Gerrit Cole

The draft is just what it is - unless we're talking about coming up unlucky with conscription, but all the same, Gerrit Cole has to be happy. His doubters look at his losing record and laugh, but as anyone with half a brain knows, wins and losses don't mean anything. Just because you're on a team with a crappy offense or because you have to apply for non-support doesn't mean that you're a bad player. It just means that you're unfortunate. That said, at least he'll be used to non support when he plays for the Pirates (although this year, they are a little better as they flirt with .500 at various points a few months into the season and they are only 2 games under at this point in time (28-30)).
We laugh at who goes first and second in pro sports. We laughed when the Houston Texans selected Mario Williams instead of Reggie Bush, but there were issues of who could afford Reggie Bush. A complete bust of a non-Kardashian career later, Bush is the guy who cost USC the National Championship (though in his defense, asking 18-24 year olds not to earn money JUST BECAUSE you've given them a full ride is asinine. If their parents are rich, they can give them beer and date money. If they're kids from the streets, well... suffer little children as you get caught for taking money and cars and jewelry and tattoos from rich donors everywhere (we feel your pain Ohio State).
And we can't blame Pittsburgh for what they can't afford or don't want to deal with heartache over. It's not like Pedro Alvarez and Scott Boras came through with an ability to match their holdout. Instead, they've got a guy hitting .208 and on the DL. One man can't change the culture of a team. At least not in MLB. Maybe in the NBA (and even then, Lebron isn't enough by himself - though he can make money at the gate). But for the Pirates scouting, they have 2 picks that had marginal talent in the Bonds-less past: Andrew McCutchen and Jason Kendall. Sure, McCutchen is touted as the 2nd coming, but he's not tearing up my fantasy league or the pros all that much. Jason Kendall is good and played for a while, but yeah... it's not like people are investing in his rookie card.
Looking at can't miss picks from number one of all of those who have played and had some degree of success, we have to look at the potential of our boy Stephen Strasburg (get well soon). We then find A-Rod, who despite hating his guts, we have to say that minus the steroids, he was the best can't miss prospect out of the league. Ken Griffey Jr. could have been great, but there were the injuries in the second half of his career. Joe Mauer could be be great as well, but he's injured so much that we don't really care what he can't do on MLB video games. Adrian Gonzalez has some upside, and we appreciate that - especially because he's finally earning his Boston Red Sox money. Josh Hamilton has a lot of upside as well - save the injuries, the smack, and the dalliances with drunken women who aren't his wife. Chipper Jones was really good too, but I never thought of him as the answer to the greatest player ever. He's a great player from an age who deserves to be remembered as being good in his age and being good for a great team during his age, but will he or should he be remembered longer than Dale Murphy was from his age?

And what of the ancients? Bob Horner? Harold Baines? Rick Monday? Tim Foli? Besides dressing up as Foli when I was a kid, there is no joy in Tim Foli land save a small town Pennsylvania Halloween parade. Baines is loved by the White Sox. Horner is pretty much forgotten outside Atlanta. Rick Monday saved the flag (we wrote about that). There are some 2 year wonders, and there is last generations Josh Hamilton (Darryl Strawberry) who always managed to blow his chances, but such is life. We can't all be perfect and this isn't about casting shame on those who aren't, but is there a possibility from number one. Can David Price continue to excel or will he end up being Floyd Bannister?
So many questions to wonder, but for now, we'll wish him and the class of 2011 the best and hope that they all end up great (same for Bryce Harper), but yeah... the minors aren't college ball, and they definitely aren't the majors. Keep working, though. The future will soon be here.

Buster Posey

Will the rain ever stop falling? As John Fogerty sang before he ever thought about singing about baseball, is there a person that can stop this rain and bring bright sunny skies back?
There is something about believing in the future and being optimistic about the opportunities that are out there, but when it rains, it's hard, and when it rains (as a former scumbag boss once said), it pours. For me, it's been raining since Wednesday night. My wife and I drove to Ohio from eastern Pennsylvania, and at one point, I looked at her and asked if it was getting dark or getting ugly (weatherwise). She stated the latter, and within 5 minutes, the sky was dark as can be, a pitch black furnace of burned coal in the air (and that's not the Cuyohoga to blame, either). Within another 5 minutes, there was rain, and then there was hail, and all the while there was thunder and lightning, and it was a horrid last 4 hours of a drive to get to Toledo to see her family, but alas, we made it in one piece.
And so as we drove into the distance - perhaps it was my wife's choice of playing the Cure, perhaps it was a continuation of so many moments in the job hunt that is my life, but I was wondering if something is on the other side when the sky gets clear again and the bluebirds sing and spring moves into the beauty of summer. Prior to this, we had about a week straight of rain, followed by a little sun, and more rain, and now we're drenched again.
So right here, there is a question that always exists and that's whether or not the world is a metaphor for what is happening outside of the event itself. For instance, is there brightness on the other side of the clouds and rain? If I'm patient, will the good things come to me?
Many people seem to have a take on it. For example, Victor Frankl wrote about a prisoner who he was with at Auschwitz (the story is in Man's Search for Meaning - an amazing book), who had a mysterious dream that he would be rescued by such and such a date. When that didn't happen, the man basically died of a broken heart.
Just recently, Harold Camping tried for the second time to get his Rapture prediction right, but alas, that didn't happen either, and now those people who waited are wondering if it's his math or a God testing their faith or if they were just betrayed. Nevertheless, the waiting and the hoping and the not happening - the rescue from outside - have caused many people to spend their savings and their faith on a pie in the sky dream not too different than my hoping to win Powerball, and yeah... the answer is always internal since we control our own destinies more than external forces do. I'm sure Frankl would agree.
Dr Seuss wrote of the existential darkness in his permanent graduation gift Oh! The Places You'll Go (not quite St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul, but... I should say that it is a great gift - don't get me wrong - the good doctor is awesome - St. John, now that was an experience for an undergrad thesis long ago):
You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.
And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...
...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That's not for you!
And hopefully, that's not Buster Posey either. We already hope that it's not Stephen Strasburg, the greatest pitcher that still might ever pitch in the game, but yeah...
There is something about facing setback that creeps into the mind, and for this, we can go a million directions when things don't go our way. Mark Twight, a "punk rock" climber, expresses this in his book Kiss or Kills: Confessions of a Serial Climber when he said:
“Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who didn’t think enough of themselves to make something of themselves- people who did only what they had to do and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.”

He made it back. Strasburg is slated to be able to come back from Tommy John Surgery as soon as September (let's hope the Nationals take it easy on him and let him come back full fledge in spring training next February). What will Posey do with his 6-8 weeks off for a broken leg (and possibly all season)? Will he adjust if this is the end of catching altogether?

We like to think that our potential and our heart will help us find a way. Here's to recovery and redemption in all of our lives.

Jim Bouton

See the thing about spring training is that it's spring training. The games might be played, but they don't count. The only thing that counts is the injuries and the players that feel jilted into writing a tell all confessional about all of his fellow players (and a sequel to it) that begins with a demotion from spring training.
We can have a game where Albert Pujols can jack a fly ball over the fence in Florida. The teams can win all the split squad games that they play. The rookies can excel. The veterans can get their swing together. The fans can collect autograph after autograph. Everyone can go to the beach or Disney when the day is done. We can drink in the sun and the fun and the alcohol of an extended spring break as the national pastime comes back and life is good, but none of it means anything except the fun of the moment because it sure as hell doesn't count in the standings.
And for that, I just can't sit and watch a game. It's like Domincian winter league games. I can't watch them either - even if it's you pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball, and you throw the ball. It's all the same. It's like college baseball. You hear the crack of a fastball on aluminum, and there's just something that isn't the same about it.
It's not quite minor league baseball, which is just a carnival that is disguised as a game, but when the circus is done well, then that's a thing of beauty and at least it trains your kids to watch the game for 9 innings. That's a good thing.
In the end, very little comes out of spring training. Sure, there are first games that are for the record book (Jason Heyward). Then again, there are extended slumps into May (David Ortiz). There are story lines to sell and memories to think about over and over, and as long as we're still in early March, everyone still has a chance. It's like Lou Boudreau said (all future and no past). We can go to the store and start our card collections and think about who we're happy to have and who we'd like to trade... who we should and shouldn't have signed (Jayson Werth)... the players that will be sitting this campaign out (Stephen Strasburg). We can look through our shelves for anyone of a million historical books to read and pine for a past that we never lived through (Curt Flood).
All in all, it adds up to everything that baseball will be on day 1.
Nevertheless, I may be happy it's here today, but I won't be watching it.

Adam Wainwright

So much promise in a young Adam Wainwright and the St. Louis Cardinals... just not for this season.
But that right elbow... the throwing arm that can make or break a player. Tommy John Surgery to follow, and stick a fork in him, he's done for 12-18 months.
That would probably stick a fork in the Cardinals' season, too, since the NL Central is no longer Comedy Central past them. Unless the Cardinals find a way to ignite Colby Rasmus at something more offense-oriented as opposed to offensive to Tony Larussa (something I totally understand since I don't like Larussa either, but fortunately, I don't have to deal with him for 162 games + spring training) and get career years out of Matt Holliday and John Jay and better than last year stats out of Pujols (because Punto, Theriot, and Berkman just aren't the answers), this is going to be a long 2011.
Since 2006's relief pitcher introduction to the non-Missouri world in the World Series, Wainwright has been pretty reliable. Other than a shortened, 2008, he's had 200 strikeouts in each of the past 2 seasons and 19+20 wins to combine with Chris Carpenter for a sweet little 1-2 punch to keep Albert in playoff hopes.
Now, he's on the shelf and destined to be an afterthought in next year's campaign too - at least unless Michael Kaplan can do some James Andrews wonder to the arm of this young ace.
This isn't good. The Cardinals need a number 1/2 starter and they need the 230+ innings the young Wainwright is good for (5 complete games last year as well).
This really isn't good because the entire Cardinals pitching rotation has been rebuilt. We may have the technology to rebuild them, but when we rebuild them, there's always the potential for more troubles - even if we're led to believe that all is well because there's a 75% recovery rate for those who undergo the most extreme of pitching injuries - i.e. the dreaded Tommy John surgery.
But Edinson Volquez believes. He's already number one out of the gate for the Reds on opening day. I want to believe for Stephen Strasburg in 2012. I really do. He's the last player I really got excited to watch in this modern game of baseball that just isn't the good ol' days.
In other injury news that matters (Vicente Padilla is a loss, but is he the team anchor?), the Phillies are catching their collective breaths as well as Cliff Lee has a side muscle strain that means that all is not well in the greatest rotation ever (registered trademark only in Philadelphia - offer does not apply in Atlanta or Baltimore). Another chance for more injury or just a hiccup on the way to greatness in 2011?
Only time will tell -35 days to be exact.
Let the games begin.

Andrew McCutchen

If you're a Washington Nationals fan, you probably feel that Bryce Harper arriving in spring training is the 4th stage of the end of the period of time that is "last in the National League East." There's Strasburg. There's Drew Storen. There's Jayson Werth. There's a lot of future out there, but what is there really? Baseball is just a game. It's played on a diamond and it provides distraction to fans while the world doesn't matter.
It's just sometimes that the world does.
Earlier today, Scott and Jean Adam + Phyllis Mackay and Bob Riggle were gunned down by Somali pirates.
As baseball fans, we often reflect on things as meaningless as what will happen to our teams in the season that is. When we think of pirates, we think of the Pittsburgh Pirates and how lowly they've been for 2 decades (thanks Barry Bonds), but it's not often that we think of these real life pirates until they're holding Americans like they did two years ago when they ended up dead and the American captain (Richard Phillips) was released safely because Navy SEALs are excellent marksmen.
Maybe we think of pirates when we think of Johnny Depp, but not any pirate that is hijacking vessels off of Somalia and Oman. If we as Americans do think of pirates in a way that isn't gunning them down quickly, we often play pretend with some ethical high road that sees us wonder what creates the need to take vessels hostage and ransom them for big bucks - as if we could find a way that would justify this and allow us to feel pity on a group of people that are made to do this to make ends meet. But in the end, other than the fact that people will pay big money to return oil tankers and yachts, is there really a reason? The aforementioned bleeding hearts will cry that the poverty of the nations make this a possibility, and perhaps, in some alternate reality that is so, but frankly, I'll take the Navy SEALs option any day.
But the thought of the haves and the have nots do strange things to people. It's as if we all sit around wondering what could make us all have at least enough, and while that's kind and wonderful, it's just not so. Wealth isn't divided equally in the baseball world or the real world. And we don't even have to be talking about a person who gets $64million for 5 years instead of a person who gets $51million for 3 years although it's safe to say that the comparative wealth of some versus that of others plays into things (hell, I'd be content signing for 1 year and $40,000+). In the nastiest parts of the world, we're speaking of living wages and the idea of being safely entrenched in life in a way that there are no more worries about the bad things that could be in a rough and tough lawless land that is governed by marauding gangs of thugs. And perhaps the warlords of the world eradicate the talent and opportunities of these modern day "swashbucklers" so that all they can think to do is become gun toting renegades instead of eventually becoming as potentially great at something as Andrew McCutchen is said to be for a more likable or rational group of Pirates.
That said, I'm not offering tryouts in warm weather locales for these thugs. I'm glad that they were shot up and arrested by our Navy - even if they weren't able to act quickly enough before these 4 innocent Americans were gunned down in cold blood.
I'm just sad that we have to live in a world that can't be civil enough to exist without trying to take from others while threatening with death and mayhem. I don't care if it's in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, or Compton, California. There are good things in life and that's what we should be focusing on - not stating rest in peace to 4 brave Americans who were murdered for no reason at all.

Francisco Liriano

The future is always brighter when multi millions come your way. On that note, Vladamir Guerrero must be smiling like the Cheshire Cat at his bluff of another offer to the Baltimore Orioles didn't get called and he got them to pony up $8million (baseball money, it's not in any way real). We'll see if all this money thrown around to whiff kings, sluggers, and could be pitchers makes Baltimore 2011 look like Baltimore 1983 or Tampa Bay 1999.
I'm going to say that I know where my money is.
All the same, for as unreal as baseball money is, it's great to see players get rewarded for success.
Even more than that, it's great to see players bounce back from Tommy John surgery and get some cash for their pains. I can't wait to see Stephen Strasburg come back and kick ass with an indestructible arm and youthful enthusiasm as he makes the Nationals the dominant team in the N.L. East. More than anything, I just want to see Ryan Howard sitting at home all October and dreaming about the wasted opportunities he had while he was whiffing away in the big games, but alas, I digress.
Last year, Francisco Liriano went 14-10 for a rather pitiful Twins team (pitiful in that A) they incite pity and B) they aren't destined to EVER succeed in the post Kirby Puckett team except in winning a division that is essentially whoever makes the biggest move out of the Twins, Tigers, and White Sox). His first half was better than his second half, and he returned to 2006 form after not healing quickly enough and pretty much sucking 2009 up. Sure, we can blame that on Minnesota as well. After the end of July, he came back for a game in August and a game in September. He didn't do well in either of them, and they cost him 3 years if you include surgery.
Now, he's back with a new contract, and we have to feel good about that gesture. Hopefully, he can return to the form that saw him 12-2.
It's never a good thing to waste a young pitcher, and let's be honest, Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, and Michael Cuddyer aren't getting any younger. Neither is Jim Thome who has 600 home runs and a return to the fall classic on his mind. However, the Twins aren't necessarily built to compete into mid October. Pavano, Baker, Slowey, and the rest don't inspire fear in hitters, no matter how kind the resigning of Pavano was. Liriano is the answer and the question mark, and we can only hope the $4.3 million gesture from the Twin Cities will energize him to play hard and to see if they can take out the AL West champion or the AL Wild Card team and bring the Twins back to glory.
Heaven knows that Joe "I really can't stop ANYTHING that the Yankees throw at me" Nathan isn't the answer at the end or middle of ball games.

Bryce Harper

Last year, I got in on the ground floor of Jason Heyward and Stephen Strasburg. After life got in the way, and I wasn't able to blog anymore, I still called the television and watched in sheer joy as Strasburg made mincemeat out of the Pirates. When he went out for Tommy John Surgery, I wanted to cry and curse the Nationals for not learning from the Cubs treatment of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. Hopefully, they won't rush him back. Besides, even with Jayson Werth, there is no hope in Mudville... err Washington D.C. for a playoff dream next year. However, there will be soon. It's just that you can't kill a young pitcher with a heavy workload and lots of speed coming off his shoulder. It's just not good - unless you're Nolan Ryan, that is.
The future is...
We haven't heard that in DC since 2007 and 2008 as America got Obama shoved down their throats 24/7 and change was coming if it wasn't already here. The writing was on the wall. Bush was gone and everything was going to be nice again.
And this time, it's for real with youngsters like Strasburg, Drew Storen, and Bryce Harper, the number one overall pick to go with the number one pick from last year. This isn't signing some worthless malcontent loser from the Devil Rays like Elijah Dukes whose power potential was completely outweighed by his propensity to blame threatening his significant other teacher with violent threats. Like father, like son. Don't even get me started on Nyjer Morgan, either. No, this is building for the future to make all of the difference in the world for the future of baseball in the NL East as they try to move away from the memories of the Senators who were first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League East. Walter Johnson is still thanking his lucky stars for that one great 1924 season after setting the record for most 1-0 losses in a career due to the non-support that his club offered. I guess in that, he must feel a little bit like Elijah Dukes whose father spent most of his life in jail and ruined his potential to be the great player that Tampa Bay and Washington were looking for in him.
But alas...
The future is next year for Washington. The bat, the arm, the hope, the dream, the moving through high school to college 2 years early, the devastation on the minor league level, and the positive attitude. It's all there, and watching it in interview with Peter Gammons... man. I believe. I'm in on this 1. A lot of people seem to be as they see the stomping on that first baseman's ankle as an unfortunate mishap by a young kid who now seems to want to do everything right.
And we hope he does.
The future is everything.
We believe.