Vote for Pedro

After Cliff Lee's insanely studly performance last night, the Phillies, and Red Sox fans for that matter, look to 38 year old Pedro Martinez tonight in game two at Yankee Stadium. I'm not going to talk about his aging fastball, career success in New York, or even bring up that time he threw 104 year old and certifiably insane Don Zimmer around like a rag doll. We all know the Pedro vs the Bronx rivalry, but tonight is likely to be the last chapter.

The Phils stunned the Yankees and their arrogant fans last night by getting out to an early lead and never looking back. In fact, by the later innings, with the score 5-0 or 6-1, multiple camera shots showed hundreds, if not thousands of empty seats. Now that's what I call a fan base. It's only the world series, you only paid 2,000 bucks for the seat, "It's Giardi's fault, we'll get em next time....now let's go get our swell on in the gym and drink protein shakes in our basements."

Here's hoping Pedro comes out with his "Coming to America-like jerry curl, and can revert back to 1999 Petey for one last hurrah in NYC (ITM side note: odds that he actually gets shelled tonight is currently about 2 to 1).

Prima Donna or not, it's times like this that I start to miss Pedro....(thanks to NJ.com for the vid)

J Roll: "Phillies in 5"

Immediate disclaimer: I want the Phillies to beat the bag out of the Yankees in the World Series as much as you do.

As good as the Philadelphia Phillies are, they are undoubtedly underdogs in the upcoming world series. The Yankees have steamrolled through the playoffs and appear more hungry than ever in their quest for a 27th title. Enter Jimmy Rollins:

“I think it will be very tough to take four straight,” Rollins said, when asked why he had stopped short of the whole enchilada. “You figure one game, they’ll find a way to win.”

“Of course, we’re gonna win,” Rollins told Leno. “If we’re nice, we’ll let it go six, but I’m thinking five, close it out at home.”

There is a difference between cocky and confident, joking around and being serious(see Dustin Pedroia), but J Roll is just J Roll. That is, he's a loud-mouth player whose name is bigger than his career numbers. Two years ago, he had a great season, however, prior to and since then, he's been a relative disappointment (hitting .250 in 09', .274 in his career). Yet he talks as if he puts up Pujols numbers. Pedroia wouldn't even jokingly say the things J Roll says with a straight face, now that's bad.

Rollins has done this in the past, and he's actually been right for the most part. Here's hoping the Yankees don't make him look like the true ass clown he is over the next ten days. Also, during media day yesterday, Johnny Damon confirmed to the world that he is still a complete mental midget...seriously, he's been in the league for over 10 years, has no one sat him down and taught him how to speak?....

ITM's AL MVP Ballot...

The three of us who write for ITM scrambled this evening to meet the AL MVP voting deadline, submitting our ballot to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA). We still have differences in the exact order of the top ten, but the list below represents a little bit of compromised on all sides. Perhaps the biggest difficulty was keeping Jason Bay off the list, and listing two Yankees ahead of Youk.....our attempt at "fair and balanced".

1. Joe Mauer
2. Mark Texeira
3. Kendry Morales
4. Miggy Cabrera
5. Derek Jeter
6. Zack Grienke
7. Kevin Youkilis
8. Adam Lind
9. Evan Longoria
10.Ben Zobrist

A press release from the BBA is due out tonight, showcasing final votes. It's going to be interesting how closely, or completely far off we all are from the baseball writers association.

ITM to Theo: Don't Give Ricciardi Any Real Responsibility

News broke yesterday that the Red Sox have a standing offer to former Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciarddi. Sure, he's a Worcester boy, was a Sox fan growing up, and has a great last name (in my book), but I really hope the Sox don't give him much responsibility.

Riciarddi spent eight years in Toronto, trying like hell to make the Jays relevant in the best division in baseball. A division that also has two teams with some of the highest payrolls in baseball.

While in the Great White North, Ricciarddi struggled to expand payroll, sign the right players, and put together the right balance of pitching depth and quality hitting.

He is best known for two outrageous deals to Vernon Wells (still owed well over 100 million over the next 5 years), and Alex Rios, a player who they rushed to make their franchise cornerstone, only to have to ship him to the south side of Chicago after a horrible year. (ITM note, I wasted a high pick on Rios for my fantasy league, I was drinking the cool aid as well).

Wells and Rios aside, Ricciardi was highly criticized for his handling of the recent Roy Halladay discussions, with many GM's calling his demands completely unreasonable. After letting other great starters go, he had a chance to completely reshape his team for the future and provide some direction. Instead, he's left the team no better off.

And don't even get me started on the Frank Thomas deal. Talk about signing a real tool bag.

Over the years, he's been close to competing, but has managed to fumble it in the red zone with terrible financial decisions that ultimately handcuffed his flexibility.

In the end, I want to like this guy, and perhaps he was never given the right (or enough tools), but if Theo brings him to Boston, they better keep him clear of the payroll, or any significant responsibility.


PS: if my fantasy football team doesn't win today, I'm going to start a blog about how terrible the "Naked Bootleggers" are. Man up.

Tell Me Again How the Sox Lost to this Team?

Turns out, even in Canada baseball doesn't make sense. I'm currently watching the Angels fall apart like the Yanks did in September last year. The worst part? I'm in Toronto for the week where people are more concerned with hockey and the CFL than baseball.

I'll give the Yankees all the credit in the world, they can mash and have been getting great pitching. But the exciting Angels offense, great starting pitching (save for Lachey and a horrible call tonight that changed the game), and bullpen that shutdown the Sox isn't there. They're not the same team, which only upsets me more about the Red Sox ALDS loss. Which continues to highlight the fact that baseball is a fickle game that simply can't be explained sometimes.

Time for a comeback is still there. But I'm quickly becoming a short term Phillies fan.

PS: Soxin09', I'm currently out of the country, insanely tired, but still blogging from my B-Berry, see how much I poured???

Who to Cheer for Now?

We're still not discussing the end of Boston's season. Instead, I thought I'd chime in with tonight's dilemma, with the Sox unfortunately out of the mix, who do you root for at this point?

Clearly I want the Angels to sweep the hell out of the Yanks. (ITM note, NYY fans should hang their heads in shame at the possibility of not selling out tonight's game, as of a few hours ago, 6,000 tickets remained unsold. Sad excuse for a fan base).

An Angels sweep of the Yanks isn't likely, but still, no matter what happened last week, you gotta cheer for Hunter and Co to shock the increasingly over confident Yankee fans. After that, my allegiance would turn far away from the Halos.

That said, it wouldn't feel right cheering for a NL team, the Dodgers could all rupture their achilles and I wouldn't care. I'm also not convinced many people in Los Angeles would notice. The Phillies have won it already, but may be the feel good story if they could beat either of the AL juggernauts. However, the only time I've every seen people here in Boston wearing Phillis hats have been the last two Octobers.....questionable at best.

So I guess my job is to root for the Phillies. Maybe the better way to say it is to not root against them. I don't like it, but I don't have a choice. I'm a fan of baseball, and I'll be sacrificing my grade on tomorrow's big final by screaming at the Yankees to fail tonight.

Random ITM question...what's the over/under on how many times the word "fisted" will be used in tonight's brodcast? Current line is at 54.

*This was composed and posted on a crowded subway train, now that's dedication people.

The First Stage of Recovery, Seasonal Awards

As a team, the ITM writers are not ready to post about the ending of the Red Sox season. We've sent along multiple emails, confirmed that we've all gone back to work and are continuing our somewhat normal lives, but any Red Sox related post out of us at this point would still be completely irrational and full of anger.

That said, as a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, ITM, along with fellow Red Sox bloggers The Joy of Sox and Boston Red Thoughts, have been asked to submit their ballots for seasonal awards. Once tallied, the results will be made public via a press release sometime in the next few weeks.

We here at ITM see this as a way to ease back into the world of baseball talk. Nothing specific, just a little list to show our ballot for the AL Rookie of the Year award:

This year's talent pool for the award was somewhat shallow, but ITM's ballot reads as follows:

1- Andrew Bailey - Oakland's new studly closer shut down 26 games out West for the A's. His 1.84 era, sub 1 WHIP, and 91 strikeouts in 83.1 innings pitched wraps up the award for him in our mind.

2- Rick Porcello - Got 14 wins at the tender age of 20 for a Tigers team that completely imploded down the stretch. His upside is huge, but at times this year he struggled to find consistency. He got extra points for being on my fantasy team.

3- Jeff Niemann - Two or three months ago I would have said Ricky Romero needs to be on this list, but the fact of the matter is Romero faded significantly down the stretch while Niemann got stronger. Niemann figures to a part of the forever young Rays rotation for a long time to come.


....Go.....Sox....?