TheBaseballStars

Don’t worry, we’ll get into Stephen A. Smith, but first … after months and months the waiting has finally paid off. The first week of baseball has ended and along with it has brought many revelations. Still recovering from a Monday that saw The Jon exert zero movement except for The Jon’s patented beer elbow, here are some of the observations from the first week that has garnered a mention on these hallowed pages, ie. there is no real topic that The Jon has to write about, so subjects will be divided up for easy perusal.

Offense sucks during opening week
It’s true. Out of the top 10 players selected in most fantasy drafts, only Chase Utley and Hanley Ramirez have had strong weeks. Utley has three homers, while Hanley posted a .438 average as of Sunday with a homer. Pitching always rules in the first couple of weeks, while teams play in 40 to 50 degree weather. Sure there was Braves/Padres and Indians/White Sox that had 10 runs scored in them, but most of the offensive juggernauts were guys hitting at the bottom of the order. Watching pitchers such as Vincente Padilla, Kevin Millwood, Jake Westbrook and John Garland mow teams down is never good. Speaking of John Garland …

Welcome back to Earth, suckers

A. Big shot out to John Garland who looked dominant against Minnesota throwing 8 shutout innings in his first start only to give up 7 earned runs in 5 innings. Here are two key stats with Garland.
1. It was Minnesota
2. In those 8 shutout innings, he had zero Ks.

B. Just when Johan Santana looks like he wouldn’t suffer any hard-luck defeats, a staple as a pitcher for the Twins, he gets one Sunday against the Braves. He only threw 7 innings while giving up a run. Was he as dominant as Monday against the Marlins? You know his typical 8-inning 8 K gem? No, he gave up about 7 hits, but that is still no excuse for the Mets offense not to touch up a Braves bullpen that had to go to work after John Smoltz left after the 5th inning. And to think The Jon actually cheered when David Wright had a bases-clearing double against the Marlins in Santana’s first start. David, Wright, what a sister-boy.

C. The Jon was misquoted in Newspaperman’s Opening Day blog. The Jon said The Jon was on the fence of Verlander’s cusp of greatness. Verlander can deal. That is a given. What is not is his mental makeup. His control goes away when he is in a jam and Verlander is on the side of Carlos Zambrano when he has to deal with the pressure. He was hyped as the next top-tier ace in fantasy baseball and now looks entrenched as a solid No. 2 starter along the lines of William Riker. Or was he called No. 1? Ahh, Kaz Matsui.

What about the aces?
Jake Peavy looks like he could supplant Santana as the best pitcher in baseball … The Jon said looks.

Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto had 18 strikeouts between them. The Jon has them both … on a tangent: The Jon hates to say Cueto (Cway-toh). Latinizing names suck. Speaking on personal experience, The Jon automatically says Cueto in the latinized form provided. The Jon would rather say his name like you would say Playdoh, but can’t. And what about Nick Markakis? Whenever The Jon says his name it sounds like The Jon is from Baahston. How do you pronounce his name?

Even with the absence of Fernando Vina, ESPN still has bad announcers
Gone are the days Fernando Vina would appear on Baseball Tonight with his double-breasted suit and impeccable goatee and say such groundbreakers as “Hitters will hit.” Still we will always have the great high pitched laughter of Eric Young saying such things as “when it rains, things get wet,” and “When an offense goes 5-for-50 with runners in scoring position, you won’t score a lot of runs.”

Better yet, how about Orestes Destrade and Candy Maldanado (yeah, that bum) teamed up with some random white guy for their Wednesday broadcast?

It was terrible. Stephen A. Smith Terrible (The Jon told you we would get to Stephen A.) How bad was the Destrade-Maldanado duo? Maldanado was barely audible and needed closed captioning to keep tabs on his three words per minute …

that …

pitch …

was …

….

a …

…

strike.

Destrade was not that much better and went with the old “these hot dogs at this stadium are really great” routine during the broadcast. This is our sports leader folks. Let’s start a petition to get The Jon on ESPN and save a Baseball Tonight that is relying more and more on Web Gems of the week, Web Gems of that particular day, Diamond Cutters and whatever the home run highlights are called because they have baseball guys that don’t know how to talk about baseball. Umm, Harold Reynolds? Come back? Does that woman still work at ESPN?

Sorry ….

can’t …

link …

Harold …

and …

the …

term …

harrassment …

together …

These hot dogs are really great …

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