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2004 Major League Baseball Season Discussion (1 Viewer)

Shane Martin

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I wouldn't smart off so soon. What did we think of the Royals last year or the other perennial losers? All you need is a motivated team.
 

Casey Trowbridg

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Yes, baseball doesn't have the parity of football, but on the other hand its starting to get to the point where so many teams can have an impact if things go their way, even basement dwellers like Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay have chances to move up in the world.

Atlanta is getting beaten down 7-2 in the bottom of the 9th. With last year's offense I thought anything was possible, but it won't be the same this year, I'm not as confident in this year's Braves team to put up a lot of runs.

They did have a good crowd though, I suspect that starting tomorrow that all will change.
 

Shane Martin

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Their defense looked a little suspect but that could have been just a few plays that I saw. I was pretty much in awe with Kaz Matsui.
 

Mark Zimmer

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Brewers still in first place! Woo hoo! :D

In other news, 2 of the starting outfielders on my fantasy team have already come up gimpy: Torii Hunter with a bad hamstring and Dmitri Young busted his leg. :frowning: Good thing I picked up a bunch of spare parts.
 

Doug Miller

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Anyone here read the new ESPN the Magazine? I know everyone here knows my disdain for all things A-Rod :angry: . If you want to know why I feel that way, read the article by "A-Rod" and some other guy ghosting him. What a #*&! Man, I hate that guy! What I think is funny, is that for as hard as ARod tries to be goody-goody, this year ought to be really interesting. I would say that A-Rod is undoubteldy one of the most hated current players in baseball (and I'm not even counting me :) ) He's alienated fans in Seattle, Texas, and Boston -- you gotta love it.

Just one more thing on A-Rod, then I swear I'll get off the subject. He was on the cover of one of last months SI's with his bright shiny new capped teeth. I thought it was funny to see the closeup picture of him in Texas with his average grill, then look at the cover with the new and improved A-Rod. You suck, A-Rod. OK, onto other things...

Was at yesterdays Mariners' loss. Eh. Not a great game.

Doug
 

Marvin

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How did he alienate fans in Boston? It was the players' union that vetoed the trade. For that matter, what did he do to alienate fans in Texas? Agree to be traded?
 

Seth Paxton

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Zimmer, same thing here, and Young was so good because of the multi-position thing.


The funniest thing I heard so far was the cocky attitude of the Cards announcers acting like the Brewers shouldn't get so high on themselves since they'll be well behind the Cards before long.

As others have said, Twins, Royals and even the Marlins have surprised teams recently. The Brewers have issues, but they also have Podsednik and Kolb to start with and both guys have shown that they can impact a game.

The D'Rays actually have a moderate team but the pitching is awful. Probably says more about the Yanks own pitching (err, Mussina actually) than the D'Rays being strong.

It's too early to tell anything, but I also think it's too early to count teams out. Plus, even if your team is better what is to be gained by berating the other teams chances on air? Classless IMO.



I've argued the point here at HTF every year for the last 3-4 at least, but money alone does not buy wins. You have to spend smartly and teams with low payrolls can still compete in any given year. At the very least they might have a crop of very talented players that will soon be bought out by other teams. But the Yanks can only field 25 guys and that means that a lot of other talent is still out there.

I think I already posted it in this thread, but there is something that worries me when you bring in guys who have great stats and yet whose teams haven't won...ahem, ARod. Or Giambi and Mussina not being able to get past the Yankees even when they had less star power (pre-Clemens, another guy who always struggled to get his team over the top despite any personal achievement he may have had).

Every champ has several role players who come up big, so what's the point in eliminating every role player on your roster to be replaced by a star? The law of averages almost ensures that some of those stars are going to slump when they get on this "all-star" roster...think Knoblach for example.

And I agree that ARod has a rather cocky and annoying attitude. At least I liked Giambi when he was with the A's. If Jeter is ARod's pal for real, even after ARod slammed him in the press last year (or was it a couple of years ago now), then he's damn lucky for that. It seems like the ARod thing will only work out because of Jeter's team attitude and Torre's good coaching.

Personally I wish Soriano had never been traded away.


Detroit really struck me as a vastly improved team. Maybe I also posted that here too, but I came away from seeing them in spring a couple of times being very impressed with their improvement up the middle, Pudge, Guillen and Vina. The pitching is still iffy but they should be a lot better than they were last season, and I'm not just saying that becuase of 2 wins over the Blue Jays.
 

Casey Trowbridg

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Well I also thought that Detroit would be better, mainly because I didn't think it could get any worse. Their pitching is not great but IMO Maroth and Bonderman can still turn in to something special, what happened last year not withstanding don't forget Bonderman is barely 21 years old.

As far as A-rod goes I won't even bring it up, anyone that saw my posts in the hot stove thread knows where I stand on that issue.

IMO, if the Yankees are looking to field a dream team then they still don't have the right idea. Dream teams work fine in the NBA or for basketball in general because in most cases pure talent can be enough to get it done on the court. But in baseball even the best hitters still fail to produce anything 7 out of 10 times, discounting walks otherwise I admit its higher than that in terms of production, but you get the general idea. A team of no names is just as capable of knocking off a team with stars because baseball unlike almost any other sport is prone to slumps. A few people on the dream team fall in to a funk and some of those no names get hot and boom, Florida wins a world series.

That's why I personally don't care if the Yankees have a billion dollar payroll it hasn't helped them much the past 3 seasons now has it?
 

Doug Miller

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Marvin --

Give the article in ESPN the mag for his diss on Texas. Overall though, here's a player that comes to Texas and says he wants to be remembered as a Ranger, then after a few years of finishing last starts pressuring for a trade (he didn't agree to a trade, he was pushing for a trade). It doesn't work out with Boston, so he tells Texas publically that he's "probably pretty sure" everything will work out, at the press conference that Texas throws for him to name him as captain of the team. Then not a month later, he agrees to change positions because he's so desperate to get out of there. Oh yeah, they're going to love him when he returns to Texas. ;)

In terms of Boston, here's a guy who was out there publically campaigning to go to Boston talking about the tradition and honor of being a Red Sox, yadda, yadda. You're absolutely right, it was the players union that nixed the deal. BUT, a guy who pledges love and admiration to the Sox, then in a month is going gagga in pinstripes, is going to hear about it. Boston would hate A-Rod for nothing more than just being a Yankee, but with how things fell through, it's just going to fan the flames. (I wonder if he would have agreed to move to 3rd had Boston asked him too, John Henry didn't seem to think so.) I can't wait for their first meeting on Fox next week.

Doug
 

Jason Seaver

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They've won the division each of those years, haven't they? Sounds like "helping" to me (though, granted, spoiled New York fans may have a different perspective on this than spoiled Boston fans). They've generally had one of the best records in the regular season, as well.

That they've been sub-.500 against decent competition for one week in October each of the past three years is just normal variance.
 

Casey Trowbridg

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Winning the division isn't what the Yankee fans want, and its not what the Yankees want, anything less than a victory in the world series is viewed as a failure.

Besides, Atlanta's won 12 in a row and all anyone remembers is only 1 world series.
Teams like Minnesota have won division titles in this same span of time as the Yankees have won these last 3 without spending even half the money. So my original implied point was that if all you were going for is a division title you can do that for a lot less money, but that's not what the Yankees are looking for.
 

Marvin

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OK, then it didn't help them between '82 and '96 (or in '97, for that matter), though I'm not sure where their payroll ranked all of those years.
 

Phil L

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I think it makes *much* more sense to field better players for each position than to hope a bench warmer has a good October.

If Jeter had a team attitude: he'd be playing 2nd or 3rd. Having an inadequate fielder at shortshop while the league's best shortstop is playing third is the height of selfishness. I have lost a ton of respect for Jeter over this and the Huckaby thing.
 

Jason Seaver

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Well, it depends on the environment. Minnesota can win division titles without spending as much because they play in the AL Central, where only Chicago is potentially going to have that much money to throw around (but has Kenny Williams as a GM just in case). It takes less effort to win that.

I'm not saying money's all that matters, but if Billy Beane had $120M to play with in Oakland like Theo Epstien does in Boston, he'd use it. It helps, a lot; it means you can afford to pay Steve Lieber not to play in 2003 to have him a year down the road or to take a flyer on Jose Contreras. It means you can have more scouts at every game, in Japan, in the Dominican, etc. It is a distinct advantage.

It's not the only advantage, and the more you spend on ML payroll, the less of an advantage each extra dollar is. It's not linear, and it's not the only variable.
 

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