ThePenguin11

Got him. Thanks guys.

Well I should have seen this coming...Patterson was put on the 15-day DL retroactive to April 22. Apparently, the move was made so they wouldn't have to send Michael O' Connor down. Sportsline says he'll miss a start or two. The trade hasn't been approved by the commissioner yet, so boy wouldn't it be great if 2/3 of my league voted against the trade?!? I won't hold my breath...

Follow-up: I counter-offered with Haren, Clement and Ichiro for Patterson, Youkilis and Todd Walker and he accepted. The important thing to note is that Ichiro is very overrated in our league because he doesn't hit for power or get RBI's. Our league is all about HR's, Wins and Saves. Stolen bases are nice too but I've got guys like Huff and Granderson that can step in. How did I do?

Just got offered John Patterson and Milton (throw-in) for Clement and Maddux. I have Maddux, Glavine, King Felix, Clement, Haren and Bush all on the same two start rotation, so I'd like to consolidate some of those six into a guy or guys who will pitch on other days. Is this a good sell-high for Maddux? Or are Patterson's forearm soreness issues enough to devalue him below Maddux? To me Clement is a non-issue, be cause I can in the next month I probably won't even use him behind the first three listed above.

I need to add another Starting Pitcher to my team in a 13 team league. I can only make a FA pickup once every two weeks, so I've got to get it right. Keep in mind that our league is very pitching intensive and awards heavily for wins. I can choose from the following: Scott Baker Angel Guzman Kyle Davies Jorge Sosa John Koronka Woody Williams Wade Miller Cole Hamels It's a keeper league, although you can only keep one and it takes the place of your first rounder, so it's not really that significant. I'd like to grab Guzman but the question is will he stick with the big squad? Baker seems to be the safe choice and the other guys don't seem to have a ton of upside.

Maddux and Freel for Sheets and Lieber. Any thoughts? I'm trying to guage how much value Maddux has. The guy with Sheets has Iguchi and Aaron Miles at 2B. I've got Utley so I don't need Freel. Am I asking for too much or is it fair?

I was hoping this would be a word association game thread. Then I could have simply posted "stinks".

The wrists are fine. Please don't worry about me. My typing has never been better...

Yuck, don't mean to get into the middle of this undecideable debate. I'm here to add a mea culpa for dogging Maddux hard for the last year. Although he did deserve the criticism for being out of shape and pitching substandard baseball, I've begun to change my thinking in that Maddux actually could pitch himself into a contract extension with an above average season. Before the season I stated that no matter how well he ends up pitching in 2006, he doesn't deserve a new contract because of his past laziness. Now I'm beginning to understand that he was just letting his age catch up with him - and didn't really know how to react to it. I'll give him credit for getting back into shape and becoming the pitcher we all hoped we were getting in 2004. I hope he keeps it up. I'd be happy to see Greg get another $8MM if he wins 16 or 17 games with a 3.50 era or lower. With this lineup, and with his new-found control and seriously upgraded movement on his pitches, those types of statistics are actually possible.

Except for "Tad" and "Jack", I've really enjoyed listening to him. I don't know that I've ever heard him before. what are you new? IMO, Vin Scully is vastly overrated. Personal opinon I guess. I don't really care for the one man booth. I have to strongly disagree. I've watched many of his games on extra innings and mlb.tv and he's the best I've ever seen by far. I grew up with Harry, and he was fun, but Scully is the say-all-end-all. I learned more about the Cubs players in one Dodgers-Cubs broadcast listening to him then I did listening to Chip and Stoney all season long a couple years back. He's so knowledgeable about not only his team, but about every team out there.

See also Julio Lugo.

I swear I've seen nearly ten of these injuries dating back to opening day with CC Sabathia. Others who've suffered this injury: Noah Lowry, Jose Guillen, Edgar Renteria (strained rib cage), Mike Cameron and Joe Randa had a lower abdominal injury. That's just the ones I could come up with off the top of my head. I don't ever recall hearing of that type of injury in baseball's past and all of the sudden, there's a laundary list of players with it. Am I overstating this? Has this injury been present over the years? I'm just wondering if the lack of greenies in the game is keeping players off the field with what would appear to be miniscule injuries. I realize that there's no painkiller element to greenies but there's something to be said for the added motivation you'd need when playing on other pain meds.

Raising the mounds would only make it harder to hit the ball. Not sure what you mean. You guys give baseball executives way too much credit. By the way, I'm not basing my opinion on what some may call a wild goose chase, and personally I find some of the comments in this thread condescending and insulting. I was making an observation based on what I've seen after personally watching parts of nearly 50 different games on mlb.tv. If it keeps up all year and certain pitchers end up with say 5-10 homeruns can I post a painting of an ostritch with his head in the sand? Would that be appropriate?

I think the black t shirts with the pirate logos are pretty cool too. Kind of a win-win I suppose.

I just looked up Sean Marshall's brother Brian on the baseball cube and he's put up some pretty great numbers through last year. Why isn't he playing somewhere? http://thebaseballcube.com/players/M/brian-marshall.shtml I thought I heard he was in the Red Sox organization. Anyone know what the deal is here?

I don't get it. My girlfriend is the art history student in the household.

Guilty. EDIT: Message changed to be more provocative.

It was only a matter of time before MLB came out with BS comments like these: Bombs away Detroit's Chris Shelton, Chicago's Jim Thome and Cleveland's Travis Hafner all had six homers through Thursday, Oakland's Eric Chavez had five and a gang of folks had four. Perhaps something of a disappointment to those who thought the new policies in place would lead to a renaissance for small ball, but let's face it: We still dig the long ball. That we've now got a sense that they are being legitimately launched isn't just good for ball, it's good for the soul. Do we really know that? Or is garbage like this being mandated on high? Who's swinging whom? That's the question you might be tempted to ask yourself when you see rail-thin Reds right-hander Bronson Arroyo mosey on up to the plate with a bat in his hands. Then you see the 6-foot-5, 190-pounder go deep twice in a six-day span. Good for ball. How? Will pitchers hitting 5-10 homers every year make baseball better, somehow? Idiots. http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article_perspectives.jsp?ymd=20060414&content_id=1399848&vkey=perspectives&fext=.jsp Keep the P.R. machine rolling baseball. What a load of crap. Every time I look around, I'm more convinced that baseball's exec's are twisting the knife in our backs again. I fell for it the first time. They need to clean house in New York and get someone who cares in there.

There hasn't been expansion in ten years. Great pitchers are being pounded for homeruns leading to blown up ERA's. It also seems like the pitchers with typically good location of their fastballs and less than stellar " breaking stuff" are the ones getting pounded deep over and over. So, what I'm saying is that guys who's pitches are hard to even make contact with are doing fine. Guys who rely on location without movement are getting smashed. As for the 'why can't anyone just grab two baseballs and compare them?' idea; it would seem to make sense that it could be that easy, but by what process would you compare two baseballs? How can you really check how much tighter a ball is wound? Is there a machine for that? Chemical or liquid displacement? Who even knows? And who even knows if baseball is throwing 'normal' balls into the mix to screw up the findings. I'd say that would be a pretty easy way to make it inconclusive. You'd have to test a sample of anywhere between 100 and 1000 baseballs. Now show me a beat writer or any other media type who is willing to do that kind of extra work. Can't we just agree that there are an INSANE amount of home runs leaving ball parks. Is it not blatently obvious? Haven't you noticed how easy swings that should result in pop-ups are going ten rows deep into the bleachers? Doesn't it seem weird that every one of Jim Thome's home runs is traveling 450 feet? :oops:

"Bonds on perjury" Is Perjury some new kind of cream or clear performance enhancer that I haven't heard about yet?

After today's games I think it's getting pretty obvious that something is afoot. I was listening to Dan Patrick's show earlier and there were 9 homers hit in the first 43 minutes of the show. Instantly, it got me believing the juiced ball hype. After seeing Arroyo hit two and Mark freaking Mulder take one yard the other day, I'm pretty much convinced. To me It would make sense, knowing MLB, if they revisited a Juiced Ball in order to make it seem like steriods never really had an effect on baseball. I figured it would be just a matter of time before baseball officials or MLB suck-ups started using this as a smokescreen to take our attention away from the severity of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Then I turned on ESPN to see them glorifying the great day of homeruns towing the mlb company line saying crap like it's "for the good of baseball." I nearly vomited. Why can't baseball glorify pitching? If stolen bases are a lost art where does great pitching fit in? Baseball just thinks its fans are mindless homerun craving idiots and force feeds us this garbage once again. Who here of the great baseball fans wouldn't take a 1-0 pitching stalemate over a game with three grand slams? Sometimes baseball really makes me sick. It makes me want to watch videos like "When it was a Game" or movies like "For Love of the Game" and "Field of Dreams" to help me believe that baseball is or was America's truest, purest pasttime.

Fixed to show who got what...

You only get one keeper and it takes the place of your first round pick so only guys like Manny, Santana, Texeira, Arod get retained. Reyes and Duke weren't going to be keepers on my team regardless. My team is team B. I gave up Johjima because I have Josh Willingham playing catcher. Reyes does me no good in the minors and will not be my keeper because I have King Felix as well. Here's my full roster after the trade: Starter, Backup C Josh Willingham, Mike Lieberthal 1B Justin Morneau, Mike Jacobs 2B Chase Utley, Ryan Freel SS Michael Young 3B Scott Rolen, Pedro Feliz OF Ichiro OF Jim Edmonds OF Aubrey Huff, Curtis Granderson, Luis Gonzalez SP Carlos Zambrano SP Felix Hernandez SP Dan Haren, Matt Clement, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Noah Lowry, Dave Bush RP Ryan Dempster, Tom Gordon, Eric Gagne (Inj.) Johjima was dealt from depth, Duke has been eratic due to changes in his delivery by his inept pitching coach and Reyes can't help me right now. He would have been released to pick up my next waiver acquisition anyways. Does that change your opinion of my trade now?

Team A: K. Johjima Z. Duke A. Reyes Team B: R. Dempster M. Clement M. Lieberthal 13 Team Keeper league (max: 1 keeper in offseason) Scoring is much like 5x5, and rewards heavily for HR, SB, Wins and Saves.

I hope you're being sarcastic. Because if you're not, I must ask you what he saved them from. Mediocrity? If you were being sarcastic - well played.