Monday, June 25, 2007

[Cricket sounds]

The blog has gone understandably quiet in the past few weeks. Being a blasketblog, after all.

But I would like to reremind everyone that it is equally a blaseball blog, in spite of the name, and that there is a rather excellent baseball season happening. There are three legitimate pennant races taking a nascent shape, and though two of these are disappointingly in the NL, the good news is that none of them involves the AL East! The AL Central promises to be very exciting, while the NL West will showcase some of that circuit's best up-and-coming talent. The NL East appears to be a question of who fails least, but what can you do?

Meanwhile, the pitching scene is magnificent. No less than ten starters maintain ERAs under 3.00, a rarity in recent years, and the names on there suggest perhaps a new era of aces. No Carpenter, no Martinez, and Oswalt backsliding a ways... but Haren, Young, Penny, Peavy, Escobar, Verlander, Sabathia, Beckett and many others have picked up the slack ... if they can manage not to burn out in the second half, this year's playoffs could feature some low-scoring gems.

Also, I realize it was just recently interleague time, always a dark episode for the fans. I suppose it wouldn't be a baseball season without the Indians and the Nationals enacting their storied rivalry, Kansas City taking out their anger on Milwaukee for leaving the AL in a huff, or Houston whalloping Texas in a matchup that surely every Lone Star stater watched with desperate anxiety. Actually - and I mean this - I would rather the Indians had played six extra games against the Orioles and Mariners each than wasting precious games on Atlanta, Washington, and the idiot Phillies who I have utterly failed to gather the will to root for.

6 comments:

Simon said...

Yeah - but that is only because the Orioles are secretly the most awesome team in blaseball.

Simon said...

Now I have changed my name to reflect the changing season

JAKE said...

nice pick-off!!

um, NBA DRAFT anybody????

holy crap balls. the nba season is not "over" until after thursday . . . not to mention TRADE CITY all summer long. or at least, one big thing will happen. and, we can blog about the world series of poker.

also -- interleague play? really? that bad? i kind of loved seeing the tigers against the mets/braves/brewers/cardinals this year. . . some of the more elite NL teams. are you sure you're not just hating because the chief wahoos slipped out of first? crouching sheffield, hidden ordonez says BLEEST.

datageneral said...

I wish I had an opinion about the NBA draft. As long as we're talking about poker, for the Cavs it's like several cards are about to come down, none of which will help us but any of which could hurt us. I'm hoping for a Len Bias situation but on a mass scale. That's possible, right?

Speaking of Len Bias, I thought of a funny crossword pun today - LENTIL BIAS. Tastewise it's fine, but I'm not sure enough people know his name.

datageneral said...

Interleague play is atrocious, and I'm not even a purist! Perhaps it hit me particularly hard this year because the Indians didn't play anyone interesting, and didn't play especially well at that. 9-9 I believe was the damage.

Re: Mets/Braves/Brewers/Cardinals - I don't find *any* of those teams particularly thrilling. The Cardinals are banking on Mike Maroth to save their staff for god's sake; the Mets are a very good team but severely underperforming, or maybe they're not as good as I give them credit for; the Braves looked smart for a while but then let the Phillies catch up; the Brewers I'm still not sold on. They slid back awfully close to .500 before their current hot streak. Funny, for the last couple of seasons I was really expecting them to break out based on pitching and now it's really the hitting that's put them over the top. Of course, they play in the NL central, so I think of them as untested to some extent, plus it's only been half a season, not even. Weren't the Orioles in first place halfway through 2005?

I maintain, even two games back, that the Indians are the best team in the central! Westbrook's comeback was crucial. As long as he does due diligence and the offense comes back to life, which inevitably it will, the Tigers cannot hope to compete!

JAKE said...

oh, well, yes, i included the cardinals because we played them in april or whatever so it was like a rematch. clearly, they suck. have the tigers even announced what they got in return for maroth? maybe at least a pet dog from larussa's animal shelter?? also, don't write off the cavs' off-season. though they seem to be stuck with contracts, there's always the chance they'll pick up sarunas jasekevicius because dude says he wants to be teammates with his lithuanian bro. but, in terms of something actually affecting the team, they seem to be interested in trading their way into a draft pick. . . .