Mods can we have this as a new thread for this year's MLB season please?

Can you direct posters from [url=http://viewtopic.php?f=30&t=330318this thread[/url for us all? Thanks

So the Red Sox start the season with a win against the Yankees last night. To quote a Toronto Journo, "As a catcher, Jorge Posada is a fine DH".

Blue Jays get underway today with a tough series in Texas. We've been hitting pretty well coming into the season (especially our 1-2-3 spots) so lets hope we can keep it going. Very nervous for Marcum, making his first big league start since August 2008.

Can't wait for today's match. Not confident with Harang on the mound (I believe he ties a Reds record for consecutive opening day starts too) because he's struggled the last two years. I'm actually more hopeful of the back three of our rotation with Arroyo (our best pitcher), Bailey (fingers crossed on a breakthrough year) and Leake (first round pick from last year going straight into the big leagues without going to the minor leagues first).

Looking forward this year to seeing Strasburg, Heywood and hopefully Champman. Lots of talk about these three, particularly the first two. Strasburg has been described as the best pitching prospect ever and Heywood is a 6'6'' five tool player. As for Chapman, he is the Reds big gamble. A 100mph Cy Young contender if the gamble pays off.

A few pictures from Spring Training...

The worst contract in MLB takes a big swing


Doc in a strange uniform


Doc pitches to Overbay


Werth sans beard


Brian Tallet


AJ Burnett


Jose Bautista taking AJ deep

Good start for the Red Sox, i must admit watching the game when they were 5-1 down, i thought it was going to be one of those days. Beckett was poor (glad he has signed a new 4 year deal though), but thankfully the Sox have a good bullpen. Hopefully going to be a good season but as usual the Red Sox have to put you through it.

Bit of a heartbreaker for the Jays yesterday and Shaun Marcum in particular, as they lose in 5-4, giving up 2 in the 9th. I had little confidence in our ability to close a game before the season started, I have even less now. On the plus side was the performance of Marcum, which was outstanding considering the length of time he's been out. Also, very encouraging to see Vernon Wells go 3-4 with 1 HR and 3 RBIs.

Less than a week to the home opener. Can't wait.

As the new season has started here are my predictions for the season

AL East.......AL Central.........AL West.....AL Wildcard
Yankees.......White Sox........Rangers.......Angels

AL Champ
Yankees

NL East........NL Central.......NL West.......NL Wildcard
Phillies..........Cards............D'Backs.........Braves

NL Champ
Braves

World Series Champ
Yankees

How come the Yanks and Sox always seems like a game 7?

Have that Papelbon you gimp.

Hard to see anyone stopping the dam yankees unfortunately....

Rays beat the Orioles 4-3

3 HRs in 2 games, steady on Vernon.

I guess he's pretty desperate to shake that "Worst Contact In Baseball" tag he thoroughly earned over the last two seasons.

What a bizarre game last night. Blues Jays had 4 hits, 3 of them HRs, 2 of which were solo shots. They were 0 for 9 with RISP and stranded 11 on base. Yet they manged to score 7 runs!

This was mostly thanks to some dreadful pitching by the Rangers and a lot of patience at the plate in which the Jays got 10 BB and 2 HBP. Their 2 runs in the 4th came via HBP, walk, fielding error, walk, walk YIKES!

That said, apart from giving up back 2 back homers, Tallet pitched surprisingly well and definitely deserved the victory. Still, looking at the freaky stats you can't help but think WTF?

The Jays also have yet to single this season. I guess it being Texas, they're all just swinging for the fences.

Afternoon game today and thank fook for the Justin.tv iPhone app. It's the absolute dogs doodahs.

Watched game 3 last night. 0-0 going into the seventh tham whammy.

I'm still pretty stunned that we staged a comeback in the 9th inning. I can't remember seeing that all last season.



VW on track for 200+ homers in 2010. If he got close he might almost be earning that fat contract.



Considering the huge question mark over our starting rotation without Doc, the thing that pleases me most so far is the 3 quality starts we've had.

Biggest concern is Snider, who looked completely clueless at the plate yesterday. He's too good for minor league pitching, he's shown that in the last 2 seasons. But he's struggling to handle major league pitchers. I'm not sure dropping him to AAA will achieve much but what do you do if this continues?

Brilliant game tonight at The Great American Ball Park. Good solid start from Bailey followed by three innnings with one hit in relief by Owings before Drew Stubbs belts our first grand slam of the year (we managed two in the whole of 2009) at the bottom of the 8th to go from 1-3 to 5-3.

Gets to the top of the ninth and Lee hits a homer in the second at bat of the inning making it 5-4. Cordero ends up loading the bases with two outs but he pulls it off with a grounder to him.

Excellent stuff. The Reds commentary team started light-heartedly calling them "The Cardiac Kids" after these two opening wins lol. Interesting stat mentioned though that we were something like 67-1 last year when we were leading in the 8th inning. It's part of the reason why I'm excited about the Reds this year. Our starting rotation has so much potential to click and with the improvement in team spirit, brought about by two come from behind wins, gives me some hope that we might just break into a winning season. A winning season would be a brilliant return for us this year.

Seven road games after this series against the Cubs. I think we can take two off the cubs but not confident about four at the Marlins with three at Pittsburgh after that. Tricky start but I honestly think we can compete this time. Our hitting phobia is being replaced by a similarly low hitting side but we seem to be scoring at the right times now. Votto and Hernandez have started well and I'll take timely hitting over prolific at the moment.

Blue Jays home opener tonight. I am really excited but the friend I was going with just bailed on me to kill my buzz slightly. Looks like it'll be my first solo Jays game. The 5-1 start is amazing but I think it's a bit misleading. We are still sucking hard with RISP and we can't expect to keep knocking out the long ball and picking up walks/errors. Our pitching is looking good so far, especially the BP. Casey Janssen has picked up 3 wins in 3 appearances.

So the Jays we were all expecting to see this season finally showed up last night.



11-1 loss and Brandon Morrow looking like I could get a hit from him. Valdez and Accardo gave Jesse Carlsson good reason to have his bag packed in AAA. Credit to the White Sox pitcher, who 'did a Ricky' on us last night.

With Brett Wallace raking at the plate in AAA, No-more-stache's monopoly of 1B may come to and end soon. I hope so. My reason for cutting him some slack disappeared with his Fu Manchu.

I predict a tied series with the Jays winning tonight.

Yay! I got something right



Jays have signed OF Fred Lewis from the Giants for cash or a PTBNL. Jeremy Reed's spell last 4 days as he's sent back to AAA Vegas. It's looking like this is a move to strengthen the bench. I wonder if the PTBNL will end up being Accardo, who came to the Jays from the Giants.

Wanted to go tonight to watch Marcum pitch but I'd have to go on my own again and doing that twice in one week makes me feel like a complete saddo. Looks like his next home start will be against the Red Sox so that'll do for me.

WHo is this Eveland who has started so well.

We picked him up from Oakland in February. He had an amazing spring, got to see him pitch and was very impressed. He made the rotation due to a last minute injury to Rzepczynski. He said he intends to change his aproach with each new game so that even if the opposition watch tapes of his last games, they still wont know what to expect as it'll be diferent every time. So far he's done that and it's working. Him and Gonzalez have both been excellent pick-ups by the new GM.

Rays beat the White Sox 12-0

We've got the Rays next. Historically we suck against them and given the way they're playing right now I wouldn't be surprised to see us swept. That said, we've got Cecil, Romero & Morrow coming up in our rotation. Cecil was excellent in the spring and continued that form in AAA (he should have started the season with the Jays but Cito went with Tallet). Romero has been our best starter this season and if he'd had any run support he'd be on 3 wins right now. 3 top quality starts including taking a no hitter into 8. Morrow is a question mark but his last outting was great and he seemed to have fixed whatever wasn't working his first 2 starts. If we stick mostly with Camp, Janssen and Gregg from the BP, our pitching will give us every chance. Then it's down to the bats, but I expect them to struggle against some excellent pitching from the Rays, especially Garza and Niemann. Providing our starters do what I know they can I reckon it'll be a low scoring series.

Hill shouold be back Friday for the Jays, which is a massive boost.

Does anyone have MLB.TV?
Is it worth getting and how do i go about getting it?

So amazingly we got to Garza on Friday and then just as amazingly our great BP shat the bed on Saturday. Poor Ricky-Ro is getting the type of run/BP support that Halladay used to get. Today should be interesting.

Don't have mlb.tv - not really worth it since I'm blacked out for all Jays games. Most of them are on the telly anyway. I've heard good things about it though. Just go to mlb.com and follow the links from there.

Two notable accomplishments from yesterdays game. Firstly, David Price threw his first major league shutout. Great effort from a very talented young pitcher. Our bats didn't have a clue. Secondly, Jose Molina threw out 4 from 4 base stealers, including Carl Crawford twice! It was pretty amazing to watch. He's now caught 7 from 8 so far this season. No doubt the Red Sox will be after him



Speaking of which, we start a 3 game home stand with them tonight and to be honest I haven't got a clue what to expect from either side.