49er16: I made the mistake of going to the Giants fanfest this weekend. I say "mistake" because A) it's always insanely crowded and B) it always fires me up for the season and then I crash cruelly back to reality when I realize the season is still 7 weeks away.
The Colonel: The crowds are the reason why I don't go to that event anymore. As for baseball fever, I always get it when I read stories about teams reporting to spring training only to come crashing back to reality as well because the season is 7 weeks away. I wish baseball would cut down the number of spring training games these teams play. The Giants play a game for basically 6 weeks straight in Arizona. That's a little ridiculous to me.
49er16: And then they come back to the Bay Area to play against the A's for three more long games. Just start the fucking season already! I don't need to watch a scrub who will probably only make the roster in September.
The Colonel: What's your thoughts on the World Baseball Classic? It will at least keep us busy during spring training but it's still just a bastard version of the World Cup.
49er16: I kinda feel the same way. Good filler during the days when the NCAA Tournament isn't on and before the baseball season starts, but it's not something I'm just dying to watch. Hopefully it's a little more competitive that the Japanese dominated past. Japan didn't dominate the Pacific rim with that much authority in the 1940's. /dennis miller'd
The Colonel: If you're going to go with a Dennis Miller style of joke, you have to mention Tammy Faye Baker and how she looked like the Crypt Keeper.
49er16: All these posts coming out of the Miami Marlins fanfest from this weekend just flat out depresses me. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen fan apathy as bad as it is in Miami right now. They have all the reasons to be apathetic, but damn that just looks lonely and depressing.
The Colonel: I love how Loaria sends out that David Samson guy to basically do a Frank Drebin impersonation and say, "Alright, nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. We swear dumping salary is in the best interests of the team. Nothing to see here. Literally there is no one to see anything here."
49er16: "I swear we do everything baseball related in the best interests of the team!" Yeah and I just ate a piece of pie because it was "in the best interests of my body."
The Colonel: You have to pay to read the rest of this article but I like how it describes that having the best farm system in baseball doesn't mean your team is going to be successful. Look at the Kansas City Royals who a couple of years ago had "the best farm system ever!" and they still didn't reach the playoffs. Farm system rankings don't mean anything. They just give someone like Keith Law a job.
49er16: Development once they reach the majors is huge. The adjustments these guys have to make is key. Some guys like Mike Trout and Buster Posey take right off, Brandon Wood was a huge bust. It's one of the reasons why I don't follow the minor leagues and I take minor league numbers with a grain of salt. You don't know if these guys are really going to succeed.
The Colonel: I don't trust minor league numbers at all. I can't remember the guy's name but I remember a prospect being a OBP machine in the minors and he came up and started hacking away and never approached those OBP numbers. Minor league numbers don't mean a thing.
49er16: Can you believe there's power rankings already? The players haven't even officially reported yet!
The Colonel: Well we're doing another one of these posts again. I'm sure the audience of this blog is already tired of baseball.
49er16: Never!
The Colonel: Jonah Keri wrote a post on the bad baseball contracts and there's poor Barry Zito ranked ahead of contracts like Albert Pujols. Yes Zito is overpaid, but this is the last year of that deal and he's only a year older than Pujols who is in the 2nd year of his ridiculous contract.
49er16: And you could say Zito actually had the better season than Pujols. The Giants will never live down that Zito and neither will Sabean even though it wasn't Sabean that wanted Zito. That was a Peter McGowan deal all the way through and one of the reasons the other owners kicked him out.
The Colonel: I didn't like how McGowan was treated on his way out. The man saved the Giants from moving and was key to getting AT&T Park built and the other owners treated him like yesterday's garbage and threw him out. Disgraceful if you ask me.
49er16: Bill Nuekom also got kicked to the curb and all he was trying to do was make the team better. I do hate the Giants ownership sometimes.
There is no more useless sporting event than the World Baseball Classic. I've seen maybe three innings of play out of the previous ones.
ReplyDeleteI probably won't watch much of it, but I will tune in if there's nothing else on.
DeleteThe problem with the WBC is that it feels a little too forced.
DeleteThat's exactly it. I wish more players would follow Verlander's lead and just opt not to play.
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