Hopefully you know I was just busting your chops there. The Rangers are going to be fine this year. Now the Sox, I'm still waiting for that turnaround. I expect it anytime but Baltimore and TB sure aren't making it easy to play catch up right now.

how about the Orioles 17 inning marahton ending with a DH pitching 2 scoreless innings and getting a win.
At least Chris Davis had pitched in high school but that is approaching a decade ago haha. I wonder if anyone tops that length of game this year.

Also i know your busting my chops. Its all good. The Rangers a certainly slumping though. When Darvish k's 11 he shouldn't be looking at a loss. The bats have got to come back alive and get more than 2 runs in a game.

This season is starting to get ugly. The Sox's trouble seems to really be their starting pitching and I'm not seeing much help on that front in the near future. Could be a long season.

Certainly a tough loss for Darvish although his pitch counts are starting to get me worried. 112 pitches over 6 innings isn't exactly efficient. Granted he wasn't helped by that Damon "single" but he still needs to get a few more quick innings. Although I still see him being ROY unless something crazy happens; especially with how Matt Moore has been pitching for TB. He was looking as the prohibitive favorite prior to Darvish signing and was still supposed to push Darvish for the award but his starts are getting worse every time out.

Darvish's pitch counts aren't worrying me yet. Though as the summer in TX wears on he will want to reduce some of those counts. His biggest deal is that his breaking stuff is rarely in the strike zone. Most hitters swing and miss at said pitches but those that are patient are getting a lot of full counts. I think he has gotten better every start save this last one, which i still say 11 strikeouts is a good day at the office.

Ok so Hamilton is a monster. He is on pace for 83 HR's by the end of the year. While he won't get that its still one of the most impressive first couple of months in baseball history. He is ripping the ball an insane amount. This week he had 9 of his 12 hits as HR's. Thats alone is crazy. He leads the majors in almost every major offensive category.
So right now he is the fav to me for the MVP. But who else have you guys observed that are likely candidates this year.

I didn't understand it then, and I can't understand it now, I have no earthly idea why the Reds traded Hamiltion at the time when they could have gotten rid of Dunn and Griffey instead, well maybe not Griffey, but they could have moved Dunn to make room for Hamiltons upcoming contract.

Especially when I look at what the offensive lineup would have been if he still was here. Phillips, Cozart, Votto, Hamilton and Bruce...just makes me upset.


Regardless of previous bone headed moves, Reds finally got back on track, and Vottos big walk off grand slam was nice to see Saturday.

I agree but as a Texas fan Im really glad they didn't do it. Some of it had to do I'm sure with how bad they got burned early by him and his problems. But once it was clear he had really turned his life around how do you let the guy go? Im stoked we got him and hopefully we lock him up for the next few years.

We didn't draft him out of HS, we got him in Rule 5 and gave him his second chance, he was nothing but Aces when he was with us and won the fan base over, I've become a Texas fan a bit because of him but it still astounds me to think about it, maybe if I can find a roofie to forget 2007.

As to the MVP discussion, right now, even though its extremely early but Josh is just out of this world he's putting up video game numbers with his Triple Crown.

NL is a bit murkier, I think Kemp is the leading candidate at the moment, but cases probably could be made for Bruce and Beltran, Beltran will probably get comeback player though, and Bruce's OPS is well under 1.000 which is a pretty strong barometer, once he gets a little bit more selective with his pitches he'll tear it up, right now I think he's at 3 to 1 K:BB so there's definite room for improvement.

I think I concur about the NL picks.

Cy Young of course is a race that may be very good this year in both leagues. Although the usual suspects may not be at the top this year from what I can tell. We may get a Cy Young no one expected this year.
I'm not sure anyone has really distinguished themselves yet this year though.

I haven't been commenting because I don't want to jinx them, but I'll say it now. Holy cow are the Orioles ever looking solid this season. The long beaten down O's fan in me doesn't want to believe it, but week after week my boys in orange are getting it done.

Of course all of this is still shy of the of the quarter season mark, so let's hope that it holds. Who would have thought a moneyball style team built on solid D and gutsy pitching could still get it done?

Well in all fairness they have a good manager too. Buck knows what he is doing. He has been a successful manager in this league before. And your right its good to see them doing so well.

This is just crazy and pretty fun too. It's mid-May and the Orioles are still in first with the Yanks and Sox bringing up the rear. And bear in mind that I'm a Sox fan.
I'm certainly upset with the home team and want them to straighten it out but at the same time I am happy for the O's fans who have dealt with quite the dearth of good news on the front for quite a number of years. Here's hoping they have reason to stay excited for the whole season.

And here's also hoping that Hamilton is able to stay healthy all year so we can see where his season ends up. I certainly don't expect him to keep this pace because that would be more than insane especially when the summer heat comes to Texas but it would be great to watch him carry this all year.

Hey ThorKnigh83, Darvish had another very good outing last time out. Starting to think he is going to be the real deal and actually live up to the hype. Hope I didn't just jinx him though