hackneyed fantasy baseball blathering on tap for cheap

evidently, despite being a rotocripple, josh beckett has the capacity to literally tear ish up. in his 3 2/3 innings last night, the united states version of becks mowed down 8 whitesox en route to a 0.00/0.55 era/whip tandem. fortunately, for the whitesox he left with some sort of a lower back injury, i currently don't have any idea as to the extent of the injury. unfortunately for the whitesox, they couldn't hit the other pitchers that florida threw in there, though ultimately losing 2-1 in 11 innings.

nonetheless, the menial outcome of this game will be lost in the news that the whitesox just dumped billy koch to the aforementioned marlins. quite frankily, billy koch hasn't been effective in a white sox uniform. there seemed to be some sort of formal media-purveyed "respect" factor that ozzie guillen would being up in constantly saying "billy's my closer" and supporting him as the team's long term primary closer. GM kenny williams just managed to rid ozzie of contradicting himself on that koch issue if he was still killing them down the stretch. good move.

more later.

tuesday night mu sings tonight's national anthem

with a 1-2 of mark prior and carlos zambrano, the cubs have done a pretty solid job in managing houston's lineup. if kerry wood can come back and avoid injury, that rotation's weakest point is likely to be greg maddux, which is not a bad weak point to have, all things considered. while maddux isn't the immortal maddux from the mid 90s, he still is the WILY VETERAN(tm) who can generally provide you 6-7 IP of 0-4 ER baseball.

meanwhile, over in le stade olympique, johan santana seems to have continued on his recent success, despite losing 2 out of his last 3 starts. in both of those games johan pitched well through about 5-7 innings, giving up 0-1 ER with something like 1BB/6Ks in each of those starts, then the wheels fell off. fortunately for mister santana, the new york mets came a-callin' and he managed to get on track for a 7 IP 1 ER 10 K outing which looked like the kind of line i've been expecting from johan all season long. going into the bottom of the 9th, his line looks like this: 100 pitches, 8 IP, 2H, 2ER, 1BB, 7K. as it turns out, that will be all for mister santana tonight, as he has been mercifully listed to keep his ERA over 2 for the night.

the whitesox have been a source of quality entertaining baseball this season, and tonight has been no exception. down 5-0, in the 8th and 9th innings, the sox scorched armando benitez to the tune of 5 runs (only three of which were credited to him) on home runs by frank thomas and timo perez (the timo-o-meter is currently at 2, for those of you who truly give a damn). frank thomas, while starting kind of slow, is now at ~.300/17/43, which at roughly a 2.5-3 multiplier, looks like another 40/100+ year for mister thomas.

i knew that i jinxed the cubs, as zambrano has mustered up some hits to the middle of that houston lineup. and as i type this sentence, here comes a 2 run single by captain morgan ensberg to give houston a 2-1 lead over carlos zambrano. chuckles has had two bad outings this year, a 7 run shelling at the hands of the arizona diamondbacks, and something like a 4-5 ER game in houston. it looks like chuckles could give up around 4 runs by the time this is all said and done.

sticking with the cubs for a second, i'm once again faced with the chagrin that accompanies the talks of MARK GRUDZIELANEK returning to the cubs. they make it sound like todd walker hasn't been that good... but has anyone stopped and looked at his numbers over on addison ave? i believe, going into tonight's game, he is .286/10/25/0 with 25BB and 25K. i mean, while he's not your prototypical leadoff guy, what more do you want? grudz probably would have a hard time hitting 10 home runs all year, and his .315ish average last season was, i believe, his best in quite some time. basically, he's a backup type player who can give you decent hitting, usually .280+, without much in teh way of power or rbi. not to mention this guy has a slightly torn achilles that he didnt have surgery on, so i doubt he'll be 100% when he gets back. so now, the campaign of this not-read BLAWG is to tell the world this: todd walker should be the cubs' 2B, and i have absolutely zero patience for anyone who tries to convince me that the GRUDZ was the MVP of the cubs last year. excuse me for being old fashioned, but when you have a pitcher named mark prior going 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA, that guy is your MVP, end of story.

jeff bagwell seems to be on the way to stickaforkin'emhe'sdoneville, i'd estimate maybe 2 years left, three if there's some sort of a fluke. he's getting old.

as i continue to type away, zambrano gave up a double to jason lane with one out, so they're intentionally walking ausmus to load the bases. fortunately, the double was a ground rule so captain morgan ensberg couldn't score for first on the play.

in a surprise move, wade miller is hitting for himself in this situation. i'm thinking that the weekend of intensive bullpen usage is whats going through the mind of jimy williams right now, other than, perhaps, the whereabouts of the wanton M missing from his first name.

pop fly. shallow right. nice catch. almost a double play at 2nd. now scrapman craig biggio gets a chance to put this one away for the astros.

after his bobblehead night saturday in milwaukee, scott "i-pod" podsednik is having more o-fers than ray ordonez.

ron santo just screamed "YES!" as surprise defensive stalwart, aramis ramirez, robbed biggio of a double to get the force at 2nd. 2-1 astros at the end of 6, another quality baseball game from a chicago team.

as i prepare to catch a ride home, i would like to note that in the years i've watched chicago baseball, this is easily the best season for quality baseball on both sides of town. the sox have been cardiac, and the cubs have managed to not completely tank with key components missing from their team, so this instills hope in this jaded slacker that, indeed, there might be quite a buzz going on in october in this town. still, there's a long way to go, and the seeming return of quality johan santana starts can't help the sox' quest any.

more later, more sooner.

quick tidbit on vladimir (from the trenches)

Finally, how impossible is Vladimir Guerrero to pitch to? One AL scout summed it up this way: "I just wrote on my report: `Good luck.' "

more cbs.sportsline.com.isms

today's a lax day both in terms of baseball (3 games, i believe?) and my updates, as its the busiest day of the year at my oh so glorious municipality.

before i start though, i noticed this gem on the usual game updates over at cbs.sportsline.com: "Victor Martinez (ankle) was removed for a pinch hitter in the fifth inning, although he is healthy. The move was simply a manager´s decision. He will test the ankle while catching in the bullpen."

i've never seen a note for a player leaving a game be so apologetic and sure to reaffirm that the guy isn't injured. evidently, victor martinez owners are touchy people.

speaking of the man, victor martinez has come out of nowhere to be a nice catcher for any fantasy squad. when posada was out with that broken nose/face/whatever, i recruited mister martinez to play a few games for jorge. since that move, jorge is something like .250/1/7, victor is like .354/4/20, so he's been sitting there in my utility role providing rbis and average, meanwhile posada has been the ever-perpetual suckfest for most of may and now into june. still, i think posada will get back on track, but 30/100 might be out of reach by now. and to think back in april you were thinking 40/120 was quite possible for, at the time, world's most catcher.

i'm also tempted to give johnny estrada or joe mauer some reps until posada gets back into a groove. although one of the typical recurring questions of the fantasy baseball world is whether or not to pursue dumping a "proven commodity" type of player like posada and holding on to the flava of the season, someone like victor martinez, in his place. thus far i've been reluctant to pull the trigger and wish posada away, but if he keeps schlepping and is stuck on .275/9/30 for a week, the thought will certainly be there.

tonight's cubs game is supposed to be a good one, roger "i can't believe that this old fart is 9-0" clemens goes up against mark "see he can do some wrong" prior up in houston. the cubs need to start winning at roughly a 60/40 clip to have a chance in the central, so games like tonight with all the hype and ramifications on divisional play end up being doubly important. fortunately, the cubs just got out of a series in anaheim that played out like a playoffesque series, two good tattered teams meeting up, using their bench depth, and pulling out 2/3 despite clutch hitting by vladimir guerrero and pretty solid pitching.

welp, per usual, more sooner for those oklahomans who like repeated jokes.

end of the night musings the blues.

tonight's cubs/angels game was definitely a fine afternoon of quality baseball. i won't dig too deep into this one, but in the name of gloating, vladimir guerrero had a really nice day at the plate. he had three run scoring singles, the last one being a clutch one in the bottom of the 11th or 12th inning with two outs on a good pitch from latroy hawkins. i think his final line was 3-5 or 3-6 with 3 RBI.

i found this cubs/angels series to be really enjoyable. while the offenses were potent for the most part, at times good pitching prevailed, and there ended up being some pretty clutch tense moments throughout the series. game three was a rubber game, and it went into somewhere around 14 innings to decide who would win. both of these teams figure to be there in the thick of the pennant race, and this was a small dose of octoberian baseball here in the near-middle of june.

one for the road

here's a cbs.sportsline.com-ism for the ages:

Melhuse homered to deep left, Dye scored, Hatteberg to third, Durazo to second.

more sooner as promised (because we love oklahoma, dammit)

vladimir guerrero keeps on chugging away, i believe he's up to 54 rbis, bringing his season stat line, at this exact moment, to .348/15/54 in his 61st game. can you fathom AL MVP? i can, have, and will. good scrappy run for anaheim, with chone (don't call me chone) figgins singling, swiping second (his 18th), then scoring on vladimir's RBI single.

as you will grow to realize, i think this man is world's most baseball player.

there's a fighting chance that the world might end tonight: luis rivas is currently 3-3 in today's game.

this just in: we don't have to worry about the polar ice-caps melting anytime soon, nor has the forecast for armageddon been dreary in the near-future, because bret prinz has given up 3 runs in 2/3 of an inning today, his first of the season. incidentally, my trusty cbs.sportsline.com game recap last night called prinz a rookie. um... dating back to 2001, bret prinz has been a legend of the diamondbacks organization, now getting a chance to show the world just exactly why YOU DON'T EFF WITH BRET PRINZ, mang.

those cardiac yankees pulled off not only one late-inning-comeback, but two of them, in defeating those demented father figure padres, 6-5. walking corpse JORGE POSADA, (.200ish/1/6 in the last month), turned an 0-5 day into a glorious 1-6 1 RBI day when it mattered. oh by the way, jorge posada is a stalwart of all three of my 2004 fantasy teams, despite the presence of victor martinez in one publeague, and offers of craig wilson in a ploy to get the big oswalt off of my active roster. what can i say? i've been sold ever since he ran his 3 year old kid out during that one all-star game, because i'm in baseball for the heartwarming family interest stories first and foremost.

or maybe i should drop posada for jamie burke, who looks like he's good for 3 RBIs everytime he steps foot on to comiscular field, where legends are born, nurtured, and sold to chicagoans like cheap car insurance. for excretions and chuckles, i have gone and computed jamie burke's statistics for the rest of the season, assuming he'd get in, say, 50 games of the remainder of the season (miguel olivo will, obviously, take a little time to fall victim to the greatness that is jamie burke)--- .750/0/150 with 50 runs scored and a slugging percentage of something higher than the performers on the "up in smoke" tour.

i've done some research, and one of the top-50 most uttered phrases in all of life is [rey] "Ordonez grounded out to shortstop."

it's 4:20pm: do you know where your baseball-enhancing tools are?

tim salmon is hitting .327 against righties (16/49 with 2hr/10rbi and 9BB to 8K) and since you figure most pitchers are right handed, well thats generally a pretty good thing. why, he'd have to be awfully bad against lefties to reduce his average below .280... especially down to like, .216, right? well, he IS that bad against lefties this year. up to the minute, he's a robust 0-23 against lefties. i dont have BB/K numbers with me, but hey, when you're 0-23 does it really matter that much how much you're walking and striking out? that's probably the most disparaging split i've seen in righties vs lefties in all of beisbol this season.

oh well, time to taper off and delve into the realm of parliament lights. have yourself a good'un, dwight.

rah rah rah rah rah rah rah babblerock for the ages.

random observations slowly marinated over the course of sunday june 13, 2004 while serving time as a perpetually bored municipal employee:

the chicago whitesox continue to hit mediocre pitching quite well to the tune of frank thomas' 16th HR and carlos lee's now 27 game hit streak. if their pitching can continue on and improve slowly but steadily, they could be a near-lock for the playoffs.

it has been determined by wanton baseball enthuiast chris "kolbsaves" jagalla palace that when i am dead, on my tombstone it will read "should have traded for ted lilly - 6/04"

honorary dominatrix, cliff lee (master of the high WHIP), likely has just earned his ticket out of rockstardom with his second bad outing in a row. i have him on the flagship team in the homophiliac-named league, the justice league.

on the other hand, despite giving up 5 ER to those mighty mashin mets, a few bumps along zack greinke road are to be expected until it's upgraded to a highway within the next few years. his era likely ballooned from 1.64 to 2.something and now i ought to cut him to teach him a harsh lesson about fantasy baseball ownership and other power-related-struggles. either that or i'll just hold out my hopes, alongside rob neyer, that the royals are just having a couple detours on the path to being a bonafide baseball juggernaught.

roy oswalt has been demoted from the prestigious moniker of "world's most roy" and "baseball's most roy" to just plain ol "roy". while he has, especially considering his pedigree, sucked profusely this season, he's still not doing that bad in life for being named roy.

fresh off of the presses over @ http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/gamecenter/live/MLB_20040613_NYM@KC --- "Carlos Beltran of the Royals left the game in the 6th inning due to an apparent injury." meanwhile, in new york, numerous erections have been reported flaccid due to this earth-shattering news.

the braves of today are not the braves of old, even the braves of 2003. this cunning expose has been funded by the following parties: travis smith, nick green, and pals. although, i do have to give propers to the venerable jaret wright, who stymied the mighty bashin boys from near-bridgeport with 7 innings of cy-young-caliber baseball.

i just figured out a way for the brewers to make it to the world series: pitch danny kolb every inning of every game. clearly, his greatness extends beyond fatigue, injury, good, evil, and the american way of life. this man is an unstoppable dynamo in the grand scheme of things, and with his variety of garbage pitches that entice you to foul them off and get behind in the count, i could see the brewers eclipsing the yankees as the class of baseball if and only if they promote danny kolb from mere closer status to traditional cy young workhorse status.

speaking of the beer distillery corporate mascots, i must say that the fanbase has warmed up to scott podsednik, as the crowd was featuring a hearty spackling of podsednik-related apparel on his bobblehead night. of note were many of those t-shirts with a half-assed brewers logo on front and cheap lettering saying "PODSEDNIK 20" on the back. now that's some soul, i denote, as i wear a batting practice jersey with a cheap felt letterjob that says "GUERRERO 27" in white on the back. by the way, i am now undefeatable in all endeavors fantasy baseball because the venerable i-pod now sits atop my home monitor, nodding his head ever so complacently to the erratic rhythm of my thunderous keystrokes.

more sooner (as later posts will appear before this one)

frosted baseball in milwaukee

last night i had the opportunity to soak up a milwaukee brewers game, so being a selfless public servant of a reporter for the greater masses of the world, i felt obligated to go undercover in the land of cheese and expose the world of baseball in milwaukee to you, my currently nonexistant readers.

in a phrase, the baseball up there is sugar coated. loud top 40 music media clips after base hits, constant mind-numbing distractions in between half-innings (the sausage race is, of course, the most ballyhooed outlet of said distractions)... things are dumbed down, the score plays are posted on the giant scoreboard, and its a loud raucous time in a sea of scott podsednik jerseys.

last night was bobblehead night for the venerable i-pod, and he didn't fail to deliver his usual scrappy game, collecting a couple hits, one of which being a nifty running bunt infield rbi single, all reiterating exactly why we're there with a graven googly image of his likeness.

there were actually 40,000 people there, and the crowd was in general loud and responsive to the events of the game. roy oswalt, steadily losing his gratuitous "baseball's most roy" moniker with each blown lead this season, choked like a stupid baby with a t-bone steak. overblown similies aside, when the big O is representing 66.7% of your fantasy baseball acumen on a given night, watching him elevate ben grieve to mid-90s proportions of foretold greatness is that much more painful.

from that 5 run inning on it was your typical baseball game, lyle overbay added a home run eventually leading to more inexplicable greatness from the mighty DAN KOLB (danny is so 2003). the only thing i noticed about his 1-2-3 dominance was that he threw up some garbage that the batters fouled off or took for a strike, was ahead 0-2 or 1-2 to all three hitters, and then he sealed the deal on all three of them. even though he's only approximately 1/3 into his workload for the season at around 20-25 innings, he's got a 1.13 ERA, which no matter how you got there is still earned somehow.

welcome to the jungle (we've preserved axl rose for your viewing pleasure)

hello howdy and welcome to the inaugeral post in the roving-dung-heap-to-be that is cicerockstardom baseball. the aim of this random space on the web is to provide an outlet for pent up baseball babbling pertaining to both the actual pure so-called american pastime and the dork-laden realm of numerical orgasm: fantasy baseball.

for your basic background, i'm a 23 year old slacker from the northwest suburbs of chicago. i can't sit here and tell you about lifelong roots in the game of baseball or anything equally endearing. nope. i got into baseball through the aforementioned glut of fake baseball reality, fantasy baseball, in the 2001 season. i suppose there's an innate level of satisfaction derived from forecasting baseball performance on a level playing field where your levels of success can be measured against both friends, acquaintances, and randumb people.

it was then, in 2001, that i learned of the bestest damn player in the land of baseball and consequently derived my fandom from his exploits. that man i speak of is the mighty vladimir guerrero, then a roving island of danger in an otherwise pacific lineup in montreal, now right there chock in the middle of the lineup of the anaheim angels. nonetheless, thanks to vlad's location in montreal from 2001-03, i still maintain an expos fandom status in technicality only. i'm stuck in a position where i don't want to jump ship and be completely fairweather and transient throughout the annals of baseball fandom, moreover i want to try and live up to the ups, downs, and in-betweens of fandom... it's hard, but i forecast converting into an angels fan to further follow the career of mister guerrero, future hall of famer and all that fun stuff.

being a lifelong chicago-area-person, i'm cognizant of the plights of both the chicago cubs and whitesox, both of whom i watch or listen to whenever possible, thus amounting to essentially a daily basis. its hard for me to catch all of the games when they're on the cable channels, but rest assured, when the games are on broadcast television in chicago, they usually get my patronage, otherwise the radio stalwarts; the actual voices of the teams, those are what i consume in my fits of baseball addiction.

anyways, i hate these icebreakers and want to stop talking about myself and start talking about other things baseball related. that said, from here on out i'm going to attempt to keep this thing baseball and leave myself as merely an impartial keen observer of the ever-passing scene presented to you through stupid jokes, biting comments, and grandiose-stoned observations of the baseball universe.

oh and i babble. you have been warned.