washed up? Perhaps I’m past my prime? Maybe compare me to Giambi? Please I do appreciate all of the 5 cent putdowns. Putting me in a tier was a nice touch too. Have I been exposed this season? Was it all smoke and mirrors.

Jesus Christ. I know you do this specifically to get a rise… which you have (one hand clapping) but everytime I go to this page I just sigh and click away instead of reading something interesting which I know you have in you so why waste all of our time with this shit. You watch baseball, you understand baseball, you have insights, so why not make this interesting. Telling me I’m done sixty times gets old.

I had intended to write my return blog about the umpires in baseball but first I must address the absolute nonsense that was shot my way regarding Scutaro being compared to Royce Clayton. Without wasting time Scutaro was a fill in because Josh Fields was sent to the minors. We have two more teams this year and that means less available players on the free agent list. I was out of the country so making a trade wasn’t exactly gonna happen. Clayton was picked as his starting SS AT THE AUCTION. This is a far cry from comparing apples and apples. Clayton is a piece of crap and I will stand by that. I never claimed Scutaro was great but he was a fill in.

OK enough on that.

I don’t understand for the life of me what sort of culture has been created in baseball that doesn’t exist in any other major sport where officials are almost encouraged to enrage players. The Milton Bradley incident is the most glaring example that I can think of but if you watch enough baseball you will inevitably see an official (normally the 1st base umpire) jawing at the runner on first. Many times you will see the player trying to ignore this but the ump keeps going. How on earth is this acceptable? If you see a player yelling at a ref in hockey long enough he’ll get a misconduct but you’ll never have the ref yell back at the player. Same in football. Admittedly coaches do seem to get away with murder on the sidelines yelling at refs in football but I’ve never seen the refs engage the coaches and get nasty themselves. Hockey coaches also do their fair share of yelling but never do the refs yell back.

The umpire’s role is to enforce the rules of the game. Simple. If a player yells at the ump and crosses the line then deal with it. Don’t engage in conversation. Here is a link for the Bradley incident where the first base coach says he’s never heard anything like it from a manager. What prompted this was watching the Jays game against Tampa the other day. Rios was up with two men on base and two outs. The Jays were in the midst of a losing streak and Rios as the best hitter was clearly putting pressure on himself to come through. Rios tried to check his swing which the first base umpire decided he didn’t and rung him up. Rios threw his bat and helmet on the ground and swore at himself. Never did he even look in the direction of the first base umpire. Well he tossed him anyway. This was in the third inning I believe, so he took the best hitter out of their lineup in the beginning of the game in the midst of a losing streak when absolutely nothing was directed at him. Wouldn’t any professional athlete be pissed on a call like that? He didn’t tell the ump her Mom was a cow or that he banged his wife. No, he threw his bat and helmet to the ground in front of him.

Umpires need to call the game and leave it at that. This does go back to the players as well though as they seem to feel that they can chirp at the umps and actually engage in this form of idiotic banter. Both sides need to leave it alone and do their jobs on the field. If a call is questionable then argue it but don’t be a jackass.

Gotta run as I am unfortunately going to miss about 2 weeks of joyous baseball with a trip to sunny Spain. Check out a bullfight or two, drink some cervezas, and try to make sure that no one steals my frigging ticket to the Barcelona v. Getafe game that I had to have forwarded to my hostel. The likelihood of that ticket actually being there and not being stolen by a local at the front desk is about the odds of the Orioles taking the East I think.

Anyhoo. Quick thoughts from watching yesterday’s games on my computer while pretending to work.

1) Detroit is terrifying. I know that this isn’t profound but actually watching that lineup was scary. Hats off to Meche and the Royals for the win. Once Granderson comes back I wouldn’t want to face them. Sure their pitching is suspect but if they put 9 on you it won’t matter.

2) I saw Denny Bautista hit 99 on the gun yesterday for the Tigs. Zumaya can go over 100 and so can Verlander. If Bautista can ever get some bloody control they have the most terrifying offense and some serious heat with their arms.

3) Carlos Gomez is ridiculous. Not since the days of Ricky (I am excluding Reyes b/c we don’t speak of the NL here) have I seen someone create such havoc on the basepaths. Weaver was totally flummoxed. The man beat out a bunt to the pitcher by about 3 feet. Every time he got on base it wasn’t a matter of if but what sort of hell he would cause.

4) Gordon tattooed that ball from Verlander

5) Unless you’re from Oakland I don’t see why anyone would ever watch and A’s game. Least exciting team I’ve ever seen.

6) Go Rays. Sure it’s one game and it’s the O’s but they had the best record in spring training and they’re 1-0 now. They seem to have finally figured the San Antonio Spurs model out in that if you don’t have character you ain’t getting on the team. Dukes, Hamilton, Young all had varying levels of problems and finally they are gone. In their place are more character guys like Percival to mentor the younger ones and it should pay off. Longoria by all accounts has a good head on his shoulders and is the future there. Washington on the other hand looks like a fucking incendiary bomb with both Milledge and Dukes on their team.

Gotta run. I’m sure I’ll be in last when I return so enjoy the head start boys.

Division winners:

Bosox, Indians, Angels

Wild Card: Yanks

Yanks over Bosox, Indians over Angels

Yanks win series

MVP: ARod

Cy Young: Beckett

ROY: Bucholz

In what will no doubt be a common theme on this blog I would like to vent about my anger. I have always been an angry man. Some call it “short man’s syndrome” while I believe it is directly related to my irrational need to beat my friends in competition. I have almost thrown a 1970’s Hitachi at a friend who beat me in NHL ‘94, chased people down the street with a hockey stick for relentlessly jabbing my ribs during crucial moments of Mario Kart, and gone on enough rants over pints to qualify for my own website with podcasts. Now the purpose of this blog is to comment on the American League and fantasy baseball. This is precisely the intersection of two causes of anger; sports and beating my friends in competition. I take great pride in beating my friends in fantasy sports and I think that if you’re going to play against your friends, deal with incessant trash talk, spend hard earned money, all with the potential of having some ridiculous trophy with your name on it say that you are better than your friends, then you bet your ass I’m coming to beat you.

This leads me to my point. Kenny fucking Williams and Joe fucking Crede have now attempted to sabotage three straight fantasy seasons of mine. Two years ago I stayed as far away from Crede as I possibly could given his injury history and sub-par performances while healthy. So what happens? He goes nuts for 30 HRs, 94 RBI and a full season playing. So what do I do the next year? I draft him assuming all will be fine. Of course he shits the bed and gets hurt (although he was borderline useless before that). So I grab Josh Fields who only hits 23 HRs in 100 games as a rookie. Once again I start counting my chickens and figure I don’t have to grab a 3B b/c I have a young cheap talent with power. So what does Kenny FUCKING Williams do? Well he decides that Crede is worth a starting player and a top prospect. Well that makes sense. If I couldn’t stay healthy, had one good year, and just had back surgery I figure I’d be worth that too. And I would also delay the development of my new 3B so that I could showcase the old piece of shit. Oh wait… he hit under .200 in spring and his trademark defense betrayed him? Oooops. Well that wasn’t a great idea.

Fuck