Finally!

I’m not a fan of the World Baseball Classic. I consider myself extremely patriotic-my daughter was in Afghanistan-and I never felt a twinge of American pride during the WBC. I didn’t watch one game, I’m not sure who won the tournament, and I don’t believe Cinderalla is frolicking in the Netherlands.

The WBC messes up spring training and makes it longer than necessary; or should I say even longer than necessary. It’s spring everywhere but in Minnesota, and it’s time for real ball games.

Spring training games-as one of baseball’s hundreds of cliches attest-are meaningless, except the ones played in the next few days. Managers finally begin tipping their hands to fantasy buffs. Ball club scrubs have been sent to the minors; lineups and batting orders in games are reflecting manager philosophies and intent. How many of you are surprised to learn Matt Kemp will be batting seventh next week?

We fantasy nuts can make final roster decisions along with our professional counterparts. More importantly, we can count down to Opening Day without using our toes. This season looks to be a great one in Minnesota, although the Twins lineup has more than a tad less appeal without little Joey Mauer in the three hole.

The MLB channel will come in handy this week; not only for knowledge seeking, but for the pure joy of catching a few innings of tempered, but serious baseball. The boys are ready for the real thing and that itchy feeling is taking hold, for them and their fans.

Fantasy baseball gyrations becoming sexier

Sometime in mid-January I began messing around with configuring a roster for the upcoming season of Fanball’s Diamond Challenge game. This year will be my twelfth, I believe, year of playing the game and I haven’t had a great deal of success.

I’m attracted to the Rotisserie format and the big-time money available if you can put together a winning team. The most I have won in any season is $1600. The grand prize kahuna wins in excess of $25,000. Hey, you never know!

There is a salary cap in this game: $30 million. Rosters consist of an active lineup of eighteen position players and ten pitchers, and a twelve player taxi squad. It’s the cap that creates all the preseason gyrations as one attempts to maximize the money angle to create the best team possible.

I’ve probably made over a hundred changes since day one, when I casually selected a team to get things rolling. The free transaction clock is running down to zero now; moves have to be finalized before the season begins and stats start to accumulate for real. Changes can be made as the season progresses, but they are limited and cost money. Having a quality team beginning opening day is a key to success.

I’ve narrowed my options. There are three or four openings on my team and I keep playing with them and researching alternative players, trying to come up with the best combination. Pressure is mounting, as is the excitement of the opening of “real” baseball.

This time of year reminds of Thanksgiving when I was a kid. I associated Thanksgiving with “a month before Christmas;” the day itself didn’t seem such a big deal to me. Well, here we are, a month before Opening Day. I can’t wait!

Hot stoves and phone booths?

Now that spring training is underway it’s time to reflect on the Hot Stove League. Wait! Was there such a thing or, a better question, is there such a thing? Has the offseason baseball rumour mill gone the way of phone booths? When was the last time you saw a phone booth?

I haven’t bothered to round up the detail of offseason transactions because I know there weren’t many, and few notable one’s other than the Yankees being the Yankees, and Manny being Scot Bor-ass. The Peavy thing was a charade of some sort and now Adam Dunn will hit 40. 17 home runs in Washington, and only a few fantasy-leaguers care about that one; maybe he’ll hit 41.25 because of the home field advantage.

Was it he economy stifling transactions? Are so many teams satisfied with their rosters that there wasn’t an urge to make changes? Has “the Twins way” infiltrated baseball to the extent that every organization is relying on their farm systems to elevate the quality of teams?

Whatever the reasons, they have burned the Hot Stove into virtual nonexistence. Now there is nothing to look forward too when this season ends. Winter will be longer and colder than ever and February of 2010, ugh! We must find a way to obliterate February from out lives or, more realistically, find a way to spend it in Arizona, waiting for spring training to begin.

This February is finally finished and the ides of baseball March are upon us. The Twinkies have won four-in-a-row and Delmon Young is pounding the crap out of the baseball. Oh no, what if he forces his way into being an everyday outfielder; what will the ball club do. No one likes the guy and our beloved Mikey Cuddyer HAS to play all the time, Denard Span had a great rookie season last year, Carlos Gomez is a Gardy “energy” favorite. So . . . what up Gardy?

And please, where are  J.J. Hardy and Jason Werth going to bat in the orders of the Brewers and Phillies. They are two of my “on the fence” fantasy baseball roster selections. Their salaries are relatively cheap compared to potential production, but if they’re batting sixth or seventh-do I want them?

Thank you, Lord, for spring training. Life can resume again, and baseball fans can lament the disappearance of the Hot Stove League some other day.

Yanks of old renew?

The latest barrage of mega-salary commitments made by the Yankees has the baseball world a-buzz: “How can we compete?” is the newest mantra of Hank Steinbrenner’s executive competition.

New Yankees include C. C. Sabathia, A. J. Burnett and M. A. Teixeira, all superstars with superstar bank accounts.  How dare any team think they can compete with the 2009 version of New York’s pinstripes?

Well, they won’t have retired Mike Mussina. Mussina won 20 games last season, Sabathia won 17; no gain there for the bad guys. Burnett won 18 games, with an ERA over 4.00; a rotation spot gain for the bad guys – IF A. J. can stay off the DL, something he regularly has failed to accomplish throughout his career.

The big stud, M. A., is a legitimate star and undoubtedly makes the Bronx Bomber lineup better; but by how much? Tex hit 33 homers last season and drove in 121 runs; departed Jason Giambi went 32 and 96. Defense is another matter; Teixeira plays it, Giambi doesn’t. So, OK, the team in improved with the addition of Teixeira, but light years improved, maybe not.

Derek Jeter is a year older, and how many years ago did his performance peak? Mariano The Great is a year older, and how much longer can the magic act do tricks. Jorge Posada is a year older, and mediocrity tends to become a trend. A-Rod is a year older, and he can’t get much better. There are no gains in this paragraph, and the opportunity for losses.

Bobby Abreu is gone. The Yank outfield is mediocre at best. Johnny Damon, Xavier Nady, Melky Cbrera and Hadeiki Matsui? Please. “How can we compete?”

Joba Chamberlain may become a star; Phillip Hughes may not. Robinson Cano was supposed to be a star; he may not be one. The bullpen is likely a middle-of-the-pack bunch. On the bench? Is Bernie Williams making a comeback? How about Paul O’Neil?

I suggest the rest of the American League wait until the Yankees have beaten them soundly before crying wolf. My Minnesota Twins have a better team, and a better future than the big-bad Yankees. They’ve resigned Nick Punto and finally captured R. A. Dickey after two years of searching for the allusive knuckleballing middle-reliever. See, the Twinks can compete with the Yanks; and so can a majority of other teams.

Johan Peavy . . . this winter’s flame?

Jake Peavy is being traded. One of the most exciting pitchers to watch throw a game is on the block. It sounds like he’ll be staying in the National League so I won’t get to see him pitch except on a rare occasion – maybe on WGN, against the Cubs.

Anticipating the trade reminds me of last winter when the Twins were trying to trade Johan Santana. Rumors flew around for months and a good portion of the Hot Stove League season was occupied by Santana news. The build-up was more fun than the result. The trade itself, which brought the Twins Carlos Gomez, was anti-climactic. The best pitcher in baseball was gone.

Gomez is an exciting player. He does things on a baseball field Little League coaches scold their players for doing, but he’s exciting, nonetheless, and has a chance to be an excellent player. The Twins may well have won the Central Division  title if they had Santana last season. Gomez won some games for them; and lost some as well. Denard Span would have been his equal, or better, over the course of the season.

The Pad’s will find similar circumstances, I suspect, after Jake is traded. Fans will be disappointed in who they get in return, simply because  Jake Peavy or Johan Santana can’t be replaced with comparable talent in a trade.

I’ll be watching, and cheering for the Cubbies to fork over a few young players no one has heard of for possibly the best right handed pitcher in baseball. Then, once or twice next spring and summer, I’ll settle back in my easy chair, tune in to Windy City television, and watch a great pitcher do his thing.

Bloging and me . . .

I haven’t written here for months. Bloging hasn’t seemed fitting with my wiritng life.  I’m writing two books and continually reading about writing and generally figuring out how to be a quality writer. Bloging about baseball, knowing I have no readers, is difficult to justify.

However I miss baseball. The World Series ended this week and as it always does, closed the door on another season. I suffer a degree of baseball withdrawal every offseason. The daily humming of the game is silenced and creates a void.

Two days after the last Phillies victory, there were two notes of interest in the StarTribune: a trade, and a Nick Punto alert. The Marlins traded Mike Jacobs to the Royals for Leo Nunez. Punto, one of my favorite Twins, is a free agent and I’ve assumed a lock to be back next season. Not so fast, according to newspaper pundits. The indication is the Twinks want to upgrade at shortstop and it’s questionable if Punto wants to revert to being a utility player.

November 1: we Minnesotans are not so anxiously waiting for snow, and I’m excited about two tid-bits of baseball scuttlebutt. Give me more! Give me more!

I now figure baseball blogging will be good for my mental health, which continually requires nurturing. I’ll find some apparently insignificant news and make into a mountain of information, or simply reflect on a baseball thought or two.

No harm can be done, right? No one is reading anyway.

Mike, Manny and Junior Who?

Recent happenings surrounding Mike Piazza, Manny Ramirez and Ken Griffey Jr. caused me pause when considering the perception of Junior’s career.

PIazza recently retired, finishing as, in the opinion of many, the games best hitting catcher. I have memories of watching piercing line drives off the bat of Johnny Bench, so I place Piazza second and nearly third; a Yoigiism ahed of Mr. Berra.

Manny Ramirez has cruised past the 500-home run mark – Manny being Manny. Manny’s a little goofy and that may be a reason I’ve frequently left him off my fantasy baseball teams, much to the chegrin of me. He’s been a consistent masher of homers and RBI throughout his career and appears to have a lot of mashing left in his bats.

Now, take a look at Ken Griffey Junior. Finally, the kid gets to 600 home runs. I think it took him about thirty years. It seems that long agosince he was a shining star playing his games in the middle of the night somewhere north of Los Angeles. The Mariners were a sinking ship, then along came Junior.

Griffey ostensibly left the Seattle Mariners partly because Alex Rodriguez’s star was shining brighter. Off to Cincinnati he goes, for redder pastures. He was to be the superstar of the Reds. Fans across the country waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . for Ken Griffey Junior to light up the sky with bombs bursting in air, over Ohio.

It’s never happened. Has Junior been a star in Cincinnati? Have the Reds won anything more than half their games since his arrival? Do LIttle Leaguers think of Ken Griffey Junior as anyone more than some outfielder on the Reds?

Griffey will get his due. He’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. More importantly, he’ll be a Hall of Fame product of the Steroid Era. After he retires and the five-year Hall of Fame waiting period begins ticking away, perusing of his career will begin and his huge youngster-era numbers will come more to light; the body of his work will rise to the top, where the cream of the crop belongs. 

Fantasy “go-figures” frustrate fanatics

Attempting to time hot and cold streaks of baseball players, grasping for rotisserie success, is like trying to take a hot shower with cold water. It doesn’t work unless your sense of hot and cold differs from reality.

Take Little Joey Mauer – please. I was willing to live with his parade of singles if the parade took awhile to end. It lasted about three days, which isn’t lengthy enough to hear all the bands play. Now, the screaming singles are being caught thin Colorado outfield air. Mauer is going back to the pine at least until he hits one home run and by then his average better be George Brett-like.

Take Alfonso Soriano – quickly; oops-too late. Fonsie is as streaky as they come and he’s been ridiculous lately. He smashed four home runs in two days and lit up the Wrigley scoreboard. It’s Sunday and roster change day for most fantasy leagues. Do you want to bet on continued Cub crushing with Alfonso, or trust his inevitable reverting to slumpdom?

Go figure!

Smoltzy a Johnny come lately?

I’m not sure how John Smoltz is viewed on the national baseball scene. I’ve always considered him a very good pitcher, not necessarily a great one. I’ve changed my mind.

The Atlanta Braves ace right handed hurler recently became the first pitcher in major league history to notch 100 saves, and 3,000 strikeouts. There’s a difficult feat for you, baseball fans. He was the Braves’ closer for four full seasons, limiting his strikeout opportunities, and racking up over 100 saves during the relatively brief time he was slamming the door on opponents, is exceptional.

And, lest we forget, he has over 200 wins and a career ERA in the 3.25 range. 

I saw Smoltzy pitch in maybe the best baseball game I’ve ever seen - Game 7 of the 1991 World Series against the Twins. Jack Morris pitched ten innings of shutout ball to beat the Braves. Smoltz pitched the other half of the masterpiece, but fell one step behind Blackjack.

John Smoltz will be a Hall of Famer.  

Cable disabled . . . fantasy unable

I moved my home last week and as a result of  poor service from Comcast, found myself without cable TV and Internet service for a few days. Fantasy baseball life is not the same without the convenience of technology – but I survive.

In fact, I thrived. I listened to the Twins on the radio, one of my favorite pastimes, even when TV is available. (Dan Gladden, by the way, is a great analyst – if you know what it is he’s tying to say. Grammar and baseball don’t by necessity belong together.) And, I reunited myself with morning-after newspaper boxscores.

The glory days of boxscores in our local rag are likely behind us. Heck, you can get boxscores on-line during games, updated instantaneously. Anticipation of results for your favorite fantasy studs and duds has gone by the wayside.  Why wait.

Well, waiting was fun. I went to bed a few nights not knowing much of my daily fantasy fate. I couldn’t wait to get to a store and buy a newspaper the next morning. I poured over the boxscores like a little kid in a candy store; opening a handful of bubble-gum filled baseball card packs.

The tech world is great, and makes the fantasy sports world go ’round. A pause in the need-to-know habit was refreshing, and reminded me how OK life will be if I miss an evening or two of instant information.