So, it seems one of the most common things during the first month of baseball this year is slow starts of teams that have what would appear on paper to be All Star teams. Now my home team, the Blue Jays, is one of the teams most put under such scrutiny for lack of performance up until, so much so that fans have really started to loose their shit. R.A Dickey was booed after his 6 innings of scoreless ball this week, and today I read an article quoting Jays broadcaster Gregg Zaun saying that the fans are becoming more and more obnoxious. Now I may not be able to go to games currently and see how bad it is, but from listening to the broadcasts or watching on MLB.TV I can see that the fans are definitely being a little over the top.
Anyhow back to the topic at hand, the main purpose of this is to let fans of teams that are off to a slow start, whether it be the Jays, the Angels or the Dodgers, to calm down. It's only the first month of a 6 month long season of baseball, there is plenty of time to make up for lost ground, not to mention that when you bring in so many new players over a year, like the Jays and Dodgers did, it'll take time for everyone to click as a team, unfortunately you can't just throw a bunch of all stars onto a field and expect them to win games if they can't compliment how the other plays. Now instead of bashing your own team for not playing at the level you think they should be, you should be looking more at their progress.
For instance over the past few games the offence for the Angels has started to light up, Mike Trout has started running more and has hit some big situation hits (such as his recent grand slam). The Jays have been improving as their last 2 games have been only lost by 1 run, and in both cases they were facing a pretty potent Baltimore offence and their pitching was pretty good, just unfortunately a couple errors really cost them the games, but again there is more than enough reason to believe they can come back from this.
Then with the Dodgers, the main problem there is similar to the Jays, their offensive core hasn't been producing (especially Matt Kemp), but do you REALLY think that someone like Matt Kemp is going to fall flat on his face with no explanation at all? Can you tell me when thats ever happened before? In addition to this Kemp it seems is calming down from the homerless streak, which in my opinion is the first step to breaking it, forget it's happening because thinking about it is just gonna drive you mad. But on the other hand, Kershaw has been fantastic, Grienke is likely to be back sooner than expected because they got his shoulder surgically prepared instead of just letting it heal normally and Ryu isn't turning out to be that bad of an offseason acquisition either. Not to mention if shit really hits the fan the Dodgers can call up Yasiel Puig who just ripped Spring Training a new asshole this year.
So overall fans of teams off to a slow start, hang tight, keep a cool head and focus on the positives. If you only focus on how bad part A or part B of your team is doing you'll only make yourself go nuts.
-Eric
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Introductions
Alright so to open this blog I'll just let you all a little about myself. My name is Eric, I'm 25 and I'm from a town called Oakville up in Canada, I'm a die hard baseball fan, avid fantasy baseball player and generic science/tech nerd.
Since I was about 3 years old I've been watching baseball on TV, I even went to a few games every month or two with the family when I was around that age. Over the years my love for the sport has grown, I went to Blue Jays games fairly often with my family fairly often when I was younger. Then in high school I started going to games with friends fairly often and paying more attention to what was going on with other teams. So I adopted a 'favourite team from each division' stance, so when the Jays weren't playing I'd watch the White Sox, the Braves, the Rangers, the Diamondbacks and the Cardinals. I picked those teams for a variety of reasons, first being that some of them had players I loved and still do in some cases (Mark Buerhle, Paul Konerko, Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Albert Pujols, Michael Young, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and other players like James Shields).
Then into my junior/senior years in high school I started playing fantasy baseball, both on my own online, with friends in private leagues and helping with drafts and pickups/drops in my dad's AL only league. I was honestly fascinated by how hooked I got on finding daily options for streaming pitchers or watching for triple-A prospect call ups and just how much more baseball I watched/listened to as a result of my new interest.
Through all of this I became more loosely affiliated as a fan of any one team (outside of the Jays that is, gotta represent your home team, right?) and became more of a fan of players, especially the ones that defied all odds to get where they were, ones who were masters of their craft, or guys that just had an amazing consistency when other players of their talent level were having rough outings or getting injured. And above all else I began to respect players that chose to stick it out with their original team rather than opt out at their first chance at free agency when they could cash in, which is why I've been long term fans of guys like Roy Halladay, Chipper Jones, Todd Helton, Ichiro Suzuki and Michael Young. All of those players either stayed with their respective teams longer than they needed to or were willing to sacrifice something for the better of the team (ie. Halladay signing an extension with the Jays despite coming off a great year, minus injury. Or Michael Young constantly switching his position so the Rangers could acquire more talented players).
Now through this I became quite the baseball nerd, but by extension I had developed other nerdy tendencies such as an affinity towards Japanese culture, as well as learning some of the language. A few years removed from high school and into University I went on a week long trip to Tokyo, and when planning this trip I saw that the Yomiuri Giants would being having a home game while I was in town, so I though 'Count me in!' (The Giants are much like the Yankees of the JBL). When I saw the game I can definitely say there is quite a difference in the game I love back in North America versus in Japan, now I don't mean just in the rules, the fan interaction with the team is much different. Fans are just as noisy, if not more so throughout the whole match, but in addition the outfield sections are specifically set for home and away team cheering sections and in a lot of cases those cheering sections will have flags, drums and sometimes other instruments at that. I remember that at that game there was a small section of people playing brass instruments and what really put a smile on my face was the that there was one Canadian player on the Giants that year and the fans had their own specific cheer for him, the game was quite an experience.
After I got back I had this sense that I should see games in other stadiums, since I had only ever been to the Sky Dome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre), Old and New Yankees Stadium and Tropicana Field, so my knowledge of baseball parks was rather limited and since Tampa didn't have a great fan base when I saw a game it wasn't an amazing experience. So when I got back from home I decided I would get out to games outside of Canada, which I did, to date I've seen games at the old Sun Life Stadium, U.S Cellular Field, Wrigley Field, Fenway, Rangers Ballpark, and 3 other stadiums when I made a return trip to Japan for a 2 weeks a year ago.
Nowadays despite doing a research degree in Australia I split a yearly MLB.TV subscription with my dad and listen to at least 1-2 games a day, and watch 2-3 of them on weekends. I still have continued playing fantasy baseball on my own as well, I'm now an integral part of my father's team and despite not having any major league games to go to over here I make sure to listen to baseball podcasts, read ESPN baseball articles and keep as up to date as I can with the sport I love.
-Eric
Since I was about 3 years old I've been watching baseball on TV, I even went to a few games every month or two with the family when I was around that age. Over the years my love for the sport has grown, I went to Blue Jays games fairly often with my family fairly often when I was younger. Then in high school I started going to games with friends fairly often and paying more attention to what was going on with other teams. So I adopted a 'favourite team from each division' stance, so when the Jays weren't playing I'd watch the White Sox, the Braves, the Rangers, the Diamondbacks and the Cardinals. I picked those teams for a variety of reasons, first being that some of them had players I loved and still do in some cases (Mark Buerhle, Paul Konerko, Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Albert Pujols, Michael Young, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and other players like James Shields).
Then into my junior/senior years in high school I started playing fantasy baseball, both on my own online, with friends in private leagues and helping with drafts and pickups/drops in my dad's AL only league. I was honestly fascinated by how hooked I got on finding daily options for streaming pitchers or watching for triple-A prospect call ups and just how much more baseball I watched/listened to as a result of my new interest.
Through all of this I became more loosely affiliated as a fan of any one team (outside of the Jays that is, gotta represent your home team, right?) and became more of a fan of players, especially the ones that defied all odds to get where they were, ones who were masters of their craft, or guys that just had an amazing consistency when other players of their talent level were having rough outings or getting injured. And above all else I began to respect players that chose to stick it out with their original team rather than opt out at their first chance at free agency when they could cash in, which is why I've been long term fans of guys like Roy Halladay, Chipper Jones, Todd Helton, Ichiro Suzuki and Michael Young. All of those players either stayed with their respective teams longer than they needed to or were willing to sacrifice something for the better of the team (ie. Halladay signing an extension with the Jays despite coming off a great year, minus injury. Or Michael Young constantly switching his position so the Rangers could acquire more talented players).
Now through this I became quite the baseball nerd, but by extension I had developed other nerdy tendencies such as an affinity towards Japanese culture, as well as learning some of the language. A few years removed from high school and into University I went on a week long trip to Tokyo, and when planning this trip I saw that the Yomiuri Giants would being having a home game while I was in town, so I though 'Count me in!' (The Giants are much like the Yankees of the JBL). When I saw the game I can definitely say there is quite a difference in the game I love back in North America versus in Japan, now I don't mean just in the rules, the fan interaction with the team is much different. Fans are just as noisy, if not more so throughout the whole match, but in addition the outfield sections are specifically set for home and away team cheering sections and in a lot of cases those cheering sections will have flags, drums and sometimes other instruments at that. I remember that at that game there was a small section of people playing brass instruments and what really put a smile on my face was the that there was one Canadian player on the Giants that year and the fans had their own specific cheer for him, the game was quite an experience.
After I got back I had this sense that I should see games in other stadiums, since I had only ever been to the Sky Dome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre), Old and New Yankees Stadium and Tropicana Field, so my knowledge of baseball parks was rather limited and since Tampa didn't have a great fan base when I saw a game it wasn't an amazing experience. So when I got back from home I decided I would get out to games outside of Canada, which I did, to date I've seen games at the old Sun Life Stadium, U.S Cellular Field, Wrigley Field, Fenway, Rangers Ballpark, and 3 other stadiums when I made a return trip to Japan for a 2 weeks a year ago.
Nowadays despite doing a research degree in Australia I split a yearly MLB.TV subscription with my dad and listen to at least 1-2 games a day, and watch 2-3 of them on weekends. I still have continued playing fantasy baseball on my own as well, I'm now an integral part of my father's team and despite not having any major league games to go to over here I make sure to listen to baseball podcasts, read ESPN baseball articles and keep as up to date as I can with the sport I love.
-Eric
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)