[quote=“mimicupcake”]Is Milk Lowell going to be traded?
[/quote]
Sure looks that way. Those rumors of him going to Texas won’t go away and have heated up again. He’s organizational depth right now and nothing more for whichever team he plays for this year. Makes way too much money now for what he provides.
Who knows? I thought he was going to be traded to Texas this winter, but his injured thumb(?) got in the way.
The logistics for Boston are kinda crazy. V Mart should be behind the plate 145 games. He could play first, DH or rest the rest of the time. Varitek might catch a few games if the opposing pitcher is a lefty, but the captain is almost worthless now. Papi is still the DH; he could play some interleague games at first if he’s hitting, but if his first months are like last year, Yikes!
Youkilis (The Greek God of Walks) is still able to play first OR third AND Adrian Gonzalez could well be signed this year. San Diego ain’t goin’ nowhere. If AGon is signed, he’s got to play first every day. Boston may need AGon to hold off Tampa for a wildcard.
Beltre is their new third baseman. So, Lowell is owed 12 million this year, and the Bosox don’t need him for much. Lowell wants to play every day, but I just see him pinch hitting against lefties late in games when Papi is due up.
Boston has too many people for Catcher, First, Third or DH.
MY SOLUTION
Boston should trade him to the Twins for Nick Punto, with Boston Paying 11.9 million of Lowell’s salary. 
Divea is a solid Twins supporter. She has an autographed bat of Bert Blyleven’s on her mantle.
5-1 Yankees over the BlowSox in the 4th. Yanks just pulled off a double steal scoring a run. I guess someone forgot to tell Boston spring training is over. 
tied at 7th inning. :raspberry:
Shrek just had double?!
Quite the opener we’re being treated to! Yanks’ pen looks troubled.
Another Twins Fan in the house. I can’t wait to get back for a game in their new stadium…no roof and real grass! Not a lot of foul ball territory, for sure a hitters park.
Yankees are currently in last place in the AL East.
Good news, and more good news!
The Yanks lose, and there is yet another Twins fan on board. (This place is FULL of 'em.)
I notice from the box score that Granderson homered to right in the second inning . . . not too unexpected . . . but wait . . . the ball traveled 455 feet! 
In the write up, they mention it as part of back-to-back homers, but I wonder if “455 feet” is a typo. How many 455-foot homers are there?
Nice that opening day is a National Holiday in Taiwan.
Taverncaptain once flew on a plane with Ted Uhlaender. He promised Ted to follow Minnesota till death.
[quote=“k.k.”]
To be fair though, that seems to happen with most franchises with championship winning seasons, the fairweather fans come out of the woodwork to leech off the good times that really should go to those that show up supporting their team through thick and thin, bountiful and lean years. It happened with my Jays winning back-to-back titles in the 90’s too, but not quite to the extent we’ve seen with the Red Sox, Evil Empire II. [/quote]
Two comments on this.
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Boston is a baseball town and even when the Celtics were THE dominant team (perhaps the most dominant franchise in pro sports history in the US) in the 1960s and co-dominant whe the Fakers in the 1980s, the Red Sox were still the more popular of the two teams.
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Where I grew up in NH, people ALWAYS stuck with the socks even when they were the Slop Sox and even when Buckner blew game 6 and Stanley blew game 7 back in 1986.
[quote=“k.k.”]Interesting story here. I can only hope it one day comes to pass. Jays to AL Central please!
Selig: Realignment will be considered
[quote]PHOENIX – Baseball commissioner Bud Selig admitted Saturday that he has put his ideas for realignment on paper, but that’s as far as it has gone thus far.
“When I am on long airport rides I will fiddle around with divisions and things,” Selig said at Maryvale Baseball Park during a spring training game between the Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers. “The one thing about it: you come up with 100 different [scenarios].”
There have been reports in recent weeks that one of the subjects the 14-person special committee Selig designated four months ago was the idea of “floating realignment” in which teams would not be fixed to a division, but free to change divisions from year to year based on geography, payroll and their plans to contend or not.[/quote]
I’m not so sure I like the “floating realignment” idea, but for starters it’s time to get one NL team moved over to the AL West to balance out the conferences.[/quote]
Why not an “A” division and a “B” division with promotion/relegation like football in Europe. Heck, let ‘AAA’ be a “C” division and give them a chance to earn promotion… heck, surely some of them are better than the Nationals, who would likely fall to the “D” or “E” division if given a chance.
Someone forgot to tell the Skankees that the game last for nine innings…
post-gazette.com/pg/10095/1047958-63.stm
According to Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette,
[quote]The Pirates’ final figure this year, team president Frank Coonelly has said, is sure to end up markedly higher than the opening payroll.
Read more: post-gazette.com/pg/10095/10 … z0kDmRBgyi[/quote]
Is the Pirates president Frank Coonelly an idiot? How will the Pirates payroll end up markedly higher than the opening payroll?
Since the Pirates are not going to be trading for veterans I really don’t see how the Pirates will not end up with a similar payroll at the end of the season.
Pirates fans and Royals fans really need something to cheer about. I’d be happy for either of those franchises to have some semblance of a successful season. Tortured, tortured fans…
ludahai, and anyone else that wants to comment on it, I posted this over on the Taiwan-Ho! site where some of us talk ball through the season. More realignment talk.
This is the best proposal for realignment that I’ve read so far. It also sounds as though (not just from what this writer is saying either) it’s not a matter of if, but when it happens. Some form of realignment isn’t far off for MLB.
[quote]ESPN.com: Olney
Monday, March 29, 2010
How to realign MLB (playoffs too)
There is no perfectly equitable system for realignment, unless you stick all 30 teams in one monstrous league and try to have them play one another an equal number of games – which couldn’t happen, by the way, unless you went with a 145-game or 174-game season.
So somebody is going to get ripped off, to some degree.
Somebody is going to have to play the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Phillies more than other teams. If you operate under the premise that the National League and American League are going to continue to exist, and that you’d like interleague play to be something that happens within a brief window of the season, rather than be dragged out all summer, then one league is going to have more teams than the other.
If you keep the divisions intact, somebody is going to have to try to compete head-to-head with the Yankees’ payroll, and try to gamely fire BBs against the Yankees’ gold-plated machine guns. We all can blog and comment and debate about how great a salary cap might be, but peace in the Middle East is probably closer to happening than overhauling a system – a system within the union’s embrace – via massive changes that could limit player salaries.
What should be done, then?
Well, after talking with some executives, talent evaluators and players this spring, this is the plan we’d propose to the commissioner’s gang of 14:
Keep the leagues intact, but eliminate the divisions entirely.
In other words, we’re going retro, or pre-1969. It worked in the building of ballparks, and it can work for the leagues, too.
The divisions have served baseball nicely, but it makes no sense that the Angels have to compete against three other teams for their division title, and the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds have to compete against five teams.
Fourteen American League teams, 16 National League teams, all stacked up together in two big happy bunches.
Give playoff spots to the top six teams in each league.
The introduction of the wild card in the '90s provided more hope for more teams – keeping more teams in play, keeping more teams in the conversation. Most baseball fans would probably not want an NBA-style playoff bracket, which sort of mirrors what the kids went through in pre-school: Nobody is allowed to lose.
But part of the lure of the NCAA tournament is that everybody loves the Butler and George Mason stories. It would be a good thing for baseball if some second-division team stepped up and made a late-season run at the playoffs, riding a couple of hot pitchers. The team that might have been the most fun, in recent seasons, was the Milwaukee Brewers of 2008; they seemingly had to win every day, and their ballpark was packed and the atmosphere around that team was electric.
The three-game series would be pressure-packed and intense, and could make for the kind of baseball we saw in the tiebreaker play-in games that pitted the Rockies versus the Padres in 2007 and the Twins versus the Tigers in 2009.
Throw some playoff obstacles in front of the lowest seeds.
You can’t mitigate success over a 162-game season; you need to reward the summerlong success. The two teams that finished with the best records in their respective leagues would have a first-round bye, and then the No. 3 and No. 4 teams would play host to the No. 5 and No. 6 teams in the first round of the playoffs – in a three-game series. Again, this is retro, going back to the old tiebreakers that led to Bobby Thomson’s home run in 1951.
Here’s the wrinkle: The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds would have home-field advantage for the entire three-game series.
So let’s say, for example, that the Brewers scrambled at the end of the season, as they did in 2008, to make the postseason; let’s say they were the No. 6 seed. They’d be thrilled to have survived.
But the No. 3 and No. 4 teams should get stronger footing in a short series, because of what they earned over the six months of the regular season; reward them with three home games in that first round, played on consecutive days.
As those three-game series are played out, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds would have four days to rest and to line up their starting pitching. The top seeds would be rewarded for their body of work during the long, hot summer, without being forced to sit and wait too long for the lower seeds to complete the first round.
The regular season would end on a Sunday. The best-of-three would be played Monday through Thursday. The next round would start on a Saturday.
The second round of the postseason would pit the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds against the winners of the first round, in seven-game series – with the usual format continuing through the League Championship Series and the World Series.
Build the regular-season schedules off the final standings.
I’ve written about this idea several times before, about how MLB should take a page from the NFL and give the weakest teams more games against the other weak teams. In other words, with a system like this in place, the Pirates would have more games this season against teams like the Nationals and Reds, increasing their chances for success.
The realignment that is forthcoming – and it’s not a matter of if realignment is going to happen, it’s a matter of what form it will take – should be all about trying to create as much parity for teams that will never truly compete on a level playing field.
Right now, there is too much disparity of hope in place. The Rays, Orioles and Jays annually are eclipsed by the Red Sox and Yankees. Those clubs have much less chance for competitive success, no matter how they run their respective operations, than the Angels, because of the structure that is in place.
There were several seasons in the past decade in which the Blue Jays probably ranked among the top 10 teams in the majors, but they were elbowed out of the playoffs by the current alignment system. Maybe, if the Blue Jays had made the playoffs, Roy Halladay’s success – and that of the Jays – would have been rewarded. Maybe he would not have felt compelled to force his way out of town, to pursue an opportunity to win.
The Reds are caught in the vise of the largest division in the majors. The Nationals and Marlins have to climb over the Phillies and Mets, two teams whose resources are much greater.
The system suggested here is imperfect, like all proposals. But it would bring a higher degree of hope; it would give teams like the Royals and Rangers and Reds – and their fans – a greater opportunity at experiencing baseball in October.
[/quote]
Sorry for the length. It’s an ESPN Insiders thing though, so I had to cut and paste as the link requires membership.
So, what do you guys think? Looks good to me. Traditionalists might shudder, but change can be good. Look at what the Wild Card has done for baseball.
Someone forgot to tell the Skankees that the game last for nine innings…[/quote]
Yeah, the Yankees bullpen was a little shaky to say the least. But then again, so was Beckett.
And Big Ploppy started off with a bang eh? O-fer. 2009 all over again?
[quote=“ludahai”]
Why not an “A” division and a “B” division with promotion/relegation like football in Europe. Heck, let ‘AAA’ be a “C” division and give them a chance to earn promotion… heck, surely some of them are better than the Nationals, who would likely fall to the “D” or “E” division if given a chance.[/quote]
I consider myself a sports person and I had no idea this is how European sports operated until 2 yrs ago. It’s a cool setup but there is no way that the American sports fan will like this. And the national’s AAA team placed 5th out of 16 in their league. So there is a massive difference in between AAA and MLB talent.
The easiest way to even out the divisions is to move one NL team to the AL West and have interleague during the whole season. But that is why it hasn’t happened. And the way bring the Yankees (and Red Sox) down to the level of everyone else is to make the luxury tax hurt. Set the luxury tax threshold somewhere around the the 10th highest payroll (let’s say that around 110M) and then tax the teams over the luxury tax threshold $1 for every dollar over. Right now the Yankees are 60-70M over the luxury tax threshold but they are only paying something like 15-30% of that in luxury tax. If you want to control their spending then you have to make it hurt to spend obscene amounts of money.
back on the topic of baseball - I have zero willpower and bought the mlb.tv package and will be skipping class tomorrow to watch the Twins opener (in Anaheim).
I bought MLB.tv for the last half of last season. Great product. I’ll be buying it again very soon for the full season. Yeah I want to watch my team, but I also value being able to watch any game, any team(s). NHL.com and MLB.tv have it going on. 
I imagine the related NFL offering is also top-notch. I’ll probably end up subscribing to that one day eventually too.
I bought MLB.tv for the last half of last season. Great product. I’ll be buying it again very soon for the full season. Yeah I want to watch my team, but I also value being able to watch any game, any team(s). NHL.com and MLB.tv have it going on.
I imagine the related NFL offering is also top-notch. I’ll probably end up subscribing to that one day eventually too.[/quote]
Unfortunately 6 out of the first 9 Twins home games start between 1am and 4am taiwan time. But there are plenty of other games to watch.
Hey! I quite like Buster Olney’s solution. It retains a 162-game schedule; gives Toronto, Tampa and Baltimore hope, and it makes fifth and sixth place teams really work to win in the playoffs.
I really respect Rob Neyer, and want to show his preseason predictions for 2010.
Notice that Toronto wins 4 fewer games than anyone else in baseball (according to Neyer). Sorry, k.k. 
AL EAST
- Yankees - 96 wins
- Red Sox - 94
- Rays - 91
- Orioles - 74
- Blue Jays - 68
AL CENTRAL
- Twins - 85
- Indians - 81
- White Sox - 77
- Tigers - 76
- Royals - 72
AL WEST
- Rangers - 85
- Mariners - 82
- Angels - 80
- Athletics - 79
NL WEST
- Rockies - 86
- Dodgers - 85
- Diamondbacks - 83
- Giants - 79
- Padres - 73
NL CENTRAL
- Cardinals - 91
- Reds - 81
- Cubs - 80
- Brewers - 80
- Astros - 72
- Pirates - 72
NL EAST
- Phillies - 89
- Braves - 88
- Mets - 80
- Marlins - 79
- Nationals - 73
Here’s where I disagree with him:
I don’t see the Indians playing .500 ball. I’ve got them coming in 4th in the Central.
I see the Angels as a game better than Texas.
I like the Dodgers in the West; I think the Giants will outplay Arizona, and I think San Diego will lose more games than anyone except Washington.
And I think the Reds will come in 4th, 4 games behind the Cubs or Brewers.
I don’t mind Rob Neyer. His predictions are a bit shaky though, IMHO. Not just the Toronto assessment either. Don’t get me wrong, I know the Jays have a long season ahead of them, and will likely finish 4th or 5th in the AL East, but all this business of them being projected as one of the worst teams in baseball this year is complete horse shit. They aren’t that bad. :raspberry:
Putting the Royals, Indians, Pirates, Padres and Nationals ahead of the Jays kind of makes Neyer look foolish.
Anyway, yeah, I figure in the NL, PHI, STL, and COL take the divisions, with LAD getting the Wild Card. There’s no way the Marlins finish 4th in the NL East though. No way. They are too good for 4th. And the Braves could end up challenging for the Wild Card too when all is said and done.
In the AL, Boston won’t be that close to the Yankees, sorry Red Sox fans. It’ll be between BOS, TB, and CHW for the Wild Card. MIN for the Central if the White Sox don’t get in instead, and the Angels in the West. I think TEX is the dark horse there. A lot has to come together for them to get up there though. There was a lot of buzz around Seattle going into this offseason, but I don’t see it happening.