Schilling Now Baseball's Biggest Bore
Now that Barry Bonds is on the sidelines until further notice, the title of the biggest bore in baseball rests squarely on the shoulders of Boston pitcher Curt Schilling.
For some reason Schilling seems to have appointed himself the outspoken voice of baseball. His latest tirade directed at the competence of Tampa Bay manager Lou Piniella implied that some of Piniella’s players blamed the manager for their losing ways.
First of all Schilling should worry about himself while he is on the disabled list. Secondly, if Schilling had any nerve he’d name the players who made the alleged comments instead of hiding behind anonymous quotes.
I actually miss Bonds, his ludicrous comments are more entertaining than Schilling’s weak diatribe by far.
Click below for more!Lou Piniella has the look of a manager about to go off the deep end. Piniella should turn the Devil Rays over to his long time confidant, bench coach John McLaren, then wait for George Steinbrenner’s call to manage the Yanks.
The Giants are stuck juggling the closers role until at least June. Tampa Bay has no hope of making the playoffs this year, they won’t part with closer Danys Baez until they can get a desperate buyer like the Giants or the Cubs to sweeten the pot, and that will take another month or so.
Forget Pittsburgh’s Jose Mesa coming to San Francisco. Mesa and Omar Vizquel are bitter enemies. Orioles reliever Jorge Julio might be available for the right price.
Maybe the Giants should be interested in Juan Cruz who is in the deep freeze right now with the A’s. Cruz has too much stuff to be the last man in the bull pen. The A’s need to get him going before he becomes a head case.
With the first month of the season down, here are my thoughts on the A’s.
The hitters take too many strikes, letting good pitches go by early in the count. It’s time to turn the bats loose.
The A’s miss Bobby Crosby’s right handed bat in the middle of the line up.
I know Eric Byrnes still chases the slider, but at least he can hit the long ball occasionally. He should be playing everyday. His hot streaks can carry the team for weeks at a time.
Oakland’s pitching has been terrific. The defense absolutely fine, except for an occasional mistimed dive for a ball in the outfield.
While I’m dispensing free advice, since the A’s are adept at hitting singles why not start the runners more often. The hit and run opens holes in the infield, thus creating more scoring chances.
Still projects to be a very close race in the AL West.
Pitchers Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, Jose Contreras, and Mark Buehrle will keep the White Sox close to the Twins all summer.
Bulletin to the AL Central: The Tigers have starting pitching, an effective bull pen, and they can hit.
Yankee Kevin Brown pitched the best game I’ve seen him throw in a long time even though he lost to the Angels Thursday night.
Reason for the Bombers slow start: other than Gary Sheffield, A Rod, and Derek Jeter, the rest of theYankee lineup is not hitting with any authority.
Take away the 53 runs the Yanks scored in four wins, and they average less than 4 runs per game.
Piniella is the favorite to be the first manager replaced in 2005, but Colorado’s Clint Hurdle and Kansas City’s Tony Pena aren’t far behind.
If Hurdle is canned in Denver, the team will go after former A’s manager Art Howe, a long time favorite of the Rockies owners.
Players showing their age: Mets Mike Piazza, Yankees Jason Giambi, Orioles Sammy Sosa, White Sox Jermaine Dye, and Astros Jeff Bagwell, all coincidentally are sluggers who have lost weight in the off season season and appear to be in great shape.
Seattle has become a threat in the West.
The Mariners have a deep well balanced bull pen. Manager Mike Hargrove has definite reliable options before giving the ball to closer “Everyday†Eddie Guardado.
The Mariners relief corps is this year’s version of the successful 2004 Texas Rangers ‘pen.
Marlins manager Jack McKeon might be pushing his starters too hard early in the season. The Fish lead the majors with 5 complete games. If McKeon doesn’t alter this strategy Josh Beckett, AJ Burnett, and Dontrelle Willis will be gassed by August.
Columnist Dave Del Grande suggests the A’s trade Octavio Dotel to the Giants for Edgardo Alfonzo. Sorry Dave, not another singles hitter. If the A’s move Dotel, it has to be for a righthanded batter who can hit the ball out of the park.
0 comments
Marty,
Thanks for expressing my opinions exactly.
I’m really not surprised the A’s offense is looking the way it does. Going into the season it was clear the team had no clean up hitter, just a bunch of singles hitters. Scott Hatteberg? Yikes. A solid hitter at the major league level…but solid is all. Absolutely not a clean up hitter.
And I really will say that I still belive Eric Chavez is not a 3 or 4 hitter. He’s a number 5 hitter. He’s always been streaky and still relies too much on his natural talent at the plate. It doesn’t seem as though he’s learned to “hit” yet. And by now if he doesn’t know to “hit” I doubt it’ll happen. Jeter, Kotsay, Sheffield, Ramirez. These guys are all “hitters”. That means recognizing situations, counts, pitches, and anticipating a pitchers’ next move. Chavez really doesn’t do any of this with any regularity. He just sees ball…hits ball. That explains the career streakiness. His pure talent and athletisism work for him on defense, but hitting is a much finer art form.
Kendall will come around. He too is a “hitter”. But its true what you said. Too many singles hitters. And other teams know the A’s are trying to walk, which they are. So they just throw them hittable strikes early in the count, and just as expected they take them and end up hitting behind in the count a lot. An ominous task at this level of baseball.
Gammons recently wrote that last year they had Kotsay doing the A’s “don’t swing the bat” thing and he wasn’t hitting either. They finally went to him and said “you can be the one guy that swings away”. And look how thats been working out. Sweet!
Billy Beane is one heck of a GM. But now that his strategy is exposed, its not such a good strategy anymore. If you look back over the past 5 years or so, the A’s offense has never been that strong…at best. The reason they did well was, yes, the Big Three.
And the offensive “OBP” thing ended up causing Mulder and Hudson’s injuries…indirectly. These guys continuously pitched in close, low scoring games. And since they were so much better than anything the A’s had to offer out of the bullpen, Howe and Macha kept them in. Look at how many innings these guys threw over the past 5 years. You want to know what happened to Mulder the second half last year? His workload caught up with him. He wasn’t hurt just like he said…he was just worn down…tired.
Point: A’s, please start using the bat for what its for and swing it.
By the way, aside from Beane’s offensive strategy not being effective anymore…its frickin’ boring to watch.
—Ned
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