2014 Official Major League Baseball Thread

[EagerBeaver]

Cubs Sue Men Wearing Fake Cub Mascot Outfit

http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/11236721/chicago-cubs-sue-fake-mascot-got-bar-fight

 

[EagerBeaver]

Lewis Accuses Rasmus of Selfish Play

Words exchanged between the Colbys:

http://espn.go.com/dallas/mlb/story...lewis-texas-rangers-problem-colby-rasmus-bunt

 

[hungry101]

I don't get it EB? If the Rangers don't want Rasmus bunting why didn't they just not play the shift. If they are going to play a ridiculous shift then by all means bunt. And it was a 2-run deficit? I think the Rangers are feeling some frustration these days.

 

[EagerBeaver]

My interpretation of this story is that Rasmus has a rep that precedes this incident. Tony LaRussa drove him out of St. Louis because he perceived him to be selfish, having an attitude, and less than coachable. To play for LaRussa you have to be coachable, he is a very old school coach who does not believe in Sabermetrics.

When you have a bad rep among fellow players and/or coaches, it's known within the league, and these kinds of incidents happen. Another example would be the Dallas Braden-A-Rod incident back in 2010. No way that incident happens if it is Jeter and not A-Rod.

 

[Doc Holliday]

My interpretation of this story is that Rasmus has a rep that precedes this incident.

That's news to me & i've been following Rasmus' career for four seasons. You must have some inside info that no one else in baseball has. Unless you simply pulled it out of your ass!

Rasmus has been a model citizen & model teammate as a member of the Blue Jays. No one has a bad thing to say about him & he does whatever his coaches & manager has told him to do over the past 2-3 seasons in Toronto. The only beef against him is that he strikes out too much.

 

[EagerBeaver]

That's news to me & i've been following Rasmus' career for four seasons. You must have some inside info that no one else in baseball has. Unless you simply pulled it out of your ass!

I heard this at the time he was traded by the Cardinals to the Blue Jays. LaRussa did not like him and this was well known and reported at the time. Like this:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=11925

How could you not know this when all of the rest of baseball does?

 

[EagerBeaver]

Or how about this one where LaRussa told the media Rasmus does not listen to his coaches?

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...by-rasmus-doesnt-listen-to-cardinals-coaches/

LaRussa never said that about his other players. Tells me that Rasmus is a sorry ass, punk attitude underachiever which is exactly what he has been since he has been since day one in MLB. Performance has been way below his talent level and it always will be. He is a poor man's Milton Bradley. That is basically what LaRussa said about him, and LaRussa has proven to be correct.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I don't get it EB? If the Rangers don't want Rasmus bunting why didn't they just not play the shift. If they are going to play a ridiculous shift then by all means bunt. And it was a 2-run deficit? I think the Rangers are feeling some frustration these days.

I agree. The Rangers didn't feel like throwing in the towel in the 5th inning with the Jays leading only 2-0, so why should they expect the Jays to mail it in? By using that ridiculous shift, it also showed that they were playing to win & believed they still had a chance to come back. And we all know that they have the offense to do it.

Colby Lewis has been the ridicule of MLB since yesterday for his idiotic temper tantrum & most experts agree that the frustration of his miserable season probably got the better of him & it really hadn't anything to do with Rasmus' bunt, which is a brilliant way to beat that shift if teams want to use it. Jose Bautista has already figured it out: teams always seem to play the shift against him, so he simply relaxes his swing & goes the opposite way. Most of the time it happened, he was successful.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Or how about this one where LaRussa told the media Rasmus does not listen to his coaches?

That was LaRussa's version of the events. I heard Tony Rasmus (Colby's father) speak about it on the air at the time his son was traded to the Jays & you don't get the same version.

Look, I've always regarded Tony LaRussa as being a bit of an asshole since his days managing the A's & his reputation didn't get any better once he joined the Cardinals. He's a good baseball man and was a very good manager, but he had a knack to be a real prick to players he didn't like. When Rasmus was traded from St-Louis, he told the media that he felt he had just escaped hell. And to his credit, you haven't heard a peep from the soft-spoken Rasmus since his arrival in Toronto & he's bonded well with his teammates.

But his relationship with LaRussa is beside the point. Rasmus is having a Brian McCann-type of season average-wise & finding a way to get on base in the 5th inning of a close ballgame was the right play. He wound up scoring soon after when Dan Johnson drove him in with an RBI double that hit the top of the centerfield fence.

Bunting or hitting the opposite way to a team using the shift on you is a big fuck you to that team for using that ridiculous shift in the first place! Well done, Colby! :thumb:

 

[EagerBeaver]

I don't recall LaRussa being as blunt in his criticism of any other player he coached, ever. LaRussa is an old school manager and the guys who have problems with old school managers are the entitled prima donnas. I also don't recall anyone ever being traded from St. Louis and dumping on LaRussa. I tend to believe LaRussa on this one.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I don't recall LaRussa being as blunt in his criticism of any other player he coached, ever. LaRussa is an old school manager and the guys who have problems with old school managers are the entitled prima donnas. I also don't recall anyone ever being traded from St. Louis and dumping on LaRussa. I tend to believe LaRussa on this one.

Well, i believe Tony Rasmus' version of the story. LaRussa is an asshole for throwing Rasmus under the bus. Good people don't do these kind of things. That was one of Tony Rasmus' biggest criticisms of LaRussa: he had no business throwing his kid under the bus & criticise him to the media, especially when he was still a member of the ballclub. You'd never see Joe Girardi or John Farrell stoop this low.

Rasmus has been a model player since his escape from LaRussa's dog house. He gets platooned, he gets pinch-hit for, he sometimes is benched in favor of what i consider inferior players....but he accepts it like a good teammate should & i hope the Jays re-sign him since he has tremendous power at times and plays all-star calibre centerfield.

The key for him is to remain healthy & cut down on the strikeouts.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Look at Rasmus's stats. He has not improved since coming into MLB. He has gotten worse. He obviously is not benefitting from his coaching, which you obviously can't do when you don't listen to it. His stats actually show he is getting worse. Bottom line is, he is a talented player, but if you look at his stats, he sucks. That is why he has gone from a starter to a platoon player. Everything LaRussa said about him came true.

 

[Special K]

I just watched the play in question and all I can say is a huge FUCK YOU to Colby Lewis and the Rangers! Don't bitch about being bunted on when your team is playing the shift, that's asinine. I wish more players would do that to avoid teams playing the shift. David Ortiz would be batting .350 if teams didn't put that play on against him and I root for him to bunt down the line if possible., though he never does. There ain't nothing wrong with a little tit for tat as far as I'm concerned. Team Rasmus on this one.

 

[lgna69xxx]

What am i missing here? Bunting is allowed no? Good for Rasmus and screw you CL.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I just watched the play in question and all I can say is a huge FUCK YOU to Colby Lewis and the Rangers! Don't bitch about being bunted on when your team is playing the shift, that's asinine. I wish more players would do that to avoid teams playing the shift. David Ortiz would be batting .350 if teams didn't put that play on against him and I root for him to bunt down the line if possible., though he never does. There ain't nothing wrong with a little tit for tat as far as I'm concerned. Team Rasmus on this one.

I wholeheartedly agree!! Jose Bautista's power numbers have dipped since the shift is being used against him mostly because he now always tries to hit the opposite way. His average has been hovering around the .300 level all season long, and would probably be slightly lower should he be pulling the ball like in the past.

Now it seems most teams are using the exaggerated shift. It's only a matter of time until teams start to figure them out. One good thing about the Rasmus/Lewis incident the other day is that it may have shown teams in how to beat it. Just bunt towards third base/shortstop and you're on base!

 

[Doc Holliday]

What am i missing here? Bunting is allowed no? Good for Rasmus and screw you CL.

I wholeheartedly agree!

I mean, "what, you can't bunt anymore with two outs in the 5th inning with your team only leading by 2 runs??"

I think Colby Lewis was just throwing a tantrum & he likely only used the Rasmus bunt as an excuse. He also almost got him out since it wasn't a very good bunt. The Texas Rangers have been one of the worst teams in baseball all season long & Lewis' season has been a terrible one. It likely was just frustration coming out. However, he shouldn't have spoken to the media afterwards and make an even bigger fool of himself. He just should have let it be.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Look at Rasmus's stats. He has not improved since coming into MLB. He has gotten worse. He obviously is not benefitting from his coaching, which you obviously can't do when you don't listen to it. His stats actually show he is getting worse. Bottom line is, he is a talented player, but if you look at his stats, he sucks. That is why he has gone from a starter to a platoon player. Everything LaRussa said about him came true.

Who cares if Rasmus has improved or not? That's besides the point.

He made a good decision on Saturday by getting on base successfully with a decent bunt when the opposing team was using an exaggerated shift on him, with no one at third base. His team was leading only 2-0 in the fifth inning with plenty of time left. There were two outs, and he's been struggling at the plate since returning from injury a week ago. His mission was to get on base and hope that the next hitter would drive him in. This is exactly what happened, since the next hitter (Dan Johnson) drove him in with a double, and the Jays added an important 3rd run in a very closely fought ballgame.

End of story.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Who cares if Rasmus has improved or not? That's besides the point.

I think all of you missed the point which is that Lewis overreacted the way he did not due to the facts of the situation which was Rasmus bunting into a shift, but due to Rasmus' terrible reputation as a selfish player which was established by Tony LaRussa, coupled with his ass-sucking .220 batting average at the time of the bunt. Lewis was specifically quoted as saying that he thought Rasmus was looking out for his sorry ass batting average rather than caring about his team.

Rasmus is at an age (28) when most players are in their prime but he is putting up terrible stats, has not improved as a player and is not even an established regular player any more, thereby proving all that LaRussa said about him when the Cards properly shipped his ass out.

My point, which was clearly missed, is that strange incidents like this happen to players who have bad reputations within the game of baseball. People in baseball take their cues from TonyLaRussa, they do not ignore him. The same exact thing happened between Dallas Braeden and A-Rod. With any other player in baseball it would have been a non-incident. Because it happened with A-Rod, words were exchanged.

I AGREE it should have been a non-incident. If Jacoby Ellsbury did the same thing, Lewis would not have said a word. It's all about who did it, not what was done.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I think all of you missed the point which is that Lewis overreacted the way he did not due to the facts of the situation which was Rasmus bunting into a shift, but due to Rasmus' terrible reputation as a selfish player which was established by Tony LaRussa, coupled with his ass-sucking .220 batting average at the time of the bunt. Lewis was specifically quoted as saying that he thought Rasmus was looking out for his sorry ass batting average rather than caring about his team.

Rasmus is at an age (28) when most players are in their prime but he is putting up terrible stats, has not improved as a player and is not even an established regular player any more, thereby proving all that LaRussa said about him when the Cards properly shipped his ass out.

My point, which was clearly missed, is that strange incidents like this happen to players who have bad reputations. The same exact thing happened between Dallas Braeden and A-Rod. With any other player in baseball it would have been a non-incident. Because it happened with A-Rod, words were exchanged.

Actually, all of us think that you're the only one who's totally missed the point.

You've pulled b.s. out of your ass in the past and on this Rasmus/Lewis incident it's no exception. COLBY RASMUS DOES NOT HAVE A TERRIBLE REPUTATION. YOU MADE THIS UP AGAIN, AS YOU OFTEN DO WHEN YOU WANT TO WIN AN ARGUEMENT. COLBY RASMUS DOESNT EVEN HAVE A BAD REPUTATION.

Rasmus has been a model teammate since his time with the Jays and he's very well-liked around the team, including his manager who doesn't have a bad word to say about him. Not once has he had a problem with an opposing player, coach, manager or umpire during his time with the Jays. The only problem he ever had was his manager during his time in St-Louis at the beginning of his career.

Rasmus wasn't getting allowing with his manager (LaRussa the prick) four years ago and wanted out. It was personal between them & the asshole LaRussa threw Rasmus under the bus when he thrashed him to the media WHEN RASMUS WAS STILL A MEMBER OF THE CARDINALS!!!!

Rasmus' camp asked for a divorce & it was granted when he was traded to the Jays for bullpen help which turned out to be crucial for them in their World Series win.

End of story.

 

[EagerBeaver]

COLBY RASMUS DOES NOT HAVE A TERRIBLE REPUTATION.

So you are saying nobody in baseball knows why the Cards traded Rasmus, the reasons for which were reported in all of the mainstream media in the US? And nobody knows that Tony LaRussa NEVER once publicly criticized a player like this other than Rasmus? Come on. It is out there and everyone in MLB knows exactly what I know, that Rasmus has a rep as an uncoachable and selfish player (and an underachiever).

You also deny that A-Rod has a bad rep among players? A-Rod was also involved in several "incidents" which were non-incidents with any other player in the game.