SB Nation User Blog: mazoboom

2nd worst baserunner.

mazoboom — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:58:19 -0000

2nd worst baserunner.

Surprise! It's Butler. I wonder how high Teahen is.

WHOOP!

mazoboom — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:48:44 -0000

As we've all commiserated with each other, Baseball Tonight is an awful experience if you don't want to sit through ten minutes of "analysis" after a Mets game highlight that consists of ex-players fumbling around trying to explain why firing a manager didn't actually change anything. It's especially bad for us Royals fans, so I've taken to watching MLB wraps on their website. Watch the first 30 seconds of yesterday's game. It seems the Royals even bores them.

Omaha came to town

mazoboom — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:04:52 -0000

This week the Omaha Royals came on down to hallowed Zephyr Field in the suburbs of New Orleans where Tony Pena led the immortal 2001 Z's to a co-championship. Using his knowledge gained on how to manage the game the right way, he proceeded to lead the Royals to a magical baseball winning percentage. The O-Royals were here for a four game series, ultimately taking 3 out of 4. I was only able to attend tonight's game which the Royals won 6-1. I'm no scout so my insight won't be helpful.

Brad Salmon went 5 innings and gave up a mere one hit for zero runs.

Billy Butler at first base had a 2-run double and a no-doubter solo HR in garbage time. He had half of Omaha's RBI tonight.

Jason Smith at SS beautifully avoided an 0-5 performance by getting a single in the aforementioned garbage time.

Shane Costa accentuated a masterful 0-4 with a walk at the plate by gracefully dropping a foul fly ball to RF resulting in an error, but made the catch when it mattered when the next batter hit an easy fly ball to him in fair territory.

Shealy DHed. Oh yeah, Maier and Lubanski also played.

Except for Gookie Dawkins being an awesome name, that's about it.

Sadly I missed Berroa by a week.

The Amazin' Pitchers

mazoboom — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:18:41 -0000

The Amazin' Pitchers

"It's hard to explain," he said. "I think we're just getting everybody in the right frame of mind as far as how we're going to attack hitters. My first year of watching this, that wasn't even baseball. And the front office has done a great job of getting guys that throw strikes. Now we just teach them how to pitch."

...

"I asked Mac, 'As a manager, am I monitoring the health of our arms good enough up to this point?'" Hillman said. "And that's a question I'm going to be asking him a lot, because the one thing that I have not done is manage this length of a season -- the 162-game season in six months I have not done."

Papelbon's Dog Eats World Series Ball

mazoboom — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:06 -0000

I know a lot of you don't like Papelbon, and this sort of story will just confirm your thoughts about him, but I think it's pretty funny. His dog ate the ball that constituted the final out of the 2007 World Series. I guess he's just lucky he wasn't somehow in possession of the 2004 ball.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3163105

Guillen to Royals

mazoboom — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:43:03 -0000

NASHVILLE -- The 2007 Winter Meetings are anything but a cold stove. In a surprising trade the Kansas City Royals have acquired Chicago White Sox's manager Ozzie Guillen. The veteran Guillen will go over to the Royals in exchange for the Royals' manager prospect Trey Hillman.

Guillen, who will be 44 in his next season as manager, not only brings more youth to the position than Hillman who will be 45, but also brings more Major League experience. In his four years of managing, Guillen has amassed a 344-304 record with only one losing season. He was the 2005 AL Manager of the Year, the same year in which he led the White Sox to their first World Championship in 88 years. His youthfulness also provides his fiery personality that is proven to excite players.

Although Guillen's career results are clearly ahead of Hillman's DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR win percentage, many skeptics claim that Hillman was never given a chance to shine in the Major Leagues after his years of work in the Minors and Japan League. Responding to these apprehensions, Royals GM Dayton Moore said, "Ozzie is a proven manager. We have tried getting results with our players for the past few years. When players can't produce, the obvious route is to get a better manager. Ozzie will bring his own brand of smartball to our team. And, really, who can argue with intelligence?"

Royals owner David Glass was unavailable for comment. Sources report that he is in a high-stakes casino in Russia, continuously placing $10,000 on the number 85 at the roulette table until he wins once.

Former Royals manager Buddy Bell will remain with the White Sox to teach them how to bunt.

Free streaming past LCSes.

mazoboom — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:49:22 -0000

Bored with this year's LCS? MLB has free entire past "classic" games. Unfortunately Chris Chambliss is in there, but it's still pretty cool.

Of course there are a lot of Yankee-Red Sox games, but Aaron Boone was dramatic and I wonder why they only have the last 3 games of 2004 ALCS and not the last 4.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071013&content_id=2263751&vkey=news_mlb_nd&fex t=.jsp&c_id=mlb

The Royals' Sphere of Influence

mazoboom — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:56:34 -0000

This is a cool site that attempts to find out what people identify with what sports teams.

http://commoncensus.org/sports.php

Poke around on the site, put your own votes in. The more people who vote, the more accurate the maps are. I think it's pretty interesting.

For some strange reason, this was called a "one-line" diary. Um, to make it 300 characters I'll talk about how Red Sox "Nation" truly is a nation. That's a lot of people who identify with it. The Yankees are actually fourth behind the Cubs and Braves in terms of numerical votes. I guess their extent is also largely international. I'm also surprised that the Rockies don't extend so far since there are no other teams around (like the Astros do). I guess that area just doesn't care about baseball.

EDIT: I suppose I should mention that there are higher-resolution maps on the site.

Pena vs. Towers

mazoboom — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:39:16 -0000

Did you guys see the Yankees/Blue Jays "fight"?

Towers got mad a Tony Pena and said "He's a quitter. He's managing a team and quit in the middle of the season because he couldn't hack it and he's going to run his mouth to me?"

Ouch.

Hey, Towers. Wanna try managing the Royals under Glass?

I did always think that it was weird that even the two base coaches of the Yankees were former managers. It's like the players who go there for the chance at a cheap championship.

Sweeney wants to play in '08

mazoboom — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:35:01 -0000

"As for 2008, I definitely want to play. I sure hope it's with the Kansas City Royals. I still have a passion to play the game, I still have the passion to be a Royal," Sweeney said.

"But I also know that if I come back, my role will change a bit. Would I like to play every day? Yes. Would I like to help Billy Butler and Alex Gordon and Mark Teahen and David DeJesus and Johnny Buck get to that next level? Yes."

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070806&content_id=2133055&vkey=news_mlb&fext=. jsp&c_id=mlb

Some nice quotes:

"I'll be lucky to get $1,100 over the minimum,"

"I'll probably be like a 1994 Ferrari that's been in a couple of wrecks and has a new engine. It's going to be rebuilt and it's going to look good again. And it'll be available for very cheap,"

Sweeney's the greatest.