SB Nation User Blog: bpoe13

Price vs. A-Rod?

bpoe13 — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:36:15 -0000

From CBS Sportsline,

"SP prospect David Price, selected first overall in the 2007 amateur draft, is scheduled to start for the Rays' extended spring training team Saturday against the Yankees' extended team, which will included the rehabbing Alex Rodriguez (quad). The left-hander, who strained his pitching elbow in a minor league spring training game March 20, will be making his fourth extended spring start.
(Updated 05/15/2008)."

Does anyone have the specifics on this game?

Location?

Time?

Hurry: Watch the newest Ray for $2.99

bpoe13 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:02:58 -0000

Sorry i didn't post this earlier but i got jammed up at work. Last night i was searching my guide for baseball shows and came across the Mexican and Dominican Playoffs. Last night I was lucky enough to watch a great game 6 between the Licey Tigers and Aguilas Cibaenas. When i got the channel the batters due up the next inning were Rafael Fucal, Miguel Tijada and Edwin Encarnaction. The game is on channel 907 on brighthouse which is ESPN Deportes and part of the Spanish package. I called the 800# that shows up on the screen and had all of the Spanish channels in about 5 minutes for $2.99 a month. I don't speak Spanish but if you follow MLB you will recognize a few of the players.

Jose Guillen, Louis Palonia, Bartolo Colon, Randy Choate (Nole), Julian Tavares, Juan Salas, Raul Casanova, Tony Batista, our boy Dukes, Ervin Santana, Jorge Sosa (who blew the save last night) and jose offerman are all on the rosters of the 2 teams playing tonight.

so no on to the the Ray.... Willy Aybar is hitting 4th for Licey and looked good last night with the exception of booting a hard grounder.

Hope others jump on as the crowds are great and besides the fact that i dont speak more than a few words of spanish its great having baseball on TV.

Adios Muchachos,

Poe

Dreams do come true.

bpoe13 — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:46:29 -0000

I can't remember exactly when it all came together but tonight is going to be a significant night in the future of the Rays. Tonight is going to be the first of what should be years and years of the best OF in baseball. Sure, its raw, and its not the best yet, but for a team going nowhere this year, its all about playing together and getting better.

CC, BJ and Delmon in the same OF....... What a sight its going to be.

Speed, power, defense and yet more speed as all 3 continue to get bigger, faster and stronger.

This is the future and as of tonight this is the present.

POE

Vero Rays in Town

bpoe13 — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:35:56 -0000

A few of the Young Guns will be in town this week and I just wanted to give you all a heads up. I am jammed up at work today and have meant to post this for a while but hopefully Patrick or someone else will add any additional info.

This is the only time the Vero Beach Rays (High A) will be here in Clearwater all year.

It looks like we are going to miss Jake McGee as he is scheduled to pitch tonight.

The projected starters look like,

Wednesday....Wade Davis
Thursday.....Wlodarczyk
Friday ..... Not sure as Matt Walker pitched in a double header on the 7th
Sat....Either Walker or Paul Moviel.

PS.. the Wednesday game is a day game.

Now the games are all at brighthouse field which is located at US 19 and Drew Street. It is an incredible field and great place to catch a game.

I highly recommend the shortie burgers, a philly cheese steak from laspadas and the beer around the world both. Tickets are cheap and you should easily be able to buy the $3 or so ticket and sit anywhere you want.

Thursday is Thirsty thursday with 1/2 price beers and the Wade Davis day game has $10 club level seats which include some type of lunch.

For more info on the park check out,

http://www.threshersbaseball.com/

Hope some of the info helps as im rushing to get out of work and forgot to post this a few days ago.

I will be sneaking out for a long lunch on Wednesday to catch a peak at the no hit kid and will be getting loaded in the Frenchys Tiki Pavilion in LF for the 3 night games.

Poe

Jose Capellan

bpoe13 — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:50:26 -0000

I am not sure what we could offer for his services but I think he would look nice in Devil Ray Green or Blue or what ever color we are in the future.

He is 26 and was once a huge prospect in the Braves system. He was has not done much the last few years with the brewers and was just recently sent down.

With no DH and weeks/fielder on the right side of the infield, i don't think the brewers would have much interest in Cantu. But what about swapping arms with us sending them McClung? Fresh starts for both guys might help.

Anyway, I have always thought Capellan has had nasty stuff and we certainly need all the help we can get in our pen.

Poe

Local Live Draft Fantasy League,

bpoe13 — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:39:27 -0000

Hey all,

We are going on our 4th year and have a great group of guys. It is a 12 man league and one of the owners is unable to make the draft and is getting married next month so is stepping down. We are looking for someone local who is looking for a long term fantasy league.

The league info is as follows,

Roto 5x5
NL only
Run through Sportsline
$87 which covers league fees and prizes.
All monies paid out at the end of the year.
Pretty standard ROTO rules

The team you would taking over has a good mix of cheap young talent and veterans.

McCann, Helton, Rollins, Ensberg, Francour, Carlos Quentin, Carpenter and chris young.

The draft date is 3/24 at 10:00 or 11:00 at Tucson's on Ulmerton Road. We will have one of the conference rooms. The draft will take 4-5 hours. If you have played online for a few years and are interested in getting involved in a local league please email your information to commish Doug at rotodaddy@hotmail.com

Any other questions you can email me directly at poe@examforce.com or Doug.

Casey Kotchman

bpoe13 — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:30:37 -0000

I understand that we have a whole bunch of options going into next year at first but what about Kotchman? With the signing of Hillenbrand, I would assume that he is available. Out of all of the options we have, I would not mind going into next year with him at 1st. Not sure who we could move to get him but just an idea.

Poe

Last Saturday workouts. Picts.

bpoe13 — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:48:29 -0000

Hey All,

I was able to get down to the Naimoli Complex Saturday the 25th and wanted to share what I heard and saw. I got there about an hour early and watched as they came out to one of 4 fields at the complex. Some guys seemed a bit hung over from a late Friday night while others it was obvious that they were excited to be out in the sun. It could not have been a nicer day, sunny but with a slight breeze allowing some guys to wear a pull over jacket. Most in the crowd of a few hundred had shorts and tee shirts on. I spent most of the day simply bouncing from field to field trying to get a glance at our young talent.

Below I have a link to a slide show of some of the pictures I took I also wanted to pass along some info from what I took from the day.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpoe13/show/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpoe13/

then click
View bpoe13's latest photos as a slideshow

As soon as the group got together at about 9:30 they moved out to left field away from where we could hear them. I imagine Joe Maddon started the day off with some words about what would happen during the day. After a few minutes they started with typical calisthenics and stretching. After this they warmed up with some light jogging. After this they broke up into groups and spread out amongst the 4 fields. I stayed at the main field which had the typical starting 8 plus a few other veterans. The first drill they did was run from home to first, straight through the bag. Just like tee-ball all the way through high school they started with the most fundamental of fundamentals, running hard through first. What caught my attention was hearing Joe yelling at the guys to, "run hard through the bag, don't get into a habit of slowing down." I thought this was awesome....teaching and applying the basics.

During this time I spoke briefly with a security guard about the vibe so far at these practices. He said he had been there a few years and Joe was keeping the guys out much later then in years past. He also remarked about Jimy Williams talking a whole bunch throughout the day.

A while later I was on the next field over when a horn rang and guys moved fields. As I stayed there, some of the vets came over for infield work. I was a bit surprised at how this "1st group" set up. At 3rd was Burroughs, Wigginton and Huff. At SS was Lugo and Rivas with Cantu at 2nd. Lee was the only guy at first. About half way through Rivas went to 2nd and wigginton moved over to 1st. Questions here......

Huff at 3rd=Delmon in right out of spring?
Where is Nick Green, or Branyon?

On the next field over was the 2nd group taking infield. This was,

1st Base..... Kevin Witt, Wes Bankston and Russell Branyon
2nd Base...... Fernando Cortez and the some Russell branyon
3rd base..... Greg Norton
SS............ Nick Green, Upton and Luis Ordonez

After a bit more of fielding the started live pitching against the hitters. I didn't get too much from this as pitchers aren't doing much and hitters are not at 100%. The only guy that truly stood out was Elijah Dukes. He looks like a stud and hits the ball real hard. Hopefully he can stay out of trouble.

The last thing I noticed that caught my eye was every time I saw BJ, I saw Branyon. They seemed to always be talking and showing each other things.

Well, hope you all enjoyed and if for any reason you want a full size picture of any in the slide show shoot me an email at rpoe@tampabay.rr.com

POE

Update on the Trop

bpoe13 — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 22:19:54 -0000

I was at the trop today and walked around looking for some sign of new life. The main entrance seems to be much brighter and has some new banners. After going through this area i went up to the second level and looked out onto the field from right center. I was standing on the side of the batters eye restaurant where the kids area is.

From here i noticed a good amount of the previously cement walls are painted green and the only other obvious changes are in the second set of seats above the rays dugout. About the distance from home plate to first base is closed down with tape and wood. It looks like they are turning this area into another VIP type section. I for one agree with this type of thinking as bringing in more corporate sponsors can only help the bottom line. Not sure what else i expected but i figured id pass along the info.

Looking forward to a new year.

POE

I want out of the AL East

bpoe13 — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:09:15 -0000

Am i the only one who hates that we have to play the Yankees and Red sox so much? I ran across an interesting post at,

http://www.baseballmusings.com

and was curios of fellow devil rays thoughts.

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/009125.php

I don't like the current division setup. I don't like divisions being of different sizes, and I especially don't like the haphazard scheduling.

One of the problems is that you're trying to fit a schedule into a number of games (162) that was designed for a ten team league (18 games vs. every team), but also works very well for a league with two six-team divisions (18 games vs. division rivals, 12 games vs. teams in the other division).

One nice thing about six-team divisions is that you can have stretches where all the games are in the division, and all the games are outside the division. This was how the AL and NL were before expansion to 14 teams each.

In the past, I've written about reorganizing the leagues to eliminate the wild card and recreate better schedules; this usually means going to eight divisions, which means expansion. But if I'm willing to keep the wild card, we can have nicer scheduling without expansion.

The AL and NL are historic artifacts. There are no longer separate league offices; AL teams play NL teams during the regular season. The only difference between the AL and NL right now is the designated hitter. So let's drop the leagues and form five major league divisions.

Five divisions of six teams would yield five division winners. The playoffs would be brought up to eight teams with the addition of three wild cards, the three best 2nd place finishes. Teams would play 18 games against each of their division rivals for 90 games. The remaining 72 games would be divided among 12 teams from the other four divisions, three games home and three games away. Match ups are based on the standings from the previous seasons. The teams finishing 1,2,3 play all other 1,2,3 teams. The teams finishing 4,5,6 play all the other 4,5,6 teams.

I like setting up inter-division play like this because it gives a team that's on the rise a better chance to make the playoffs. It also provides an incentive for teams to be good; if you're good, you get other good teams to visit you, which should bring in more fans.

Here's how I see the divisions shaping up under this scenario:

The East Coast Division
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Florida Marlins

The Northeast Division
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Baltimore Orioles
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds
Cleveland Indians

Upper Mid-West
Toronto Blue Jays
Detroit Tigers
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
St. Louis Cardinals

The Spread Out
Chicago White Sox
Kansas City Royals
Houston Astros
Texas Rangers
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies

West Coast
Seattle Mariners
San Francisco Giants
Oakland Athletics
Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
San Diego Padres

Under this arrangement, the division winners would have been:

Braves

Yankees

Cardinals

Astros

Dodgers

and the wild cards would have gone to Boston, Anaheim and Minnesota. Same teams as actually were in the playoffs in 2004. Playoff pairings can be based on record, with all division winners getting a higher seeding than wild card entrants. You can even do the division winner can't play a wild card from the same division so you can wind up with a Red Sox-Yankees semi-final.

My guess is that you'd get a better mixing of teams than we're currently getting with interleague play. The Cubs and White Sox might not play every year, but it would be pretty close to every other year. And if you're going to get the big draws into your stadium, you have to play well.

I'd love to hear comments on this.