It's Time

Let's do it. Let's Go Pens!

May Baseball Musings

This is drastically overdue, but better late than never, right? Anyway, with two months of the baseball season pretty much in the books, I wanted to catch up on some interesting things in this early season.

Predictions—The Wheelhouse might have been a bit off with some of our preseason forecasts as not only are the Indians in dead last (picked to the the AL Central), but I also thought the Diamondbacks were on their way to a great season to compete with the Dodgers down the stretch all season. As it turns out, the Dodgers, with or without Manny, might have the NL West wrapped up by the Fourth of July. They are currently up 8.5 games over the Padres—yes, the Padres and they just won 10 straight this week! Meanwhile, the D-Backs are 20-27 and have really been hurt by the loss of Brandon Webb since April. The Dodgers look to be a force in the National League. With Chad Billingsley living up to the expectations, the Dodgers might be my favorite to come out of the NL.

Zach Greinke—Can you say legit? Greinke is finally putting together that breakout season that people have been talking about for a couple years, and it's not a breakout season for a young player, but possibly on way to a historic season. He's already fired five complete games while sporting an ERA under 1.00 through his first 10 starts, which hasn't happened since 1966 when Juan Marichal did it. Not bad company at all. It'll be a great thing to watch all summer to see how long he can keep this incredible pitching going. And he almost makes the Royals watchable...every fifth day at least.

Early Surprises—If you scour the standings, you see two teams near the top of their respective division that is a bit of a shock. Before their recent nine-game streak into the tank, the Blue Jays were the hottest team in baseball. They have come back to earth, but once they figure out how to win again, I think they can hang around for a while and compete. I've always been a fan of the Blue Jays. I love the city of Toronto, a great baseball town. Love the SkyDome (forget the Rogers Centre crap) and I think they have a decent team. The other surprise is the Texas Rangers, who are leading the AL West by three games. Sure, they can hit the ball, they have always been able to do that, but the pitching has been there for them through 40 games. Will it last? No, it will not. I mean they are getting pitching from guys you never heard of like Matt Harrison. Texas will not last and the Angels will pass them once they get healthy and their shit together.

Guys I Would Love to Have on my Fantasy Team—This is a long list, but nobody is higher on the list than Raul Ibanez. I had him on my radar in both of my drafts this year because he's always been a consistent hitter and I liked the move to Philly. Of course, I thought he would drop a round or two more and passed him only to see him get taken and absolutely rake in this early season. Have you seen this guy? He's having an incredible start to the season, hitting .339 with 17 long balls, 44 RBI. He had just 23 homers in 162 games last season! Of course, I wish I had Greinke. How about Orioles outfielder Adam Jones—what a pickup if you grabbed him late. I do have Justin Morneau in two leagues, so I can't complain there as he's been a beast so far this season as well. The list goes on...Ian Kinsler, Dan Haren, Billingsley.

Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates—Of course, the Pirates would put their fans through a series of crazy emotions through just two months. The Pirates ran out to an 11-7 start, dropped eight straight after that and have been about 4-5 games under .500. It would be nice to see them sniff .500 all year and actually make something to watch down the stretch to see if they can avoid the infamous record. Honestly, I don't see that happening. They just don't have the talent (surprise) yet. The winning in April was a nice reminder of how great it can be if they would have a winning team one of these years. For now in Pittsburgh, we're on the Andrew McCutchen watch till he gets called up.

Stupid NHL.com Articles

With the Penguins fresh off their sweep of Carolina to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals for the second consecutive year, the Philadelphia Flyers are still crying.

Honestly, we are three rounds past that series and the NHL is still publishing these kinds of stories? The Flyers still feel like they outplayed the Pens! Even though they got bounced at home after six games. Flyers captain Mike Richards is the latest to speak up about how much it hurts...

"Last year, give them full credit, they beat us and dominated us in a lot of parts of the game," Richards said. "I would never make excuses and this year they beat us and they're having a lot of success, but we thought we had a lot of success against them, outplayed them and outshot them, but we just couldn't beat Fleury. They had great goaltending and they're an opportunistic team. They capitalized on their chances.

"In playoffs, all the teams are so close and you need a couple of bounces to have success. Even though they have a great team, they got a couple of bounces and we didn't. It's not an excuse, though."

Let me summarize his comments, "WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH." Anytime you say this isn't an excuse and then use the word excuses twice, it's an excuse. Sure, there are a couple of bounces that go either way in every series and every game, I agree with that. But it's not like the Flyers lost on a last-second shot in Game 7 in overtime. They got beat on home ice in only six games for the second straight season. Get over it, Mike. Get over it, Philly. Move on—break out the irons and set up the tee times cause nothing's going to change. And NHL, please stop publishing these "oh whoa is me" loser stories.

Lackey's Ejection Ridiculous

I have plenty of other things in the baseball world to catch up on and write about, but I couldn't wait to discuss this. On Saturday, Angels pitcher John Lackey returned from the DL, threw two pitches in his game and was ejected. Here's what happened...Lackey's first pitch went behind the Rangers Ian Kinsler, his second pitch hit Kinsler in the ribs and he was ejected.

Now I don't know what kind of person John Lackey is, but he was coming off a forearm strain and this was his first start of the season. He had not thrown a competitive pitch all season, so do you think that he was a bit rusty and might have problem with his control early on?

The ejection was absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure the whole time Lackey was rehabbing, he was just sitting there going, "Man, I can't wait to get out there and bean somebody...especially Ian Kinsler." Come on, I'm sure that's what was on his mind. There's no apparent bad blood between the two, so there was no background story that anyone was aware of.

What happened to warning the pitchers and benches? I've seen a ton of games where hitters were getting nailed all game and nobody gets even a warning. The umpires did warn both benches, but only after Lackey was tossed out. The guy already missed more than a month of action, don't punish him by tossing him after two pitches. If he hits three guys in the first two innings then you have a problem, but after two pitches, that's ridiculous. The ejection was completely unnecessary.