Easily the greatest sport ever…
I saw this excellence this morning courtesy of Kurt Mensching over at SB Nation’s MLB Daily Dish:
I’d love to know how long this took the creator to complete. It brought many of the LOLs.
On Thursday the Red Sox are playing a pair of split-squad games against a pair of colleges, on Friday there are real fake games, and then Saturday at noon, we get real fake games on MLB Network.
This is how everyone *sings* that commercial in their houses, right? RIGHT??!?!?!!
The Indians venerable announcer won Wednesday night with his hilarious dig at Kim Kardashian spurred by the length of the Indians-White Sox game.
Brian Anderson, color guy for the Tampa Bay Rays, caught himself in a hilarious double entendre when discussing Miss USA Laura McKeeman (who works for FOX Sports w/Anderson & Co.) and his dad. Enjoy.
Click here if the audio player doesn’t work.
Also see: McKeeman throw the first pitch in Miami.
When Mario Impemba and Rod Allen began talking about Delmon Young‘s … ahem free-swinging ways… on Tuesday night’s telecast, Rod could barely contain himself at the sight of Young’s walk count for the season. Witness aurally below:
And I certainly hope they are on to something here:
I can’t imagine Carlos Quentin costing the Tigers a lot to acquire him from the Padres which only makes the prospects of a deal more appealing. He loves Comerica Park, too, with a .292/.370/.611 line including 10 HR, and 26 RBI in 127 plate appearances. I’ve been the Delmon Young fan for a few years now, but I want my favorite team to get better and Quentin is significantly better than Young or Brennan Boesch and he understands the value of a walk. Here’s hoping the Lids.com webmaster has an inside track on MLB trades. Dodgers fans, keep refreshing in hopes of seeing a Cole Hamels jersey.
Despite a modest start to his AAA career (.250/.333./375), Bryce Harper is headed to Los Angeles to make his MLB debut against the Dodgers and Chad Billingsley. Harper made a push to break camp with the big league club, but that was always a longshot. Most saw his callup coming in mid-May or early-June, but the disabling of Ryan Zimmerman has facilitated the potentially high impact move for the NL’s best ballclub by record (14-5, .737 win pct.) and second to the 15-4 Texas Rangers for baseball’s best record. The 2-time #1 overall prospect according to Baseball America hasn’t been great in his 57 games in the high minors (37 in AA last year) toting a .254/.328/.388 line in 229 plate appearances with four home runs, but that won’t keep expectations from being unrealistic and sky-high.
The potential is enough to make him worthy of a pickup in literally any format, but be careful with who you cut to get him in 10-team mixed leagues. Chances are strong that you have a replacement level player somewhere on the roster, but don’t drop a real talent just in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle. I really hope we see Harper coming up and catch fire immediately, but at the same time, that is unlikely. He will likely have his moments, but I think we will see a .240 average with 12-15 home runs if he stays up for the rest of the year. He is still just 19-years old. In the expansion era (since 1961), we have seen just 19 players come up and have 100 or more plate appearances as 19-year olds and the results have been mixed.
(click to enlarge)
Just six of the 19 ended up with an OPS+ of 100 or better (100 being league average). One of those was Ken Griffey Jr. who skipped AAA destroying the minors for 129 games before hitting the ground running on his Hall of Fame career. He was thought of as a once in a generation talent like Harper, who has… yep… 129 games of minor league work on his ledger. That is a decent collection of talent, though only Griffey was transcendent and Conigliaro may have been had it not been for his hit by pitch accident.
How about the collection of those who were subpar as 19-year olds?
(click to enlarge)
Now that is a collection of talent. A-Rod, both Uptons, Yount, Beltre, Pudge and Jones all went on to have very successful careers (several of which are still going) including some Hall of Fame resumes in there. Meanwhile, Trout is running neck and neck with Harper for the top spot on prospect lists and he was pretty bland in his 40 games of work as a major leaguer last year. That was after a lot more minor league experience than Harper has had, too. The point is that you should temper your expectations with a 19-year old in the majors, especially one with limited AAA experience during which he has been pretty ordinary. There is a non-zero chance that Harper could set the world on fire from the jump. There is a stronger chance that he looks downright mortal and often overmatched as he gets acclimated to a level of competition unlike anything he has ever faced.
You have probably experienced this feeling at some point in your fantasy baseballing career. One of the three or so daily shellackings doled out to starting pitchers happens to be on your team every night. Your closers are the ones putting their jobs in jeopardy with two or three blown saves already. Your star hitter is mired in an 0-for-24 slump to start the season and even though you know he will probably have two or three such slumps during the summer, it just hurts more to START the season. And your sleeper is still fast asleep and in danger of a trip back to AAA. Worse yet is all of these things are happening at once leading to a disastrous start. What’s a fantasy manager to do?
Nothing, really.
The hardest thing to do when faced with one of these starts is absolutely the right thing to do. Unless you’re being ravaged by injuries and demotions, you have to (or at least you should) trust the roster you constructed at the draft table and give it a real chance to flesh out. That doesn’t mean you should blindly reject trades or avoid picking up useful pieces on the waiver wire, but don’t tinker just to tinker. Don’t get early (1 thru 10) rounders off to slow starts for the flavor of the week. In the internet age with up-to-the-second standings, staying the course in the face of disaster* (*as disastrous as a bad 10-14 days can really be) is the hardest part of the game, but you will be better for it more often than not. Trust the March version of yourself who made the decision to purchase/draft these players. At least wait a month to 45 days before determining that early Spring version of you was wrong.
The Diamondbacks will take this road soon and I think there is a pot of gold at the end of it.
Toronto Blue Jays left fielder Eric Thames is purposely styling his facial hair in this manner. I think it could’ve been enough to get him sent to Las Vegas in favor of Travis Snider but then I forgot about his remarkably unfortunate mustache from last year. Meanwhile, Jason Collette told me on Twitter that he believes Thames should be celebrated for the facial hair.
Baseball By Paul 