Greetings readers!

I just wanted to give you guys a heads up and an apology for my inactivity writing entries. I’ve been putting in a lot of over time at my everyday job. In fact I worked 15 hours yesterday coding away.

I’ve got several entries started, several others thought out, and other fun things planned for the future. I just need time to finish them off, proofread them and publish them off.

After this week hopefully I can resume my normally bi-daily entries.

On a more serious note, I just wanted to get my condolences out to the Josh Hancock family, the Cardinals reliever who was so tragically killed in a car accident this weekend. He was one of those guys who wasn’t really flashy or anything, but he went out and always did his job with no questions. It’s horrible for anybody to loose a family member, teammate or a friend, especially when they are well loved and loved life. He was really a class act. We will miss you greatly.

Man, the injury bug is in full effect this year, and it’s completely contagious. Players are falling down left and right, and taking other players with them. The Yankee’s rotation is a complete mess because of injuries. They’ve had to call up top prospect Philip Hughes when they said they weren’t going to. It’s no surprise that oft injured players are still on the DL, like Mark Prior and Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs. Also Nick Johnson of the Washington Nationals has been bitten by the bug in recent future as well.

Several teams have several starters out of action because of injuries. Many players have just taken a few days off in hopes of avoiding the DL, such as Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez.

This is totally screwing up all my fantasy teams. All four of my Yahoo Fantasy Baseball teams have injuries on them. Many players won’t be out for an extended period time, read several months, so I can’t go dropping them, and let somebody else get their stats when they come back. It especially hurts when they (Yahoo) only give you one DL sport on your roster. On my one team, I had Randy Johnson, Chris Carpenter,…

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This week I had the chance of choosing between a few folks. Jose Capellan part of the Milwaukee Brewers organization didn’t show up to his Minor League assignment because “he thought he was going to get traded, of which he hasn’t. Also Willy Aybar of the Atlanta Braves, has been MIA for the last few days. He hasn’t reported to team meetings, or meetings with MLB Officals. He’s been indefinately suspended with out pay for the time being.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like that Aybar has had some substance abuse problems in the past. From the sounds of it his own mother and good friend Vlad Guerrero can’t get a hold of him nor find him. He started the season off on the Disabled List with some hand problems. All of this started when he failed to report to two rehab sessions. Because of these actions, or lack there of, he was suspended for three games by the team. Next, he failed to report to a meeting with manager Bobby Cox. He was the suspended indefinately following this. Finally he failed to report to meeting with the Major League Officials.

Given his past history with a substance abuse problem,…

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I know I wanted to get this done at the end of the first week, but I just got too busy writing other articles and doing other stuff, but hopefully this is still early enough to get a good prediction in. I’ve had this written for over a week now, I just haven’t had time to tie up the loose ends, and write all the extra thoughts for this season. Hopefully it’s a fairly accurate prediction.

Now that we have 2 full weeks of the season under our belts, I think I can adequately give my predictions to what’s going to happen with the season, playoffs and World Series. It’s really hard to make these predictions because a lot of the teams are relying on keeping their players healthy, and you never know what teams are going to do at the trade deadline in order to set their team for the big postseason push and setting their 40 man rosters.

With all of that said, I’ve broken down the rankings of the teams based on division but I’m not getting into the granularity of specific records for each club. I will also name each teams MVP in the process. I’ll include any…

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First, off this entry is in no way a rip on Jackie Robinson himself. I understand what’s he did for the league, how heavy of a burden it was for him to play, and how many threats he received. I’ve read many articles and books on the subject, and I caught a feature on him on Sportscenter. A lot of the threats, etc were even coming from his own teammates. Because there was no free agency “back in the day”, the other Brooklyn Dodgers players were either forced to quit, or play this colored man. On his first game that was played today, 60 years ago he was 0-3 with a sac bunt, and eventually scored the winning run. An interesting fact: Johnny Sain, the pitcher who was the starter against Dodgers, playing for the Boston Braves, at the time throw the first pitch that Jackie Robinson saw as a Major Leaguer. Sain also threw the last pitch that Babe Ruth ever saw in exhibition game during war time in the earlier 40’s.

Anyway, for those of you haven’t read much about it, Bud “The Tool” Selig un-retired his number (42) and made it wearable for this day only. This first…

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There have been a few closers and setup guys that haven’t been so successful so far this season. Jorge Julio, the newly acquired closer for the Marlins, has been roughed up really bad. Chris Ray of the Orioles gave up a walk off Grand Slam to A-Rod last week. The Cubs two big set up men, Bob Howry and Scott Eyre, have been horrible this season giving up walks and runs. As I noted in yesterday’s entry, Brad Lidge already lost his spot as closer for the Astros. Octavio Dotel of the Royals, has landed himself back on the DL already. List goes one as well.

On the flipside, Ryan Dempster has been perfect thus far, as has Jonathan Papelbon. The Brewers and Dodgers relievers have been really effective as well. The starting pitchers have generally done their jobs thus far this season; it’s the bullpens that have been giving up a lot of runs.

I’ve gone through the teams, and I’ve compared some stats, and what they are currently doing this season and also how they’ve faired generally in the past. I’ve come up with the top four best setup/closer duos in the league. Please do note that I’m picking specific…

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In all honesty, this move does not surprise me one bit. I’ve said over the past few years that Lidge was overrated. Sure he can throw in the upper 90’s but he has problems placing it. You can throw the ball 100mph, but if you can’t place it you’ll be walking too many or getting the ball smoked right back at you.

Lidge was always at the bottom of the list when up as a reliever. When the ‘Stros had Wagner, Dotel, and Lidge, you knew if you were down in the 7th inning, you could pretty much guarantee you were going to be losing the game. Wagner has since left to close for the Mets, where he is still successful. Dotel closed after he left, and was successful, and eventually left and has battle injuries ever since.

This just leaves Brad Lidge to handle all of the closing duties, of which he had one good full season closing. Last year his ERA was FAR too high to be a legitimate closer for a playoff caliber team. Perhaps he took his role for granted and how he’s suffering the consequences. He’s saying he is using the demotion as motivation, which makes sense,…

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Greetings folks. Sorry it’s been a few days here again since my last post. With the holiday weekend, and an extremely busy work week, I wasn’t able to pay much attention to the site. I also want to apologize for getting this entry out a day late.

Anyway it’s time for my weekly installment for The Tool of the Week. There hasn’t been much happening off the field, or at least the media isn’t reporting it. I was thinking about giving it to Sir Albert Pujols for his 3 hits out of 22 at-bats to start out the season, but that’s for a real weak reason.

I have decided to give it to the Chicago Tribune who announced the sale of the Chicago Cubs on opening day, thus postponing the potential signing of Carlos Zambrano to a long term deal. I figured this was coming because of the spending spree the Tribune took this off-season spending over 300 million. It’s actually part of the deal to where a billionaire named Sam Zell is buying the Tribune. If you think about it, it’s smart by the Tribune because they only need worry about the first year of these huge contracts the players…

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Early this afternoon Dice-K Mania will be in full swing when he takes the hill in the bottom of the first in Kansas City verus the Royals. This will be a pretty good first test for him. He’s a playing a pretty below average team with a little bit of talent in some young players.

I’m hoping for the fans, and the Boston Red Sox, that Dice-K has a really good game. After reading some more reports, it’s been pretty much confirmed that Dice-K is NOT throwing a gyroball. I pretty much figured as much. The gyroball has turned into an elusive manhunt similar to that of the Loch Ness Monster.

I know I’m eagerly awaiting to see the highlights of the game as I’m stuck at my day job while the game is being played. I’ll check on the stats through out the day to see how he’s doing.

I was watching the Civil Rights game on ESPN this past Saturday afternoon. It was nice for the ESPN announcers to talk to some of the greats of baseball past while in the booth. They talked to former Yankee and favorite of mine, Dave Winfield. They talked about his book, “Dropping The Ball”. It talks about whats going wrong with the game of baseball and how it can be fixed.

I found it really fasinating as they chatted about it. I went out on EBay and found the book and got it. I’m really excited to read it, and I’m not normally much of a book reader. I anticipate writing a full review on the site once I complete the book.

Hopefully, it comes this week and I get started on it while were on the holiday weekend.

*EDIT* My book has arrived and I can’t wait to start reading it.*/EDIT*