Spring Training 2009

[Czech please! 0]

Anyone else's local teams doing things like this because of the economy:

 

The Reds are offering 5 dollar tickets all season now

They have $1 hot dogs, cokes, ice cream and peanuts

 

And they've dropped the price of a draft beer down to $5

 

 

 

This was done because tickets sales aren't just low, but they are alarmingly low due to the economy. Corporate sponsors are dead, so they're desperate to get people to buy seats. It's now cheaper to go to a reds game then it was in 1996. I'm not really sure that's a good thing, maybe it's a bad sign.

Helloooooooo traveling Cubs and Cardinals fans.

[Smues 0]

Atlanta has had $3 per game season tickets for a few years now. How I wish I was close enough to take advantage of it.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

And yet I can't get tickets to Opening Day at a reasonable price 'cause they went on sale via lottery. Jerks.

For the Mets or another team? The Phillies do the same thing, which is an annoyance but inevitable in a 47000 seat stadium. They actually do the same for Red Sox and Yankee series.

[Dandy 0]

I will be attacking those Reds tickets all year. Ms. Dandy's best friend was born and raised in Cincinnati, and I can stay with her for free and go to the weekend games ultra-cheap. The only thing that sucks is my newest job requires you to be there for one full year before you get any days off. I can not take a day until August 5th, which means the weekday games are out for the majority of the year.

[devo 0]

And yet I can't get tickets to Opening Day at a reasonable price 'cause they went on sale via lottery. Jerks.

For the Mets or another team? The Phillies do the same thing, which is an annoyance but inevitable in a 47000 seat stadium. They actually do the same for Red Sox and Yankee series.

 

Well, I was referring to the Reds' Opening Day, since the Mets are opening in Cincinnati this year. It's just annoying because it's one of only three games that I need to attend at that stadium and there's no affordable way of getting in.

[jimmy no nose 0]

In a trade sure to generate no excitement from either side the Phillies sent Ronny Paulino to San Francisco for Jack Taschner.

[devo 0]

Mets released Jose Valentin today. Godspeed, 'Stache.

[v.2 0]

Al, I saw the Giants/M's in Spring Training the other day and Pablo Sandoval looked like a complete stud. He hit a homerun, bunted for a single, beat out an infield hit, and probably would have stole second if not for a foul ball. What do you know of him?

[jimmy no nose 0]

I don't think speed has ever been one of his strong points, so I'm not sure what happened in that particular game. Last year was his big breakout year, I think he hit almost .350 between high A, AA, and the majors. He also started showing some power for the first time in his career. He also tore up the Venezuelan League over the winter, and has been hitting like crazy this spring. Dude swings at almost every pitch he sees though. I think he walked 4 times in 140 at bats in the majors. I figure pitchers will eventually start working against that.

 

He also doesn't really seem to have a position. He came in as a really good defensive catcher, but I think there are concerns about his ability to be a catcher long-term because of his size (5'11" and about 250). In the minors they took him away from catching one entire season before putting him back and bouncing him between there and first base. He's supposed to play third this year, but he has pretty limited experience there, so we'll have to see how that goes.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

"Astros don't under small sample sizes"

 

Huh?

 

EDIT: Never mind, I guess it's supposed to be "understand."

[Czech please! 0]

there are concerns about his ability to be a catcher long-term because of his size (5'11" and about 250).

Man, I'm gonna miss Joe Mauer.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Al, I saw the Giants/M's in Spring Training the other day and Pablo Sandoval looked like a complete stud. He hit a homerun, bunted for a single, beat out an infield hit, and probably would have stole second if not for a foul ball. What do you know of him?

Jimmy summed up Sandoval pretty well. I would quote a comment I read on Baseball Think Factory.

 

Want to hear something interesting about Sandoval's 2008?

 

Among hitters with a minimum of 150 PA, he saw the second highest percentage of curveballs (12.9%) and the 24th lowest percentage of fastballs (53.2%).

 

In other words, they were already pitching him like he was Ryan Howard (10th lowest % of fastballs and 16th highest % of CB). Folks seem to think the league is suddenly going to get wise to the guy; but the league already has. Check out the numbers for guys like Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo: those guys see 70% fastballs.

 

I'm not saying the guy will continue to hit .345; but he's not going to turn into Pedro Feliz either. He's already being pitched like he's Pedro Feliz and hitting better. He's some kind of freak of nature.

 

I ran a search on Baseball-Reference's PI, for players who stood six feet or under and weighed more than 230 pounds. The only hitters that came up were Prince Fielder, Bob Hamelin, Byron Gettis and Travis Snider. So at this point you have a player who's a switch hitter with a unique approach and a unique body type. What the heck do you make of a player like that?

 

As far as catching, I figure the presence of Buster Posey is going to make that a non-issue anyway. Sandoval is probably going to need to stick at third base to have value as a regular player. He may be better served in a valuable bench role, filling in at three different positions. I'm rooting for him. Unique, different players make the game more exciting.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

In a trade sure to generate no excitement from either side the Phillies sent Ronny Paulino to San Francisco for Jack Taschner.

If nothing else, it means Chris Coste has survived Spring Training with his backup role intact.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

And already Paulino has been traded again to the Marlins for Hector Correa.

[Bored 0]

Justin Duchscherer will have arthroscopic surgery on his elbow and will be out six weeks and that's if they find nothing wrong. Given the A's history with injuries I'm just going to assume he's out for the season. This all but guarantees at least one of their top pitching prospects Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson will begin the year in the Majors, if not both of them. They will also now have an all 25 and under rotation.

[jimmy no nose 0]

How does Kevin Gregg beat out Carlos Marmol for the closer job? I guess they actually based it on spring training performance.

[YourKock'sReallyGreat 0]

Yankees are going to be batting Jeter leadoff and Damon 2nd. Should cut down on all of the double plays that Jeter has hit into the last two years. Plus he should face alot of first pitch fastballs while Damon is more known for taking a pitch and working the count.

[Precious Roy 0]

I like it, great move by Girardi.

[YourKock'sReallyGreat 0]

Mike Francesa brought up a good point today. The Yankees and the Mets should have opened up the regular season against eachother to start the season. One game at the New Yankee Stadium and the next game at CitiField. Then they would just make it up the rest of the games later on in the season.

[YourKock'sReallyGreat 0]

The Tigers have released Gary Sheffield today. I wonder what team is going to pick him up. He is currently sitting at 499 career homeruns.

[CutAbove234 0]

The Phillies have released Geoff Jenkins and have said they are interested in Sheffield. since he is owed 14 million from the Tigers teams can sign him for 400k.

[LuckyLopez 0]

Mike Francesa brought up a good point today. The Yankees and the Mets should have opened up the regular season against eachother to start the season. One game at the New Yankee Stadium and the next game at CitiField. Then they would just make it up the rest of the games later on in the season.

Its a reasonable nice story but its a bad business move. Any Yankee/Met game is an automatic sellout. Opening Day is an automatic sellout. Make Opening Day a Yankee/Met game and you lose a sellout. Plus the way you have it put with April 6th in the Bronx and the 7th in Queens... again, a cool little baseball thing, but that takes away the Opening Day homestands for the two clubs (or at least one of them) that usually draws money. I mean, the Yanks can return to the Bronx on the 8th and both teams can do homestands but you lose that immediate "I want to go to Opening Day but I can't... I'll go the next day" impact.

 

Its all a lot of little things you can say are less important than a cool baseball story. Pain in the ass scheduling. Really screwy schedule for the Yanks and Mets to start the season. The off chance that rain means TWO Opening Day rainouts and pissed off fans. A few thousand less tickets purchased. The hassles it makes for the scheduling down the line when interleague play starts. It can probably all be worked around but ultimately the business men probably have no desire to. Its just the fans who really don't care about the business who like to see stuff like that and don't care about the pains.

 

But its probably just not worth it.

[YourKock'sReallyGreat 0]

I understand where you are coming from. I also understand that the Yankees and the Mets are worried about the economy and season tickets being sold. I do not think that either team are worried about single game tickets and the stadiums being empty. Both teams drew around 4 million last year. Both teams are playing in New Ballparks that are also smaller than the previous ones in terms of seats. They are both going to draw 3 million plus this year. One game wouldn't have hurt, especially when Yankee Stadium is going to be 80-90 percent capacity for a Royals game on a weeknight in May.

[LuckyLopez 0]

Money's money. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to give up even a little unless you think you're getting something out of it. I totally get what you and Francessa are saying and it would be a cool little thing as a fan. But if there's no real gain in it for the businessmen than there's no real reason to deal with the headaches, be they financial or scheduling.

 

Its a cool idea, its just that you probably need a little more than that to move the pros to do the bit of extra work or sacrifice it takes. I'm not saying its impossible or terribly damaging or anything. Just that "some fans might enjoy it" is kinda "meh" motivation for them. But then again they went and scheduled a cool Mets in Wrigley, Yanks in US Cellular doubleheader a year ago that drew me and a bunch of fellow Yankees and Mets fans to Chicago. So obviously it not beyond baseball.

 

To be honest it was probably just an instinctive reaction I had because so many baseball fans seem to enjoy ripping MLB apart for every little thing they do or don't do. And you didn't do that, you merely presented a simple idea you thought would have been good. I probably just had a knee jerk reaction. My bad.

[Live Free or Battlenuts 0]

That'd be a neat idea but I'm not big on inter-league play and a throw-away 2 game series that ends up resulting in another shortened series later on and more traveling as a result.

 

I just hope a nice new stadium doesn't take away from the fact that a WS title has never been more expected than it is this year. I'm against anything that's gonna make people take longer to say "yeah the ballpark's nice now earn the fucking money we just burned here". This spending money like a team who wins every year without winning every year is gonna comeback to bite the team quicker than people think if the economy keeps going the way it is.

 

That said, I can't fucking wait to walk around with my over-priced, watered down beer soaking in the history and then tell Kevin Youkillus I'll never dislike him as much as Jay Buhner... even though I do, I just figure it's the best way to hurt his feelings.

[YourKock'sReallyGreat 0]

WFan in NY is reporting that Sheffield has signed with the Mets.