bobbob1313

Some shit referring going on so far today.

Though if the USA hadn't stood around looking lost and helpless for 50 minutes, the referring wouldn't have mattered/

Philly likes to be super patient with their prospects. There's a chance he might not see AAA until next year.

Though I didn't realize he was in AA for a month or two last year. He'll be in AAA by July, I would think. They need him to be ready to replace Werth.

Jesus Montero is a good bet to get called up for the Yankees. He's gotta be the top prospect in baseball right now, despite a slow start in AAA.

He was generally 3-4 before the season, and everyone else is up.

Pirates call up top prospect Pedro Alvarez.

Year of the prospect continues!

Holy upset, Batman!

Spain loses to Switzerland.

How about the fraud that is the French team?

Sorry. My bad. I knew the Marlins had another 1B prospect and I thought Stanton was it, with him being so large and all. It's hard to keep up with all those young Marlins.

Nope Stanton's just a big RF. Was supposed to play TE for USC before we signed him.

Though when Bill Parcells saw him in Spring Training he said he was "a little wormy" for football.

Hence his nickname, the Big Worm.

Yup, and Nava was only the second guy to hit a grand slam on the very first pitch he'd seen in the majors. The first was Kevin Kouzmanoff, then with the Indians in 2006.

So with Hermida and Kouzmanoff as company, I think the most important thing to do is temper expectations.

Congrats to Boston's Daniel Nava, the 4th player in MLB history to smack a grand slam in his first at-bat. And on the first pitch, too!

Jeremy Hermida did that too. Pinch hit, no less.

He does now.

Stanton's a natural RFer. Don't think he's played a game of 1B in his career in the minors thus far.

Logan Morrison is our big 1B prospect. Top 20 prospect by Baseball America coming into the season.

That is awesome.

I really want to see them again...

Fuck it.

If we're changing everything, let's just make it 10 conferences of 12 teams each, shorten the regular season to 11 games + a conference championship for every conference, and then a 12 team tournament with each conference winner and two at large, top 4 ranked teams in the tourney get a bye. Just get rid of all the time in between the conference titles and the bowls.

et's not overlook the Marlins callup of their top prospect, 1B Mike Stanton, who seems very Evan Longoria-ish.

Unfortunately, our bullpen continues to be stinky-poo.

Could've used the old, white Mike Stanton too.

Well, Beckham's young, that happens with young players. Chris Coghlan's been almost as bad, ignoring a recent 10 game hot streak, and he was even better than Beckham last year.

Quentin seems to not be fully recovered from that wrist injury 2 years back, and those kinds of injuries can just kill a young power hitter. He simply never may recover.

As for Floyd and Peavy, both are probably the recipients of a little bad luck, but that defense doesn't look too hot to me.

I'm not a big fan of Ozzie, but I'd take him as my manager. At the very least, he's interesting.

Can I ask why he has lost his grip on the team?

I haven't heard anything about trouble in the clubhouse. Is it just because they are old and suck? Because that's not really his fault.

This has been an crazy year for prospects, with guys like Mejia, Heyward, Smoak, Neftali Feliz and the likes all being top prospects playing pretty big roles for their teams.

But it's about to get even crazier.

Stephen Strasburg (Nationals vs Pirates) and Mike Stanton (Marlins vs Phillies), basically the 1 & 2 prospects in the minors make their Major League debuts on Tuesday.

I'm excited.

Sure go ahead. Though my go to argument would be "Griffey played better competition in the American League so Bond's stats would be better" and I'm not sure how true that actually is.

Didn't bonds win 3 MVPs and get robbed of a 4th while in the same division as Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz?

We have an agreement.

Can somebody say that Ken Griffey Jr was a better player than Barry Bonds in the 90's so I can rant?

Hope you get to go, that was our plan until this Atlanta show was announced. Should be a great weekend.

I had tickets for their show in Atlanta in 2007 and had to give my tickets away when a friend bailed. Coincidentally, that friend ended up marrying me, so we agreed that if they came anywhere within a reasonable driving distance, we'd be there.

I saw it live too, and I had no idea whether he was safe or not. If I hadn't seen a replay, I would have been fine with whatever call the ump had made, based on my initial reponse. I don't see anyway you could say for certain in live action from a wide angle. I would say at normal speed, the difference between foot hitting bag and all was less than 1/10 of a second. His foot wasn't squarely on the bag until the runner's foot was in the air and about 2 feet from the bag maybe less.

It's super obvious in slow motion, but that was kind of the definition of a bang bang play.

Sounds awesome.

Does your wife actually like Arcade Fire, or is this like Homer Simpson buying Marge a bowling ball with "Homer" on it for Marge's birthday?

Oh yeah, she likes them more than I do (And they're a top 5 current band for me). They are playing Lollapalooza on her birthday, I was thinking about trying to take her to that, but Atlanta's much closer for us (though still not particularly close. The Arcade Fire must really despise Florida.)

The only thing I could have thought was that he kind of sno-coned the ball and then popped it into the glove. Maybe he thought it was bobbled.

tim kurkjian made the exact point you did last night. If he is safe, he is safe. unfortunately, this was not even a close call.

It was an exceptionally close call. If it happens in the 4th inning, you go "Shit, he missed it, but it's a close play and he's human" and move on. Maybe Lou Pinella gets tossed, but that's about it.

Dan Le Batard's column on this was great:

Here it is, the decision of a lifetime. It is right in front of you. It will be, by the time you have made it, the most important choice of your entire career. You are very good at what you do. You have spent more than two decades at the top of your profession. But you have but a blink to choose now. See, process, decide -- in less time than it took you to read those three words.

 

And you choose wrong.

 

So very wrong.

 

And the world immediately falls on your head before you have had time to drop it.

 

So cruel, baseball. Everything you've ever done can be erased in a hiccup, as Bill Buckner can tell you.

 

A human game was marred by human error Wednesday night, the pursuit of historic perfection punctuated by historic imperfection. Umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at the worst possible time. In the history of sports rulings, you aren't going to find too many worse than this.

 

Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga had faced 26 batters and retired each one. One more to go. One strike to go. Slow roller to the right side. Galarraga gets to first base in time to record the out -- clearly a step ahead of the runner. But Joyce chooses wrong.

 

And history is forever altered. One step changed the headlines from ``Perfect game!'' to ``Imperfect ump!,'' just like that the pendulum swinging from joyous to angry, one symbolic step the difference between the perfection humans aren't meant to achieve and the imperfection we've perfected.

 

The oddest thing happened then, though. Many years ago, a home run was taken from George Brett because of an umpire's silly decision about pine tar on his bat, and Brett famously raged out of the dugout, requiring all manner of restraint as he boiled near the umps. That's what happens sometimes when competition-aholics are robbed of what they have earned. It wasn't an important home run, never mind an immortal one. Just another regular-season game. And Brett lost all control. People understood the reaction. Whether it is Bernie Madoff or Scott Rothstein, Americans get very, very angry when what they have rightly earned is stolen.

 

And here was young Galarraga, a pitcher with a 20-18 career record, on immortality's front porch, literally a step from this divine place only 20 other pitchers in America's most historic game have ever reached. Fans would have understood if he had thrown his glove or filled the sky with expletives or maybe even bumped the ump in an injustice-soaked burst.

 

But you know what he did?

 

He laughed. It wasn't a mocking or sarcastic laugh, either. It looked like the sweet laugh of acceptance. Tranquility amid turbulence. Almost a spiritual state. The very opposite of wherever it was that Brett visited as he was being restrained.

 

Religions form in search of this kind of balance and serenity. Amazing grace.

 

You can't really fix this. Commissioner Bud Selig can overturn the ruling, as he may, but it doesn't bring back the joy. The moment has been forever stolen by human error.

 

You can't have teammates come back and pile on him, or fans file back into the stadium with a spontaneous noise. And Joyce, of course, was despondent. He had blown the biggest call of his career. He apologized to Galarraga. Hugged him, even. And Galarraga accepted.

 

Truth is, umpiring decisions impact outcomes all the time without this kind of notice. Heck, we just had the 20th perfect game right here in Miami last weekend, thrown by Philadelphia's Roy Halladay, and the ump's absurd strike zone in that game helped make that one as perfect as this one was flawed.

 

But Wednesday's reaction, so loud at first, was somehow softened by the humanity exhibited by both pitcher and ump in interviews afterward. A broken umpire's obvious despondence mixed with a betrayed pitcher's gentle forgiveness put feelings and context and empathy where there had been only wrath and mockery.

 

The Indians and Tigers played a baseball game Wednesday night, and it was not quite perfect.

 

But it was about as close as sports can get.

Did you really think it was safe without a doubt in real time?