tepid participation

-perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that I really fricking like baseball and all(most) seems right with the world when I’m watching it, talking about it, reading about it, or researching it.  Ahhhhh.

-small sample sizes RULE for making significant, knee-jerk observations!

-We learned that Yoenis Cespedes has legitimate, big-boy power.  He probably shouldn’t have watched the first few seconds of his monster shot last week, but if you’d just launched a ball 1/3 of the way to Palo Alto, you’d have scoped a peek as well. Anxious to see pitchers make adjustments to him.

-We learned that the Red Sox have closer issues until the return of Andrew Bailey.  Those were some big leads they blew and it can’t be ignored. Also, Josh Bard’s slider (along with Alexi Ogando’s) is awesome. Having said that, two-pitch starting pitchers don’t have a long history of success.  I’m ready to see how this works out for him.

-The Orioles helmets look cool with the new/old bird

-Staying on the sartorial slide, how great did the Astros look in their Colt 45’s?

-Speaking of the ‘stros, take a look at their lineup. If you remove a couple of obvious names, you could tell me it was the roster for a NYC summer league basketball team and I would scan the list and shrug in agreement.

-The Orioles’ Dylan Bundy has a chance to be special.  Everybody was talking about how polished he was coming out of high school last year.  I’d like to see the number of times ANY kid graduating from Owasso High School near Tulsa was described as “polished”. Really excited to see him pitch sometime soon.

-Ozzie Guillen- man, Ozzie, man.

-We learned that the Mariners have a frightening trifecta of young arms coming through their system, my favorite of which is Taijuan Walker.  Seen lots of tape of him and he is crazy fun to watch.  He sits about 95 and has a huge, hammer curve.  Also, a quick Google search reveals a signed photo of him on eBay for $14.99.  You should buy it.

-Taijuan Walker is amazing and has potential to be amazing-er, but if you want to see what it looks like if EVERYTHING  goes perfectly in his development, you can just watch Justin Verlander every five days.  Holy shit.  Raise your hand if you have 3 fucking near 80 grade pitches. I know this is an obvious observation, but it still bears repeating.

-Mike Trout is not better than those other guys in the Angels outfield? umm, ok.

-Are the Twins going to lose 100 games. Prolly.

-the good news for Twins fans is that in 3 short years, Miguel Sano will be playing first base for them and with his 80 grade power he’ll be able to hit at least, what, 15 home runs in your park? (but he’ll hit a bazillion homers in other people’s parks)

-apparently the NL Cy Young is going to come down to a vote between Chad Billingsly, Barry Zito, and Jeff Samardzija (the Cubs dude/ND receiver with the sneaky “z”).

-We learned that Yu Darvish is a pretty competitive SOB with great stuff. I always wondered what it would look like to see a pitcher throw with 128,000,000 people on his back.

-Got to believe that the shoulder is the next great conquest for orthopedic sports medicine.  ‘Cause every NBA player has a new ACL, and Tommy John surgery has become the orthodontist visit for MLB pitchers.

-on a sad note, Google “Stephen Gant”, then go tell someone you love ’em.  It’s still just a game.  I’ve been gutted reading about this kid this week.

Well that’s pretty much our first run through the rotation.  Been lovin’ chatting some of you up on Twitter.  Feel free to send me emails or whatever.  Enjoy the games and life.

-Tepid