Week 1 Round Up

What a glorious week it has been!!! Gotta say once baseball season hits life is always good, because no matter how shitty a day you have just had you know you get to watch your team play and thats super(unless they lose and then your more pissed). Anyways welcome to the best time of year friends.

Lets start it up with the week one round up:

The Royals swept the Tigers - I am sure just about everyone is aware of this by now because it is pretty darn ridiculous. But the Royals didn't just beat the Tigers they pretty much dominated them. Could this be the year the Royals put together a good year? They have not been over .500 since 2003, and before that it was 1994. I think this could be the year they have a solid season, and go above .500. They have a solid lineup with Gordon, Butler, and Guillen knocking in Gruds, Teahen, and DeJesus. I also think maybe this can be the year that they have 3 solid, not great, but solid starters to throw out there. I don't think they can win the division and certainly not the wild card, but an above .500 year is a good start for this franchise.

PS. Butler- 22-109-.310 Gordon-20-115-.290

Fragile Handle with Care Department - Well welcome back to the disabled list Pedro, Mike Hampton, Rocco Baldelli, and Scott Rolen!! I swear they just keep coming back because the food is so good. There are other guys who hit the DL recently to but those guy are not as much fun to harass.

Pedro popped his hammy throwing a pitch, the funny part about this(at least for me is the conversation The Sports Don and I had earlier that night before the fateful pitch:

(2008-04-01 18:47:06) Donbot: i look for pedro to compete for the cy young this year with santana
(2008-04-01 18:51:25) Me: no chance
(2008-04-01 18:51:47) Donbot: u'll see
(2008-04-01 18:52:30) Me: I will see him start 20 games if he is lucky
(2008-04-01 18:52:53) Donbot: fair enough. we agree to disagree
.....
.....
(2008-04-01 20:32:22) Me: DL stint #1 coming up
(2008-04-01 20:32:49) Donbot: jesus christmas
(2008-04-01 20:33:08) Me: wow man
(2008-04-01 20:33:27) Me: I didnt mean to jinx him, but 20 starts it is

Really I didn't mean to jinx him. Now a days you have to know Pedro is going to get hurt he hasn't throw 200 innings since 2005, and is just getting older. I would hate to think that Omar went into this season with his fingers crossed. NO he wouldn't do that, I am sure he has a backup plan better then Claudio Vargas.

Then we have the mandatory Mike Hampton DL stint. Strained left pectoral. So basicly he hurt his left titty. Imagine your wife/girl friend/lover/one night stand said to you "Honey I can't do it tonight, I strained my left titty." You would probably fire her, or at least send her to the bedroom for the night while you do whatever it is you do online. Thats what someone needs to say to Mike Hampton, "YOUR FIRED". I don't know why you sign him to anything less then a minor league deal anyway. Guy has not thrown more then 200 innings since 2001, and has not pitched at all since 2005. So while your on the DL Mike enjoy wraslin' gators in the swamp of Florida.


Toujours blesser Rocco!!!! Rocco has had just about every aliment know to man ACL, Tommy John, pulled hamstrings, but this new one is an interesting one. He now has a "Mitochondrial disorder, a condition that causes extreme fatigue". So in other words he just gets reeallly tired after playing. Maybe that stems from not playing for so long? Probably not, but just asking. At least the Rays have smartened up and declined his option for next year, so someone else will have to deal with this walking catastrophe.

Finally we have Scott Rolen, who when healthy is a solid all around player. But he has missed a lot of games in his career. 50 missed games in 1999, 30 in 2000, 20 in 2004, 105 in 2005, 20 in 2004, and 50 last year. Most of that time was with various shoulder injuries. This year he starts the season on the DL with a broken right finger. The claim is out for 3 to 5 weeks, but I will lay money he gets some other injury some how.

What helmet? - Well Larry Bowa let the MLB know what he thought about this new rule requiring base coaches to wear helmets and the new rule about staying within the coaches box. Gotta say that Bowa id 100% correct, can say I agree with his methods, but the message is right. These rules are nothing more the public relations and CYA legal maneuvering. These new rules were put into place this season because of the death of Mike Coolbaugh last year. Mike was hit in the the neck with a line drive, which killed him. Thats a horrible thing to happen and everyone wishes things like that would never happen, but sometimes they do.

The helmet rule is down right ludicrous. Apparently this helmet :

Is going to protect a base coach from being injured by a line drive. Um how about no ya crazy dutchman. The helmet doe not protect anything more then the top of your head, also the part which needs the least protection because it is so hard. The soft parts of the neck, ears, temples, back of the head are all still very much exposed. So basically baseball has made a rule, which most coaches are very much against, that does nothing but look good to the ingorant sheep known as Americans. I feel like the MLB has magically turned into the Federal Government who only pick solutions that help on the nearest election day.

Ya know MLB most of these guys have been in the league for the better parts of their lives. Let them choose to wear a helmet or not, and any new guys into the league have to wear the helmet. I think its called grandfathering or something like that. NHL did it once, maybe call them up for some advice.
Barry who?Barry still does not have a job. How this is I am not sure. I mean yea he might get put in jail, he might be linked forever to steriods, he might be a huge jerk, but I KNOW he can help some team win games as a DH. End of story.

Yearly Awards - Here I am going to give you my picks for MVP, Cy young, ROY, and such.

NL MVP - Dave Wright (32, 120, .310, 26)
AL MVP - Can you guess? Alex Rodriguez (60, 153, .321, 10)

NL Cy Young - Johan Santana (22-5, 2.10, 234)
AL Cy Young - Scott Kazmir(18-10, 2.65, 216)

NL ROY - Jay Bruce (20, 70, .270)
AL ROY - Joba Chamberlain(10-1, 1.81, 107)

AL SB - Carlo Gomez - 54
NL SB - Jose Reyes - 61

Also the Yankees will win the AL east. Next time I will give you all my division standings for the end of the year. Until then its on like Donkey Kong!!