TSN Baseball Insider Steve Phillips answers several questions each week. [url=http://www.hockeywildauthority.com/]Minnesota Wild

Posted in IYH Forums by jokergreen0220 at 08:35, May 23 2017

TSN Baseball Insider Steve Phillips answers several questions each week. Minnesota Wild Jerseys . This weeks topics include the Blue Jays struggles at Yankee Stadium, what the Tampa Bay Rays should do with David Price, remembering Tony Gwynn and his pick for the best team in baseball. 1) What is it about the Blue Jays and Yankee Stadium that dont go together (15 straight losses through Wednesday)? You would think an offensive team would do well in a hitters park. In your experience, what was the toughest park to play in and why? There isnt anything wrong with the Blue Jays. They just cant seem to beat the Yankees. The Yankees have the Jays number. Baseball is such a mental game. What you think or feel impacts how you play. When one team dominates another like this it gets in the mind of the losing team. It also empowers the winning team. As each subsequent game unfolds, the losing team feels that a loss is inevitable. When something goes wrong in the game it feels like that will be the reason the team loses on that day. In contrast the winning team has a feeling of inevitability as well. They just know someone will make a play or get a big hit to win the game. The Jays have a defeatist attitude against the Yankees. Im sure they start out each game telling themselves that this will be the day they end the losing streak. But at some point a lost scoring opportunity, an error, a bloop base hit, etc causes the voices of doubt start to scream in their psyche. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I lived this nightmare when I was Mets general manager. We could not beat the Atlanta Braves, especially at Turner Field in Atlanta. It didnt matter what we did, we lost. We could get good starting pitching but their starters pitched better. We could score a bunch of runs but they would find a way to outscore us. We lost every way imaginable. We lost some games with bad first innings and some with bad ninth innings. We lost on home runs, errors, wild pitches and squeeze bunts. We would rally and look like we were coming back and then hit in to a double play to end the game. We even walked in a game-winning run in the NLCS in 1999. What makes matters worse is when the team that has your number is in your division. With the unbalanced schedule we played division rivals nineteen times each. We always finished second to the Braves mainly because we couldnt beat them head-to-head. I told Braves GM John Schuerholz and manager Bobby Cox that if I ever had to pick them out of a police line-up I would have to have them turn around because I chased them for six years and only saw their backside and never saw their faces. In fact I am convinced that the only reason we advanced to the World Series in 2000 against the Yankees was because the Braves lost in the NLDS that year to the Cardinals. Our struggles ran from one season into another season. Not even an off-season flushed out the demons. In fact, several years after I was general manager I returned to Turner Field as a baseball analyst to broadcast a game. I remember walking in the visiting clubhouse and the awful feelings of past losses at Turner Field flooded me. It was still in my head. Every team has that other team. Unfortunately for the Jays that team is the Yankees. 2) There are a lot of suggestions that the Rays should be trading David Price now. Would you do it, and what would be your expected return in a deal for Price? What team has assets that fit that wish list? The Rays must trade David Price. Small market teams have to do all they can to maximize their assets. Price is the Rays most substantial asset. They cant afford to keep him and they cant afford not to trade him. In order to continuously reinvent themselves, small market teams have to recycle their roster. It seems highly unlikely that the Rays would trade David Price withinthe AL East. It is already a very difficult division so why make it that much tougher. Certainly the Jays, Orioles, Yankees and Red Sox would all have interest in Price. But so do the Tigers, Athletics, Angels, Braves, Cardinals, Reds Giants, and Dodgers. The Rays have had success being an organization built around deep pitching and just enough offense. Unfortunately for them, this year they dont have anywhere close to enough offence. The challenge for small market teams is finding the right balance between their pitching and offence. The timing between the two is critical since they cant spend significant dollars in the free agent market to fill deficiencies. The Rays want to compete again as soon as possible so finding young major league talent instead of a bevy prospects is preferred. The team that can make the best deal with the Rays is the St. Louis Cardinals. The Rays should ask for 1B Matt Adams and RHS Michael Wacha. This would replace Prices role in the rotation and give them a big power bat for the middle of their lineup. I would expect the Cardinals to say no to including Wacha in the deal. So the Rays should then ask for RHS Shelby Miller and RHP Carlos Martinez in the deal with Adams. The Cardinals would have a rotation that would include Adam Wainwright, Wacha, Price, Lance Lynn and Jaime Garcia. Alan Craig can play first base in the absence of Adams and Oscar Tavares can play right field. The Rays would get a quality young starter in Miller, a potential impact starter/closer in Martinez and a big bat for their lineup. It will be very interesting to see where Price goes and what the deal will be. One thing for certain he will not finish the season with the Rays. 3) We lost one of the great hitters and great personalities in baseball last week. What is your fondest memory of Tony Gwynn and where does he rank among the hitters you saw play? Tony Gwynn is one of the best pure hitters that baseball has ever known. He was a student and a teacher of the game. Gwynn is one of the rare players who played for one team his entire career. He is known as Mr. Padre. He never had a contract dispute. He didnt play for the money. He could have taken advantage of the free agent market and squeezed every last dollar out of his ability. But he wasnt about money. He played for the love of the game. Interestingly Gwynn got more attention in his death than he did as a Hall of Famer. People in some ways diminished his accomplishments because he was a singles hitter. The most home runs he ever hit in a season were seventeen. He could have hit more but he chose to stay within himself and do what he did best. He punched the ball the other way. He was a contact hitter. He hit for average. Gwynn had a .338 career batting average. He led the league in hitting eight times. He was a 15-time All Star and a five-time Gold Glover. His .393 batting average in the strike-shortened 1994 season, was the closest that anyone has gotten to .400 since Ted Williams did it in 1941. The hole between the shortstop and third baseman became know as the "5.5" hole because of Gwynn. He had an uncanny knack of being able to hit any pitch anywhere in the zone through that hole. I remember an afternoon when I was GM for the Mets that I was sitting in my office and heard the crack of the bat coming from the field at 1pm. We had a 7pm game that night so I wondered who could possibly be hitting that early. I went out on the concourse and saw Tony Gwyn taking early batting practice with one of the Padres coaches. I couldnt believe it. The game was six hours away. Then after regular batting practice I saw Gwynn walking with a bucket of balls down to the batting age under the stadium. He was going to practice some more. The best pure hitter of his era was also the hardest worker. That told me all I needed to know. The other remarkable thing about Gwynn was his smile. He was the least Hall of Fame acting Hall of Famer I have ever met. He was genuine, sincere, compassionate, kind and friendly. He greeted fans and opponents and ground crew workers in exactly the same way. He wasnt too big for anyone and no one was too small for him. Baseball lost the best pure hitter of this era and one of the best ever in the game. But the bigger loss was that of the man that was Tony Gwynn. 4) Baseball is such a great sport. Everyday gives you some different feeling about your team and its chances. It is made for sports talk radio. Or maybe it made sports talk radio. Either way our team can excite us one day and disappoint us the next. One week we feel like we are going all the way and the next week our team is a bunch of bums. The season is a marathon-long roller coaster ride. It can be exhilarating or exhausting depending upon the end result. Statistics allow us to continuously grade the progress of our team and how it is performing. The numbers can be made to tell just about any story and often times suit our bias. I love the weekly power rankings that come out and show which team is ranked ahead of its competition. Each week the teams are moved up and down based upon how they performed over a seven-day time frame. Seven days in a baseball season is only a snapshot of a team and who they are. There is a saying in baseball that no team is as good as they are when playing its best or as bad as they are when they play their worst. Yet each week we come up with an ordering of the teams according to some arbitrary evaluation. This year is no different. So far in one ranking the Giants, Cardinals, As, Brewers and Tigers have all been atop the rankings at one point or another this season. This is bizarre to me because there is one team that is the best and no one else is even close. The best team in baseball by far is the Oakland As. Why? The As have outscored the opposition by 134 runs. The next closest team is the San Francisco Giants who are a +47. Isnt the idea to outscore your opponent? The As have scored the most runs in baseball. "Well isnt pitching more important?" you ask. The As have given up the least number of runs as well. Back when Billy Beane co-wrote "Moneyball" everyone focused on the need for hitters to have a good OBP. Yet, Beanes teams back then had much better pitching than they did offence. They didnt win because their hitters had a great plan at the plate, they won because their pitchers didnt give up OBP. This As team is a true "Moneyball" team through and through. They are baseballs best offensive team while also having the best pitching. Beane has been criticized because his teams never won anything. That means championships. His clubs won a ton of games and got more bang for the buck than anyone else but that doesnt seem to matter. This is their year. Here are my power rankings: Its the Oakland As and then everybody else. Charlie Coyle Wild Jersey . Azarenka needed exactly one hour in a 6-1, 6-0 rout of Austrian Yvonne Meusburger to start the night session at Laver Arena. Sharapova had a much easier time earlier in the day with cooler conditions and took full advantage in 6-1, 7-6 (8-6) win over Frenchwoman Alize Cornet, while Radwanska had to rally for a 5-7, 6-2, 6-2 victory over Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Erik Haula Wild Jersey Authentic . Despite Arsenals financial firepower, the 31-year-old midfielder was the only arrival in the January transfer window. Signed until the end of the season as injury cover, Kallstrom might not be fit until mid-March after arriving Friday at Arsenal having injured his back earlier in the week while training with Spartak Moscow. http://www.hockeywildauthority.com/jared-spurgeon-wild-jersey-c-17/ . However, the 38-year-old is in no hurry to sign with another team. "Im not in a rush. This will be my last contract, so I want to do it right," said Burris on Thursday.DENVER -- Stronger, healthier, feistier than ever. Peyton Manning capped a spunky week by getting the first disciplinary penalty of his storied career Saturday night when he was whistled for taunting in the Denver Broncos 18-17 preseason loss to the Houston Texans. Manning was mad after D.J. Swearinger hit slot receiver Wes Welker in the face on a tackle. So, after throwing a 29-yard touchdown pass to Emmanuel Sanders on the next play, Manning ran up to the Texans swaggering second-year safety and gave him a piece of his mind. "He didnt invite me to dinner," Swearinger said. Welker, who has a history of head injuries, sustained a concussion, coach John Fox said afterward. "Obviously, Im concerned about Wes," Manning said. "I didnt like seeing him come out of the game with a blow to the head. He had one of those last year that kept him out for a while." Besides, Manning said, 15 yards with 5 seconds left in the half, why not? "I think if youre going to get one, thats a good time to get one," said Manning, who has never had a personal foul among his 60 career infractions in the regular season and playoffs. Manning declined to reveal what he said to Swearinger, who was also at the centre of several skirmishes during the teams three days of intense joint practices during the week. As for what Swearinger replied, "he said, Thanks, appreciate it. Good luck to you as well," Manning cracked. Swearinger swore that he didnt cross the line with a cheap shot on Welker. "I led with my shoulder. Thats the only thing I could do. Hes a short guy," Swearinger said. "There are some fine lines with hits. I could have tried to go low, but he ducked his head. ... What am I supposed to do? I made a Hall of Famer mad." Out of respect for Manning, however, Swearinger declined to reveal what the five-time MVP said other than to confirm foul language was exchanged. "That is a Hall of Fame quarterback. I respect him," Swearinger said. "But he shouldnt have done what he did." Mannings teammates wholeheartedly disagreed. "I loved it," Marvin Austin said. "Its a beautiful thing. Peytons not really a trash-talking guy." Manning, who called out his offence earlier in the week ffor a sloppy practice, and Sanders found their rhythm after an early miscue. Thomas Vanek Wild Jersey. They connected for two long touchdowns in the final 67 seconds of the first half to give Denver a 17-7 lead. Sanders, who practiced only sparingly this month because of a nagging thigh injury, was targeted eight times by Manning and caught five passes for 128 yards. Manning texted Sanders on Wednesday night telling him hed better get back in the lineup so they could work on their timing. It was evident their rhythm was off when backup cornerback A.J. Bouye intercepted a pass to Sanders early in the second quarter that led to Jonathan Grimes 1-yard run that gave Houston a 7-3 lead. Sanders took the blame, but Manning called it "a poor throw and decision by me." Sanders made up for his blunder when he zipped past Bouye and strong safety Eddie Pleasant to haul in Mannings 67-yard touchdown pass with 1:07 left in the first half. Then, he zigzagged between the same defensive backs for the 29-yard score with :05 left. "It was good to get Emmanuel out there. I had not completed a pass to Emmanuel in a game yet," Manning said. "I wanted to get some completions to him. I think you want to complete some passes to a first-year receiver in this offence going into the season opener." With all the work the teams put in together during the week, both head coaches dialed back the work they gave their starters. Texans DE J.J. Watt played just part of the first series and Denver LB Von Miller played a single series in his first game since tearing his right ACL on Dec. 22. And that was more than fans got to see of top overall draft pick Jadeveon Clowney, who sat this one out. Running back Montee Ball started for Denver 19 days after his appendectomy and had four runs and four receptions on Denvers opening drive. That series ended with Matt Praters 32-yard field goal. Houston won it when third QB Tom Savage drove the Texans 74 yards, hitting Ryan Griffin for a 31-yard TD with 59 seconds left and finding Travis Labhart for the 2-point conversion. Notes: Manning finished 21 of 27 for 243 yards. Texans quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick was 10 of 17 for 80 yards. ... Broncos CB Tony Carter (neck) came out in the second half. Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale NFL Jerseys Jerseys From China Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap Jerseys Cheap Jerseys ' ' '