2012 MLB Regular Season Running Thread

8 IP, 5 hits, 1 walk and 11 K's ... and the bullpen pisses it away in the ninth.

 

Lincecum will not be buying Mr. Casilla dinner tonight.

 

Why? Small markets win once in a while despite the deck being stacked against them.

 

Giants recover to win in 12, while Padres beat Dodgers in ninth on a Little League special: Cabrera steals home to tie it , then LA catcher throws ball past pitcher, allowing winning run to score.

 

Just saw it on MLB.tv. You know what the best part was? Home plate umpire initially called Cabrera out, even though the ball had gotten past the catcher and was bouncing off the backstop behind him. MLB umpiring at its finest!

 

The '78 Yankees were 14 1/2 behind the Red Sox. The Cubs franchise is well financed and under a strong new management team. Why not just start being good again? Is their minor league system that bad?

 

One of the perks of having family in the CFD.

 

And, of course, the anchor on Comcast Bay Area saw the out call and got the whole play wrong.

 

I love the ESPN headline right now:

"Sources: Cubs' Dempster in demand."

Thank god they've got themselves a deep throat or two on that blockbuster scoop.

(The story is actually fine, with some specific information. The headline just cracked me up.)

 

The '78 Yankees also had one team to catch, not four. Easier to come back when one team can get cold.

The minor-league system is deep, but mostly with replacement-level players and very few real future MLB impact players -- especially w/r/t pitching. The Cubs also are tied into some awful contracts thanks to the spending spree the Tribune allowed Jim Hendry to go on to beef the team up in 07-08-09 (and go on one big run to make the team more attractive to sell). He got/re-signed Soriano/Zambrano/Ramirez/Lee and a handful of others, but did so with a lot of backloaded deals the Cubs are still paying for.

Soriano is still on the books for $18mm through 2014, but most of the other contracts either expire this year (they're still eating Zambrano's through this year) or have already expired.

Going in, this looked to be a pretty bad year, so the idea seemed to be to sell off the parts that would become FAs in the next year or two, get a bunch of prospects and stock the farm system and fill the rest of the gaps with a few spare parts (guys like David DeJesus, Paul Maholm) and reclamation projects (Ian Stewart & Travis Wood). However, with Stewart hurt and Luis Valbuena getting clutch hits, Soriano hitting the best he's hit in years and Wood/Dempster/Maholm all throwing pretty well, they've become a decent team, but one that's too far out of contention. The bullpen was a bunch of gas cans early and blew several games in the latter innings, but even it has come around and been pretty solid.

It seems the plan is to go through 2 years of pain and creative destruction/restocking the farm system and try to go for it in 2014/2015, when the last of the bad contracts come off the books, there's some money to spend and some of the prospects they've traded for/will trade for/have drafted/signed internationally start matriculating to the majors.

 

Cutch goes deep again.

 

Ben Sheets: 6 IP, 0 R, 2 H.

Good for him.