Posts Tagged ‘MLB’

Major League Baseball’s All-Star game was last night and one of the big plot-lines coming in was whether President Obama would throw a good opening pitch. Okay, it was a lame plot-line, but, really, all-star games are rather boring. His pitch? Well, he made it to the plate in the air, allegedly.

Why allegedly? Why is controversy about this ensuing as if this post was guest-written by Sean Hannity? Well, Pujols, who was receiving the pitch, had to reach forward quite a bit to prevent the ball from bouncing its way up there.

As for the rest of the All-Star game? Short. Two and a half hours. The pregame stuff went about 50 minutes, so, yeah, this thing rolled along. Not too much offense, some good defense, some bad defense. Not too much to it. Carl Crawford, he of the mentioned good defense, got the MVP of the game award for robbing Brad Hawpe of a home run with some slick glove work.

Let’s get back to some real baseball. Some of us have fantasy leagues to lose.

This is NOT Don Johnson, it is a Korean, but you were fooled, right?

I’m talking, whoever had this kind of creativity kicking around in their head is the one who should have full responsibility for trading Cliff Lee this summer. He will get something good done. I have no idea why they decided to dress Choo up in a Miami Vice look, but you can never go wrong there. Then, they top it off by having Choo standing on top of a SIMON.

I hope they gave out like a million of these, because I definitely need one.

In last night’s MLB Amateur Draft, the first televised, Stephen Strasburg, pitcher from San Diego State, was selected first overall. The dude had crazy numbers in his final season of college and is supposed to be flat out electric. Strasburg was the runaway best talent in this draft, hitting over 100mph on the radar gun at times this season.

The problem, is when Scott Boras enters the equation. Boras, would like Strasburg to be signed by his drafting team, the Washington Nationals, for a ton of money. The 50million label has been tossed around and all you really need to know is that it would SHATTER what had previously been given to players taken in Strasburg’s position.

So, where does the landscape of baseball changing? If Strasburg signs for an off the board sum of money, what happens next year and beyond?
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Randy Johnson has won his 300th game. It’s an amazing accomplishment and with the way pitchers pitch right now with bullpens the way they are, pitch counts and 5-man rotations this is something that we might not see again.

And, hell, many didn’t see it live either. There were like 6 people at Nationals Park in DC today that weren’t on a team or related to the Big Unit. But, MLB Network had it on and granted, it was a sleepy, rainy, dreary performance. Today was not dominating, only 2 strikeouts in 6 innings pitched, but it was the culmination of a great and at many times dominating career.

Johnson is the 24th MLB pitcher to reach 300 wins and might be the last time we see this in a while.

This would be Big Z tossing a ball into left field. Because he was pissed at the ump, not because, you know, it was any part of a play.

The Cubs came into the season as favorites in the National League. They sit coming into today at 23-23 and like middle of the pack in their Division.

Things have not gone smoothly for the Cubs. Things might have hit rock bottom this week when Carlos Zambrano was ejected and then proceeded to: eject the umpire, toss a ball into left field, beat the crap out of a Gatorade machine with a baseball bat.

It was not the best meltdown, but, it was fairly entertaining.

Their biggest problem? Can’t hit and injuries. Derrek Lee has been fairly injured most of the season and slumped the rest of it. Aramis Ramirez has been injured. Milton Bradley has been a disappointment and blamed it on the umps, as we covered this week.

So, what do you think: can the Cubs bounce back and become the top team in the NL this year, as was expected?