2008 Baseball Season -- Underway

Currently, it's the bottom of the tenth, according to ESPN's website.

I've got to say, I don't care much for the scheduling, as has become an annual spring complaint, though it's slightly different this year. Having two games this week (on Tuesday and Wednesday), then having these teams return to America, play exhibition series, and then have the regular season resume on Sunday (Monday for most teams) makes little sense. Having the vast majority of teams (26, I think) begin play on the same day is a good move, but they still leave some with an off day in the middle of the opening series, and I despise off days in the middle of series. Also, it seems odd to have the Braves and Nationals play Sunday night, and then leave town to play other teams the next day. The Nationals probably won't even have 12 hours between leaving the stadium and reporting to the one in Philadelphia, due to the unusually late start time Sunday (8pm EDT), and an early game on Monday (1pm) (I figure they need to get to the stadium a couple hours before gametime).

I see that Boston has now won. Huston Street blew the save in the ninth, and then gave up a couple more runs in the tenth, and Papelbon tried to blow the save in the tenth, and seems only to have been saved by poor baserunning (Athletics making baserunning blunders ... that sounds strangely familiar ...). Glad I don't own either in fantasy play, based on their performance today. I did pick up Okajima in a league yesterday, though, which worked out quite well, as he got the win.

Jack Cust was his normal amazing self, and struck out four times. He's my early favorite for this season's strikeout king. I've seen people talking about the possibility of Ryan Howard reaching the 200 strikeout mark, based especially on his performance last year, and there's always some Adam Dunn talk, but my money's on Cust, who last season became the first player to strikeout 150 times or more in less than 400 at bats (164 in 395, in 124 games). While Howard did manage to strikeout 199 times in 144 games, his strikeout rate was much higher than normal, and I'd expect it to swing back in the direction of the previous two seasons (once every 3.12 AB in 2005, 3.21 in 2006, compared to 2.66 in 2007). Cust, on the other hand, is a Rob Deer quality strikeout machine, averaging one every 2.41 AB in 2007 after a rate of once every 2.09 AB in his career prior to 2007. The only problem with betting on Cust is that he's the only one of these big three likely to get a serious benching if he goes on a prolonged slump.

In fantasy news, I did my annual plugging of ESPN projected stats into the projected team lineups in the league I care about, and it had me winning the twelve-team league by half a point. My hitting was third-worst (though not really far below average), but my pitching was awesome. The exercise had only two players within fifteen points of my combined pitching total, and they were the two players below me in hitting. In a result I don't expect to play out in real life, the good doctor finished last, mostly due to pitching that was as bad as mine was good. The exercise did not factor in any injuries or post-draft roster moves, and was really just a simple plugging of ESPN's projected stats for the players I projected to be in each teams starting lineup, and for the pitchers, I took each teams relievers and added their top starters until I ran up against the league's innings limit. I freely admit that it's a flawed system, but it does make a decent starting point for evaluating things.