Loading ...From 2008 to 2011, the Philadelphia Phillies towered above the National League. They won two NL pennants (including destroying the Reds in the 2010 NLDS) and a World Series title. The Phillies won 102 games in the 2011 regular season. It’s worth noting that through those seasons, their payroll grew from $97 million to [...]
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Let’s recap tonight’s titanic struggle…. FINAL Cincinnati 2 St. Louis 1 W: M. Latos (2-0) L: A. Wainwright (4-2) S: A. Chapman (6) BOX SCORE POSITIVES –So, as it turns out, Mat Latos has a little bit of talent when it comes to throwing a baseball. Tonight, six innings of shutout baseball, surrendering five [...] When I got up at 5:30am Kabul time Tuesday morning and learned that the Reds lost on Opening Day, my day started off bad. The runners left on base, the lost opportunities, a wasted brilliant pitching performance by Johnny Cueto. It all brought back memories— bad memories— of watching Game 3 against the Giants [...] Writing about baseball on the internet (either above or below the line), is a funny sort of thing for the way it tends to polarize and calcify our opinions about topics even if they aren’t ultimately that big of a deal, or even if we don’t actually know very much about the question when [...] The Redleg Nation editorial staff put together a fine article on the recent developments regarding Aroldis Chapman’s move back to the bullpen. Word reached me late as I was in Jalalabad, a city near the Pakistan border that is very active — if you know what I mean. The 101st Airborne – the Screaming [...] I was all set to move on. Steve Mancuso had written a fantastic editorial on behalf of the editors of RN and I knew I couldn’t do better. I was set to swallow my disappointment (to the best of my ability) and move on with the season. Then I read yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer. Specifically, this article by John Fay. It contains no real explanation as to why this decision was made. I’ll highlight some of the quotes: Walt Jocketty says: “It was like last year. It was what gave us the best opportunity to win as an organization this year. The rotation as it was, we had four guys who pitched 200 innings. We have another guy who is capable of pitching 200 innings. That’s a very strong rotation.” I don’t disagree, but what about improving the team? Do you believe that Chapman in the rotation can’t top 8 wins and a 4.58 ERA (Leake’s contribution last season)? Jocketty also says: “Leake’s had a good spring. As long as we felt he was close to coming back to where he was a couple of years ago, we thought we were a better team.” Good spring? By what definition? I’m not big on spring stats, but what makes you believe this is the case? In addition, what makes you believe that Leake won’t continue to regress (his ERA went from 3.86 in ’11 (with a very low .269 BABIP) to 4.58 (fairly average .306 BABIP) last year). He also says: “We’re a team built to win. In our opinion, this gives us the best chance to win now.” And you believe that Chapman in the rotation (vs Leake) and Broxton closing (or Marshall, or Hoover for that matter) (vs Chapman) would have made a difference between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs? Because if you don’t believe that, then you have to look at the big picture also. Jocketty also said: “We approached this spring exactly the same as last year with Chapman. He was either going to be a starter or closer.” This is simply untrue. The canary in the coal mine died yesterday, March 22, 2013. Time of death: 12:41pm EST. Cause of death yet unknown. Dusty Baker has been taken in for questioning. Whenever I walk around New York City during the work week, I’ll occasionally see an interesting sight—a large inflatable rat, fifteen or more feet in [...] |
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