Don't hate the player, hate the game. It's the system that is broken, not the Yankees. Don't blame them for taking advantage of it, when anyone else in their position would do the exact same thing.
Yeah, pretty much. Usually once he secures the save he'll do something like that. Like SMU said, he used to do it in his days with Arizona, but I never really saw him. (NL, pff). I never really understood why people get upset at people like him and Joba. Especially if those are the same people who do not take exception to the celebrations in football (after every play). I hate when football players do it, but it never really bothered me when baseball players do anything, probably because they're not dancing around like idiots. Nothing wrong with a fist pump here or there.
As I understand it, it has less to do with how fans react and more to do with how their fellow players react. Simply put, it's just not done. It's why you don't usually see excessive celebrations after home runs or great plays. It all goes back to that "Act like you've been here" mentality. Also, not so much anymore, but it used to be that showboating or self-congratulation got you or a teammate hit by a pitch for disrespecting your opponents. Major League Baseball is considerably more strict about retaliation these days, so these guys can afford to behave in ways that would have earned them a lovely bruise 20 years ago. As a Yankee fan, I personally don't care for when Joba goes overboard and I also wanted to see Valverde get fucking creamed last night (It's May, guy. Relax.) A reserved fist pump is one thing, but the screaming and the dancing around is nonsense. As much as I enjoy the AL, my one huge reservation about the league is that pitchers aren't held accountable for that kind of bullshit. One solid fastball to the small of their backs would shut them up good.
I am pretty sure if any rookie gets a 20-20 season, he'd win ROY. Also, his defense is known to be a little weak. When Lee is ready, he'll push Castro to 2B; or at least that is the organization's plan. Right now, the move shores the defense at 2B more than SS, as Theriot and Castro are both mediocre but Fontenot is pretty bad. Also - the "Ask a Pink Hat" thing is awesome.
I thought we already crowned Jason Heyward ROY for '10, and MVP for 2012-2020? Why didn't they just move Castro to 2nd now? I've seen very limited amounts of Theriot in the field but his UZR/150's for the past three years at SS have been solid (7.1, 2.9, 6.2), and if Fontenot is that bad then Castro should at least be somewhat of an upgrade there, right?
From what I've heard/read during the past couple of days Castro is up because of his bat. He is staying at SS because he has a better arm than Theriot and can make the spectacular play. His knock has always been flubbing the routine plays, which leads to the question "Why bring him up until he has more polish in the field?" I don't know the answer to that. Perhaps the answer is that Theriot is a better bat than Fontenot, and apparently management thinks Castro is a better bat than Theriot which improves an offense that is atrocious right now. A lot of crap has been flung at the wall the past two weeks, I'm hoping 1/2 of it sticks. These motherfuckers are too damn good (especially compared to the rest of the division...minus STL) not to wang-whip their opponents on a daily basis.
A couple reasons. First of all, as of this winter, they weren't planning on calling Castro up this year. Therefore, they thought they would have more time to work on defensive stuff in the minors. Lee is a year younger than Castro and is still in A ball. So instead of having them both in the minors to work on this, they had about a month. Plus, Lee is still a couple years away so you can't assume he'll make the majors yet. But if you call up Castro now, you have to let him play his more natural position (SS). Especially if you don't really have a defensive stud there. And I give props to Theriot for improving his defense (especially his throwing, he used to double pump everything), but he's still nothing special. He always has looked more like a 2B anyways. Basically, right now on pure defense Lee>Castro>Theriot, assuming Castro calms down a little bit. Expect Castro to spend next couple spring trainings working a lot with Sandberg on defense.
Here's an article called 'Valverde defends animated celebrations'. There's not much in there that's worth reading but Leyland said something along the lines of "animation has become more of an accepted part of the game," which is certainly true. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing it go away entirely. As I've said, I hate when they do it in the NFL, so it won't be long before everyone's doing it in the MLB, and I'll hate that too.
I didn't get to attend or watch today's Tigers game vs. the Yankees, but I did follow on MLB Gameday. I had tickets to last night's game, but it got postponed to this afternoon. Porcello finally had a good outing. He did walk too many batters (3 in 7IP), but none came around to score. He was finally able to get hitters to keep the ball on the ground and headed towards the fielders, very nice to see (15 groundouts, 4 flyouts, only 2 K's). Hopefully he figured out what was going on, or his luck turned around, or whatever. The Tigers need more than one pitcher who can pitch more than 5 innings any given time through the rotation. Unrelated, Guy Fawkes threw his 2,000th strikeout today in a (temporary(?)) return to the starting rotation.
I like and respect Albert Puljos but does he have to look at the sky after every good play? After a HR or even a double play seems fine, but a guy hit it to the pitcher and got thrown out. Afterwards AP pointed at the sky (to thank God I assume) It's ok to have allot of faith but cmon.........................
The Tigers had a pretty killer week. 3 out of 4 from the Yanks and 2 out of 3 from the BoSox. Unfortunately, the Yanks couldn't hold off the Twins today, so the Tigers remain 1.5 games back. I saw this on twitter, courtesy of Elias: The Tigers have 4 wins after trailing by 5 in a game. The rest of the league has 3 combined. Though, if they would just stop falling behind by 5, that'd be even better. I didn't see Guy Fawkes at today's game..
I went on Friday and Saturday nights. Had a great time at Comerica. Tiger's fans are pretty fun to watch a ball game with too. Only a handful of douchebags that knew very little about baseball and tried to give us shit. If you want to bust balls when the visiting team is ahead at least know your shit. We moved down to the first row over the Sox dugout for the 10th-12th innings on Saturday nights game. Sat amongst a ton of Tigers fans and they were all laughing when I had a meltdown as soon as Ramon Ramirez took the mound. I was brutal but... proven to be entirely correct after 75% of his pitches were in the dirt and he walked in the winning run.
I cannot believe the Reds are in first place. Im currently sitting in the Vegas airport with my hat on, and people are talking to me about it! Usually people question why anyone would wear that outside of the house.
I watched A-Rod hit #588 today at Yankee Stadium (in the last row, no less). He'll fall short of Pujols as the best of this generation for both juicing and inferior stats at the end of the day, but even now that he's (supposedly) clean, his ability to simply drive the ball incredibly long distances, especially when watching him live, is unreal. If he could turn even 20% of his K's into singles (and not break his hip), he'd be a Triple Crown threat every year.
If/when it's ever revealed that Pujols tried some substance at some point, do you think that'd level the playing field in that argument? I say that because every year it seems like more players are outed as having tried something, whether it was legal at the time or not. I'm wondering if it's only a matter of time for Pujols to be added to that list.
Definitely. If Pujols is/was on the juice, all bets are off. It could be a statistical photo finish for A-Rod and Albert when all is said and done.
And that's the sad thing. There has NEVER been any shred of evidence whatsoever, in any way, linking Pujols with any kind of supplements (right?). Yet, because he's been mashing on a level previously reserved for the Elite Great Ones of yesteryear, there's an almost underlying suspicion just wondering if he's guilty. The question shouldn't be "if Albert is ever caught using...", it should simply be, "my God, has there been anyone with greater numbers ever?" Such a shame this PED-cloud has left over baseball.
He's a suspect strictly because of the era he played in, just as every single player in the MLB still is. We can't say for sure that any player in this day and age is 100% clean.
There is no proof and I would bet my life the guy has never used anything. Everyone knows what a good guy he is off the field, but the reason I would use is that you have never seen and inconsistency's in his game (or his body for that matter.) He hit 37 HR's in 2001 and has pretty much been around that figure for most of his career. He is a big man and has been most of his life. I understand the speculation because of how many players were caught using steroids ( A-Rod still boggles my mind) but I think it's a safe bet that guys like AP and Ryan Howard did not juice.