One week has passed on the Major League Baseball season and there have already been some interesting developments. Any of the predictions from the season preview published over the past two weeks will not come to fruition. However, with six games under their belt, the Toronto Blue Jays look like a completely different team. Despite their two losses in New York, squandered opportunities and stranded base runners, the Jays returned to Toronto knowing that they had some of the best pitching in the American League. Early in the season, the Jays needed to take advantage of the tired, jet-lagged and somewhat disoriented Boston team. They did just that with three more strong outings from their starting pitchers and some serious power shown by Frank Thomas, leading them to sweep the Sox right out of Canada. Roy Halladay finished it up on a Sun. that saw Thomas launch a first pitch fastball into the left centre-field seats for a two-out grand slam. Over the three games, the Jays outscored the Sox 23-9. Now at 4-2, the Jays need to focus on taking advantage of some of the underachievers in the American League, namely the Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers, who they’ll face over the next two weeks.
Other interesting developments of the past week:
The Detroit Tigers having a 0-6 start going into a tilt against the Chicago White Sox makes for a bad campaign. This is why the baseball season lasts 162 games, but Miguel Cabrera still does not look like the stud he was in Miami and the Tigers are losing stars left, right and centre to various injuries.
The New York Yankees are going to finish fourth in the AL east. It might be difficult to believe, but outside of Joba Chamberlain, Mariano Rivera, Phil Hughes and Chien-Ming Wang, who the heck is pitching for the Yanks? Andy Pettite and Mike Mussina are not 30 years old anymore, and no one knows who Ross Ohlendorf is. After getting handled by the Tampa Bay Rays over the weekend, New York finally squeezed a win out behind the pitching of Wang. No matter how many runs they score, though, it isn’t going to be enough to beat most of the teams in the AL with that bad calibre of pitching.
My personal prediction that the Milwaukee Brewers will win the NLCS is looking good six games in–not. Add one more frontline starter to this team, though, and look out. If only they could make a trade for Rich Harden of the Oakland Athletics. That lineup is deadly and Ryan Braun will win a batting title in the next few years, guaranteed.
The Mets lost Pedro Martinez to a hamstring injury. When was the last time this guy threw more than four innings in a game? Well, last year, but he only made five starts in 2007, 23 the year before, and it would be lucky if he made it to five this year. Martinez is done; he just doesn’t know it yet. He was throwing Reagan-era fastballs and looked, frankly, old in his three-and-one third innings. Might this be the first year in the past 15 that New York is left without Oct. baseball?