He doesn’t catch line drives. They fly right into his glove.
His home runs fly so often and so far, they send him mail requests for airline reward points.
He is the most expensive first baseman in the world.
He doesn’t always sign big contracts, but when he does, it’s 12-year deals.
“Stayin’ in Cincinnati, my friend,” says Joey Votto.
OK, so that’s a taste of some of the non-sense we were discussing at Thursday’s Opening Day cookout.
You want to know what else we were talking about?
It was the lack of offense. The highest scoring games were the 16-inning marathon between the Jays and Indians, and the Dodgers-Padres game. Can’t say I saw that coming, especially in Petco Park.
A pair of 1-0 games, a 2-1 game and a 3-2 game all helped mark the lowest scoring Opening Day since 1983.
The day started with a trio of games that went scoreless through nearly six innings so at around 3 p.m., we were keeping eyes on three scoreless games in the sixth, and another scoreless game that was in the top of the fourth. Finally the Mets scored, then the Phils, and we avoided extra-boring-innings with several early games.
This can be expected to an extent when starters like Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, Justin Masterson and Jon Lester going, but several other Opening Day starters like Johan Santana, Tommy Hanson and Erik Bedard were dealing.
It was a bad Opening Day for offenses in fantasy with only the Gameday Gamblers going to sleep with a .300 batting average. He walked away with a .385 batting average, and that was with Ian Desmond (3-for-5) on the bench.
The Duchess was close with a .292 average, but six teams are below the Mendoza line and that include yours truly. In fact, I head into Friday looking for my first hit of the 2012 season.
My first hit? Really?
The Slammers have been known to get off to slow offensive starts — you can note it in the blog archive — but this start is epically bad.
No hits in two days? I didn’t have anyone go in the Japan series and everyone I did have in the first two days of the season have been awful, batting 0-for-22 with a walk and an RBI — thank God that James Loney got a bases-loaded walk to get an RBI.
Outside of that, it wasn’t too bad in that the bats only combined for six strikeouts, which means contact is being made; they're just hitting it to the wrong spot.
I’m sure others in the JLB are feeling the same pain.
Still, the good thing is, it’s just Opening Day in a long week and a half opening season matchup for us in fantasy.
It’s one of those things where you cannot overreact.
The first two weeks of baseball bring out overreactions all the time. It’s why guys like Russell Martin in 2009, Clayton Kershaw in 2010 and Andre Ethier in 2010 were let go by some owners, allowing other owners to benefit in the short term and long term. Martin started a sluggish 2-for-20 (something close to that) and he wound up being the No. 2 catcher in all of fantasy baseball.
That’s why no one, particularly myself, should react to slow starts.
I may, however, change my mind tonight if I’m heading into Saturday hitless.
Other notes from Opening Day (Part 1)
Jerkin’ My Kurkjian’s trades pay off on Day 1
We may look back to a pair of offseason trades and say, “Wow, what deals!”
Jerk came into the League and turned his team into a competitor, acquiring Justin Masterson, Tommy Hanson, Adam Lind, Zack Cozart, Javy Guerra, Vinnie Pestano and Yonder Alonso. Alex Gordon also was acquired and he starts his season today.
The other trade acquisitions all opened Thursday, and outside of Alonso’s 0-for-4 showing, what a day for Jerk.
Masterson was as Jerk said on Twitter “Nasty-son.” Eight innings, two hits, one run, one walk and 10 strikeouts. Wow. He should have had the win but he settles for the quality start and the no-decision because his bullpen blew it in the ninth.
Hanson went just five innings and took the loss, but he allowed just one run in a 1-0 game. No Braves offense made his start look worse than it was.
Both Pestano and Guerra had scoreless relief appearances and Guerra got an Opening Day save.
Offensively, Cozart was 2-for-4 with a single, double and a run, and Lind was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
The deal looks great, so far.
Strasburg starts strong
Stephen Strasburg went seven strong, allowing just one run on five hits and a walk on Thursday, and that was great to see for the Nationals.
He struck out five, so it wasn’t as big as his MLB debut, but there was something to note here and that was his efficiency. He threw only 82 pitches in the seven innings, which brings up the question of whether or not an innings-limit is going to work for Strasburg. Compare it to Dempster who went 7.2 innings and threw 108 pitches, or Edison Volquez who threw 97 pitches in five innings.
How can we give him an innings limit when his innings are different than others?
We could see him go 190 innings instead of the 160 limit rumored to be out there because he throws fewer pitches to get through them.
I wish we would get rid of the inning count for pitchers in the media and worry about pitch counts.
Either way, this works for the Gamblers because I’m sure Nats are on top of this and if Strasburg continues to get through seven innings with about 80 pitches, he’ll be pitching deep into September, which is when the Gamblers hope to be vying for a third World Series title.
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