SHaynes23

Big game for St. Louis tomorrow night, it should be a great pitcher's duel between Carp and Halladay. Hopefully the Rally Squirrel makes the flight to Philly.

How can you seriously compare a 69-93 team favorably to a 97-65 team? The Orioles might have looked decent on paper and started good, but they were pretty horrible this year. In another division, maybe they are decent, but you got to play the games that are on your schedule, and the Orioles stunk it up again. Wins and Losses, ultimately the only stats that matter.

I didn't watch it too closely but I thought Francona was the one who chose to leave. He talked about the team not responding to the things that were happening and pretty much admitting that he had no control over most of the veterans.

That was the most intense night of baseball I can remember for sometime, really was an amazing few hours. And GatorBait, I generally agree with your awards predictions, except the AL MVP. I think that Curtis Granderson is going to run away with that award. The only thing Cabrera has him beat in is average stats wise, Granderson beat him pretty badly in homers, runs, RBIs and stolen bases. I guess the only argument is that Cabrera is more valuable to the Tigers than Granderson is to the Yankees, which is one of my gripes with the award, I think it should just be given to the best player regardless.

I'm almost 100 percent sure he'll be the manager of the Marlins next season. Plus, he could never work for a network, dude can't go more than two sentences without dropping multiple f bombs.

Yeah, if the managers of the year aren't Maddon from the AL and Kirk Gibson from the NL then something is wrong. You hit the nail on the head with Maddon, but I think Gibson has equaled him this season. Everybody knew the D'Backs had a little talent, but nobody though they would come close to doing anything yet, especially with the World Champs in their division. At the beginning of the year I had them slotted 4th in the West, and they are putting a hurting on their division mates. I think Gibson should get a lot of the credit for making his team believe that they can win now and getting them through the long season and in all probability into the playoffs.

I usually check into this topic, just haven't been around GDS much lately. Congrats to Mo, certainly the best closer of all time having that claim backed up after today. Don't get me wrong, Hoffman was a great closer, but I don't really think he's in the same league as Rivera, he has pitched in so many more huge games and always comes up big.

That would make too much sense for Selig to let happen though I really hope they don't switch over to 15 in each league, that would be so dumb. The only way I could think of that working schedule wise is to have 1 interleague series going on all the time, that would be horrible.

I'd guess because there are so many eastern teams in the National League. There's really nobody that could fit the Central in terms of geography. Atlanta is the furthest west of any of the NL East teams. I guess they could always make the NL East the six team division though.

We'll find out if Pittsburgh stands a chance this weekend. I wouldn't look into what they do against the Phillies and Braves as much, they are way better than what they are contending with. If they can handle the Cardinals without much problem they should be able to keep up with the other two teams too. I'm very excited for this Cards/Pirates series, first one I can remember where the games against them actually mattered to both teams, not just the Cardinals.

Yeah, he was finally starting to hit like Albert too. It's a really good thing we picked up Berkman, he can just switch over to first base for a month or so and Jon Jay is more than capable as an everyday starter (over .300 again this year, just like last). You can't replace Albert in the lineup, nobody can, but this isn't worst case scenario panic time for the Cardinals. Holliday and Berkman will do just fine in the 3-4 spots, and we are getting David Freese back this week, he was hitting over .350 when he went down after getting his hand broken by a pitch. There's been a lot of talk on the local stations today that this might speed up a Cardinals trade though. There has been a ton of talk about us getting either Heath Bell, Luke Gregorson or Mike Adams from the Padres. They are also talking about getting a defensive shortstop so they can move Theriot over to 2nd. He's been one of our best hitters this year but the man has stone hands in the field. It's amazing that we are in 1st place after all we've dealt with this year. At the beginning of the year if you said Wainwright wouldn't pitch a game, Carpenter would be 1-7, Albert would be having his worst season ever and eventually break his arm, Holliday would be on the DL twice and Freese would miss almost 2 months you'd think we'd be doing what the Cubs are now. The team has really had role guys step up this year and keep us afloat. It'll be a fun summer between the Cards, Brewers and Reds.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="PoisonedSuperman" data-cite="PoisonedSuperman" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="26724" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Who do you see them getting catcher wise? Not that I'm a Giants fan, just making conversaton. Yahoo says that they could be looking into Ryan Doumit, but I was thinking... what if this Posada thing in NY isn't over? I mean I don't think he can catch anymore, the Yankees don't think he can but he believes that he can, all you need is one team to believe in ya.<p> </p><p> Now I don't think that would happen but it would be quite interesting. </p><p> </p><p> And what do you guys think about Wilpon talking down on his OWN team? I've never seen anything like that in my life. I live in Buffalo and we used to have a great minor league baseball team when we were affliated with the Indians, but now we're the mets and I don't even like going anymore. Although Bobby Keilty did give me a ball on one of the two times that I went. Obviously the Indians had wayyyy better talent but I don't know, it just seemed "funner" I guess, maybe it's the way things are ran? IDK.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I have heard lots of people say that they've contacted the Nationals about Ivan Rodriguez. Personally I think they'll get Bengie Molina to come back and catch for them. He has history there, and he was looking at teams in the offseason, so it's not like he's retired for good. Neither would be the best offensive option, but they can both call a great game.</p><p> </p><p> On the Doumit situation, I just don't see the Pirates moving him. I see them trading Chris Snyder, they owe him a lot of money and Doumit is playing very well this season. Snyder would be a good offensive addition to the Giants if it happened.</p><p> </p><p> I personally loved hearing Wilpon rip Reyes and Beltran. It's what the fans are thinking anyways. They are both good players, but they got paid wayyyyyy too much by the previous leadership. He was dead on with Beltran, he got paid for one postseason full of work. He tore apart my Cardinals in that offseason so at the time I was thinking he was worth it, but hindsight is 20/20. I think once the Mets get those awful contracts off the books they will start to turn things back around. At the time they signed the big stars everything looked good and they were a favorite, but they couldn't have known the franchise would implode like it did.</p>

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="PoisonedSuperman" data-cite="PoisonedSuperman" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="26724" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>They're have been rumors about the Giants making a big splash in a trade (Jose Reyes) or bringing up their number one prospect Brandon Belt, I"m guessing they're going to have to do both now and they're still going to need a catcher. <p> </p><p> But they won last year without much of an offense.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Yeah, I think they have to go make a big trade to pick up a bat since Buster is going to be out for so long. Reyes would definitely help but I don't really think he'd give them the pop that they are missing without him. Belt got called back up yesterday too, but he really struggled his first time around this year. I know their pitching can take them far, but without Posey, this year or last, I don't really think they have a shot at the playoffs, much less a title.</p>

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="BHK1978" data-cite="BHK1978" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="26724" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Did anyone happen to catch the Phillies/Reds game last night? I was going to watch it but decided to catch the Ultimate Fighter and the Mavs game so I missed it. Well it seems to have turned out to be an interesting game with a position player becoming the winning pitcher.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Yeah, I heard about it too. I'm friends with OOTP on Facebook and it popped up in my feed today talking about how Valdez is the first position player to get a W since 2000. The Reds are in a massive slide too. They swept the Cards a few weeks back to take a 1.5 game lead, now they are 2-8 in their last 10 and are 4 games back and have passed up by both St. Louis and the Brewers (both of whom are on fire right now).</p><p> </p><p> How about the news about Buster Posey? Broken bone in his leg and torn ligaments in his ankle, probably done for the season. Does this take the Giants out of it? They really don't have an offense without him.</p>

I'm a huge Titans fan, far and away my favorite team. Being from Missouri I was kind of pulling for them to draft Blaine Gabbert since I've watched him since he was in high school, but I think I'm actually happy they took Jake Locker. Last year everybody was saying he would have been a number one overall pick, and even though his stock fell this year I think he still has great talent, and being a 4 year starter in a BCS conference will help him get ready faster too. I hope Blaine has a great career and I think sitting under Garrard for a few years will help him a ton.

I wouldn't go as far as saying they have a better offense than the Yankees. Sure they have some pop in there, but I don't think they can match up with New York in terms of offense. They added Derrick Lee and Vladimir Guerrero, both these guys can still hit pretty well, but they are both getting up there in years and have seen their better offensive days go by. They added Mark Reynolds too. The guy can hit the ball out of the park like very few, but if he doesn't hit a homer he's either striking out or just hitting a pop fly, he hit .198 last year and has led the league in strikeouts three years in a row. I'm sure they'll have a strong offensive year and will be exciting, and like I said before I really like them, but I wouldn't put them up there with the big three just yet. I'd say they have a year like the Blue Jays had last year, they were fun and played good baseball, but were still on the outside looking in.

I really really like the O's this year. They have so much power and their pitching might be good. Buck is a great manager too. They are who I'm playing a season with in MLB The Show this year to see if I can catch the rest of the division. On an unrelated note, this is the first year I ended up buying MLB.tv, and so far I am loving it. The PS3 app for it is really cool, for games I don't end up watching you can set what events you want to see, like homers, steals, runs or whatever you pick, then just go event by event through the game. And the computer version lets you plug in your fantasy team, so every time one of my players come up I get an alert and can switch over to see their at-bat.

Kinda makes the whole Jerry Sloan situation just even more of a shame now. All signs pointed to him leaving being something to do with Deron Williams, now both of them are out of Utah. Harris is pretty good I guess, but it seems like he's hurt more than he's healthy, and he certainly isn't going to come close to doing what Williams did. And you're right, Favors isn't on the level of Jefferson and Milsap, he's just going to be spelling both of them. I know Williams was running his mouth after they traded Boozer and Brewer away that he thought the Jazz were kind of taking a step back and said that's why he's got a short contract with them. Maybe he has been keeping that up recently and they had to do this to get him out of town? Who knows, something just doesn't add up with this one.

http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/nba/news/story?id=6150419 Didn't really see that one coming. Deron Williams to the Nets.

I really like the trades for Orlando. Sure they had talent to begin with, but they seemed like they had settled in as the third or fourth best team in the East as the season draws on. They had to do something to shake things up. Lewis is not a bad player, but he wasn't putting up anywhere close to the numbers he's paid for. Did you know he's the 2nd highest player in the league? I actually like J-Rich better in this lineup than Vince Carter, he seems to have aged much better, and unlike Carter won't be pressured to lead the offensive charge. I don't expect Turkaglu to be as good as he was the first time around, but he adds a sixth man who can do a little bit of everything. They also have a very good 1-2 point guard punch with Nelson and Arenas too. I'm really excited to see how this works out.

<p>We talked about this same subject in my Microeconomics class the other day. Sure other people work very hard for their livings, but the teacher brought up a pretty good point. He probably puts close to the same number of hours in as Albert Pujols, but 50,000 people aren't going to pay 50 bucks to see him talk about elasticity.</p><p> </p><p> While I believe many professions are underpaid, that's not the point here. These athletes are providing a high level of entertainment to a mass of people who highly demand it. The majority of events from the big four in America are sell-outs, or close to it in most cases with a few exceptions. If people stopped showing up, sure these athletes shouldn't get paid what they do. But as franchises continue to bring in huge dollars, and the players are what drive these franchises, it makes sense that they get their cut.</p>

Paul Pierce is kind of a double whammy for me. I really don't like the Celtics at all. They were my least favorite team until LeBron took his talents to South Beach this summer. They are growing on me though because it's so fun to watch Rondo play, and they play like a true team. Plus Paul Pierce was a Kansas Jayhawk, and I'm from Missouri, enough said. But his 20,000th point was a cool moment even though I'm not his biggest fan. He could have easily left when things were down for the Celtics, but he stuck it out and is an all-time great for that franchise now.

Yep, one of my friends is a Cubs fan, he hears about it constantly from us. For whatever reason he has always hated the Cardinals....makes me question my choice in friends.

<p><a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100725&content_id=12626212&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb" rel="external nofollow">http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100725&content_id=12626212&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb</a></p><p> </p><p> Big move for the Angels today, they traded for Dan Haren from Arizona. The race in the West could turn out to be very good.</p>

ESPNews is saying that the Rangers have gotten Cliff Lee for Justin Smoak and three other minor leaguers. It'll be cool to see what the Rangers can do with a solid ace, they've never really had the pitching to do it.