just some random thoughts/predictions on the coming season:

-mets starting pitching woes = VERY overrated...if anything hurts them it'll be the bullpen

-2 interesting players have a legitimate shot @ 30hrs this season: if the a's stay true to their word and don't catch him at all, mike piazza will do it...the 2nd is jose reyes, though i think '08 is the year he reaches 30

-peter gammons is just about the only baseball analyst who isn't just a mindless parrot

-the orioles are going to shock people like the tigers did last year...in any other division they'd make the playoffs

-on a related note i'm still convinced that brian roberts is the most underrated player in baseball

-carlos beltran may have made the best OF assist of '07 on the very first day of the season...that was a nuts throw

-at some point this year i'm pretty certain matt cain is going to throw a no-hitter

-i'm thinking dontrelle gets traded this june, probably to the mets for lastings after that de aza guy becomes eric reed II

-what would kill that trade? pedro's return which IMO will be VERY successful right around the end of july

-kei igawa = chris capuano

-postseason picks: mets, cubs, dbacks (phillies)
                            redsox, whitesox, a's (yankees)

MVP: jose reyes & ortiz/arod photo finish like '05 (arod wins after a big year to spite yankee fans)
CY:   cain & johan again (but erik bedard will be close and if healthy rich harden could steal it)
ROY: alex gordon & chris iannetta (but i could see josh hamilton having a very solid year)

just wanted to get that stuff off my chest...feel free to post some of your own predictions/obervations/opinions/etc.

is it just me or has jay bruce gotten a little overrated? especially on this site but on others as well

don't get me wrong, i love his potential and the #'s hes put up so far are really nice but my concern is does he really deserve a top 10-12 spot especially when a number of comparable guys are being placed pretty far below him? the projection left is great but hes still a hitter who strikes out far too much and hasn't shown the ability to hit lefties...basically i just don't buy bruce at 12 with all the way down rasmus at 36:

bruce's '06 MWL:  444ab .291/.355/.516 16hr 19sb(9cs) 44bb 106k

rasmus' '06 MWL: 303ab .310/.373/.512 11hr 17sb(5cs) 29bb 55k

i guess if you buy into the BA school of thought you can say his sweet lefty power stroke projects better than other A-ballers like rasmus or cgonzalez or fmart or tabata thus warranting a higher spot...but i say that analysis sounds a lot like the one people came up with for dallas mcpherson & mike jacobs so i'm not willing to put too much weight into that

i will buy that argument when it comes to players who have had similar success at comparable levels (rasmus, martinez, tabata, mccutchen, reimold etc)...but again only to a certain extent, for example on our own community prospect list hes 23 spots ahead of rasmus; is that all because of projection? IMO he earns maybe 10 spots if you like the projectability arguments but after that, the rest is hype

also, it completely stops holding water once you start placing him above guys who have done it at higher, sometimes significantly higher, levels (aka cgonzalez, pence)

in the end, i still like bruce a lot...but not that much more than rasmus, reimold, etc...IMO not only does rasmus deserve to move down the list to the 25-30 range, bruce probably belongs around 20+, not around 10 +

i've always thought so, just figured more people would agree with me now...for those who don't know, he hit a game-tying HR with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th in the first game of the japan series today...the game ended in a tie...now lets see those brainiacs over at the WBC try to bring chipper again...

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20061102&content_id=1729404&vkey=japan200 6&fext=.jsp

oh yeah and where the hell was this during the NLCS?

So basically i'm wondering if the Alex Gordon era will begin in KC possibly tonight but if not then at some point next week

With a dramatic late-inning win last night, Corpus Christi took the Texas League crown 3 games to 1 over the Wranglers, thus ending their season...and possibly allowing Gordon to make the journey to KC?

Since Teahan's shoulder surgery, they've been playing scrubs like Esteban German and Jeff Keppinger and i know very well about what Dayton Moore's been saying about the importance of each level but how long can that last with Gordon sitting on his couch just a phone call away?

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=olney_buster#20060908

this kind of came out of left field but it looks like mark teahan is having shoulder surgery that may end his season. unfortunate as he looked like he'd finally discovered how to hit again after a lot of hard work down in omaha...however

does this mean AG might get a look? i'm praying it does, i mean come on, what else can they be waiting for? he just won the wichita player of the year and what better reward than to bring him on up as soon as the playoffs end down there...so basically i'm wondering if anyone has heard anything that i haven't because i'm very curious

so the question has become, what the hell are the royals now going to do with alex gordon?

around the break it seemed like the glorious mark teahan experience was finally (and thankfully) at an end, and that 3b in KC would belong to gordon by the end of this year and for years to come...

well in typical mark teahan fashion, he completely screws things up...but amazingly this time its by actually playing well, believe that or not...

so now, with gordon, CLEARLY ready to make an impact in the majors as IMO an above league average hitter this very second and DEFINITELY the best hitter in the royals lineup, what do the royals do? i mean teahan's emergence has even carried over to the field so its hard to say move him off third...and though gordon is supposedly a pretty sure-handed fielder, his 13 errors thus far are about the only aspect of his game that possibly the greatest cynic might criticize him for...so now you can't just drop teahan to the bench as the royals need as many hitters as they can get at this point

so do they actually screw with their golden boy and move alex gordon to first or rf or something? well i sure as hell hope not...and furthermore, i hope moore was bluffing when he said gordon wasn't on the fast track, he better be up by years end or so help me...so please grant me some insight on this as well as the callup issue, when the hell is he coming up?

don't know how many of you may have caught the sunday mets game vs. atlanta but for those of you that did, how about the job done by home plate ump angel hernandez? i heard some mets officials say that hernandez has some sort of beef with the organization and has pulled stuff like this before but the first 2 innings of that game had me laughing out loud...to keep from punching in my tv screen...

"After the game, both Lima and Lo Duca said that Hernandez told them that he was calling pitches farther off the plate strikes for Smoltz, but not for Lima. ''When the umpire said 'I'm going to give you a couple of inches off the plate, but I'm not going to give you 4-5 inches because you're not John Smoltz,' I'm trying to protect my pitcher,'' Lo Duca said."

so basically hernandez admitted he was giving the braves a larger strike zone than the mets...wow...of course this angers me twice as much as a mets fan but this kind of thing CANNOT be allowed to exist within the league...i can only hope that MLB comes to its senses and disciplines hernandez

oh and heres a recap for those who didn't catch the game: the difference between the smoltz strike zone and lima's was very visible from the start and was being called as such...the first time through the mets lineup produced 6 k's and A LOT more jawing than the usually quiet mets hitters are used to and the braves benefitted greatly as lima had to continually groove bp fastballs just to get by...finally when lima fought back and produced a DP, hernandez brought back the lead runner, stating that lima had balked before the pitch (obviously later review showed he did not)...and later that inning during a botched atlanta suicide squeeze, the batter missed the sign and loduca tagged the unprotected runner coming home but at that point you could almost smell hernandez's safe call coming...which obviously it did...so loduca flipped and got thrown out and the braves ran away with the game so that this umping issue kind of got overlooked but it was straight up ridiculous

the royals announced that teahan is (finally) going to be sent back down to "work on his hitting":
http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060505&content_id=67811&vkey=n ews_milb&fext=.jsp

it looks like someone with KC must like John's work as they've gotten teahan out of the lineup, given 3b to german, brought up guiel and it looks like joe mays is packing his bags as well, all moves that John made reference to in his last Fake Royals Lineup...
http://www.minorleagueball.com/story/2006/5/4/15512/13608

so d. glass just made a bunch of statements declaring that he "has never been more frustrated" (that'll happen when you're spending 6 cents for every million you pocket...on retreads no less) and that big changes were forthcoming...sooo am i to assume that this is it? or was this just a preview of more moves to come? basically, the question is, is alex gordon on his way?

i figure they're going to give german a decent shot at 3b...hes never really gotten a true opportunity to make a name for himself in the majors so i'm sure the royals probably want to see what they've got (who am i kidding they're hoping they've stumbled onto a diamond in the rough) but who knows if he'll have extended success...looking at his history, hes not a terrible hitter, at least not at the AAA level...hes always had an ok k/bb ratio, hes proven he can at least hit for a decent average and he seems to be able to get on base reasonably well (certainly better than kerry robinson)...plus, it also looks like the guy can definitely steal a base...IMO he could become a nice spark plug at the beginning of their lineup...and he is off to a nice 13 for 27 start...i have to say, as an alex gordon booster, i'm more worried about german holding onto that spot (at least for the remainder of this season) than i was teahan...i'm finally starting to think that a position change may be in the works...

pretty odd title for a diary huh? and i apologize for yet another delmon-bat throwing diary however, i do not want to talk about that issue...what i want to talk about is the complete double standard that we're seeing right now...i tried to bring this issue up in another thread but it was sort of hijacked so i will try again here...

i see absolutely NO difference between this incident and the clemens-throwing the bat shard at piazza incident...obviously not quite the same reasons for the eruptions but they are identical in the fact that they were both SO uncalled, so unjustifiable and just so wrong...and in a much more blunt way, they both involved a bat being thrown at another participant of the game...so please someone explain to me why clemens didn't even get a warning and delmon will suffer a lengthy suspension? and just to clarify, i am not arguing leniency for delmon, i want to know why clemens got off the hook so easily? and why i never EVER heard anyone say 1 word against clemens, at the time or since then...i feel like im taking crazy pills here

i'm sure some people will disagree with me here (yankees fans: please don't tell me he thought it was the ball, PLEASE) but seriously, think about it...there is so little difference within these 2 scenarios, why the hugely different outcomes?

i haven't gotten to see much more than the occasional episode of baseball tonight but brad lidge has certainly sounded like hes been struggling...i mean i dont know if i buy harold reynolds' "familiarity w/ division" explanation, sounds kind of weak considering lidge has been out there for like 3-4 years now so why the struggles now?

so for someone who doesnt get to see lidge more than a handful of times a season, can anybody explain what is wrong with him? maybe a stros fan whose been watching him and has seen something? or maybe they havent seen anything and its nothing, like mariano rivera's hiccups last april...

either way, i would appreciate some insight, thanks