Yoenis Cespedes of the Athletics is the current MLB home run leader with … two. He hit this mammoth shot against Jason Vargas and the Mariners last night. Here's the latest from baseball's two West divisions…
- The Giants’ ability to hold on to Tim Lincecum and Madison Bumgarner down the line depends largely on having prospects work out as low-cost, high-impact players, writes Tyler Kepner of the New York Times.
- Rangers GM Jon Daniels expressed some concern about his team's bench when speaking to Calvin Watkins of ESPN Dallas yesterday. "Listen, no club is flawless," he said, "and not to suggest that's our only one, [but] we got some guys on the bench that have some ability … if it's something we need to address we've shown in the past we will."
- Jamie Moyer will start for the Rockies today, but GM Dan O'Dowd told Troy Renck of The Denver Post that having the 49-year-old left-hander on the roster is about more than on-field production. "He brings a set of intangibles that will really benefit our club and our pitching staff. He loves to share information," said the GM.
- The Angels could make the playoffs without Albert Pujols, says Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. He says the club has enough talent "that even a slow start by their superstar won’t doom them."
You’re not going to go far if 49 year old Jamie Moyer is the number 2 starter in your staff.
Pujols goes 0 fer3 and all of a sudden their talking about slow starts.
Seriously… the first game of 162 and Pujols is “off to a slow start”. It is pretty laughable.
Almost as laughable as the comments below the article from Rangers fans saying that Pujols is lazy, the Royals owned us until they took Chen out, that the Rangers looked much better in their first game, and etc. Umm, it was a 5-0 win and Weaver was lights out. I’ll take it.
I was having a hard time believing Chen could get that far into the game without getting rocked. Anaheim hitters just kept chasing and chasing his pitches outside the zone. He isn’t a rubbish thrower of the Moyer class, but gets hitters to bite on the outside, then starts throwing further and further outside of the K zone and Anaheim hitters were obliging him and not knocking Anaheim at all. Then Kendirick think it was? Or was it Morales later in the game? Hit that Hard shot that fell just short of leaving to R/C and just died at the wall, was about they could manage off of him hit really hard.
What Rangers fans are saying anything about the Angels game yesterday? I haven’t seen one comment about that…
“He brings a set of intangibles that will really benefit our club and our pitching staff. He loves to share information,” said the GM. Well, gee Mr O’Dowd so does the coaching staff. Furthermore, it should be interesting to see how having Guts and Moyer as the Rockies #1 and #2 all season long. The thing about Moyer it’s going to be feast or famine if he stays healthy all season long. I type this because he will either pitch a no hitter (which he almost did in 2010) or give up 9 runs in the first inning (which he also did in 2010). There will be no in between with this guy. Some teams will clobber him and others will be mesmerized by his garbage :)
Honestly, I hope he does well, I think it’s pretty groovy that he can still do it!
PS It was pretty wild looking at his statistics on Baseball Reference the drop down menu for season by season stats goes all the way back to 1986. He might be the only player from the 80’s still playing meaningful baseball.
Vizquel debuted in 89. 2 guys from the 80s are left.
While Moyer may be feast or famine, I don’t think it’s fair to represent it so dramatically. And #2 in the rotation won’t mean much of anything once the season gets going.
Morosi stands to be very disappointed in his predictions this season.
Cespedes styled that home run way too much for my liking.
Cuban players do that in their league and it is normal. I actually was watching the A’s game for a short bit when he hit that monster shot.. A’s announcer a bit later said it went.. 460′ think it was??? If that was correct.. Who cares if he watched it anyway hitting one that far and it was only his second career MLB blast.
He will pay for watching it and really.. Was it as long as Ortiz used to before this spring? He didn’t flip his bat or anything either.
He did get some chin music for watching it, and he gave a nice little stare to king felix. Later that game, he hit ANOTHER monster home run, he didn’t watch it either
While i agree that he did watch it a little too much, he DID come out after the game and apologized for watching it so long and said he’ll work on not doing that.
And for that, I give him mad props.
Seriously, the Angels are going to be VERY good this year. It’s really hard to argue (please give it a shot if you can).
I’ll try, but it will be pretty tough:
Basically if their lineup doesnt come through early on in the game they could struggle. It’s a good lineup but after Albert, theres not another superstar (Kendrick and Morales are great but not stars IMO) and I think they are counting on Hunter and Wells for more than a WS contender would like to. The bullpen isnt fully established, Walden is great, but streaky so thats another concern that isnt damning, but is still an issue. That and the Abreu situation. It’s just not something you want in a clubhouse. They are better off not having him and by DHing him, they are attempting to limit one of his weaknesses (fielding) because if they do put him out in right field, that is a huge liability.
So yeah the Angels are gonna be fantastic with that rotation and Albert and win 92-96 games, but I dont think they can hang with the Rangers when all is said and done, but that’s why they play the game.