hammerhead johnson

Pretty wide open right now, but the Marlins and Phillies will break away from the rest of the pack when the teams in that division start playing one another. The Phillies are 14-5 against the NL West, and yet, they're only 5-7 within their own division at the current time. That's going to change in a hurry. And the Marlins are the Marlins. Just a s***load of talent that can not be stopped. I look at the Mets and I see a bunch of bad investments.

I think that they'll fall apart though, as usual. The Marlins and the Phillies are so much better than they are (even if the Phillies have been playing like s*** thus far).

Ha! That explains why some people refer to Jones as the greatest defensive center fielder of all time! Or why Bonds, asshole that he usually is, went out of his way to call Andruw Jones the best defensive center fielder that he has ever seen! I know that the guy is a sick, perverted SOB, as he took part in group sex in front of a bunch of old men? :puke But still, his defense is absolutely superb. Best in the history of baseball type superb. And I'm not trying to sound like Hawk Harrelson or Bill Walton with the "Greatest Ever" talk, but this is the truth.

Well, I never hang my hat on anything that is isolated, but when you read the same stuff over and over and over again from a bunch of different sources, you'd have to assume that there's some truth hidden in there somewhere. I said earlier in the thread that Glavine is my favorite option. And of course, I turn on the televison later on that evening and I see that he threw a 1 hitter? And now he's 6-2 with a 2.13 ERA? He's no longer the best kept secret. What's amazing is that he's doing all of this with baseball's version of the Los Angeles Clippers, where you suck no matter how much talent you have. But if we were to somehow land him in July, he'd have about 5 million left on his salary for the rest of the year, and he'd be guaranteed about 11 million in 2005. Seeing as though we'll have Koch, Maggs, and others off the books next year, I'd absolutely love to have him for a full season at 11 million. The guy can just flat out pitch. And his clubhouse presence? Priceless.

His OPS against left-handed pitching is over 1.000 His OPS against righties? :puke That's all that anyone needs to know. And I remember him making two leaping catches at the wall in the same game last year. One would have been a home run, and the other would have been a double or triple. What happened to this defensive phenomenon since last year?

Freddy Garcia When Garcia is on, there are few pitchers in the majors who are better. But he runs hot and cold and is too emotional at times. Garcia doesn't strike out as many as he should and surrendered more home runs in 2003 (31) than he should, especially with half his starts coming at pitcher-friendly Safeco Field. BOTTOM LINE: Plenty of talent, but plenty of risk. Let someone else take the gamble. (Sporting News excerpt) Freddy Garcia's 2003 Season It was one of the most inconsistent seasons by a pitcher in recent memory. Freddy Garcia, counted on to be the ace of the Mariners' staff, pitched like an ace for weeks at a time, but also went through stretches where he got hammered regularly. He bounced back and forth between the two extremes so often that it was impossible to know what to expect from him on any given day. Understandably, the situation produced frustration all around, not the least of which from Garcia himself, whose maturity had been questioned in the past. (ESPN excerpt) Freddy's 2003 Season continued It looks like Freddy's heading for his worst season as a pro. His ERA, walks, and homers are up and his strikeouts are down -- all bad signs. To many pundits, it seems as if this season is just a continuation of Garcia's poor second half last year. Derek Zumsteg, for instances, argues that Garcia is struggling due to a poor work ethic and an injury that occured sometime last season (triggering the collapse). Zumsteg knows a lot more about the Mariners than I do, but I don't really buy either of his arguments. If Garcia is such a "partier" as Zumsteg claims, why did it just begin to affect him the second half of last year? He was able to succeed for 3.5 seasons with this alleged kind of lifestyle, yet he all the sudden begins to suffer from it? David Wells sure seems to be thriving and he's clearly in worse physical shape than Freddy and is a huge partier. Hell, if drinking and doing drugs causes struggles like Garcia's, every athlete in the world is due for a big collapse. A much more plausible explanation is that Garcia is nursing an injury. At least this scenario explains why Freddy began to fade in the second half last year. I'm still not buying it, however, as from what I've seen of his starts this year, Garcia has been able to dial it up into the mid-90s. Common sense would tell us that a labrum tear would hamper his ability to throw the ball that fast. The "hidden injury" theory also fails to explain how Garcia has turned in excellent performances during his bad streak. While the purported lack of preparation/focus may be affecting Garcia's game, I think the two main culprits behind his struggles this year are competition and lefties. So far this season, Freddy has faced Oakland twice, Texas twice, Cleveland twice, New York once, Chicago once, and Detroit once. Coming into his last two starts (New York and Cleveland), Garcia had a 3.83 ERA. That 3.83 ERA came in 4 games against good offenses (Oakland and Texas), 2 games against mediocre offenses (Chicago and Cleveland) and 1 game against a terrible offense (Detroit). Not too shabby, IMHO. He followed this decent run (3-3, 3.83) with two brutal games against New York and Cleveland that dropped him to 3-5 and shot his ERA up to 5.47. He's pitched 4 bad games this year, one each against Oakland, Texas, New York, and Cleveland. I think it's fair to give him a pass here, as these are some of the best offenses in baseball. Yes, he's going to need to pitch better against solid competition, with the talent in the West and the unbalanced schedule, but we shouldn't just give up on a guy with Garcia's talent this early in the season. The second big problem I see with Garcia is the fact that lefties have blitzed him this year at a .298/.377/.526 (.903 OPS) clip. This is troubling, of course, but looking at ESPN's three year splits (00-02), we can see that lefties haven't given Garcia any more trouble (.749 OPS) than they have Jeff Weaver (.758), Tim Hudson (.728), or Joel Pineiro (.744). Even last year, when Garcia collapsed in the second half, lefties only had a .732 OPS against him. Righties managed a .724 OPS against him last season, suggesting that his struggles weren't merely the result of lefties clobbering him. The Mariner coaching staff obviously realizes Freddy is having trouble getting lefties out, since they moved his planned Tuesday start to Wednesday. Pitching coach Bryan Price said the move was made "in order to fine-tune some mechanical changes." MLB reports that Garcia has moved "to the third base side of the pitching rubber and also has been working on getting more consistent arm action" and I've also heard/seen/read that he might be working on a cut fastball in order to get lefties out. (battery.blogspot excerpt) What happened in 2002? Issues ranging from concentration to composure helped contribute to his decline after the All-Star break in 2002, when he went 5-5 wth a plus 5 ERA. Garcia hasn't exactly turned the corner and left all his struggles behind. (seattle newspaper excerpt, "the olympian") What Freddy Garcia Has To Say About It "Bad pitch, too high. It made me mad." -Freddy Garcia (marinermusings excerpt) What Brandofan Has To Say About It "The guy is just a lazy, cocaine-dabbling asshole." Brando later said that the cocaine part is probably bulls***, though.

Maybe POPPY HIDALGO feels that the Twins are better, but I doubt that anyone else does.

Well, where I come from, it's called Comiskey. And here we go again with the Garcia propaganda. Once again, he's a fly ball pitcher who absolutely took a s*** last year in perhaps the friendliest pitchers' park in all of baseball (not just merely a "friendly pitchers park"). And when people speculate that it might have been due to injuries, well, that's just another reason not to acquire him, correct? Refer to posts by Cheat, Witesoxfan, Brando, DBAHO, etc, etc, etc.

I swear, the more I hear the name Garcia, the more I think that there are some undercover cubs fans on here. We need ground ball pitchers in Comiskey, correct?

Yes indeed.

That's putting it lightly. His ERA is up around 6.00 and his WHIP was approaching 2.00 at one point. I had him on my fantasy team last year when he was putting up 5-0 months, and I drafted him this year as well. Him and Mike Mussina pretty much took all the fun out of fantasy baseball for yours truly. Well, that along with Mark Prior getting injured. And Garcia sucked so badly last year. People have a memory loss. I have "Catch A Bad One" playing in the background right now.

What's his salary again?

I think that Tom Glavine is the most realistic option. KW dealt with the Mets last year, so I'm assuming that they have better chemistry than say, Billy Beane and KW or Sabean and KW. I think that they'll accept an offer of Diaz, Rauch, and an A ball prospect. You could also substitute Munoz for Diaz. If Tom Glavine is healthy, he can definitely perform in the playoffs. Guys like Randy Johnson, Jason Schmidt, and Ben Sheets would cost us way too much in the long run. There is no way in hell anyone will take Carlos Lee or Paul Konerko off our hands. If we were to trade for Johnson, it would be like highway robbery. They'd take the two best prospects in our system (whoever they may be), among others.

As opposed to Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, who were "motivated, cocaine-dabbling assholes". That is just a sad story if it's true.

And that is what I would call a kick ass analysis.

AND THAT'S A WHITE SOX WINNER!!!!!!

Botch gives up a solo shot to Guzman.

It's like a spinner (what Rooney calls it) slash curve slash change. It doesn't fall into any one particular category. We need to come up sith a new name for that pitch.

OMG!!!!!!!!!! 50 MPH spinner from Shingo! This guy is absolutely amazing!

Big MO grounds out. They have now stranded 13. Not good enough for me.

Bases loaded for Big MO. Two outs.

Jose with a double! That's hit #23.

It's only a matter of time before Azumah returns one of those kick offs against that piss poor Minnesota special teams unit And Randy Moss :fyou

CREDE!!!!! Bases are loaded with two outs!