Andrew Stoeten

Recent Posts

Every Thursday, the Getting Blanked crew makes a prop bet of sorts with one another having something to do with baseball games over the weekend. Of the three competitors, whoever wins the prop bet is able to dole out a punishment on the colleague of their choice. This week’s punishment was watching and recapping Monday night’s Boston Red Sox  game. #PropHate

Pregame

While the Boston Red Sox of 2012 have continued an underachieving trend that began approximately September first of last year, the Kansas City Royals scoff at such pretensions of futility, already with an 11-game losing streak on the books this year, and coming off 16 sub-.500 seasons in the last seventeen. But that’s not what tonight was about. Tonight was about punishment– a war of attrition among my brain cells as a pair of guys who can’t stop giving away free passes– Boston’s Felix Doubront and KC’s Jonathan Sanchez– set themselves to try to bore their opponents into submission.

The notoriously slow-working Sox provided one element of what looked to– and indeed did– make this contest colossally tiresome, but the real star was Sanchez. Acquired from San Francisco for Melky Cabrera this winter, Sanchez was a kind of upside play for the Royals– a guy who might be alright if he could ever fine tune his command– y’know, despite the fact that he doesn’t throw particularly hard (averaging 89.7 on fastballs in 2011, per FanGraphs), has long exited his prospect years (he’ll turn 30 in November), and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with an electromagnetic barn broad side hitting machine (he walked 14.9% of batters faced in 2011). But… shit, it’s Kansas City– they’ve been running Luis Mendoza out there every fifth day. How bad could Sanchez really be?

Pretty bad, actually.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prince Fielder Eats Bad Pitchers

In the wake of the madness caused by the Blue Jays decision to extend Dustin McGowan for 2013 and 2014 after he’s pitched all of 21 innings in the Majors since 2008, and my galling suggestion that this might be a curious decision on the part of the club, I’ve found myself in a number of online arguments. In one of them I was being accosted for being open to the idea of the Jays signing Prince Fielder to a mammoth contract, but against McGowan’s deal. Money, of course, has nothing to do with my confusion over the McGowan deal, but this was an internet fight, so such trivial concerns as accurately representing what you’re arguing against don’t matter so much.

What matters is that I was for Prince Fielder, who spent 2011 padding his numbers by crushing dingers off the soft-tossing junk-balling has-beens of the NL Central– barely a step above triple-A, relative to the American League East.

This, I thought to myself, is surely a textbook example of an absurd notion being put forth by some clod hellbent on disagreeing me no matter what. Uh… then I looked at Fielder’s home run log for 2011…

Read the rest of this entry »

Arizona Bullpen Snake-Bitten

The Narrative: Three homers from right-handers off Zach Greinke wasn’t enough to power the Arizona Diamondbacks past the Milwaukee Brewers, thanks in particular to an error-driven bullpen meltdown in the bottom of the sixth. Now the Snakes get on a plane back home needing three wins to save their season.

Milwaukee jumped out to a quick lead on a two-run shot from Ryan Braun in the first inning, and added two more in the third thanks to RBIs from Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks, making it 4-1– Arizona’s run coming on a Paul Goldschmidt solo shot. But the Diamondbacks clawed back, thanks to towering blasts from Justin Upton and Chris Young.

For a couple innings the game had all the makings of a tense battle, until the wheels came off for the Diamondbacks in the sixth, when reliever Brad Ziegler entered the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

So… a little bird came along and told me this afternoon that the logo in the image you see below is what will be found on the caps of the Toronto Blue Jays, starting next season.

I have no idea whether it’s real or fake, but what I’m being told is that the new primary logo will be the bird and maple leaf here, and will include a baseball and the team name arched over and under the baseball (much like the 1977-1996 logo). The BLUE JAYS script you see in this image is, from what I’m told, not a part of the new graphic package but a standard font used on a t-shirt.

If it’s true, what do you think? I’m beyond all for it, frankly. They never should have ditched it in the first place.

This winter, when he hasn’t been putting on bandannas, getting his tips frosted, or taking heat for not acquiring his main free agent targets, for publicly disagreeing with ownership over the Rafael Soriano contract, and for suggesting that Derek Jeter will wind up in the outfield before his deal is done, New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman has been taking up some curious new hobbies.

Back in December it was rappelling– specifically, down a building at Landmark Square in Stamford, CT– and this week, as you can see in the video below, he took a turn at… um… bartending.

But the evening, a charity event to raise money for prostate cancer research, wasn’t without an element of baseball newsworthiness. Cashman was asked to address his comments about Jeter and Soriano, which he unsurprisingly downplayed, and he insisted that there’s nothing awry with his relationship with the Yankees.

Hat tip to the New York Post, and to Sports Crackle Pop for the YouTube clip.

Keith Hernandez Wants Your Gold

When he’s not falling asleep on the job (and forcing awkward commentary from MSNBC hosts who know nothing about baseball), being the subject of conspiracy theories on Seinfeld, insulting Emmett Smith’s beard, or trying to explain baseball to Count Von Count, a former All-Star first-baseman and member of the World Champion 1986 Mets is looking to buy your gold.

Yes, according to a clip spotted by 7th Inning Stache, Keith Hernandez has joined the illustrious, noble world of  ripping people off the gold trade.

And listen to that music! Sounds classy! Clearly much more reputable than the two-bit gold-buying operation that the late Ed McMahon and MC Hammer shill for.

It’s fitting that the team from Minnesota, home of political red-headed stepchildren like Jesse Ventura (both of them!), Michelle Bachmann and Al Franken, are once again champions of the American League’s red-headed stepchild– the Central division! (See what I just did there?) And yet this year they’ll be doing so for the first time in their new, outdoor ballpark, Target Field.

Ahhh yes, who among us doesn’t get a little misty-eyed about great baseball traditions like peeling yourself off a bleacher seat in a frosty Minnesota mid-October while chowing down on some walleye on a stick?

And they say tradition is dead.

Read the rest of this entry »