Braun To Bat Cleanup

What are the odds that if Pujols hits two bombs, Braun will say it was because he was protecting him in the lineup? Even.

NL
SS Hanley Ramirez
2B Chase Utley
1B Albert Pujols
RF Ryan Braun
LF Raul Ibanez
3B David Wright
CF Shane Victorino
C Yadier Molina
RHP Tim Lincecum

AL
RF Ichiro Suzuki
SS Derek Jeter
C Joe Mauer
1B Mark Teixeira
LF Jason Bay
CF Josh Hamilton
3B Evan Longoria
2B Aaron Hill
RHP Roy Halladay

Is it just me, or does Paul Ibanez and Jay Bay look like pretty junk #5 hitters for an All-Star game?

ESPN Baseball Preview

It says here that the ESPN "experts" will make their predictions on Sunday. Here's my predictions of Peter Gammons' predictions, if that makes any sense:

AL MVP: Kevin Youkilis, Boston Red Sox
AL Cy Young: Jon Lester, Boston Red Sox
AL Comeback POY: David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox

NL MVP: Manny Ramirez, Ex-Boston Red Sox

AL East Champ: New York Yankees (Just to put all the pressure on them and off Boston)
AL Champ: New York Yankees (Ditto)
World Series Champ: New York Yankees (Ditto)

Holy Crap...

No more speculation I guess...

"And I did take a banned substance and, you know, for that I'm very sorry and deeply regretful. And although it was the culture back then and Major League Baseball overall was very - I just feel that - You know, I'm just sorry. I'm sorry for that time. I'm sorry to fans. I'm sorry for my fans in Texas. It wasn't until then that I ever thought about substance of any kind, and since then I've proved to myself and to everyone that I don't need any of that."

"It was such a loosey-goosey era. I'm guilty for a lot of things. I'm guilty for being negligent, naive, not asking all the right questions," Rodriguez said. "And to be quite honest, I don't know exactly what substance I was guilty of using."

Wow. Quite the commentary from Mr. Alex Rodriguez. No lawyers...no publicist...he just flat out admitted it.

It's kind of refreshing really...sometimes you just have to fess up to stuff as a man when the evidence finally bites you. A-Rod is no fool. He had no place to hide. The facts were there about his usage. The statements that he made were very open...

More to come on steroid usage this week...as I'm sure this story is just beginning to get legs. You can probably sense my opinion on this issue indirectly through what I've written so far...but I'll try and spell it out later in a different post.

Baseball Salary Cap Wouldn't Work?

According to this guy, a baseball salary cap (which everybody I know wants) wouldn't work. Slicing up the current numbers, a realistic cap and floor would be $103 million and $75 million, respectively. The author claims the system would crumble because some teams can't afford a $75 payroll, and would have to shell out way too much money for crappy players just to reach the floor. Plus, there's been more than enough parity over the last decade, a salary cap is unnecessary even if it would work. An interesting read. DEBATE.

Article.

Jake Peavy, Cheater?

I love a good sports cheating scandal. Looks like SD hurler Jake Peavy had a little "substance" on his hands during his mowing down of the Dodgers. Hmmmm, interesting....looks like Jake has a little explaining to do. From TheBigLead.com.

Randomness

Random Observations after a whopping 3 days of perusing box scores and Baseball Tonight.

- Twins Opening Day pitcher in 2007: Johan Santana. 2008? Livan Hernandez??

- Boy are the Giants shitty. Check out this opening day lineup:

Dave Roberts
Rich Aurillia
Randy Winn
Bengie Molina
Ray Durham
Aaron Rowand
Jose Castillo
Brian Bocock

Bengie F#cking Molina is your cleanup hitter?? Can you say "opening weekend sweep?"

- Royals pitcher Brian Bannister (who just shut down the Tigers) got 1 question wrong on the math portion of the SAT. Steve Hawking wonders what happened on that one question.

- Anybody see Mt Bowa erupt last night? And he's not even the manager!! 3B coach for the Dodgers...throwing stuff all over the yard. Just another classic meltdown from Bowa

- Speaking of, how many more losses until Pinella goes ballistic? 4? 5? Lee Elia needs company. (Warning, dozens of 4 letter bombs about to go off).

- JD Drew, Prior, Baldelli, Nomar, Pedro, Rolen, Unit, Pavano, and Kelvin Escobar all on the DL. Good to see some things never change.

Former Brewers:

- Matty Wise: still a gas can. Lost the Mets first game by giving up a bomb in the 10th. I'm guessing it was on a 60 MPH change.

- Jenks thus far: 0-3, 1 K

- Sexson: 1-11, 4 K

- Hey, guess who the Mets backup catcher is? How about Raul Casanova. Ha.

- Anybody see this sh!t? Some guy made a replica of Miller Park out of Legos. The f-ing roof opens and everything?

- Goldy, you know what everybody is waiting for....

Baseball Season

Well...football is in the rear view mirror, meaning large, heaping-helping servings of baseball on Chuckie Hacks will follow. Train, try not to get too excited. Don't worry, there will still be plenty of Ted Thompson glorification (For Matt, of course) and Big-11 bashing (For Matt, Part II).

In the mean time, how about this picture of our "super tough" new catcher?