MLB 2011 Part Two

Shit, are we for real talking baseball with a not-too-shabby former player?

If so, respect.

I didn’t get in to baseball until I was halfway done with high school…a little bit too late to start playing.

Haha, I was so bad as a kid… I’m tall so I’d always start off batting cleanup and by the end of the year be batting 7th or 8th… every year.

I’m actually a lot better now after watching a lot of baseball and listening to analysts etc. I actually rotate my hips/body instead of just poking my arms out hoping to make the bat touch the ball.

I was a decent pitcher though. I’m sure I could strike out DBCooper with my eyes closed.

I know it’s early but Colby’s swing is looking better. A lot of hard hit balls, unfortunately most of them have been directly at fielders. Moments ago he hit a double leading to the go ahead run in the top of the 10th. Just sayin’.

Anybody else paying attention to Desmond Jennings? I added him in fantasy land when he got called back up a few weeks back, so I’ve been paying close attention. Striking out a fair amount, but his numbers have still been pretty ridiculous so far. Looks legit.

^ I just saw him hit a game tying HR in the bottom of the 10th. Yeah he looks like he’ll be great.

Brett Lawrie just got the call up, right? Looking forward to seeing if he lives up to the hype I’ve been hearing about him all season.

[quote]therajraj wrote:
So did you have a decent chance of ever getting to the Bigs and pissed it away through alcoholism? Or were you just a decent player who made it to a high level?[/quote]

Really dude?

No, I didn’t “piss it away through alcoholism”. I blew out my shoulder early in my junior year, when I probably would have been drafted again (albeit most likely somewhere around the 20th round. I was a 40th round pick out of high school. Right handers who throw 87-91 with good control of a two and four seamer, an above average slider and a below average changeup are a dime a dozen).

AFTER blowing out my shoulder (I tore my supraspinatus, infraspinatus and teris minor and broke my clavicle in a non-related baseball accident. I was fucking done pitching at that point) is when the alcoholic drinking started. Are you trying to push my buttons for the sake of pushing buttons or are you just jealous that I actually played with and against current major leaguers and that my opinions come from a position of authority that yours don’t?

[quote]eeu743 wrote:
Shit, are we for real talking baseball with a not-too-shabby former player?

If so, respect.

I didn’t get in to baseball until I was halfway done with high school…a little bit too late to start playing.[/quote]

Yes, you are. I was never a professional player by any means. But I have played against a lot of current major leaguers. I played baseball between the ages of 6 and 21 in California, so the chances of playing against current pros is pretty high.

[quote]scj119 wrote:
Haha, I was so bad as a kid… I’m tall so I’d always start off batting cleanup and by the end of the year be batting 7th or 8th… every year.

I’m actually a lot better now after watching a lot of baseball and listening to analysts etc. I actually rotate my hips/body instead of just poking my arms out hoping to make the bat touch the ball.

I was a decent pitcher though. I’m sure I could strike out DBCooper with my eyes closed.[/quote]

You probably could. I didn’t start pitching until I was 15. I played on a team that somehow ended up with only one decent pitcher and I knew that I could throw the ball farther than anyone else in the league and I wasn’t a good hitter at all so I decided to teach myself how to pitch.

I still remember the basic line from my first start ever: 7 innings pitched, 146 pitches thrown, 9 walks, 3 hit batters, two hits allowed, 13 strikeouts and 8 wild pitches.

edit: and 9 runs allowed. We lost, 9-8.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
So did you have a decent chance of ever getting to the Bigs and pissed it away through alcoholism? Or were you just a decent player who made it to a high level?[/quote]

Really dude?

No, I didn’t “piss it away through alcoholism”. I blew out my shoulder early in my junior year, when I probably would have been drafted again (albeit most likely somewhere around the 20th round. I was a 40th round pick out of high school. Right handers who throw 87-91 with good control of a two and four seamer, an above average slider and a below average changeup are a dime a dozen).

AFTER blowing out my shoulder (I tore my supraspinatus, infraspinatus and teris minor and broke my clavicle in a non-related baseball accident. I was fucking done pitching at that point) is when the alcoholic drinking started. Are you trying to push my buttons for the sake of pushing buttons or are you just jealous that I actually played with and against current major leaguers and that my opinions come from a position of authority that yours don’t?[/quote]

You talk openly about your alcoholism and pitching at high level on these boards, I thought perhaps they were related.

That was a little rude I guess.

Also did a major league team draft you?

There was a guy in my accounting program who had a similar story to you. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, got a free ride at Berkley out of it, then blew out his shoulder in college.

[quote]eeu743 wrote:
Brett Lawrie just got the call up, right? Looking forward to seeing if he lives up to the hype I’ve been hearing about him all season.[/quote]

Shit, basically everyday for the last month people have been asking when he’s coming up.

[quote]therajraj wrote:
There was a guy in my accounting program who had a similar story to you. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, got a free ride at Berkley out of it, then blew out his shoulder in college.

[/quote]

Regarding your first post: No prob. I guess I had it coming anyways, since I seem to remember saying something about pushing buttons in order to provoke conversation in this thread.

Regarding your second post: the only teams that can draft you are major league teams.

Regarding this post: That sort of shit happens all the time. It’s sad and it makes me wonder how many potentially-great players out there never get a chance due to injury and how many of them plunge into a downward spiral as a result of a missed opportunity.

I know a guy from a 12-step program who was a fucking stud in high school. 6’4", about 200, left-handed, threw low 90’s and absolutely dominated everyone in a VERY tough high school conference. But he was a fucking screwup. He was kicked out of high school halfway through his senior year season for repeated drug and alcohol-related incidents. Naturally, this scared away pro scouts and he went undrafted. But somehow he got invited to some sort of private tryout with the Cincinnati Reds (who had scouted him heavily his junior and senior year in high school).

So what does he do? He gets shitfaced and doesn’t even show up to the tryout. Word went around REAL quick that the guy was a total headcase and totally not worth any sort of attention, which was a moot point anyways because he never pitched competitively at any level at all ever again.

I don’t hold any illusions about my own potential. I was good enough to be a professional baseball player for sure, which is something that about 1% of the population can honestly say. I didn’t doubt my ability at all, but I also knew that I most likely wasn’t good enough to be a MAJOR LEAGUE baseball player. But I’ll never know now and it’s all my fault and that is a TOUGH pill to swallow.

I was riding a skateboard down a parking structure and I crashed hard and I was fucking flying when I crashed. I landed on my throwing arm and totaled my shoulder, broke my wrist and suffered a severe concussion. Regardless of whether or not I would have made it to the bigs I would have been drafted that year, barring injury, and I would have signed and I would have been a professional baseball player, which is something that few people can say. It was my dream and I blew it and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.

I don’t watch any college baseball games at all. I don’t watch the College World Series and I’ll probably never attend a college game or even a low-level minor league game unless I have to do so for someone else. I’m just not far enough removed from that level of play to watch it and actually enjoy it. The only joy I gain from baseball anymore is watching the Giants, or any other Major League game for that matter, and coaching kids.

I had the chance to coach some 13-14 year olds and also helped coach an 18 y/o Palomino team (Troy Tulowitzki played for it!) and part of the reason I decided to go back to school to earn my teaching credential was because teaching would also give me the time to coach high school baseball. That, and coaching made me realize that teaching and relating to young teenagers was something that I was very good at; it’s my “gift”.

I do believe that things happen for a reason and I firmly believe that once I start teaching and coaching again I will make a difference in the lives of many teenagers, both in the classroom and on the ballfield. I moved out of the area that I coached in but the guy I coached with is still involved with coaching and he says the kids I coached (the 13-14 year olds) still talk about what an impact I made in their lives and how good of a coach I was. I’ll openly admit that it makes me emotional to hear this sort of thing about me and I take comfort in the possibility that maybe getting hurt put me in a position to coach instead of play and that it is THIS that is my calling in life.

If I redirect even one kid who is headed down the same path that the guy I mentioned earlier went down, and if this redirection leads to him achieving some sort of dream of his, then I suppose it’s all worth it. In fact, there was a kid on one of my teams who wasn’t really any good and thought about quitting the team. But I encouraged him to keep playing and really pounded into his head the need to just do the little things right rather than try to be the star player (he was the star soccer player so not being the stud on the team was foreign to him) and he ended up doing just that. He never missed signs, he always made the routine play, he hit the cut-off man, he didn’t swing at bad pitches, he seemed to develop that baseball “instinct” and even though he still couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, he was always in the starting lineup. He ended up playing in high school and his senior year he was the best player on the team and now he’s playing at a Div I AA team in Albany on a full scholarship. I need to find him on Facebook one of these days and tell him how proud I am of him.

So there’s my life story. Now back to MLB 2011. The Giants hitting is fucking pathetic and it angers me. The euphoria from last year’s Title has officially worn off and I am now back to being an eternally-pessimistic Giants fan, just like I was from April 1980 to October 2010.

The Giants need to bring Bonds back.

Man I miss that bat.

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
The Giants need to bring Bonds back.

Man I miss that bat.[/quote]

Fuck. That. The Giants need a cancer on their team like I need a .22 caliber bullet bouncing around in my brainpan.

The best part about this team and last year’s team is the overall personality of it. Lincecum and Wilson are superstars but they aren’t superstars in anywhere close to the same vein as Bonds was, and in a good way. As much as I liked watching Bonds play I don’t miss him at all. Just like it’s hard to appreciate some things until they’re gone, it’s hard to understand how fucked up things were until something better comes along. If Bonds played on this team today, even in his prime, he would absolutely blow up the team chemistry and I think it’s the team chemistry the Giants have that have made them so good with such a bad offense.

Look at the A’s and the Padres. Both of those teams fucking suck cock. And yet they have the same basic team that the Giants have: great pitching and anemic hitting. Yet the Giants are WAY better than both of those teams. Who knows why that is, but perhaps a large part of it is that they don’t have the chemistry that the Giants have. Not to say that the Padres and A’s have BAD chemistry; it’s just not as good as the Giants. I think that is part of the reason why they seem to do so well in close games.

I can’t tell you how many fans I run into who are so excited about this team in large part because the stars on it are the complete antithesis of what Bonds was. That speaks volumes. So does the fact that Bonds wasn’t present at Willie Mays’ big 80th birthday celebration earlier this year. To me, that was a very conspicuous condemnation of everything Bonds was and stood for, both as a person and as a player. If I never see that guy at the ballpark again it’ll be too soon.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]scj119 wrote:
Haha, I was so bad as a kid… I’m tall so I’d always start off batting cleanup and by the end of the year be batting 7th or 8th… every year.

I’m actually a lot better now after watching a lot of baseball and listening to analysts etc. I actually rotate my hips/body instead of just poking my arms out hoping to make the bat touch the ball.

I was a decent pitcher though. I’m sure I could strike out DBCooper with my eyes closed.[/quote]

You probably could. I didn’t start pitching until I was 15. I played on a team that somehow ended up with only one decent pitcher and I knew that I could throw the ball farther than anyone else in the league and I wasn’t a good hitter at all so I decided to teach myself how to pitch.

I still remember the basic line from my first start ever: 7 innings pitched, 146 pitches thrown, 9 walks, 3 hit batters, two hits allowed, 13 strikeouts and 8 wild pitches.

edit: and 9 runs allowed. We lost, 9-8.[/quote]

hahahahaha

Man…that was deep/interesting. Sheesh.

So…MLB. I think Lawrie will be starting today? I know he was supposed to come up like a month ago but got hurt. Obviously I haven’t seen him play at the AAA level or anything, but people are freaking out about this kid.

Jiminez makes his first start as an Indian tonight.

Giants might not make the playoffs?

[quote]eeu743 wrote:
Man…that was deep/interesting. Sheesh.

So…MLB. I think Lawrie will be starting today? I know he was supposed to come up like a month ago but got hurt. Obviously I haven’t seen him play at the AAA level or anything, but people are freaking out about this kid.

Jiminez makes his first start as an Indian tonight.

Giants might not make the playoffs?[/quote]

They’ll make it. I think. I hope.

I don’t think the Giants are done making moves yet, so there’s always the possibility that they pick up another bat. Virtually any catcher that gets released is going to find interest from the Giants since literally every starting catcher in the bigs can hit better than the combo of Chris Stewart and Eli Whiteside.

What pisses me off is that they keep playing Huff and they just optioned Belt back to Triple A after activating Mark DeRosa off the 60-day DL. That guy can’t hit for shit and I really don’t see any value he brings to the team. They say he’ll play first base to spell Huff every once in a while and give them a right-handed option over there. Great. Now they can run a lefty AND a righty out there at first who suck cock for a couple million a year. Belt is the best defensive option they have for first base and I have a hard time believing the guy can’t hit slightly less pathetically than Huff has this season.

Fuck Huff, fuck Torres, fuck Rowand and FUCK Zito. I am so glad the Giants’ management had the balls to tell him he’d better think up some fantasy injury he suffered in his last start so they could put him on the DL. If only they had a 3-year DL for that fagot.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
There was a guy in my accounting program who had a similar story to you. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, got a free ride at Berkley out of it, then blew out his shoulder in college.

[/quote]

Regarding your first post: No prob. I guess I had it coming anyways, since I seem to remember saying something about pushing buttons in order to provoke conversation in this thread.

Regarding your second post: the only teams that can draft you are major league teams.

Regarding this post: That sort of shit happens all the time. It’s sad and it makes me wonder how many potentially-great players out there never get a chance due to injury and how many of them plunge into a downward spiral as a result of a missed opportunity.

I know a guy from a 12-step program who was a fucking stud in high school. 6’4", about 200, left-handed, threw low 90’s and absolutely dominated everyone in a VERY tough high school conference. But he was a fucking screwup. He was kicked out of high school halfway through his senior year season for repeated drug and alcohol-related incidents. Naturally, this scared away pro scouts and he went undrafted. But somehow he got invited to some sort of private tryout with the Cincinnati Reds (who had scouted him heavily his junior and senior year in high school).

So what does he do? He gets shitfaced and doesn’t even show up to the tryout. Word went around REAL quick that the guy was a total headcase and totally not worth any sort of attention, which was a moot point anyways because he never pitched competitively at any level at all ever again.

I don’t hold any illusions about my own potential. I was good enough to be a professional baseball player for sure, which is something that about 1% of the population can honestly say. I didn’t doubt my ability at all, but I also knew that I most likely wasn’t good enough to be a MAJOR LEAGUE baseball player. But I’ll never know now and it’s all my fault and that is a TOUGH pill to swallow.

I was riding a skateboard down a parking structure and I crashed hard and I was fucking flying when I crashed. I landed on my throwing arm and totaled my shoulder, broke my wrist and suffered a severe concussion. Regardless of whether or not I would have made it to the bigs I would have been drafted that year, barring injury, and I would have signed and I would have been a professional baseball player, which is something that few people can say. It was my dream and I blew it and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.

I don’t watch any college baseball games at all. I don’t watch the College World Series and I’ll probably never attend a college game or even a low-level minor league game unless I have to do so for someone else. I’m just not far enough removed from that level of play to watch it and actually enjoy it. The only joy I gain from baseball anymore is watching the Giants, or any other Major League game for that matter, and coaching kids.

I had the chance to coach some 13-14 year olds and also helped coach an 18 y/o Palomino team (Troy Tulowitzki played for it!) and part of the reason I decided to go back to school to earn my teaching credential was because teaching would also give me the time to coach high school baseball. That, and coaching made me realize that teaching and relating to young teenagers was something that I was very good at; it’s my “gift”.

I do believe that things happen for a reason and I firmly believe that once I start teaching and coaching again I will make a difference in the lives of many teenagers, both in the classroom and on the ballfield. I moved out of the area that I coached in but the guy I coached with is still involved with coaching and he says the kids I coached (the 13-14 year olds) still talk about what an impact I made in their lives and how good of a coach I was. I’ll openly admit that it makes me emotional to hear this sort of thing about me and I take comfort in the possibility that maybe getting hurt put me in a position to coach instead of play and that it is THIS that is my calling in life.

If I redirect even one kid who is headed down the same path that the guy I mentioned earlier went down, and if this redirection leads to him achieving some sort of dream of his, then I suppose it’s all worth it. In fact, there was a kid on one of my teams who wasn’t really any good and thought about quitting the team. But I encouraged him to keep playing and really pounded into his head the need to just do the little things right rather than try to be the star player (he was the star soccer player so not being the stud on the team was foreign to him) and he ended up doing just that. He never missed signs, he always made the routine play, he hit the cut-off man, he didn’t swing at bad pitches, he seemed to develop that baseball “instinct” and even though he still couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, he was always in the starting lineup. He ended up playing in high school and his senior year he was the best player on the team and now he’s playing at a Div I AA team in Albany on a full scholarship. I need to find him on Facebook one of these days and tell him how proud I am of him.

So there’s my life story. Now back to MLB 2011. The Giants hitting is fucking pathetic and it angers me. The euphoria from last year’s Title has officially worn off and I am now back to being an eternally-pessimistic Giants fan, just like I was from April 1980 to October 2010.[/quote]

You said you probably would have been drafted again, so what team drafted you initially?