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2008 MLB Season

zioxide

zioxide

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 11, 2006
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With football being over, the hot stove cooling off, and spring training just a week away, I figured it's time to start this discussion.

The 2007 World Series Champion Red Sox have the entire team returning, and will also have rookies Jacoby Ellsbury and Clay Buchholz emerging in to a full-time role.

The Yankees also kept most of their core team in tact, including a great core of young pitchers who should be good as long as they invest in a can of bug spray. However, manager Joe Torre left for LA and was replaced by former Marlins manager Joe Girardi.

The hot stove was pretty active this past offseason. The Mets acquired 2-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana from the Twins. The Marlins sent Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers. The Athletics sent Dan Haren to the Diamondbacks. The Cubs signed coveted Japanese free agent Kosuke Fukudome.

One interesting storyline to the 2008 season will be whether the NL Champion Rockies will be able to make it back to the playoffs or whether their play down the stretch last year was just a fluke. They do have a great group of core players, but probably could improve their pitching rotation a bit (at least from what I saw in the World Series).

All-in-all, 2008 is shaping up to be a great season. Go Sox :D
 
Thanks for starting us up zioxide, I am looking forward to the season starting. I think the AL East will be another good ride to the finish, hope the Blue Jays can remain healthy.
 
man, i can't wait until the spring training games start. i'm personally planning to go to a few, with vero on march 7th pretty much a lock (i suggest you visit vero this year if you haven't already). likely going to jupiter locally to see the braves on the 17th and do a bit in orlando the weekend before that game to see one of my old friends. anyone else with spring training plans? i'll have a st tv schedule for ical up in a couple of weeks and the regular season edition hopefully on march 9th (easter at the latest).

and i'm hyped up for the braves this year, it's probably going to be our last chance to win in a while with our stars aging and rebuilding set to come in. and we'll see how big of a mistake andruw jones was for the dodgers.
 
This will be a big season for stadiums, the Nationals open the season in their new building on March 31. The Yankees and Mets both will have final seasons in their stadiums.

As a Braves fan what is your take on Santana going to the Mets.
 
MacNut said:
As a Braves fan what is your take on Santana going to the Mets.
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i was mad at first, but i don't think santana will all of a sudden make the mets a ws contender when they have other problems like the rest of their pitching and their collapse from last year. the mets seem to always make dumb deals, it may not seem dumb today, but it will eventually. i think santana doesn't last the season injury free.
 
If he adjusts to the NL he will be fine. As long as they don't over work him. If he is the only ace on the staff I can see him maybe getting injured. That might be wishful thinking tho but I think he will do fine.
 
furcalchick said:
i was mad at first, but i don't think santana will all of a sudden make the mets a ws contender when they have other problems like the rest of their pitching and their collapse from last year. the mets seem to always make dumb deals, it may not seem dumb today, but it will eventually. i think santana doesn't last the season injury free.
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This deal will never seem dumb unless Santana loses his entire arm. Based on his history, Santana will be contributing to the Mets for a while. The Mets staff needed a true ace to give it any credibility, and they got one now. What they had to give up to get him was talent, but not guaranteed outstanding talent.

Santana will own in the NL.

I'm just happy he didn't go to the Red Sox. What a stacked rotation that would've been.

Speaking of stacked, I can't wait to see how the Detroit Tigers lineup will do.
 
goodtimes5 said:
This deal will never seem dumb unless Santana loses his entire arm. Based on his history, Santana will be contributing to the Mets for a while. The Mets staff needed a true ace to give it any credibility, and they got one now. What they had to give up to get him was talent, but not guaranteed outstanding talent.

Santana will own in the NL.

I'm just happy he didn't go to the Red Sox. What a stacked rotation that would've been.

Speaking of stacked, I can't wait to see how the Detroit Tigers lineup will do.
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Well don't forget Pedro went over to the Mets and hasn't been right since. Although he was a few years older.

Anyways on to the AL, the Sox and Yanks will once again duke it out, but I do feel some competition from the Tigers. If they can stay healthy and beat up on the Indians should be the best team in the MLB, even though my Sox will be just behind them, with the Yanks pulling in 3rd if Joba transitions well to a starters role, if they keep him as a reliever should be a little better.
 
The Yankees success depends on how well the new coaching staff can work together.
 
MacNut said:
Thanks for starting us up zioxide, I am looking forward to the season starting. I think the AL East will be another good ride to the finish, hope the Blue Jays can remain healthy.
Click to expand...

If the Yankees don't start out terrible like they did last year, it's going to be really interesting in September.

My ideal scenario would be beating the Yanks in the ALCS and then the Mets in the WS. That could redeem us for blowing that game yesterday.
 
zioxide said:
If the Yankees don't start out terrible like they did last year, it's going to be really interesting in September.

My ideal scenario would be beating the Yanks in the ALCS and then the Mets in the WS. That could redeem us for blowing that game yesterday.
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I don't think anything can redeem that game for a long time.
 
MacNut said:
The Yankees success depends on how well the new coaching staff can work together.
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I think it's more dependent on how many good innings the Yankees can get out of their starters vs. the Red Sox starters. In recent years the Red Sox have had the advantage there. The White Sox title season was mostly a result of a core of starters that was almost completely injury-free all season, something that almost never happens. Last year the Dodgers lost both Randy Wolf and Jason Schmidt for most of the season and they could never catch up. The healthier your starters are, the better your chances of winning in the long haul.

Maybe Girardi and co. will find a way to divide the innings up that's better than Torre's was, but there's a lot of luck involved too.
 
This will be the first time in 12 years that the Yankees have had a whole new coaching staff. Granted a lot of the pitchers are young and have been with Eiland since they came up in the minors so it shouldn't be that big a factor. I just hope Girardi can get off to a good start and keep the media happy.
 
zioxide said:
One interesting storyline to the 2008 season will be whether the NL Champion Rockies will be able to make it back to the playoffs or whether their play down the stretch last year was just a fluke. They do have a great group of core players, but probably could improve their pitching rotation a bit (at least from what I saw in the World Series).
Click to expand...

That was a total fluke. While the Pet Rocks have some very good players, and one great one (Holliday), their pitching is totally dependent on two starters surviving their second year. Put simply, the Rockies were the benefactors of luck last year. Credit to them for taking advantage of it, and for helping to create it. But they are, overall, a slightly above-average team that will be lucky to finish in the top three in the NL West.
 
MacNut said:
This will be the first time in 12 years that the Yankees have had a whole new coaching staff. Granted a lot of the pitchers are young and have been with England since they came up in the minors so it shouldn't be that big a factor. I just hope Girardi can get off to a good start and keep the media happy.
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The media will be happy if they win. If the Yankees win, then they'll call Girardi a genius. If not, then they'll say he's not fit to shine Torre's shoes. There's not much evidence that a manager's "style" can cause a team to win.


Naimfan said:
That was a total fluke. While the Pet Rocks have some very good players, and one great one (Holliday), their pitching is totally dependent on two starters surviving their second year. Put simply, the Rockies were the benefactors of luck last year. Credit to them for taking advantage of it, and for helping to create it. But they are, overall, a slightly above-average team that will be lucky to finish in the top three in the NL West.
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I agree in one way. It was a fluke that they finished the season with such an improbable winning streak to make the playoffs in the first place. A loss in any of those games and the Padres finish ahead and make the playoffs outright instead of needing a tiebreaker game. So it's a mistake to assume that their pennant last year makes them the NL favorites in 2008.

But the Rockies have a pretty good team. They are not the division doormats that they often had been for the previous decade. Earlier in the 2007 season when the Dodgers played them, I could tell that they weren't the "Todd-Helton-and-a-revolving-door-of-overrated-hitters" lineup of the past. And they have a very good defensive team now, which is crucial in their big park. From 2000-2006, the Dodgers were 78-49 against the Rockies, the most wins L.A. had against any NL West team over that span. Last year, the Rockies took 12 of the 18 games. (Thanks to www.baseball-reference.com) One of those games was won on a walk-off homer by Helton in September against Takashi Saito, who was one of the most reliable closers in all of baseball last year.

Does that mean the Rockies' pitching will hold up again? No way to know. But there's also no way to know if the Padres' pitching will once again be able to make up for their lack of hitting. Or if the Dodgers' starters can stay healthy. On paper, the Dodgers look like the favorite in the NL West, but they've been in that position before and underachieved. That's why the Hot Stove can only get us so far! :D
 
The Red Sox might be kicking themselves for not going after Santana after all. Reports are that Schilling is out for the season.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3235556
The Boston Globe and Boston Herald are reporting that Schilling has a shoulder injury that has the right-hander and the club in a dispute over whether he needs surgery and the Red Sox have at least investigated to see if they can void his 2008 contract.
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zioxide said:
If the Yankees don't start out terrible like they did last year, it's going to be really interesting in September.

My ideal scenario would be beating the Yanks in the ALCS and then the Mets in the WS. That could redeem us for blowing that game yesterday.
Click to expand...

We are still trying to redeem ourselves for the 04 ALCS.
 
zioxide said:
Nah.

Beckett, Dice-k, Lester, Wakefield, Buchholz
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There's no reason Beckett shouldn't be good again. But betting on Dice-K improving THAT much is a reach, you never know what Wakefield is going to bring, and Lester and Buchholz need to have their innings limited. Buchholz should throw no more than 178 innings, and Lester no more than 183 (based on the idea a pitcher should not increase their innings by more than 30 year to year).

So the insurance the Sox thought they had now appears to be gone.
 
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