Now it has been a long time coming. Both in that I haven’t done a column in nearly 3 months. Why the long period of time? Regardless of the way that my Packers lost to the 49ers in the divisional playoff game a week later the column was released, it was still a decent season for the Green and Gold. I get my revenge on Christian Ponder (who is more of a pussy than anyone else that I know), on stealing who was my interest months before he stole her, Samantha Steele (now Ponder, now obviously the latter last name was better to me). Other than my revenge, the Packers even up their rivalry with the Vikings in the playoffs at 1-1. There is a point to this article.
Baseball has returned. Days are getting longer, Beer doesn’t freeze when you try to drink it, girls start to wear shorts, shirts (yes my guy friends, don’t lie you like it, I do too). Another year of hope for Cubs fans to break the curse of the Billy Goat, Yankee fans claim that this will be the year that they will win #28 (and fail), hot dogs will be consumed, baseballs will be thrown back in disgust, another year of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver destroying the great game of baseball (one idiotic word at a time). Here’s my overall thoughts on the season, and the season so far.
1. Yankees still suck. 2009 was the last great year of the Yankees opening their checkbook to players in a big way. CC Sabathia and Mark Texeira were the ones that took from going to small-time teams to the big show. Going to the Yankees that year you witnessed many things: the two players actually making an impact on the club, the last year that you witnessed an Alex Rodriguez actually being clutch and put up numbers like he was supposed to make, and the Yankees winning #27 of their overall World Series titles (of which I couldn’t watch ESPN for a month because they loved to give the Yanks so much slack, note this is before Tim Tebow came into their lives and destroyed the network).
Obviously the Yankee bandwagon has been small these past few months for good reasons. Their players get more injured than an average Yao Ming season. It’s a fact that they have old players (Kuroda 38, Pettite 40, Jeter 38, Overbay 36, A-Rod 37, Youkilis 34). The average age of the team is 30 years old. Certainly no spring chickens on the team. 7 players on the disabled list.
2. Tigers bullpen is still trash. Biggest reason why they couldn’t win a title last season. As much as starting pitching is key to winning games, relief pitching deserves as much responsibility to winning games. For example, if you work in a McDonalds, your shift is about to end, business has been good, plenty of great compliments from the customers, working area is clean, you head out, and the coworker puts in the wrong order for a customer, bad example I know. That’s what relief pitching is essentially, you keep a good thing going for the one who came before you and you don’t try to screw it up for the person. The team’s ERA is 2.60 (which is good when you think of it) but here’s the relief pitchers ERA (Smyly 13.50, Downs 6.75, Coke 9.00). The season is young I know, these sort of problems happen normally, I feel the Tigers will be alright.
3. Houston Astros. The Astros as of right now are 1-2 on the season. The logo is nice, the stadium is still pretty cool (AT&T Park is probably my favorite ballpark). On Opening Night last Sunday, these Astros won a game against the Rangers. 8-2 in fact. After that, the honeymoon was over. Losing to the Rangers 7-0 and 0-4 in 2 days was heartbreaking I figure. My overall thoughts on them going from NL to AL is so-so. I personally liked to see the Brewers go back to the AL since that was where they started as a club (established in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots then moving to Milwaukee in 1970, entered the National League in 1998).
4. Red Sox. As a fan of the Red Sox, I find this year to be a year where we could go almost anywhere in the division. First or last. The division is open. Somewhere we could get closure to the horrid season that was 2012. Jackie Bradley Jr., already is a household name, starting pitching looks good, hitting is impressive, we could go all the way in a possible way.
That’s all that I have for right now.
-Tom
darthretro 