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Well, let's settle down and wait a spell to start our new season party. Now that things count, it might take a while to see that Spring Training offense, and those Spring Training stolen bases, and that spring Training C.J. Cron slugging. The Angels opened with a 4-2 loss in Oakland and only Yunel Escobar (2 for 4) and Mike Trout (2 for 4 with 1 HR, a Run Scored, and 2 RBI) were their usual selves. I hope. I hope that the other bats were not what will turn out to be their usual selves.
Oakland Alameda Stadium has an overall capacity of 63,132. Current MLB capacity is 35,067. The A's sold out last night. That suggests that the tarp family purchased 28,065 seats...........
Recap the rest of Opening Day here...........
Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Well, we've had 14 games of baseball now (the White Sox and Tigers have yet to play. Rainout.) And we have already had 33 home runs. I have been keeping an eye out on Trout, who has not made any point to display much power this spring. We have had walk offs and grand slams. We have had moon shots and HR's from both sides of the plate. 4 players already have 2 HR's, with 1 of those guys being a pitcher. And one team had a 4-homer game. But as I commented yesterday, "Mike Trout has hit a baseball over the outfield fence just 3 times against live pitching dating back to September 4th, 2016. 145 At-Bats.". I wrote next how I was hoping to jinx myself, "I would love to end up looking stupid for posting this comment when we get to tomorrow morning." Well, here I am, happily looking stupid..............
Victor Rojas publishes post #2 on his new blog.............
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Everywhere In Baseball
Deadspin does a focused lock on the Padres, and points us to the bullshit. The Pares are following the now time honored tradition of the tank. It's worked well for the Astros, and the Cubs. The Braves are the next team to be expected to come bobbing back to the surface, with the Phillies and Brewers not far behind. In this past offseason, the Padres tied the rock around their ankles and jumped overboard. The Padres this year are gonna be, uh, cheap. deadspin links to USA Today, which puts SDP at $34.5MM. Cots has them at $69MM. Either way, cheap! And here is the point of the Deadspin article: the way teams tank, by dumping talent to accept losing as a process to reload via high draft picks, teams sacrifice veterans. They sacrifice their proven talent so as to not risk wins. And, in so doing, they sacrifice their higher payroll burdens. But, in the end, they sacrifice veteran players. This is how baseball is going young. And the Player's Union, which has quite a history of neglecting the up and coming talent not yet a part of their union, just locked their membership into a corner for 4 years as those very kids are more than happy to grab a nice payday at the expense of some guys who didn't much care for them down on the farm...........
One of the Padres tricks to try and remain respectable is to run Christian Bethancourt out there as both a catcher AND a pitcher. Yesterday he had his first mound appearance of the season, and it could have gone a tad better if the Pads are really looking for respectability,...........
FanGraphs gives us two pitchers in which we should already be very interested, but or two opposing reasons. Zack Greinke is still sliding, while Madison Bumgarner is still rising..........
Big Time Plays in Baltimore. Manny Machado looking brilliant from deep 3B on one knee, and Jose Bautista showing his cannon, and then again Jose Bautista with a dive and a double up...........
Opening Day is over (for most), so let's have a freak out!...........
Well, I'll be darn. Looks like Yankee Nation has moved out of New York City..........
Golf has a rather long and sordid history of crowd-sourcing their officiating. And they are a pretty pissy lot. So what if other sports, including baseball, allowed for the same kind of couch-potato participation?..........
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The Duffle Bag
Javier Baez committed an error in his first game, and he raises a just cause, although stupidly unusual............First World Problems..........Eyespy knows better than to allow Hawaii to even rate a rank as any kind of meaningful time zone for sports. His is the time zone that MLB blacks out for pretty much everybody...........Oakland doing Oakland things............Baseball lost an old-school scout. Being old-school don't mean he was a bad guy, at all..........Hottest hitter stat of the day..........ESPN may be going a bit overboard trying to showcase their stat love.............(h/t UniWatch) How to pick out a glove, like the pros do it..........
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