Minnesota Twins

The New York Yankees have cruised through the 2009 baseball regular season, destroying teams with their 9 slugger deep line-up that includes not one player having a bad year. While every hitter is having varying degrees of success, not one man in that line-up is performing below their norms (save for mighty A-Rod, who's injury has slowed him down a bit to the tune of only 26 homers and 80+ RBI's). The bullpen has also been stellar, with Mariano Rivera looking as spry as he did in 1996, and with Phil Hughes redefining his 2009 season in the ilk of that very same roie Rivera held in '96- the gutsy set-up man that becomes a dominating extension of the closer. The defense has improved mightily too, especially around the infield, where Derek Jeter has revived his defensive career by extending his lateral range and improving his arm strength. Robinson Cano has looked interested for the first time in the field since his rookie season and Mark Texeira has done wonders for everyone, displaying why he is considered a defensive elite (you can tell Don Mattingly was his favorite player growing up, his range and glove work are superb). 

Continue reading "Joe Girardi- Let the Force Be With You or Else."

(Note: originally posted on February 25.)

Each year, prior to the start of the MLB season, I use a unique mathematical system (one that I will not get into, because it's boring) to project the performance of every player and team. This season, in lieu of their significant offseason additions, I expected the Yankees to come out on top. Surprisingly, my expectations were wrong...

Continue reading "MLB Preseason Predictions: Regular ..."

To add to yesterday's post, neither Ibanez nor Washburn was dealt after they were claimed on waivers. According to the Post-Intelligencer, the Twins put in claims on both, and their waiver number was higher for Jarrod, while the Tigers claim was highest for Ibanez.

Continue reading "Waiver Update"

The Mariners announced today that Jarrod Washburn has cleared waivers, meaning he can now be freely traded to whatever team wants to take on his massive salary. There's no real surprise here, as it's doubtful any other team would want to take on his bloated $9.85M salary. So the failure of Seattle to deal him before the deadline isn't so awful, except that his value seemed to have peaked at that point for a couple of reasons: (1) he'd pitched really well to that point (4 ER in 19.2 IP in the three starts before the deadline, (2) his value diminishes with each day that passes, since that means less time he can spend with a contending team (e.g., the Yanks) starved for starters, which leads to (3) the team in question being more likely to go in another direction.

Continue reading "Washburn is ready to move"

Continue reading "Raul and the Blowout"

For the first time since May 13, the Minnesota Twins--the team that stood pat during the recent Trade Deadline Sweepstakes--assume first place in the NL Central today.

Chicago had been waiting for its bats to heat up all season, and both Swisher and Konerko have had a few streaks of hot hitting, but they couldn't get the whole team hitting at the same time. So they grabbed Ken Griffey, Jr., a move that was part consummation of a long-time love affair with Junior by GM Kenny Williams and part best-choice trade.

Continue reading "Twins in First"

One of the All-Star Break traditions: Reassessing our predictions from the first half of the season. Some of mine have changed, some have stayed the same—and some were just damn wrong. Living in the West, I will take the contrarian position and roll from west to east in my choices.

Continue reading "Second Half Predictions"