Fucking Pirates!

What a nuts trade deadline. Fucking Neal Huntington man. He fucking hosed the NL West. Like, seriously, he pretty much said, "im gonna go fuck over the NL west" and then did it. I mean look at this bull shit:

To NL West: DJ Carrasco, Bobby Fucking Crosby, Ryan Church, Javier Lopez, Octavio Dotel

To Pirates: Chris Snyder, Joe Martinez, John Bowker, James McDonald, Andrew Lambo

No fucking fair, why won't anyone do trades like this with us anymore. I mean look at that, they gave away a boring reliever, a horrendous infielder, a useless outfielder, a pretty bad reliever, and a pretty decent reliever, all for a good cheap catcher, a young and cheap relief arm, an intriguing corner of/1b bat, an awesome arm who was wasting away on a stupid team, and a high upside outfielder young for his age at AA. Fuck you NL west, way to be a bunch of fucking idiots. It'll take time, but the Pirates are gonna be a pretty good team. They keep acquiring talent, and their depth keeps getting more impressive. They lack stars at the moment, but if a few of those prospects pan out they can go all Rays on the league sooner than we may think.

GARZA!

No hitter! I love me some Matt Garza, got to be my favorite non-A...non joe blanton division. No idea why i love joe blanton so much. But Garza! Such a joy to watch that guy. Never stops spitting...even after the game is over. An his stuff is just insane. Velocity for days, hammer curve, disgusting slider. I really can't understand how he doesn't K more people, his stuff is just silly. Happy he got the no hitter though, if anyone could its him. Just cause on any particular day his stuff has that truly unhittable potential. An today it was! wooo!

Dan Haren Traded to Angels?!

Fuck the dbacks. Fuck em. Fuck em fuck em fuck em fuck em fuck em. Theres no fucking way this trade makes sense for them, no matter what universe you live in. People this incompetent at their job deserve to be publicly humiliated and executed. And then they can go burn in hell for the rest of eternity and they STILL would not be forgiven for being so goddamn fucking stupid. We basically got a whole fucking baseball team for dan haren a few years ago. The dbacks managed to get in return 3 turds and a ptbnl who ISNT mike trout. just, wtf. the ptbnl is really meaningless, unless it were trout this trade is a disaster. Conger is shit and will most likely not catch, bourjos cant hit, and never mind now i check again it turns out the player is skaggs. Skaggs at least doesnt suck, but hes a high upside a-ball arm. THIS IS DAN FUCKING HAREN. on a team friendly contract! incredibly team friendly! wtf wtf wtf. if it were skaggs + bourjos id be still angry, but at least a little bit less. dbacks have got to be considered now one of the stupidest teams in the league. can u imagine how good they could be if they had never bothered to acquire haren? its disgusting really, theyd have carlos gonzalez in center, with cuningham fighting chris young for the spot in left. chris carter at first, brett anderson atop the rotation, and eveland/smith are prbly released by now...but honestly arizona cant pitch for shit so they may be useful for that team. fuck the dbacks. just when it looks like angels are finally on their way to irrelevance, they get a fucking ace pitcher gift wrapped to their door. first the m's got lee for free, then the angels got haren for free...next year it had better be our turn. im talkin grienke for raj davis or some stupid shit like that. cause this is just ridiculous.

Young Arms

Remember that golden rotation we had at Stockton two years ago? The one that featured somethin like Cahill, Anderson, Rodriguez, De Los Santos, annnnd someone, Mazzaro maybe? I've been kind of depressed this year about how shitty our prospects have been this year, but when it comes to the return we are getting from these five guys that are/were the top arms in our system, its pretty damn uplifting.

Everyone knows pitching prospects are risky. They get hurt, they flame out, they never find their command, whatever. Those five guys were five very highly touted arms, and it is looking like we are going to get production from all five, which would be an astounding success. Anderson is looking like a superstar. Cahill is looking like a solid mid rotation guy with upside for more. Mazzaro is showing signs of being Cahill-ish with a lower ceiling. Rodriguez is throwing 100 mph fastballs at the red sox as I type this. An FDLS, despite goin through tommy john, is dominating AA as a reliever. Our pitching is already pretty good, and it should only get better. In a year or two theres a potential for us the be Rays deep in our pitching staff, and with the upside that guys like Anderson, Cahill, an even Gio hold, theres a potential for our guys to be even better.

Can't Study

Can't seem to focus. Not good either, got a group presentation tomorrow. But oh well, in a burnt out mood. I don't link to much stuff on this blog, so I think I'm due for a link dumpish kinda post.

Crazy entertaining game. Lincecum was crap, Giants somehow clawed back, Broxton loaded the bases and then Mattingly, unaware of the one trip to mound per inning rule, turns back to have another word with Broxton, forcing Broxton out of the game. This game had everything, hit batters, ejections, bizarre scenarios, dramatic comeback.

If this is true, I probably have a new favorite Warrior. I watched a few summer league games and Lin impressed me. He always looked to push the ball up the floor or attack the basket when he gained possession of the ball, just couldnt help but think how nicely he would fit in with the warriors system. Defense didn't seem particularly horrible either, well, he showed effort at least.

Randomly came across this mashup. It almost sounds like emo boa, which sounds like a horrendous situation, but this mix is really workin for me for some reason.

Spent a shit ton of money on video games yesterday. There's actually some pretty decent deals in there, an I used that 20from80 code to get a further 20 bucks off...yea that already gives you an idea on how much I spent. Totally worth it though, I'm gonna have way too many games to play when I get home.

Joe hooked me up with a little writing situation on some startup baseball site. Haven't written anything yet, seems kind of interesting though, I'll be writing I guess weekly ~200 word game summaries/previews for the dodgers. I suppose the concept could be useful for casual fans who have too much money or something. Honestly, I can see how a subscription could be fun, even for a baseball obsessed fan like myself, but I couldn't see myself spending money on it. But then again, I am a poor college student who is always searching for more baseball knowledge, so I guess that's why I'm writing and not buying.

Henry Rodriguez! Kid deserves an extended look in the bigs, where he actually pitches too. He's been crazy good at sac and he throws fucking TRIPLE DIGITS.

Grumpy Computer

just blue screened on me. It does this every few months it seems. For pretty much no reason! I do the same thing: have a heart attack, hold down power button to make scary screen go away, hide face in hands for about 10 minutes, then turn back on and realize nothing is out of the ordinary. I really dislike my computer, it really went to shit fast. No, it hasn't actually died on me, but between the nonexistent "battery" and fucking grinding noise, it has pretty much been the most immobile laptop ever. And it annoys the shit out of me. Also, its slow as fuck, but that prbly could be fixed if ucla didnt make me install all this useless security shit. o but one of the video cards did crash. so that is pretty weak. I bought left 4 dead 2 a while ago for super cheap, was kinda excited but my computer cant run it. Video card is just...pathetic. It had to be the high end one that crashed too, couldnt be the shitty one for power saving. O well, gonna try to ride this guy out til the end of summer, actively lookin for a replacement.

Stream Torrent

Holy crap. Stream Torrent is dangerously easy to use. I remember the only reason I stopped watching streams of games was because tvants was impossible to fix. You had a million problems with every new stream you opened. This is a breeze though, basically just click the link and it opens. hurraaaay a's games! hurraaaay incomming shitty grades!

WAT THE POWER

I LOVE SCOTT KAZMIR

also, lolcliff lee, complete game loss, 3 homers allowed. hurraaaaaay texas, he is so gonna miss safeco by the end of the year. hell, i bet he misses it now.

Lee

M's did well for themselves. Really well actually. 1st base was a pretty huge problem for that organization, and they seem to have filled it nicely. Smoak will probably be solid, a kind of switch hitting Barton if you ask me, probably more power eventually but with a few more strikeouts. I've said it many times, I think the M's roster is absolute shit, so this is the kind of move that I can get behind; stud youngster and some semi-interesting prospects for a player that was toiling away on their crap team. Really, I didn't see a need for the rangers to make this move, yea they are now a legitimately good team now, but I don't think their chances of losing the division were that high before. It pretty much is assured they will make the playoffs now though, so I guess that is worth something. On a completely different note, holy shit miami heat. who cares if they play with a million rookies, that team is unfair.

Gio

Am I the only person who is really scared of Gio's season? He hasn't taken any steps forward. He's walking a tad less, but also striking out a proportionate less amount. And that said, he still leads the AL in walks! His walk/K raito is worse than last year. The only reason FIP likes him is his hr/fb% is at 7%...which yea, is impossible, this is GIO for fucks sake, its gonna regress to 10%+ and his ERA/FIP with it. His year has been, well not horrendous, but its been bad, a step backwards. What made Gio awesome was his ability to miss bats. Yea, he missed the strikezone too, but that missing of everything was a net positive. This year he isn't missing bats, well, like he used to at least, his overrall contact rate is way up. Like, across the board, in the zone, out the zone, hitters are simply gettin the bat to the ball quite a bit more often. I haven't watched any games. None, I haven't been home, I don know what the hell is up, but it worries me. For a guy who's always been a big strikeout guy, including at the major league level, this lack of K's is starting to cause quite a bit of concern.

SABEAN WTF

When I saw that Bengie had been traded for Chris Ray, my first thought was, "makes sense, crap for crap." Wait no that's a lie, my first thought was, "wtf? bengie got traded? unexpected. apparently even sabean has his limits." but then i saw that the ptbnl is fuckin mike main. WTF! did Sabean just swindle someone?! i think he did! i mean, not only did he manage to dump bengie to get posey time behind the plate, he got a shitty relief arm AND a stud prospect! I've always been kind of afraid of main, seein as how he seemed to be a guy with pretty good stuff and was highly touted in a rangers system that had a crap load of pitching talent. im impressed, to say the least, best move ive ever seen sabean make, i think.