This Week in Baseball 5/4 - 5/10

[Bored]

Hey everyone its Phillies Week! ESPN, FOX, TBS, and MLB Network will all televise a Phillies game this week. So let's all celebrate and recall our Phavorite Phillies moments and players!

Baseball! Live! In COLOR!

MONDAY
Red Sox (Jon Lester) at Yankees (Phil Hughes), 7:00/4:00 PM, ESPN

WEDNESDAY
Phillies (Chan Ho Park) at Mets (Johan Santana), 7:00/4:00 PM, ESPN

THURSDAY
Phillies (Jamie Moyer) at Mets (Mike Pelfrey), 7:00/4:00 PM, MLBN

SATURDAY
Rays at Red Sox, 3:30/12:30 PM, FOX
Braves at Phillies, 3:30/12:30 PM, FOX
Giants at Dodgers, 3:30/12:30 PM, FOX
Cardinals at Reds, 7:00/4:00 PM, MLBN

SUNDAY
Braves at Phillies, 12:30 PM/9:30 AM, TBS
Rays at Red Sox, 8:00/5:00 PM, ESPN

 

[Precious Roy]

Who the fuck is Steve Jeltz, and does Eazy E know he stole his Jheri Curl?

 

[Smues]

And the one TV day without the Phillies has Sox/Yanks instead.

When is Kansas City Royals week?

 

[Master Thrasher]

Hurray for Phillies week.

 

[Czech]

Carlos Zambrano tore his hamstring whilst running out a bunt. Point and laugh.

 

[alkeiper]

I'm tempted to start an Ortonsault and flood this thread with memorable Phillies' players and moments.

1.
Steve Jeltz had been to the plate 1,700 times in his career. He owned two career home runs, and had entered the 1989 season with a .260 slugging percentage. On June 8, 1989, the Pirates scored ten runs off the Phillies in the top of the first inning, though the Phillies responded with two, the Pirates still led by eight runs going into the second inning. Pirates' announcer Jim Rooker announced that if the Pirates lost, he'd walk home. Steve Jeltz entered the game on defense.

Not only did Jeltz homer twice, he did it from both sides of the plate. The Phillies won 15-11, and Rooker indeed walked the 300 miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, after the season for charity.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI198906080.shtml

 

[alkeiper]

Carlos Zambrano tore his hamstring whilst running out a bunt. Point and laugh.

I'll point and laugh if he tore it, but I haven't seen a report that it's not a strain yet.

 

[JHawk]

Nine national games this week and seven of them are some combination of Boston and Philadelphia. The only game involving a first place team is Dodgers-Giants, which is on the FOX slate and somehow I doubt that's going to really be seen outside of California.

Hooray for parity in major league baseball.

 

[Czech]

If you consult the standings this morning, you will see a lot of parity in Major League Baseball. The Royals are in first place with the Twins in fourth/one under/two back. There are four quality teams in the NL East, everyone but Houston is at least .500 in that shitty division, and the FIRST PLACE BLUE JAYS.

As for the kvetching about Red Sox games, you gotta let it go. Douchebags in pre-faded Red Sox hats span the entire country, their team is really good, and they're the natural favorite team of a certain national sports media monolith based out of New England. The Phillies are the defending world champions. Of course they're going to get the lion's share of the national coverage. There are so many ways to follow a team, whether it's through regional coverage or Extra Innings or mlb.tv or just reading about them on the Internet, that the programming decisions of a few networks should have little or no bearing on your sports fan life. You bitch and shake your fist at the Red Sox, but you've never really posited any sort of preferable alternative to showing nationally popular teams on nationally televised games. Even distribution of games split 30 (or 29) ways? Enforcement of a clock that allows exactly two minutes of analysis per team per hour on Baseball Tonight? You are not entitled to parity in your coverage.

 

[alkeiper]

Adjusting schedules on the fly to show first place teams in May would be a bit ludicrous. Looking at that Wednesday matchup though. If Johan Santana can't score a win against Chan Ho Park, he should sue his team for non-support.

Looking over the standings and teams, does anyone have a clue who will end up in the World Series this year?

 

[Precious Roy]

Dodgers-Yankees, as I have predicted every year since the last year I predicted it

 

[Agent of Oblivion]

Marlins/Angels.

 

[Dandy]

I get my Reds fix on Fox Sports Cincinnati for something like 90% of the games. To me, that is the way the coverage should be. The team in your region gets (gasp!) regional coverage. If your team happens to be out of the region you live in, there are various ways to watch, as Czech pointed out. From what I have seen, there are a lot of games on the various Fox Sports _____ channels that show the majority of the games for the team in that region. MLB Network has done a tremendous job of showcasing different teams, as well. ESPN and Fox Network continue to show the games with the highest probability of ratings due to numbers of fans, and it is hard to fault them for that.

In summation, get DirecTV, which has MLB Network (which is the greatest channel in the history of the world); you can get the sports package relatively cheap and watch the majority of your favorite team's games; and you can always get Extra Innings if it means that much to you.

If you're on the fence about getting DirecTV for your baseball viewing pleasure, they are giving $100 off (spread over x number of months) to new subscribers that were referred by an existing customer (who also gets $100 off). I'll be glad to refer anyone and get a hell of a discount.

 

[alkeiper]

The stupid thing sometimes is that it's easier to follow an out of market team than it is to follow one in market.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

Hooray for parity in major league baseball.

JHawk, I thought we went over this in the chat. Look at the standings, Pittsburgh is a .500 team. Kansas City is in first place. Seattle's playing well.

Philly won the World Series. Boston's been to the playoffs a lot recently. They absolutely deserve national coverage, since they're two of the best teams in baseball.

Also, I'm still getting MLB Extra Innings for free.

 

[Czech]

Off the top of my head, the only team that gets shafted w/r/t national coverage is the Minnesota Twins, but even they get a fair handful of Fox games. The Rays can get back to me when they draw more than 10,000 a night.

JHawk, lay out your comprehensive plan for how baseball should be covered on a national level or drop it altogether.

 

[Bored]

The only real problem I see with the current MLB television deals is that west coast teams are severely under represented on a national level. Except for late in the season, ESPN's current deal allows them only a 7:00/8:00 PM EST timeslot for their Monday and Wendesday's games which means you'll never see a West division team home game nationally televised those days. TBS, who's coverage is almost useless and I'd just assume do without it, only shows games with a Sunday start time between 12:30 PM EST and 1:30 PM EST. In fact for the the first two months of the season TBS will not be showing a single game featuring a West division team. This problem is compounded by the unbalanced schedules where some West teams may only make one trip to New York/Boston/Chicago/Philadelphia. On the other hand, outside of the Dodgers, both West divisions are pretty dreadful at the moment and don't really warrant national coverage.

 

[Smues]

This isn't exactly my preferred schedule for the week, but as everybody has already said ESPN and FOX would be stupid not to give a lot of coverage to the major market teams. And last week had a pretty well balanced TV schedule. As to re-scheduling TV games based on teams that are in the lead no no no. That's just going to cause problems. And if ESPN overloads their schedule with Yankees and Sox early then they suffer for it down the stretch when they've reached the limit (whatever it is) for times they can show one team and can't show important September games, and that always makes me laugh, so it all works out.

 

[Taxman]

I'm channeling George Costanza with this gem. What exactly would happen if a team's plane went down? Would they forfeit the rest of the season? Call up the AAA team?

 

[Vitamin X]

I'd imagine the latter. Everyone from the minors would just have to step up.

 

[alkeiper]

I'm channeling George Costanza with this gem. What exactly would happen if a team's plane went down? Would they forfeit the rest of the season? Call up the AAA team?

http://www.halosheaven.com/2009/4/15/838662/what-if-the-unthinkable-were-to

 

[Smues]

A re-stocking draft would be interesting.

 

[Czech]

Yeah, but the problem with those is that all the players are heralded as these five-tool sabermetric wonders who will all allow the team to be the class of the American League indefinitely, and then you have to hear it from their asshole fans.

Oh wait, that's a Red Stocking draft. Myyyy mistake.

 

[alkeiper]

How many five tool players do the Red Sox actually have?

 

[Dobbs3K]

Bill Hall will be making his first ever start in left field tonight for the Brewers, as Ryan Braun was out of town today getting an MRI on his back/ribcage/whatever.

 

[Smues]

Yeah, but the problem with those is that all the players are heralded as these five-tool sabermetric wonders who will all allow the team to be the class of the American League indefinitely, and then you have to hear it from their asshole fans.

Oh wait, that's a Red Stocking draft. Myyyy mistake.

Well played sir.

 

[jimmy no nose]

Bill Hall will be making his first ever start in left field tonight for the Brewers, as Ryan Braun was out of town today getting an MRI on his back/ribcage/whatever.

That's not really a big deal since he's played in center before. The start didn't last too long though, looks like he pulled something in his leg.

 

[CanadianChris]

I know Scott Downs has pitched three straight days and needed a rest, but Brandon League had no business pitching the ninth, esp in a one-run game.

 

[alkeiper]

What a crazy game in Toronto tonight.

 

[alkeiper]

Red Sox/Yankees. Over/under on the end time is 1am.