Baseball Mastermind

Okay, so the games in Japan were the MLB’s first opening day - gotta expand our horizons. Daisuke Matsuzaka looked nervous but also like every pitcher in the first few weeks of the season - not ready - in front of the Japanese crowd but his performance looked a lot worse than it really was. Then there was the second opening day, Sunday night, when the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals squared-off in the new Nationals Park, of the $611 million variety. Ryan Zimmerman broke the new ballpark in nicely. He’s going to have a great year. But today, is Opening Day. Baseball on all day, it’s a beautiful thing. I’ll be live-blogging throughout the day, as much as I can so keep an eye out for that.

Here are the games to watch today on ESPN and ESPN2:

ESPN @ 10:05 AM: Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees - Roy Halladay vs. Chien-Ming Wang
ESPN2 @ 11:20 AM: Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs - Ben Sheets vs. Carlos Zambrano
ESPN2 @ 7:05 PM: Houston Astros at San Diego Padres - Roy Oswalt vs. Jake Peavy

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Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci makes his pre-season picks. Not bad. He jumps on the Detroit Tigers band-wagon, I stick by my Cleveland pick. He also picks the Colorado Rockies over the Los Angeles Dodgers or Arizona Diamondbacks, which I find questionable.

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Larry Brown makes his pre-season picks. (Larry Brown Sports)

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True Blue LA gets a facelift.

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Ben Howland pretty much is the man. We’re going to win it all. (Gutty Little Bruins)

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And I saved the worst for last. I published my Top-30 Franchise Players in three parts this past week as a copy of Nate Silver’s annual column. Well, it seems ESPN’s Rob Nayer has published his Top-50 list. He doesn’t specify his criteria except for the fact that he projects a five-year window rather than a six-year window. That shouldn’t affect the ranking at all.

To be honest - and I really admire Rob Nayer’s work - this is a pretty awful list. The top fifteen are a matter of opinion and I’m not going to question his picks but he has Jimmy Rollins as #16. Rollins has a career .331 on-base percentage, so that kept him off my list. He has Jhonny Peralta at #21, above Jake Peavy. I’m not buying it. He ranks Dustin Pedroia #24, but ranks Prince Fielder #40 and Justin Upton #43. Was he on drugs? He has Melky Cabrera (#46) listed above Matt Kemp (#49). I like Melky as much as the next guy but he barely projets for 20 homeruns, much less anything more than that. He finishes the list with Asdrubal Cabrera. Again, I like Asdrubal but if I’m drafting a team, would I really pick Asdrubal in the second round?

I’m really not trying to pick apart Nayer’s list, although that’s exactly what I am doing. I just don’t see it. I’ll wait for Silver’s list to come out.

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