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July 13, 2004
All-Star Break Blogging
I haven't done a whole lot of baseball blogging this year, but now is the perfect time for some mid-season thoughts, awards and half-cocked opinions.
The bad news is, the Cubs are seven games behind the stinking Cardinals right now, with the filthy Reds and the I-dont-even-wanna-think-about-it Brewers breathing down their necks. The good news is, the Cubs are only a game out of the wild card and Kerry Wood pitched for the first time in about two months on Sunday, and looked good doing it.
With the Brewers above .500 and fighting for a playoff spot, I don't think there's any doubt who the NL Manager of the Year is so far. Ned Yost. Lou Pinella in Tampa is probably the AL Manager of the 1/2-Year in the AL, although Buck Showalter has an argument down in Arlington.
What the Rangers don't realize though, is that they'll need to fire Showalter before they can win the Series. Look at his history. Managed the Yankees until being replaced with Joe Torre in '96. The rest is recent, horrible history. Then Buck took over the fledgling Diamondbacks only to be fired in 2000. What did they do the next year? Win the World Series is all. I wonder if out of work managers are turning down jobs just waiting for Buck to get canned?
How afraid are other teams of Barry Bonds? Through the Break he has 131 walks. The next closest is Lance Berkman with 75. Not only that, he has 6.89 walks/strikeout. Compare that to the next closest, Albert Pujols at 2.04. My favorite sabermetric stat, though, is Runs Created/27 innings, a measure of how many runs per game a team of Barry Bondses would score. Bonds' RC/27 is 21.17. Pujols is in second, trailing Bonds by 10 runs per game.
Tommorrow I'll bore everyone with my fantasy teams.
---just watched the first 1/2 inning of the All-Star game. Was Piazza giving away Clemens' pitches to spite him? I hope so.
Posted by Half-Cocked at July 13, 2004 07:31 PM
Comments
As a Red Sox fan it was pure heaven to see Clemens give up so many long balls!
Posted by: Justin at July 14, 2004 11:06 PM