All of the familiar faces
Posted by: Chad Jennings - Posted in Misc on Mar 27, 2010 
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Austin Jackson and Johnny Damon will be the Tigers first two hitters this afternoon, and Phil Coke is scheduled to pitch out of the bullpen.
After Nate Robertson starts for Detroit, Coke, Joel Zumaya, Ryan Perry, Brad Thomas and Robbie Weinhardt are scheduled to pith. Thomas and Coke are lefties.
Here’s the Tigers lineup
Austin Jackson CF
Johnny Damon LF
Magglio Ordonez RF
Miguel Cabrera 1B
Carlos Guillen DH
Brandon Inge 3B
Gerald Laird C
Scott Sizemore 2B
Adam Everett SS
And just to clear up some confusion from the previous post… Kevin Russo hasn’t shown up in minor league camp because he’s been needed in big league camp. He was sent down a few days ago, but he literally has yet to step foot on a minor league field.
can we assume Marty Foster is umpiring?
The Red Sox are back to picking guys out of the scrap heap, yet Jayson Stark loves ‘em.
Shocking!
2 through 6, those are some pretty darn good hitters the Tigers have.
Damon, Mags, Ordonez, and Inge are highly overrated
Yea, that Johhny Damon really sucks.
Here’s hoping Baseball Prospectus is dead wrong
“As BP’s injury expert Will Carroll wrote, “Joba may be remembered as the nadir of the ‘save young pitchers’ movement. Everything they did was to keep him healthy. Well, he is.” In other words, congratulations, Yankees. You got what you wanted, but lost what you had. “
In counting down to the brand new baseball season, I have chosen to watch the following baseball-related movies for the next seven nights:
1. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
2. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
3. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
4. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
5. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
6. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
7. Barry Levinson’s “The Natural”
World Series Ring Ceremony is April14. Someone send Will Carroll an invitation. Seems he forgot who won last year.
For a team that does so much “wrong”, the Yankees seem to win an awful lot.
I’m sick of pencil pushers like Carroll taking shots at the Yankees.
He should stick with wrongly predicting player injuries and playing with numbers.
He’s not qualified to predict how Joba, or any other 24 year old pitcher, will end up.
Looks like AJAX is doing well this spring. I hope he does well.
SJ, Pirates over or under 71 wins ?????
Pat,
I think over. I could see 73-77 wins out of them this year if they get Pedro Alvarez to the majors by June.
I saw about 7 or 8 people in the last thread say that the BP did not hurt Hughes. One question:
How do you know this? Are you basing this decision off a few ST starts?
this game isn’t on mlb tv,right?
SJ, Thanks…That was my call as well
LGY , How do you know it will ???? You must have you’re big soup spoon in hand and you’re looking for a pot to stir????
Pat,
I do not know either way. IMO it could have helped him, it could have hurt him, or it could have done nothing for him.
He has not spent a year in the rotation yet so I am trying to figure out what people are basing the conclusion on that it helped him.
LGY
I know it with as much certainty as the people who say that Joba can’t be a starter again if he pitches in the pen this year.
Roger
March 27th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
this game isn’t on mlb tv,right?
I know it’s on YES and the MLB Network has the Mets game.
Injury expert? Seriously? Like he has a masters in injuries? Pfft.
Hughes himself said that his stint in the bullpen helped him a lot.
That should end any argument on the subject.
“Phil and Joba are completely different pitchers and people, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect a stint in the pen to effect them in the same way. That’s the only caveat I would place on the idea of the pen being a quick fix.”
Really astute Betsy and those are the same things that are ruminating in my mind. Sometimes you need a different plan if you are dealing with different personalities.
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Pat, see Betsy’s point. I’m wondering about the same thing.
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Pat M I’m afraid that I have a social worker mentality and cannot pry that from my lifeview. I do see it in play at times with players, even though it’s the majors. There is handholding that takes place, be it in the form of a manager-to-player confidence talk, extra BP with Kevin Long, one player bolstering another.
By the way, here’s my latest NCAA tip. Tennessee.
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Pat M, puh-lease don’t make SJ any more sure of himself than he already is! (no offense SJ). Because he hit this one doesn’t mean he hits them all. Let me take you back to a situation last season when you and I were in concert – along with a number of other posters – and SJ was taking the extreme opposite view and was sure of his position. Things played out according to the way we thought it would. SJ is smarter than the average bear, yes, but also fallible.
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He went from an oft injured question mark to a dominant guy in the pen, helped the team win a WS and is now the 5th starter. You don’t think the stint in the pen did nothing for him?
How does one close the gaps he closed without being successful at the ML level? For Phil, his pen work served as the springboard to where he is right now.
“I’m sick of pencil pushers like Carroll taking shots at the Yankees. ”
It’s no coincidence that I found the Carrol link on ESPN’s website. I bookmarked it. It’s gonna be fun to send it back to him when the Yanks prove him wrong.
I should say “prove him wrong ,again”. Joba’s collecting his first ring at age 24.
LGY…..Go to Vegas Watch and give me what you consider the 5 best over / under picks..And please spare me of the B.P. bs…..I’m not holding anyone to their input, it’s just a consensus for my on the fence teams….
If I know LGY, it’s not soup, it’s seco de chivo right?
Man, this is kind of the Tigers opening day lineup isn’t it?
I’ve heard some good things about Scott Sizemore. I
Austin is definitely going to need his Red Bull playing CF between those two.
SJ,
I am not making any conclusions on his stint in the pen last year. IMO being in the rotation when Wang went down would have been better but I could very well be wrong about that.
I want to see what he does in the rotation this year before making any conclusions. Being named the 5 starter does not mean he has any success this year.
If for example he is pounding the zone with his fastball the pen probably was a big help. If he shows serious fatigue like Joba last year at 110, 120, whatever innings it could have hurt him.
“As BP’s injury expert Will Carroll wrote, “Joba may be remembered as the nadir of the ’save young pitchers’ movement. Everything they did was to keep him healthy. Well, he is.” In other words, congratulations, Yankees. You got what you wanted, but lost what you had. “
That just doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
I hurt for Joba because I see him as kind of lost at this point. I don’t think he had all of the supports in place as a lot of kids did coming up. I think a lot of craziness has caught up with him. Now more than ever he needs some really solid support and good guidance. Is there so much frenzy going on with all of the new players, getting things in order, shuffling the twenty percenters, that Joba is somehow getting lost in the shuffle?
I pray to God not. He’s a kid with needs as much as he is a ballplayer, maybe even more off the first than the second. I don’t want to see the needs ignored. Seriously. He’s ours gang. We want to take care of him in any way we need to.
all hughes has done is prove is he good out of the pen.
joba prove to be a serviceable starter and lights out as pen.
i love judging guys on st stats.
cc just got lit by minor leaguers.
he a bum
Pat,
I do not watch college basketball
Tricia, I lost 5 bets last night and dropped some bank as a result. early line has Tenn as a 2 point favorite….On the SJ matter, first off I was in the Hughes to the rotation camp as well….It’s just that SJ gets so much heat and he really took a beating this spring training so I was just reminding those ( and not you ) who went out of their way to hammer him….Hey, SJ can handle the heat as he’s been around the block quite often, however I just wanted to point out that even though you don’t care for the messenger, don’t get blinded by what the message is….For me it was clear, but I’m a low profile guy….SJ is a bullseye persona, I’m certain you can relate
As I posted in the previous thread, we don’t know how well Phil’s stint in the pen will serve him as a starter; hopefully, well, but who’s to say? Joba and Phil are different people, different pitchers; they will be affected in different ways.
LGY…It’s the over / under on the up coming baseball season for teams total wins…….????
Um, ok. Will Carroll offered his opinion as stupid as it is…..and the Yankees, and Joba, will go on. Sheesh.
Jobs was the worst starting pitcher in the AL after his 3 post AS Break starts. Prior to the ASB, he was anything but reliable as a starter.
If you think that’s serviceable, we have different definitions of the word.
They didn’t make the decision on ST stats. If they did, Mitre would have won.
Try again with more accuracy the next time.
Oh, send me the link. I just went to the vegas watch website and that is the first thing that popped up.
M, we’ll see if it helped him as a starter. We’ll see if he’s aggressive with his FB or if he nibbles. He hasn’t had his best FB yet in terms of command, so……..we’ll see.
I asked this before, but has Phil dropped his 2 seamer? CB had mentioned that he’d like to see Phil become more of groundball pitcher again; why would Phil become such a completely diferent pitcher in the majors as in the minors?
Pat M, gotcha.
On Tennessee, because I don’t have any handle on the remaining teams I can’t know if my thinking on Tenn makes any sense. Maybe it’s that Ohio University’s players look like stick figures and that’s what really caused me to come away with the impression that Tennessee players are Titans. I later told someone that that game (Tenn v Ohio U) reminded me of the Yankees playing one of our Babe Ruth teams in town. The Tennessee players were so strong that some of them reminded me of footbal players. It was like Ohio U kept running into a solid brick wall.
So I don’t know it Tennessee is the real deal or whether I am just being swayed by the game I saw. I also had the Gaels as the winner of the Cinderella sweepstakes and we know how that went.
SJ, I was the one who made that point. I never said Phil wasn’t successful last year; I said we don’t know for sure that that will help him as a starter – that’s to be determined. Since I think he’s a stud to be, I’m sure the pen will prove to have been a turning point for Phil, but….the proof is in the pudding.
SJ, yesterday CB gave a list of things that he hoped to see from Phil this year: more ground balls, more variety on his curve, better depth to his cutter and the change becoming a good enough pitch to where it’s his #3. Most important, he hoped that Phil’s FB command would be the same as it was when he was in the pen. Is this the kind of stuff you are looking for from Phil to gauge his progress?
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Pat M, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.
Bets, I’m convinced that the Yankees could have put Phil in the Ringling Brothers Circus juggling balls and he would have come out a starter. He was ready made when he came to the Yankees. He had all of the tools, all of them. He had to refine a few things maybe but he had it all together.
I see Joba as so much different. It’s like he’s all loose ends. It worries me.
he did impoded. hard to pitched when you getting yo yo.
joba was a great as a starter in 08.
he was serviceable prior to the yo yo.
fact is prior to skipping he was 7 and 2 with a 3.58.
now that doesn’t tell the whole stary, cause his whip was really.
to this point, joba been the better pitcher than hughes in the starting. heck hughes hasn’t been able to stay healthy as a starter
Betsy,
yes, that list covers it.
Yesterday, had we not been leaving, would have been a great day to catch a game at the Disney ST complex of the Atlanta Braves. They were playing the Tigers, and presumably, I could have seen a few of my ex-Yankee favorites (Damon & Cabrera). Oh, well.
Good to be home, but I wish I was still in Florida. Man, is it cold up here!!!! It had just started warming up nicely in Orlando. Oh, well. Again.
Trisha -
I’m ready to pick a win total for the season. Put me down for 99 wins (but hoping I’m on the under side of wrong!). I’m always conservative.
I’m thinking Joba is going to be just fine.
Just hoping the Yankees bats start warming up.
Back to vacation laundry.
Joba’s pitching today.
I’m looking forward to it.
Trisha,
Unfortunately, I don’t think the major leagues are the best place to learn what it seems Joba needs in life. It’s just so competitive that there’s no time to nurture the needy.
I also think the “young 20′s” are a tough age for a guy like Joba. It’s like the mental age hasn’t caught up with the physical age. You look like a man but you’re still pretty much an idiot on the inside.
Doreen – welcome home! Happy you had fun, but happy to have you back. We’ve missed your voice of reason.
You’re down for 99.