another day in the trenches

my apologies, but i need to do this more often.

ON THE CHICAGO BASEBALL TIP:

obviously the big news now is the cubs sorely lacking 8-10 weeks of the indelible services of derrek lee thanks to a freak play the other night in los angeles. naturally, the cubs are used to having injured franchise-cornerstones, however position players are naturally an everyday aspect.

this means that we await the john mabry era with baited breath. for some reason, some call it defense, they might forsake the offensive production potential of a todd walker (he seems like .280/20/80 at his best) if i were the cubs i'd look for some outfielder who could play 1B this way you'd have excess depth. or at least this is the fantasy baseball dork in me talking.

one thing i find amusing with cubs fans is when there's an injury like this, they start mulling over who they want from other teams. i've heard that nick swisher would be nice. oh yeah, you know billy beane gives away moneyballer kids like that... ha, read the book.

the whitesox are looking like the team that i thought they'd be after their 1-4 start. after averaging something like 6.5 runs per game for the first 4-5 wins of the recent 9-1 run, they had a round of quality starts from contreras, garcia, garland, and vazquez. this whitesox offense is noticeably more potent not just because of the addition of jim thome, which has obviously paid dividends, but because players like joe crede are progressing as well. more experience coupled with the confidence of winning a championship should benefit this offense... so whereas the bullpen is a questionmark for the sox right now (keep in mind that politte and cotts, two big guns in the bullpen by the end of the year last year, were in mop up type roles at this time last year. now they're starting out in the heat of the fire...)

btw i have predicted javier vazquez to be the sox ace by the time the year is out. if he keeps his delivery more over the top and stops the arm angle from sinking downwards, that ball will stay down and he's got 4 pitches he can throw for strikes.

i remember the best pitched baseball game i ever saw, april of 2003 opening series at wrigley field. cubs/expos. mark prior vs javier vazquez. prior went the distance, giving up like 2 hits and a walk and striking out 12.

vazquez went 7, gave up 2 ER, and struck out 14.

dont forget that vazquez went something like 14-3 1.75/0.85 in the 2nd half of 2001 until ryan dempster plunked him in the head, cracking his skull and ending his season with a start or two lefrt. he's never had a dominant streak like that since, however, if you scroll down in this blog i called out contreras' potential... cooper did a great job last year turning contreras into your game 1 of the world series starter.

if he can do to vazquez what he did to contreras, watch out, for vazquez has been ~200 IP and ~175+ K for years, tho the ERA tends to hit 4.25 with the whip in the 1.30s

at his best, i think vazquez could push 17-20 wins, 2.75 ERA and a 1.10ish WHIP with 215+ Ks.

i predict at least 15 wins and a sub 3.50 era and sub 1.30 whip for vazquez with a minimum of 175Ks.

lets see how bad i look, eh?

as i say in all of my other journals, i have more to write but i have to go, so since what i write later will end up on top of this, i close out this journal with a phrase i hope you learn to know: more sooner!

meanderings of a fantasy-borne-loser

the leo mazzone factor is going to help erik bedard, a guy who i had pegged for sleeper studliness last year.. he got injured after bein like 7-4 3.00something i think. this year, he's had an enh start and a shutout thru 7 last nigh t(6/7 whip, basically sub-1, and like yeah).. mazzone has turned chicken salad into chicken ish b4 with john burkett, kevin milwood, and ummm countless pitchers. he was a key part of the braves' 13 consecutive title runs and without him i think you're gonna see some slight regression, cuz i wont sit here and pretend to know about leo mazzone but he seems to help pitchers make adjustments, as there has to be some reason so many pitchers dont have the success they had IN atlanta oince they leave it. if he merely taught them something i mean wouldnt they retain it?

thus far i have some red hot players on my fantasy teams:

lance berkman: .360/4/10
orlando cabrera: .370/2/7/3
alfonso soriano: .308/2/6/2
ryan freel: .545/0/1/5
vladdy: .400/1/5

yeah. so far i've done a good job of milking the hitters i've got, and like you know basically fantasy baseball is scouting really. anyone can get players with high draft picks who go .280/30/100 or thereabouts, its using the mid-late round picks to get guys like that, and getting guys who are like 30/30 or .310/40/120 with those high picks that make an offense a juggernaught. this main league im in preaches depth, which i will explain later cuz now i have to go.

but yeah vive la bedard for the 06. oh and daniel cabrera too if we're lucky

and i think harden/haren, the identical names plus D crew in o-town, are gonna be fo'real. oakland was a real trendy pick over anahim this year, and seeing as oakland has dominating ace-type-pitchers and anaheim's best pitcher is john lackey, or maybe ervin santana b4 the year is out, you do the math

rock on players, i will be in touch

a week into the madness

and wow it looks like a lot of so-called aces are havng problems. perusing the morning paper i saw the following eras for your so-called studmuffins:

johan santana: 5.73
bartolo colon: 12.86
jake peavy: 7.36
john leiber (yeah i know): 8.71
andy pettitte: 8.18
roy halladay: 4.20

meanwhile here's some pitchers i would've bet on to start well

rich harden: 2.84
brad penny: 1.50
dontrelle willis: 1.38


anyways, yeah i know first week of the season. who remembers santana in 2004? sucked hardcore up til june or july, then bam one of the best stretches i've seen in my fantasy baseball life (2001-on)

i loves me some white sox as much as the next man, but is that cleveland at 5-1? two homers for eduardo perez? travis "pronk" hafner looking as deadly as he did in the 2nd half of last season? jason michaels hitting everything in sight? wickman a beast? westbrook actually starting with a sub-2 era? PAUL FUCKING BYRD WINNING GAMES? uh oh.

meanwhile the cubs are looking pretty good, that is, until htey stop hitting homeruns. this team needs to single/double some runs in to make me feel better about it. if they can somehow stay afloat until they get their CHOSEN pitchers back they could be in good shape. so far there's no "oh woe is me" stuff... i saw aramis ramirez absolutely own bronson arroyo in the first inning of last wednesday's game. man he crushed a beauty.

derrek lee is actually improved. part of me wondered if last year was a fluke but it looks like he's 2-3 notches beter than the .270/30/90 d-lee tat we got from florida a few years back.

today the whitesox travel to detroit and take on le tigre at noon. they're going to lose cuz freddy garcia has at least a month or two worth of issues to take care of, judging by his stoutness and 85 MPH FASTBALL. jeez. detroit looks vastly improved at least from the first week. i had no idea curtis granderson was a UIC alumni. gotta rep the mother-nipple of edumacation.


this sox/le tigre series should go a long way in telling us if there's uh oh in the south side (cuz there is uh oh in cleveland, just the other way around. those injuns aint fuckin around at this juncture) and if there's uh oh in detroit. i think detroit could finish up with like 83-90 wins or something, but they're going to need a couple of those pitchers to have shots at 17-20 to really get up into the 90s. that offense is what it is really, and i mean is nook logan gonna steal 50? i think they need a bonafide base-stealing threat i nthat park cuz i dunno if we'll live t osee a 45-50 HR hitter in comerica, even tho i wanna say the fences came in about 10-15 feet last season, i'm not quite sure about it. altho pitching i ncomerica should help out pitchers like kenny rogers, tho i dont know how much. kenny rogers is one of thosre pitchers i've always wodnered how they did it. and i still dont know.

seeing zambrano beat carpenter was awesome as well. zambrano is the fucking man, whether or not everyone realizes this, and once he masters his own head i think he's just about as good as it gets in baseball. i love the way he always wears teh blue jerseys too. i want a zambrano jersey its just since i like the sox more that the cubs i might be disowned in a few chicago baseball circles.

but fuck it, thats why i wear my vlad jersey wherever i go. gotta stick up for the man for whom you run the vladometer.

welcome to 2006

so now that the first post-gameday newspaper is on my lap complete with box scores oh yes luscious box scores it is time to talk incessantly about my baseball fantasies, or lack thereof.

last night i was privy to a whitesox game that reiterated why they won the world series last year: they're a take-no-shit team that seems to have their heads screwed on correctly when it comes to working together to achieve a common goal, oh yeah and they're upgraded over last year with an actually-dangerous DH (ask hawk harrelson, you gotta make yourself dangerous up at the plate. or maybe you should ask c.c. sabathia about that one?) their pitching will likely have high expectations in the minds of fans and analysts who muse over the concept of a dynasty, not to mention the pitchers themselves might have a bit of a mental letdown of sorts, however this is nothing serious to impede a path to the playoffs, where hey every year its a new year and just get there and we'll see what happens. sure i'll make predictions like the next man, however when i look at a team throughout the course of the year i determine if they have a legitimate shot at it. if they do and its a team i like, hey, thats when i get pretty excited just like the next man =D

anywho, today was the first day of real all in your face baseball and i was up to task. my day started at 12:10pm with the ESPN national broadcast of the mets and nationals. as if they had asked me for my dream team, ESPN provided stone cold vets chris "punny nickname" berman and jeff "how did he get a job here?" brantley. i'd have to say that out of all my play by play guys i prefer berman the least, even tho i think he's a swell guy who could kick my arse in golf, and i definitely do not like to hear brantley. whenever i hear him talk i just picture him with his hands up in the air driving the point home, championship ring proudly displayed, and him meandering about some point which i could stomp him on. and i never even played the fucking game.

anywho, berman serves as a billboard for whatever sport he's covering. since its opening day and its americana like wal-mart, they have to be especially positive jock-riding "ambassadors of the game" on opening day, which means that he incessance factor was through the roof. for me, it all started with the verbal monument they built to the mighty jose vidro. don't get me wrong, i'm an expos fan in this sick and twisted game of life, and while i respect vidro as a serviceable league-average 2Bman before he lost a couple'a knees in nam, calling him one of the league's best, a perennial allstar, and all kinds of praise usually reserved for david ortiz in any non-opening-day-broadcast is just kind of ridiculous. he's a well tenured man in the organization now that vlad is gone, otherwise any manager in his right mind would start soriano over him at 2nd base because soriano is the truth, whereas vidro is a passing complement to a girl you know you have no shot with. i could cite more examples about these guys, but if you know what i'm taking about then you're the kind of reader i hope to have and lets move on.

about 1:00pm the cubs/reds came on wgn and yes oh god yes president bush is here to throw out the first pitch and the genius minds of len kasper and bob brenly are here to get me all pumped up to see the most widely recognized asshole grin in the world toss out the first pitch. i wonder what espn2 is picking up at 1:00pm.

zap.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S STEVE STONE!! an oasis in an islant of shit, steve stone is a beacon of hope in a baseball world gone retardo montalbon. this man literally raised me by manning the booth with harry caray from my birth to as long as i can remember. he's diabolically intelligent, and now that he's off of the cubs' leash his truth-fortified sarcasm wields truth in a manner only matched by stephen colbert. espn wisely paired him up with steve phillips, a charismatic ex-gm of the mets who sees talent and ability through the absurdity of corporate baseball, not to mention humor in the ways of steve stone. they go at it in wit wars that totally crap on some of the more hilarious aspects of baseball, although a great deal of simpleminded people would think them "assholes". moderating them is gary thorne, a veteran NHL announcer who has a stone-cold vocal delivery and an intellectually-fortified sense of humor that is requisite to surviving in that booth for howevermanytimes a year. i'm drawing blanks on quotes and stuff from tehse guys, but its a long season, and you will definitely hear more about them. put it this way, this crew makes any game, evne a bad one, watchable because you learn so much and laugh your ass off if you are truly in on the jokes. which never stop rolling at the apexes of the game.

red sox versus rangers. schilling vs millwood. good luck there, texas.


at 1:10pm the cubs extravaganza starts. the cubs score 5 early runs, mainly thanks to a splendid piece of hitting by exciting young LFer matt murton. the cubs very own redman delivers a cool calm demeanor, the ability to hit the ball straight up the middle and likely to both fields, and a nice lanky build which is condusive to being flexible in terms of speed/power. i think with confidence and bad NL central pithcing the kid could hit upwards of 25+ home runs. until albert pujols played a couple'a hours later, he WAS leading the NL in homeruns.

now i am a big believer in carlos zambrano. he is my favorite pitcher in all of baseball, and even games like today illustrated why: he's nuts. but in the right ways. he gets upset when a mere pitch doesnt go his way. he snaps his glovehand at the ball and yanks it out of the air before it even reaches him. he paces talking to himself, god, or whoever happens to be within earshot. he jumps up with a fistpump when he gets out of a nasty inning by giving up a warningtrack flyball with the bases loaded, screaming something so passionately he loses his gum, lands, and recoils the fist for a couple of more pumps while hte screaming is constant.

this man gave up 5 ER in 4 2/3 IP today. but from what i saw, ol chuckles will be just fine. by the way the cubs scored 16 runs today, matching last year's 16 which was up on 2004's seven, but down from 2003's 15. so literally, when you're talking about the cubs you can ask "where did the offense go" and you'd be correct, because at least for four seasons in a row it was there on opening day, if not completely useless by september (insert rimshot here)

going around the league, it's nice to see a first at-bat homerun from vladimir guerrero, who if you dont know is basically the daddy of cicerockstardom. this man is the best player in baseball. if you dont understand this now, someday it will become very clear to you. vlad lost three cousins in a car accident during spring training, causing him to pull out of the world baseball championships, and limiting him to 18 games this spring. he hit .479 with 22 hits, 4 doubles, 3 homeruns, and 13 rbis. he's ready. 2 run HR in the first at bat? he's locked. i run a vladometer on my myspace page, and i am ready to predict him to be the AL MVP along with fellow exexpo javier vazquez as the AL cy young award winner.

NL mvp is albert pujols, cy young is carlos zambrano.

these are just my picks, i am likely wrong, but if i get even one right i will take 500 embellishing words to let you know how right i was. revel in the moment. it's opening day. i'm enjoying it. more hardcore statistical analysis coming as the season warms up here and is tart churning the fantasy baseball combine. btw first place today with 67.5 points. i'm unnecessarily cocky to feign an aura of invincibility: so i'd better get used to thsi status because i am building a condo in first place this season.

hasta

# el carneceria jimenez del sol