Rest of Baseball Thread 2009

[Sgt PSN]

tim lincecum  wants 13mil in arbitration.  can't possibly imagine what he'd spend it on. 

[Rome]

A sitar?

[PhillyGirl]

Good grief, he is a freak.

[Sgt PSN]

btw...i don't even understand why lincecum is asking for 13mil in arbitration.  actually, what i don't understand is why the giants haven't given him a dump truck and the vault combo.   

[Seabiscuit36]

someone posted this a while back, but Andy Martino just updated it
Mets playing Bobby Bonilla 1.9mm this year thru 2035

Also, Carlton Fisk just obliterated Mcgwire in the press. 

[Sgt PSN]

i read the fisk comments yesterday or the day before.  yeah, him and jack clark have both been about as blunt about it as i've ever heard anyone when talking about steriods.  good for them.  and farg mcgwire and every other pos that's juiced.   

i was just reading an article this morning in an old baseball magazine i have from 2002 that was talking about canseco (he had just retired from baseball) and how his numbers later in his career (and many other players) were aided by recent expansion in baseball.  the whistle's been blown on steriods now for so long that i actually forgot that for probably about 5 years or so, people were pointing to expansion as the reason why home run numbers in baseball were going through the roof.  i always knew that was a bs reason. 

[QB Eagles]

Lost in all of the controversy is this: the scientific case that steroid use increases home run production is shaky. People just seem to be assuming that steroids = more home runs, because big guys hit balls hard. There have been a few small scientific papers that tried to figure it out, and they've come up with differing conclusions. There hasn't been any conclusive answer. Raw strength and muscle mass are not really the key to home runs, as you can see by all of the home runs hit by the twiggier players. Most players are capable of swinging the bat quickly enough to hit a home run. Good vision, reflexes, and timing are far bigger factors. To the extent that muscles are necessary, you want fast-twitch muscles for rapid bat acceleration, not weighty bodybuilding muscles. Guys like Ruth, Williams, and Aaron were not close to the strongest guys to ever play baseball, and didn't even have access to the basic knowledge of modern ("legitimate") strength training.

Where there is no dispute is that steroid usage helps shorten recovery time. But is this really any more of a performance enhancer than amphetamines, used by dozens of Hall of Fame players, almost certainly including Carlton Fisk? Amphetamines have only been banned from baseball since 2006, but like with steroids, using them without a prescription has been illegal for a long time. And if it's being against the rules of baseball that matters instead of merely being a performance enhancer, why are spitball hurlers, bat corkers, and signal stealers in the Hall? Or do we think none of those guys are in there?

I'm not saying that steroids shouldn't be banned, or even that we should ignore the players that used them. But the media fairytale... the game was pure and then the black scourge of steroids made everyone capable of inhuman feats for ten or fifteen horrible years that are now over, thanks to testing... is a crock in many ways. It will be interesting to see how the game responds to designer drugs, performance-enhancing surgery, cybernetics, and eventually nanotechnology in the future. Sports will never be free of performance enhancement ever again, get used to it.

[Rome]

players are gleefully afforded the hardest narcotics known to science to dull the pain of injury and aid in treatment and recovery, yet those who use pharmaceuticals to increase body mass are treated as cheating pariahs.

gotta love the unabashed hypocrisy there.

[Sgt PSN]

i agree with pretty much everything you said, especially the part about how players have always found a way to cheat the game over the years, be it by corking the bat, scuffing a ball, too much pine tar, etc, etc.  i guess the way that people view those acts as opposed to steroids is that when those players got caught, there was no denying it.  either your bat was corked or it wasn't.  either you were putting a foreign substance on the ball or you weren't.  and more often than not, i have to believe that players who did that were caught rather quickly.  players/managers/umps can call for the ball or bat to be inspected pretty much whenever they chose to.  and the ones who were caught were ejected immediately.  not to mention that at least during more recent times....say from the 40's or 50's to now, there aren't any suspicions out there of players who played with a corked bat the majority of their career.  can't say the same for the roid users.  and i guess that's the main difference (if you choose to look at them differently)....corked bats and pine tar and snot balls were typically used in the short term.  maybe to get an edge on a specific hitter or to bust out of a slump.  where we know that players have been juicing for extended portions, if not the majority of their careers. 

Where there is no dispute is that steroid usage helps shorten recovery time.

this is where i personally look at the roids as cheating the game.  a guy pulls a hamstring or strains his pitching arm and rather than getting put on the 15 day dl (or longer) takes some roids and is back on the field after missing only a couple of games, giving him more ab's, more innings pitched, etc...thus, increasing their stat totals.   

take a guy like bonds or mcgwire for example.  both of them had some injury problems earlier in their careers and then all of sudden they were playing damn near 162 games every year.  for guys who were that talented, an extra 20 or so games a year = an extra 80 at bats = an extra 8-10 home runs. 

[QB Eagles]

Perhaps the simple fact that it extended their careers for such a long time was the determining factor. Both of them were already premiere longball hitters before the roids, and that's one of the stats that actually tends to peak later in a player's career. Experience is so helpful to hitting a homerun... so many little details go into the act that you can continually perfect as you age, not the least of which is knowledge of the pitchers you are facing.

There's a lot of luck involved in hitting 60 or 70 home runs, too. A player like Bonds or McGwire who is pretty much at that elite level of home run hitting talent might have a certain small percentage chance to do it, and an extra 3-5 healthy years to take a crack at those records is a pure multiplier on that chance.

[Sgt PSN]

yep.  that's why i think the numbers on steroid users are so tainted.  you take guys like that who are not only missing less games per season with injury, but then also extending their careers a few extra years on top of that and the numbers they put up are a total sham.  and for what?  they were premier players to begin with.   

and then i look at a guy like ken griffey jr, who i don't think anyone in the world suspects of being a juicer.  dude has 630 hr and has 7 seasons where he played less than 140 games (not counting his rookie year).  you add together all of the games he's missed over a 20 yr career and we're talking about roughly 4 or 5 seasons worth of missed games.  tell me you don't think he's been tempted over the years (especially 2002-2004 when he played no more than 82 games in a season) to juice up and get back on the field. 

you give junior griffey just 3 full seasons of his career back and we're looking at a guy who is flirting with 800 career home runs. 

i hear these idiots talk about the pressure that they were under to perform and that they just wanted to get back on the field, blah blah blah.  what a lot of people don't remember is that in the late 90's before mcgwire and sosa had their season, people were looking at griffey saying that he's "the one" who can challenge maris and aaron.  no one was under more national scrutiny at the time than grif.

but dude stayed clean and he is undoubtedly going to the hof.  something that mcgwire, bonds and the rest of them will never do unless they buy a ticket.  just like me.   

[PhillyGirl]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4849432

[Sgt PSN]

saw that yesterday.  wtf is that dude thinking? 

[Sgt PSN]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4853444

NEW YORK -- Alex Rodriguez looked at the award he just received from Babe Ruth's granddaughter with big eyes and a broad grin. It was as if he almost couldn't believe it was his.

"Postseason MVP. Wow," Rodriguez said Saturday night. Pausing for effect he added, "What's next, the good guy award?"

it's bad enough that his lying, cheating ass is getting any type of award, but to throw that whole "good guy" comment out there is ridiculous.

[ice grillin you]

The Tampa Bay Rays may not be able to afford staying in Florida much longer. NESN baseball analyst Peter Gammons reports on MLB.com that the Rays eventually could be forced to move to a more profitable market.

With spring training drawing closer and teams putting the finishing touches on rosters, Tampa Bay faces a bigger challenge than filling in its second-base hole. While the Rays have enjoyed success against big-market teams such as New York (Yankees), Philadelphia and Boston, their on-field success has not translated into revenue.

"There are smart people in the Major League Baseball offices wondering if there's hope of even discussing a potential move of the Rays to New Jersey or Southern Connecticut over certain protests from the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Phillies," writes Gammons on MLB.com.

Prior to the 2008 season, the Rays were ranked last or close to last in MLB attendance every year since 2000. The 2008 AL pennant only produced an average of 6,000 more fans per game at Tropicana Field. The less-than-stellar increase still tethers Tampa Bay to the bottom of the MLB attendance report.

Tampa Bay's baseball history has been an uphill battle from the beginning. When the MLB first looked to Tampa to begin a franchise, city officials of nearby, less-populated St. Petersburg resurrected the Florida Suncoast Dome against the wishes of the league.  The Florida Suncoast Dome became the ThunderDome before becoming Tropicana Field.

Unfortunately, the story is not a "rags to riches" tale. After a struggle to find tenants, the eventual 1998 dawn of the Rays and even the American League title did not mark the end of the rocky road. Still, people are unwilling to travel to the area.

"The Trop is stuck in a place that no one east of Tampa -- such as the Orlando market -- will drive to" writes Gammons on MLB.com.

Gammons extends the issue across Florida, citing the Marlins as another strong organization that lacks a following, ranking No. 29 for 2009 attendance. The South Florida team is hoping that "location, location, location" solves its problems, with a new, more accessible stadium close to I-95 and Florida's Turnpike scheduled to open in 2012.

If locality is not the brunt of the problem with Florida baseball, it may be the state's poor economy and foreclosures, all cited by Gammons.

"The Marlins and Rays share a broader issue -- Florida," writes Gammons on MLB.com. "Yes, it's South Beach and Worth Avenue, St. Pete Beach and Siesta Key. It's also Orville Triebwasser's House of Taxidermy and Fort Lonesome, the Fossil Museum and miles and miles and miles and miles of cattle and hurricane remnants and foreclosures."

According to the Bleacher Report's JC La Torre, the economy has hit Florida as hard as other areas of the country, but the Rays' low attendance problem is more complex than just tough times.  He believes that if Major League Baseball truly cares about the teams in Florida, it will stop holding spring training in Florida. The area's inhabitants -- most of whom have relocated from other parts of the country -- have former team allegiances. Being able to see their teams in Florida for spring training, why would they make the crossover to root for the Rays?

To make matters worse, WFTV-TV reported that politician Armando Gutierrez has discussed moving a baseball team to Orlando. The Milwaukee Brewers, who were mentioned as a possible option, have since refuted the suggestion of their potential relocation. But the possibility of a neighboring team poses even more turbulence -- and competition -- for the Rays in Florida.