Mets doing well in their Florida "Home" opener. Marlins fans don't even show up for their home openers. Santana is doing a fine job of picking apart the Marlins.

Barry Zito continues to show why he will go down as a worse FA signing than Mike Hampton, giving up four runs in four innings thus far in L.A., and just throwing terribly.

This little bit from the Miami Herald was entertaining (and excerpted on SI.com, lest you think I give a @&#*& what's going on in Dade County):

Look for a webgem by SS Raphael Furcal, making the anti-Jeter play, ranging far to his left, doing the 360 turn and getting the runner at first. He has a gun of an arm, to say the least.

Zito, what a disappointment. Nice guy and all that.

Eric Gagne just gave up a single, a walk, and a home run an the Cubs tied the Brewers in the bottom of the 9th. The game was 0-0 at the end of eight. Kerry Wood gave up the three runs to the Brewers. I guess Gagne is up to his old tricks.

Pavano?

Pavano definitely sucked, but looking at the situations as a whole, San Francisco is much worse off, IMO. Pavano got four years $40m with a $2m buyout. The Yankees easily absorbed that suck, and it was relatively short term. Zito, OTOH, pulled down the largest contract for a pitcher in baseball history (7 years/$126M) and gets $7m just in his buyout after the 2013 season, unless he throws 200 IP in 2013 or 400 IP in 2012-13 or 600 IP 2011-13, in which case that $18m becomes guaranteed. All that for a guy who was below league average in year one of the contract, and has done nothing to make people think he will rebound. The Giants are probably the team with the worst long term outlook in all of baseball.

That home run he gave up to Kent was an 84 mph fastball grooved right down the middle. I agree about Giants having the worst long term outlook in baseball as long as Sabean is GM. Instead of underfunding the draft on a yearly basis, why sign Aarond Rowand to a five year deal when the team has little chance of competing in the next five years. Pumping some of Rowand's 60 million dollars into the farm system would help the team a lot more than he would.

Granted, I haven't seen much evidence showing that Sabean can manage a draft, but that's a later problem

Right, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain won't help.

The Astros, however, thank God they're going to be awesome with all that influx of talent coming up.

Didn't they try to trade Lincecum for Alex Rios?

Pence and Bourn are terrible though.

As much as I like those guys SF has a lot of work to do before they help them get anywhere.

i.e.

2007 Matt Cain 200.0 IP, 3.65 ERA, 7-16 Record


edits: Curll I'm assuming you're being sarcastic

Red Sox Fan 2 I'm assuming you're not being sarcastic. They didn't trade him

try

What a choke job in the Pirates/Braves game. Braves score 5 in the ninth to tie..after a potential bonehead play of the year.

From USA Today, courtesy of a quick google search

December 5- "Giants GM Brian Sabean indicated that the Jays' offer of Alex Rios for Tim Lincecum remains on the table."

So it was considered but rejected

Right, thats the worst part - there was every reason to believe that this was going to be what you got from Zito.

If I were a Giants fan I would probably have tried to shoot Brian Sabean by now, and Zito wouldnt even be my top gripe.


Those are two excellent young pitchers, and the Giants farm system is better than the Stros... BUT Houston actually has a major league offense, while San Francisco has NOTHING. They look like an epically bad offense in 2008. They have nothing to build around besides Lincecum and Cain... compare that to Houston's core...

MLB should really take over the San Fransisco franchise, fire everyone and sell it to the highest bidder. It is that poorly run right now.

Other things of note:
-Rod Gardenhire is a terrible manager. I cant believe that 1) He batted Carlos Gomez leadoff - showing no understanding of how runs are scored; and 2) the move friggin pays off! Good news for the rest of the league b/c it probably means he'll keep him there for... ever... and when he's hitting .240 with a .290 OBP everyone can knock Morneau and Mauer for having down years and bad RBI totals...

-Man, the Orioles and Giants may be the two worst teams Ive seen since the 119 loss 2003 Tigers. What's funny is that the O's are on the way up at least, while the Giants still may not have bottomed out...

Jake Peavy is 7.1 innings into a shutout at home on ESPN2. Against Houston, though.

Make that 7.2 innings...

I'd pick the Giants as worse off than the Astros right now. The Astros have good, young players at catcher, CF, RF -- All-stars at 1B, LF, and SS -- and Wiggington isn't terrible at 3B. Matsui definitely sucks, but the lineup is not too shabby.

However, after Oswalt, the rotation is absolutely pathetic. They can thank Purpura (who might have been Sabean and Bavasi's rival for worst GM) for that -- not offering arbitration at key times that ended up costing them valuable draft picks. That and signing Woody Williams.

Peavy only pitched 7 innings.

7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 4K, 3BB

watched that game, Peavy was his usual dominant self.

Oswalt gave up 11 hits in 5+ innings...... and beyond him they have very little in the rotation.

Houston could be very bad.

Brian Bannister is flat out shutting down the Tigers right now -- six scoreless innings of two-hit ball. A classic example of brains over brawn.

This kid is really growing on me. You should really interview him, he would be great.

I had him picked as a guy who was going to drop off pretty sharply this year... but now I keep getting this feeling that he's going to just keep up the success.

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6547

Im a jack***

My apologies.

In fact, Im pretty sure I already read this interview...

Nice.

Reading it now. I had Bannister in a fantasy league when he was a Mets rookie and expected too much after his first few starts...

Rockies beat the Padres 2-1 yesterday in 22 innings. The game lasted until about 4:15 AM Eastern time.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2..._1&c_id=mlb

I was listening to the Brewers v. Cards game yesterday (4/22) on the computer/radio.

The Brewers finally won the game in 12 innings but how frustrating it must be to manage the Milwaukee Brewers!? Let me elaborate: the SP (Parra) left after 5 innings with an 8-3 lead, and the bullpen just melted. Milwaukee used a total of 6 pitchers from their bullpen and not one of them was effective. Especially Gagne who hit the first batter he faced, then gives up a single & finally Pujols drives in the tying run off of him.

So that got me to thinking, here's the list of pitchers who threw out of the pen for Milwaukee in the game (in order by 08' salary):

McClung - $770,000
Shouse - $2m
Mota - $3.2m
Torres - $3.33m
Riske - $4m
Gagne - $10m

That's >$23m

Just for the sake of comparison:

Delcarman - $421,000
Aardsma - $403,250
Papelbon - $775,000
Lopez - $840,000
Okajima - $1.275m
Timlin - $3m

vs $6.7m

Crazy!

Also, the Brewers are tied for 2nd in MLB with 5 blown saves and their relievers are 18th in MLB in ERA at 4.34 (through 4/22).

I am pretty sure that at least of three of those blown Brewer saves are Gagnes.

Is anyone watching the Dodgers/Rockies game? I just turned it on and there is an ambulance on the field near home plate and they went to commercials. Anyone know who got hurt?

Edit: Apparently the home plate ump got hurt somehow.

Edit #2 The catcher got crossed up and the ump got hit in the facemask with a Brad Penny fastball. It looked like they were concered about a neck injury.

ESPN has Gagme with four blown saves (and it's still April).

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?playerId=4181

Keep an eye on the Diamondbacks game on Monday. Max Scherzer is making his first start. He pitched in relief in his first major league appearance this week and threw 4.1 perfect innings with 7 K's. He was immediately promoted to the starting rotation.

Anyone with access to the Mets game might want to turn it on... I'm just saying

Edit: It's the 7360th Mets regular season game ever.

Edit #2: and the first batter after I post this hits a line drive single to break up the no hitter leading off the 7th.

Aaron Freaking Boone, right? Edit, Yankees are getting Kazmired. 4 - 0, bottom 4.

<Bump>

Doug Davis of Arizona has given up 1 less baserunner through 6 innings than Lackey gave up through 8 tonight.

If you have Directv and EI it's channel 748 for the Diamondbacks broadcast.

The Padres are woefully inept at baseball.

Oh, and you mean TWO less baserunners...

(Drew HBP, Pedroia BB)

Correct. I forgot the HBP.

Edit: I go out of my way not to say he's perfect and the D'Backs announcers are talking about it. Then the D'Backs make the last out in the inning and when they show the linescore they have the 0 under hits for San Diego highlighted. I don't really believe saying it makes any difference* but it's a fun baseball tradition.

* in spite of my post in tonights game thread where I used the words "no hitter" an estimated 47 times after the 8th inning.

Edit #2: Giles, who was 4-33 in his career against Davis, singles cleanly to center with 2 outs in the 7th to break up the perfect game.

2 hits for the Padres in the end; 3-0 Arizona.

Tigers and Indians are tied 12-12 in the bottom of the 10th. No wonder Detroit wanted Farnie.
Kelly Shoppach is 5-for-5 for the Indians.

Interesting save for Craig Hansen tonight, with an assist from Brandon Moss.

Hansen comes in for bottom of 11th, or maybe the 12th, with the Pirates having just taken a 2-0 lead over the Phillies. Hansen gets the first batter on a soft grounder back to the mound, then he walks two guys on five pitches apiece, most of them not even close. Chase Utley falls into an 0-2 hole, fouls off about three pitches, then drills a liner to the LCF gap. Moss races over and makes a diving catch, then relays to Freddy Sanchez who doubles Victorino off first for the game-ending DP.

Pittsburgh must be where old prospects go to die.

Minky learned something from the day A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's hands:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...sp&c_id=mlb