No Glory Blog: Let's Go 2014 Texas Rangers!

Random Thoughts


According to ESPN, the Mets are interested in some guy named Gonzalez on Tampa Bay. Unfortunately, Tampa Bay does not think a deal can happen. A team official said "How are we supposed to fleece them for another top prospect when they have nobody left? Sure those Saber-tooth guys may say Yusmeiro Petit, but the MSM would crucify us for trading for such a non-prospect...I mean "Gonzalez" is a key part to our next contending team. Yes, in the front...His first name, umm, beats me...next."

Yes Mulder I said you sucked...in fact, i will keep saying it.

The White Sox announcers are a complete riot. They are blatant cheerleaders for their own team but are not condescending to other teams (quick to point out other players doing well)...they just really like the White Sox. Against Kansas City, Tadahito Iguchi hit a liner down the line and the call went "come on come on come on...dad-gummit a foul ball" I spit out my soda when I heard that. Who uses the term dad-gummit??!! They are also blissfully unaware of modern-day baseball. Andy Sisco came in the game and they had a conversation wondering who he was. "The guy is 6'10" and throwing 95 and nobody knows who he is." Correction: YOU don't know who he is!!! They are also compelled to sing the praises of Ozzy Guillen and his Steven Hawking intelligence. God I hate Guillen. How obnoxious can one guy be. Can the White Sox please just revert to an 80-win team so I can stop hearing the virtues of small ball. They keep winning games on late-inning home runs after small ball kills rallies in the middle innings.

The Yankees announcers are also blatant homers, but unlike their White Sox counterparts, they are extremely condescending to other teams. They are just as clueless as the Sox guys, but they make their statements with an aura of snobbery that makes them seem smarter; however, I would like to point out one of their many bouts of idiocy. During Pavano vs. Clement, they kept extolling the virtues of Pavano, who was not afraid of his stuff like Matt Clement. According to them, the Yankees non-Johnson pickups were clearly superior to Boston's. The dreaded unnamed scout quote said that Clement had no intangibles to be a winner and that Pavano was off the charts. The announcer then went on a long tangent about the magnificence of Jaret Wright while Wells was struggling and Wade Miller can't even pitch because of injury. a "waste of money."

So let's see...Sox 11-9 Yanks 8-11 Pavano 22IP 27H 12R(7ER due to notorious Yankee scorekeeper) Wright 19IP 36H!! 20R!!! 1 shredded shoulder (totally shocking...who could have seen this coming) Clement 25IP 26H 6R Wade Miller ahead of schedule on rehab. On a brighter note for the Yankees, they do get to knock off $3million in Year 3 of Wrights contract if his shoulder is not sound. God I pray for the losses to keep mounting in New York.

My Pedro prediction was right on. No pitcher stood to be helped more by facing a pitcher instead of a DH. The 10 or so pitches saved allows an extra inning of work and knocks another .5 off the ERA. Bad news for the division.

Matt...please take this the right way. If Jason Lane keeps Lance Berkmaning the league, do not trade him for a 2nd round pick. To succeed in these leagues, you need to keep impact players. Keep the young guys for an extra year even if they have struggled. Take the gamble and hold your Jake Peavys at the expense of a solid innings guy. You can always find another innings guy in the draft. If trading a youngster, make sure you are getting a youngster in return or are trading for a good veteran when you are sniffing the playoffs.

Who is going to represent the NL at catcher in the All-Star game? Sort their stats. LoDuca and Ramon Hernandez better keep it up or their will be a frightening selection for the team. No Damian Miller will not keep it up.

The lighter side of baseball

One thing that always cracks me up are the "bloopers" they show during games, half of which involve some sort of injury. They intersperse these with shots of fat people dancing or mascots bothering someone with wacky music playing in the background. Additionally, there is "nothing funnier" in movies, especially kids movies, than seeing a man get hit in the groin and having him drop to the ground in agony. So, I expect these two elements to dovetail and this scene from last week to be hitting the blooper circuit any day now:

MENDOZA LINE

As of this writing, 8 of my starters are at the Mendoza Line and another 3 are below .250. Although box score watching was once one of my "happy moments," they are rapidly becoming "homicidal moments." Feel free to mix in a base hit!

Since he is not on the trading block, Oliver Perez asked me to tell all of you a shocking truth. "I would like to apologize to the entire Woofer organization for my recent pitching performances. After a heart-to-heart with team psychologist 'Mario Antonucci', I have come to realize that serving up home runs to Neifi Perez and Jeff Cirillo by tax day is, in fact, stupefyingly awful. My only excuse stems from the utterly unfathomable scenario itself. I mean Cirillo...he is that guy that hit a Mike Lansing-like amount of doubles when I was in junior high school and then tried the controversial 'Charlie Lau no-bat' technique. And Neifi...funny looking guy who homers as often as I put on weight. How could these two homer off of me? Although Mario could not pinpoint the exact cause of my suckitude despite research into the 'belt-high fastball theory,' his 'treatments' should definitely cure me from any more setbacks to Mark Grudzielanek during my next start.

First Ballgame
I went to the game last night and was reminded of why I seem to go to less and less every year. It was some kind of college promotion, I think, or maybe it was the Bobbleheads but every single stupid Pitt student was there. They were there solely to drink beer and verbally abuse strangers. They were incapable of talking to the people sitting right next to them and would instead talk out to the open air, hoping someone would turn around and nod at them .They were all experts on baseball, parroting whatever amazing insight they had heard on the football talk radio show, or coming up with their own fascinating conclusions:

- "Did you see that one guy who got caught on steroids? I looked him up and he only had four homers. What is he on steroids for? Because he doesn't even hit home runs except for four of them. And people take steroids to hit home runs. And they don't even work for him. And he got caught. Taking steroids. But he didn't hit home runs."
-or-
- "Some guy hit a home run and he is the only guy I never heard of. Can you believe that? Some guy I never heard of and he hits a home run. Don't pitch to him. He is going to hit a home run. He hit a home run last time. So he is going to hit a home run this time."

But more often they would lend their incredible wit to commentary on the social situation itself, loudly complaining about how long the game was, how many beers they were going to drink, or suggesting that passing women take off their shirts to show them their breasts. There was also plenty of chest-thumping to go around.

- "You know what is bullsh*t? That you can't smoke here. But I don't care. I do what I want. This one time I was smoking a cigar and this guy was just going nuts on me. He was like 50 years old. I would have beat the hell out of him. I would have f*ing pounded him but he looked like he was some kind of psycho with a gun or something. If he didn't have a gun I would have beat the crap out of him, totally."

And then there is the phenomenon that totally boggles my mind. Calling someone else at the ballpark just to see if you can see each other.

- "I'm at the game. Yeah, I'm at the game. I'm on my cellphone. Yeah, on my phone. At the game. Do you see me? I'm standing up in front of these people with my cellphone. Yeah, do you see me? I'm at the game. On my cellphone. Where are you? Are you on your cellphone? Are you at the game? I am too. I am on my cellphone. I'm at the game. Standing up. On my phone. OK I have another call. Hello? Where are you? I'm at the game too. On my cellphone..."

I imagine these people announcing what they are doing at all times in all places. "Yeah, I'm taking a shower. Yeah, showering. On my phone..."

First Results

For some reason, the first week's results always seem to resonate and set the tone for the season. So how annoying is this?

Forster_________W___L___ERA___RS_
 Highway Kind   3   3   3.44  3.5  
 TriBonds       3   3   5.07  2.8  
 Burninators    3   3   2.78  4.7  
 Wookies        3   3   4.17  4.0

I know it is just one week, but come on! Carl's the only team that should have been 3-3.

And if you think that is annoying, how about being in the visitors' dugout and having to listen to the entirety of this every time one of Lou's guys hits a home run.

The best moment of Opening Day was this:
Gas House Gang's Schmidt,Ja; King,Ra no-hit Soko Atarijin.

Especially after reading this funny trade request from new Atarijin GM Hawk Harrelson, which must have annoyed Scoresheet's Luck Balancers.

"Team 3 (Randy Hall) wants to trade one of his high OBP guys. Give mesomeone who knows what to do once they're on base!"

Revisiting the Trade

Chipper for Mulder:

I felt that this was a classic risk/reward trade for me. Mulder's peak is greater than Chipper's proudction at his current age because top pitchers are platinum to 3B gold in Scoresheet. Nevertheless, I took on substantially more risk in this trade. Both Chipper and Mulder struggled last year; however, the nature of their struggles were much different.

Chipper Jones had an injury hold him back in the 1st half. His 2nd half performance was comparable to his usual outstanding performances. I had little reason to believe that his OPS would not be .920+ again this year.

Mark Mulder had a precipitous drop in the 2nd half last year and single-handedly cost the A's a playoff spot. Late in the year, his starts were like playoff starts in that he was yanked at the first sign of trouble. This lack of confidence is never seen in upper echelon pitchers like Johnson and Schilling.

I made the trade because I already had a good staff and would not be killed by a Mulder flameout, I could make a small gamble with David Wright at 3B, and with Mike's team so strong, this was an opportunity to seize a competitive advantage with our offenses so comparable (my steady production vs. his slight edge in superstar production).

Unfortunately, Mulder has looked horrible and the gamble will likely not pay dividends. I do not expect any sympathy as Peavy, Hudson, and D-train look dominant. I also expect one of the struggling pitchers, Oliver, Vazquez, or even Mulder to get his head on straight and combine with Carpenter to give me an excellent rotation.

However, I seem to be 1 dominant starter short of my goal, which is music to the ears of the Dancing Homers as well as Smith and Loo, who have an opening in a suddenly more interesting divisional race.

First Few Games

Well it always seems to happen. You turn on a game and get a sick, sick feeling in your stomach. Whether it is watching your pitcher get inexplicably RITZED or seeing your star batter come up time and again in a good hitting situation and not get the job done. Of course as the season goes on, the average will be that good players have good years and bad players have bad years but their first game of the season always seems to resonate more.

And then there are games like this. Both your brand new pitcher and best young hitter leave the game due to an injury. I will never forget showing up at a July 4 barbecue a few years ago and Carl telling me that Mark Sandman had died on stage and asked if I saw Kendall. "No, why?" I asked. Then Carl described in gruesome detail, Kendall's ankle injury with the bone sticking out and how that ruined the whole day for me. Last night I was checking box scores and read that Madritsch had left the game with an injury. Then I saw Morneau had been pulled for a pinch runner. Hmm. Reading the play-by-play I saw he had been hit by a pitch. At this point I went to the game chat on ussmariner.com and they were saying Madritsch has a torn labrum, probably because of the overuse he got from Bob Melvin at the end of last season. Then later in the chat they talked about how Morneau got hit in the head and was just lying there. So, it was an anxious night.

This morning the news is that Madritsch has a slight strain and that Morneau is ok. Of course this is coming from teams and teams always lowball their injuries. Still, it is games like these that make me feel like I'd be safer just not watching at all.

Little Ball

All Spring Training, I listened to the stupid Shite Sox announcers talk about how much offense they were going to have because of Little Ball. They managed to scratch one run across in a 1-0 victory on opening day and were shut out for 8 innings the next game until they exploded on Bob Wickman with HOME RUNS to score a bunch of runs. The extra inning Marlins-Braves game was becoming a joke with so many double-plays on botched bunts and outs on steals. Both the Mariners and Mets ran themselves out of big innings yesterday and the Mets gave themselves two self-inflicted outs on Opening Day ahead of a couple home runs. I know managers like to look busy and announcers like to laud them for it but could someone just ONCE call it as they are seeing it? It is happening right in front of them.

Little Ball...



usually comes up short.