Blog Archives
Wilmer Flores will Never Forget 2015 Thanks to The Fans
Wilmer Flores says his ankle is 100% since the injury and that 2015 will be a season he will never forget thanks to the fans.
Youngsters Making An Impact In 2016; American League East
With spring training around the corner, I wanted to take a look at a couple of young players for each team that I think will have a larger impact in 2016. We’ll start with the American League and move to the National at the end of the week.
Baltimore Orioles
Manny Machado, SS – How does a guy who collected 102 runs, 181 hits, 30 doubles, 35 homers, and 86 RBI make more of an impact? Simple, the kid is currently just 23 and I think he’ll continue having better plate discipline where he can build on his career .281 batting average (.286 in 2016). This is based on a jump in walk ratio as he went from a career high 5.7% in 2014 to 9.3% in 2015. Some sites are predicting a large drop in power, however again, I think because of age, he’s just developing his gap power as there was a huge boost to in his career percentage (9%) of extra base hits in 2016 (9.3%), yet the home runs jumped from a career high of 14 in 2013 to 35 last season.
Sandy Alderson on Cespedes and Harvey’s Extracurricular Activities
Sandy Alderson checked in with WOR’s Pete McCarthy and commented on the roster, having Cespedes back in Queens, and Harvey’s appearance on Watch What Happens Live!
Checking out to see who is at the ballpark
Last week I stopped off at the CenturyLink Sports Complex for a couple of hours to see what was going on if anything and to see what players may have already shown up to get a jump on spring training. I have not been out earlier this year because the weather here in SW Florida has been a bit strange this year. A couple of weeks ago we had a tornado about a mile from the condo in Cape Coral and a few days later they had another tornado touch down in Ft. Myers not too far from Page Field. Cape Coral which is just across the river from Ft. Myers has had almost 13″ of rain in January and they average under 2″ of rain, so it has been a wet January. February has started out cool and windy (for this area anyway) with temperatures in the low to mid 60’s and our average is 75 for this time of the year.
When I got to the ballpark there were a couple of people buying spring training game tickets as I headed towards the back fields where I would expect to find the action if there was going to be any. The rest of the story can be seen here.
Can the Pittsburgh Pirates avoid Tommy John woes?

What does the alarming Tommy John surgery rate mean for the Pittsburgh Pirates?
Spring training is less than two weeks away for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which means reports will soon start pouring in of players suffering season-ending injuries and surgeries, specifically Tommy John surgery.
According to a database maintained by Jon Roegele, there have been 1,169 such surgeries since its namesake first went under the knife of Dr. Frank Jobe in 1974.
If it seemed like the Pirates were plagued by the surgery bug in 2015, that’s because they were.
In the Jim Benedict era, the former assistant to the general manager, critical to pitcher development in the organization, the Pirates had 33 players from the Dominican Summer League up through the majors lose time to Tommy John surgery just since 2009.
From 1974 to 2008, they had just 15. In fact, no team has had more since 2009.
What can the team do to stop this disturbing trend?