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74 punchies and 9 BBs...that is an entire line-up of Carlos Pegueros. I'm sorry...but this can't be allowed to happen. Ever. When MLB finally decides to instill a salary floor, we'll see some competitive balance.
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Tacoma Rain, taking his own cyber-life in his hands, speaks of He Who Must Not Be Named:
I know we are sooo much better than the Astros, BUT what IF.... Then what?
Do we lynch Z? Is it Wedgie's fault? Can we trade Morales already?
Life has this wonderful way of giving you unexpected scenarios...
......
Silentpadna and Dr. D have been pleasantly jousting with Benihana since about 2002; usually he's been about a 3 or a 4 on the 1-10 scale from |-- Cynic -- to -- Sunshine and Rainbows --| .
It's a treat to see him weighing in with his granite-steady point of view:
We're 3-4, and have only been outscored by 3 runs so far, despite some pretty abysmal performances from our 3, 4 and 5. Plus, now we get to come home and get healthy with a dose of the Stro's. The M's April schedule is a very difficult one, with series against the A's (94 wins), White Sox (85), Texas (93), Detroit, (88), LAA (89) and Baltimore (93). The two series against the 55 game winning Astros is where we need to make some hay. I'll take 5-1 against Houston and hope for a .500 month. Then the reinforcements will start to arrive.
I can't help but imagine a mid-July rotation of Felix, Iwakuma, Hultzen, Erasmo, Paxton dealing us down the stretch... just need to stay in contention. First away series: mission accomplished.
.......
Baker also, in his column, looks The Kids' OBP squarely in the eye but shrugs that it will be "at least a month" before any real assessments can be made.
(Am just guessing here, but if we repeat the readers' tip about the Times' paywall -- private browsing defeats the cookie, they say -- we doubt Geoff will object. The Times doesn't share its revenue with him, and perhaps through the summer, some of us will cave in and subscribe.
From an ethical standpoint, that being Matthew 7:12 in this gray-area case, I personally wouldn't mind if readers "worked around" my paywall for a short time, if (a) they were considering subscription and (b) they weren't systematically working to defeat my long-term objective. If I were grim-faced about the paywall, I'd be setting up something a tadbit harder to "sample."
Hopefully he'll chime in if he has a different take. His bosses are watching, so we'll take silence for what it's worth ...)
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=== 2012 Angels ===
On the morning of Saturday, April 27, 2012, last year's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim had 6 wins and 14 losses. First the Yankees, then the A's, then the Orioles, and then the Rays had left them for dead.
After that date, they won 83 games and lost 59, contending for the title. That was despite the fact that they never did get their starting rotation together.
That's one picture, selected because it's worth 1,000 words. You could find teams, every year, who get off to slow starts and then catch fire. The M's have played 7 of 162 games; if this were an NBA game, the score of the M's season would literally be 6-4 with 9:30 left in the first quarter.
If the M's lose 2 of 3 to Houston, the score will be 8-4 with 9:00 left in the first. I don't suppose you walk out of the building in that situation.
...........
That said, I'm liking the fact that the Astros are hitting .199/.234/.286 with 74 strikeouts and 9 walks.
Comments
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the fact that the BOR starters get a shout at that .520 OPS, while Felix and Kuma start the Mariners off against the Rangers. I'm also liking the opportunity to redeem themselves against Phil Humber as a starter.
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http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/30/2536599/meet-the-lastros-al-wes...
Playing against a team this bad is kind of stressful, because anything less than a sweep is losing ground to at least one other team in the division. We can be sure that Texas, the Orc Horde and the hated Angels will get their licks in, and it is obvious that a wild card berth could be awarded just for consistently demolishing Houston. The Mariners look like a .500 ball team. For .500 ball teams, a few opportunities, tragedies, or injuries make, break or define the season. The Astros look like that kind of opportunity.
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Bazooka Joe is the guy to watch. He got beat up in ST and thrashed in start #1. He's 6 weeks into the season and has yet to show anything. Tonight's the night, Joe! Let's see it. We've got 6.5 Big invested in you.....and some Diaper Dandies* beating on the door. Tonight would be a good night to unleash the fury, don't-cha think?
Go team,
* Credit to Dick Vitale
moe
moe
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I know doodly about the NL, and haven't looked at their lineup whatsoever.
Going to be great if you can hang around this summer. You knew your other account was cleared?
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But we hope that everybody realizes the odds are ALWAYS against a 3-0 result... lot of Pascal's Theory involved in baseball, where the batted balls wind up.
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In the US Chess Championship Closed, the grandmasters HATE it when an amateur qualifies from the US Open and finishes with 2 draws and 11 losses. The pressure to win is uncomfortable; even if you win, you've just done what everybody else has done.
Personally I like the novelty of the "exhibition games" against an AAA-quality team ... assuming that the Lastros are actually that bad. Are they?
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Including 103, 107, and 100 the last three years.
He should be fine. Doesn't look like there's anything wrong with him. Can't imagine he won't be a solid #4 starter; the first-week reactions to our rotation seem out of place.
Will be interesting to see if Montero's starting, though... ah. Here's the GameDay.
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I apparently had a slightly different password than I thought...I thought I was getting bad account errors because I was booted.
Anyway, good to be back in my own name.
And yes, I think the Astros are as bad as we think. I believe this could be the first team since the 2003 Tigers to be truly submarginal...in fact this Astros club has a legitimate shot to unseat the NY Mets as the worst team in modern baseball history.
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Forgot about the Montero/Saunders tiff (or something). Will be iunteresting.
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Nice game! Good call, Doc!
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They just had trouble connecting on the signs a whole bunch of times in that first game...Montero is learning Saunders...stuff like that happens sometimes early on.
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($0.02 from a professional web developer & SSI lurker)
You, as a human being browsing the Web, are in no way morally obligated to turn cookies on. If the Times wants to restrict their content, they'll force people to create an account and log in to see the premium content. It's that simple. Until they do that (which they probably won't because they want search engines to crawl all their articles), you are more than welcome to circumvent the sales pop-ups by using a private browsing session.
Inferring from the technical implementation, their business model is like the "pay what you want" services that indie musicians are using to sell their albums: if you like it, we'd appreciate a donation, but we're still going to let you listen for free if you prefer. Or maybe it's more like the Best Buy model of tricking uninformed shoppers into buying $40 "premium" HDMI cables when the same cable costs $3 on Amazon. I don't know.
Whether or not this approach will work for the Times is none of my business, but in the meantime don't feel bad browsing the web using a private, cookieless, no-tracking browser session. You are not a dirty hacker for turning off cookies, just a cautious Internet user.
(The point I'm trying to make is that this is a different kind of issue than pirating software, or downloading "free" HBO episodes, or "borrowing" your neighbor's cable feed, or watching NFL games over an illegal stream, etc.)
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Not sure it closes out the issue, but it moves the discussion forward about 20 yards. Thanks J.S.
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I agree that it's still a conscience/gray area, too. Just wanted to point out that their technical "solution" is kind of inane. As a developer, these kinds of things bother me. :-)