Phillies & Yankees Four Months Later….

Posted: March 4, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Dailies | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

It’s about four months since the Phillies and Yankees closed out the 2009 World Series and today they stepped out onto the same baseball diamond again. Both teams looked relaxed and ready to play some spring training baseball, for the Phillies it was the first Grapefruit League game of 2010, for the Yankees it was their second.
halladay-2.jpg
The Phillies fielded most of the starting players, omitted was Utley, Howard and Ibanez, it was the first time Roy Halladay would throw game time pitches in a Phillies uniform, and came out ready to show his new team mates what he could do. Halladay threw two solid hit-less innings, picking up 3 strike outs.

The Yankees surprisingly were the opposite, they fielded just 4 of their starting players, which only included the catcher and 2nd baseman in the infield behind CC Sabathia, it didn’t stop CC having a solid start over 2 innings giving up a couple of hits and a couple of walks.

The game was pretty much like that through 6 innings, both teams traded hits occasionally, but it wasn’t till the 7th inning when the Phillies scored a run. By this time both teams were down to AA and AAA players. It stayed like this till the 9th inning when the Yankees scored a couple of runs with good base running to take the lead. Bottom of the 9th the Phillies mirrored the Yankees with some hitting and running to score 2 runs and win the game.

It was good to see the Phillies out playing another major league team making the regular season even closer.

Around Baseball

Rumors that Joe Mauer may sign an extension with the Twins circulated today after his agent arrived at spring training which was called a regular visit, but could also indicate talks for extending Mauers contract.

The Nats took a double beating today, against both the Astros and the Marlins. Pence of the Astros homered twice in the 4th inning as the Astros had 9 cross the plate, in fairness to the Nats it did look like a AA squad showed up against the Astros.

Zito dinged Fielder in the back today in the 1st inning, it seems the
Giants have held a grudge since last year when Fielders home run base
trotting ended with an earthquake type celebration at home plate. It doesn’t seem to have helped much as they are currently down by 2 runs in the 4th inning. But who knows maybe the Giants will have better luck against the Brewers AA squad in later innings.

any sarcasm is not meant to offend, unless it does, then consider the possibilities of more during the season

 

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New York Mets Living in Fear….

Posted: March 3, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Dailies | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Finally we saw some interactive baseball yesterday, the shame of it all was that it rained early in the day.

The Mets living in fear of a 2009 repeat didn’t play any of the regular squad players. I wonder what will happen should it rain everyday during springmetslogo.jpg training, will we not see the likes of Reyes and the other injury recovered players from 2009 till opening day. Yes, it is sometimes safer to play on the side of caution, but if you have to worry about multi-million dollar players getting hurt because the ground is a little wet, then all I can say to Mets fans is: “your in for a long season, which may not be like 2009, but will surely end up with the same season ending result”.

The Braves came out to play, the players looked relaxed as though it was a relief to finally play some ball against another club. The 2 key points for Atlanta had to be Tommy Hanson got through 2 scoreless innings and looked pretty good for day 1 and the other was the role of the emerging Jason Heyward, who it seems is being hyped up by the media to be something extra special, there is no doubt he has the talent to be a excellent player, but give the kid a break, the last thing he needs is extra pressure starting off a career. After all when the regular season starts he could be shown up to be just another mediocre outfielder.


The Arizona Diamondbacks look asjustin-upton_dbacks.jpg though they have managed to secure a bargain deal, should all go right they will have secured a six year deal with Justin Upton, which is expected to be worth around $50 million. This may not make the D’Backs contenders this year, but the beauty of baseball is you never know till it happens.

The Dodgers say that Manny Ramirez will make the trip to Taiwan later this month, it seems they were advised by Scott Boras that Manny would be going, mostly so Boras can make money off the endorsements he has lined up for Manny out there. So I am just curious, if Boras decides he can’t make any money in Boston this June, will Manny stay at home, or have a 3 day injury.

any sarcasm is not meant to offend, unless it does, then consider the possibilities of more during the season.

Sync It…..

Posted: March 2, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Dailies | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments
…it’s refreshing to know that in baseball
pitchers can’t ‘pitch-sync’ just sink pitches and batters can’t
‘hit-sync’ just hit sinkers…

 

http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf
courtesy
of ‘The Onion’

…I ask this "what else does the government
‘sync’ too..?"

and in other political news, last week
the Republican Senator Jim Bunning, obviously thinks his ability
to put a million-plus Americans into destitution is all in a days work,
I ask is this retribution because he missed a basketball game, because
we all know that’s more important… (as
reported by tpmdc)
quote: "I have missed
the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00 and it’s the only
redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only
team that has beat Kentucky this year," he said on the Senate
floor.end quote. –  On the same subject Politico
quotes him as saying "Tough S**t" to at least
one other senator on the floor when he was harassed for holding up the
benefits. I’m betting this is one politician that wasn’t lip-syncing…

 

 

 any
sarcasm is not meant to offend, unless it does, then consider the
possibilities of more during the season.

 

It’s Time….

Posted: March 1, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Dailies | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments
…to spring into action, players
have had a chance to wipe away the cobwebs, meets old friends, get
introduced to new ones, have their memories jogged on which base is
which, and figure out which shoe goes on which foot.

This week is the week that interaction
between teams begins, this week is the start of old and new rivalries.
It may only be spring training games, but it will give us a hint
of what’s to come, it will let us see who’s here to play and who’s here
to wing it.

The Phillies bring a core of
players which in essence is the strongest it’s had over the last few
years, some new additions, even a re-addition to what was already a
solid base of players. This is definitely the start of what should be an
interesting year all around baseball.

For the Phillies, question marks
will surround the likes of Lidge and Hamels, not just at
the start of the season, but all season long. The media will be waiting
to pounce on the first sign of anything that may show a reduced
performance, in my opinion Hamels will do just fine, for me the
one to watch will be Lidge, even though he will have a better
year than last year, (which shouldn’t be hard to do), he will
have just a mediocre year and hopefully Charlie will have him on
a shorter leash than he did last year.

I am sure it will not take Polanco
long to get his footing at 3rd base and become a dominant 3rd base
player, he is a familiar figure to the organization as are they to him.
It’s looking as if Polanco will be the only addition to last
year’s starting line-up in the field, the rest of the infield and
outfield should be more than accustomed to each other by now. We should
get a chance to see the new additions to the bench during this month and
some of the potential prospects, even though the farm system is a little
depleted with the acquisitions over the last couple of years.

We will definitely get a chance to see
the star acquisition Roy Halladay as he is set to square off against CC
in the opener against the Yankees this week, as with all spring training
games, we shouldn’t expect too much from him, after all we’d like to see
him still throwing maximum innings come October.

Around Baseball

Not too much to say at this point, just
waiting for the St Louis Cardinals to announce Pete Rose
as the players investment coach, following the announcement of McGwire
as the hitting coach, I am sure Pujols and Holliday will
be looking to him for inspiration.

 any
sarcasm is not meant to offend, unless it does, then consider the
possibilities of more during the season.

 

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