Posts tagged BenSheets at FanHouse

The above headline is a bit misleading. While Hank Steinbrenner (who has been eerily quiet recently) did actually blame injuries for the Yankees troubles this year, he did not actually guarantee danger and delusion next year. He just merely exhibited delusion across the scope of his quotations, one of which involves the Yankees being dangerous.

"I'm not writing off this season," the Yankees' co-chairman said Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. "They're trying hard to win. There's only so much you can do. They're not supermen."

[...]"I think it's very simple, we've been devastated by injuries," Steinbrenner said. "No team I've ever seen in baseball has been decimated like this. It would kill any team. Imagine the Red Sox without [Josh] Beckett and [Jon] Lester. Pitching is 70 percent of the game. Wang won 19 games two straight years. Chamberlain became the most dominating pitcher in baseball. You can't lose two guys like that."

[...]"We're going to win it next year," he said. "If we need to add a top veteran pitcher, we'll do that. We'll do whatever we need to do. Next year, we'll be extremely dangerous."

I'm sure the Yanks will be scary. C.C. Sabathia, Manny Ramirez, Ben Sheets and Mark Teixeira are all going to be on the market, and I'd be surprised if at least one didn't land in New York.

But is Joba the "most dominant pitcher in baseball"? And does Hank really have zero clue that part and parcel of Wang's 19/year wins came from the redonk offense New York is sporting? And is pitching actually 70 ... oh, nevermind.

Point being, Hank hadn't spouted off at the mouth for a little while, what with the Bombers actually making some headway in the East, and now that it looks like time is creeping on them, he's playing the role of angry, flummoxed meathead. And frankly, I enjoy it.

Over the weekend the Yankees and Red Sox got their share of press with people repeatedly referring to the series as, "the biggest of the year thus far." While it was certainly a big series, that kind of sentiment is typically short-sighted and East Coast centric. The biggest series of the year thus far may actually be taking place over the next four days at Miller Park between the Cubs and the Brewers.

After starting strong and fading last year, the Brewers are hoping to catch the Cubs, who've been flagging of late. Both teams have armed up with ace-level starting pitchers in the past month, and we'll see both of them, as well as the two aces the teams already had, in this series (CC Sabathia goes tonight, Ben Sheets and Carlos Zambrano go tomorrow night, and Rich Harden goes in the pre-deadline finale on Thursday).

So, one game separating the two teams, four aces making starts, a four game series, and only one certain playoff spot between the two teams (the Brewers lead the Cardinals by three games and the Phillies by four in the Wild Card). Don't forget Kerry Wood on the disabled list, Alfonso Soriano's recent return to form, and CC Sabathia's domination of the NL since pulling on a Brewers' jersey two weeks ago.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Since the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs are the two teams in the NL Central making all the moves, most people have begun writing off the St. Louis Cardinals as division contenders. It's pretty hard to blame anyone for feeling this way. After all, in recent weeks the Brewers have added an ace to their starting rotation in CC Sabathia, and just yesterday they added some infield depth when they picked up Ray Durham from the Giants.

I don't expect the Durham trade to be Milwaukee's last play, either.

Meanwhile, the Cubs have added Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin to their pitching staff, and there's talk they're thinking of adding someone like A.J. Burnett to the rotation, and Brian Fuentes or Huston Street to the bullpen.

The Cardinals? Well, for the most part they're just crossing their fingers that Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright can return in August and provide a boost to the ballclub. The problem with this approach is that the Redbirds may very well find themselves out of the race by then if they sit on their hands. That's why every game right now is important for the Cardinals, and the four game set they're about to begin with the Brewers tonight is huge.

There aren't too many things that Ben Sheets and Cliff Lee have in common. Sure, they've both showered with C.C. Sabathia but Sheets is pure pitching talent while Lee has spent his career getting by on guile. They'll always be joined as the starting pitchers in the 2008 All-Star Game, though.

There's another similarity, actually. Neither one would have been a good bet at the start of the season to be in this spot. For all his talent, Sheets hasn't had any luck staying healthy and that's always been a mitigating factor when weighing his chances at All-Star berths and Cy Young awards. Lee wasn't even a lock to make the Indian rotation before the season started but has outperformed even the loftiest of expectations to date.

Each man is a deserving choice. They wouldn't be my choice, however. In the National League, Sheets is somewhere behind Edinson Volquez and Tim Lincecum to this point. The two youngsters have impressed from day one but each pitched over the weekend, likely eliminating them from consideration by Clint Hurdle.

In the AL, no one is more deserving than Justin Duchscherer. His success is even more out of left field than Lee's and even more impressive. A 210 ERA+, two starts with more than two runs allowed and an unbelievable 0.865 WHIP make him the best the junior circuit has to offer. Like Lincecum, however, Duchscherer started on Sunday which means we probably won't see him pitch at all tomorrow night.

It's hard to imagine a better way to kick off the mad dash to baseball's trade deadline than with the Brewers and Cubs pulling trades for big-name pitchers within two days of each other. Of course, those moves raise a pretty big question: who's the favorite to win the division now? Let's break it down.

Definitely not favorites: Pirates, Astros, and Reds. The Reds are young and exciting but at least a year away, the Pirates seem to be meandering down the right road but they're still way down the path in the wrong direction, and the Astros are a disaster area.

The Cardinals: This team perplexes me. By all accounts they shouldn't be very good, and yet they've still got the second best record in the NL and are ahead of the Brewers in the Wild Card standings. They probably won't join in the arms race with the Cubs and Brewers, but they get Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter back from the DL in pretty short fashion. Still, they're short on offense besides Albert Pujols and Ryan Ludwick, it's hard to know what to expect out of Carpenter after missing most of a season and a half, and Kyle Lohse is a prime candidate to turn into a pumpkin.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

So in the last 48 hours the Milwaukee Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their rotation, and the Chicago Cubs picked up Rich Harden to add to theirs. All the Phillies have managed to do in during that span was lose two games in the standings.

The Phillies have now lost four in a row, and unfortunately for them their losing streak directly coincides with a four-game win streak by the New York Mets. Now both the Mets and Marlins sit only a game and a half behind the Phillies. So the pressure is on the Phillies to add an arm of their own to the rotation.

If you look around the National League right now, things aren't set up too well for Philadelphia. The Brewers now have Ben Sheets and Sabathia. The Cubs have Harden, Carlos Zambrano, and Ryan Dempster. In Arizona the Diamondbacks feature Brandon Webb and Dan Haren at the top of their rotation, while in Los Angeles the Dodgers have a NL-best 3.70 ERA.

The Phillies have Cole Hamels and, um, Jamie Moyer? While the Phillies have the fifth best team ERA in the National League, Hamels is the only member of their rotation who has an ERA under 4.00. Their offense may be pretty dangerous, but once the playoffs start (if the Phillies get there) it's pitchers who dominate, and the Phillies just don't have enough of them.

So when will the Phillies make their move in the NL Arms Race?

The National League shapes up a lot differently today than it did yesterday. Burly Indians left-hander CC Sabathia, none other than the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, will make his first start for the Brewers tonight.

As difference-makers go, Sabathia is virtually impossible to top. Milwaukee's NL rivals simply can't do any better than the southpaw. Here are the gruesome details for the Cubs, Cardinals, Mets, Phillies and Marlins: On April 16, Sabathia's ERA was 13.50, since then he's made 14 starts, posting a 2.16 ERA and getting through the sixth inning in every single turn.

And of course, he's moving to the weaker National League and moving to a team where he won't be expected to be a savior - not with Ben Sheets and Manny Parra already in the rotation.

Milwaukee still has some work to do. As of Tuesday morning, the Brewers sit four games back of the Cubs in the standings and a 1/2 game behind the Cardinals, but Sabathia is replacing Jeff Suppan and his 4.71 ERA in the rotation. The expectation here is that they'll be able to make up that ground just by placing him in the rotation for the second half.

So the question for the Brewers' National League rivals becomes how to react to Milwaukee's coup. The answer is simple: concentrate on what you can control, and forget trying to better Brewers GM Doug Melvin.

So now that the Brewers have traded for C.C. Sabathia, one has to wonder what move, if any, the Chicago Cubs are going to make to counter it. After all, a top of the rotation that features Ben Sheets and Sabathia is quite formidable, and the Brewers are currently constructed are more than capable of making up the 3.5 game gap between themselves and the top of the division.

So what are the Cubs going to do to answer Milwaukee's challenge? Word out of Chicago is that general manager Jim Hendry has been talking to Billy Beane a lot lately, and the topic of their conversation is not the weather, but rather what it would take to get Rich Harden in a Cubs uniform.

While this move would make a lot of sense for the Cubs if they could pull it off, I wouldn't exactly plan on seeing it happen anytime soon. First of all, Beane has showed us in his recent deals for Dan Haren and Nick Swisher that if you want one of his top players, you better have a truckload of prospects to send back his way. I'm not sure the Cubs have enough players who would qualify as somebody Beane would be interested in taking.

Then there's the fact that while Harden was on the block at the beginning of the season, that was because everybody expected the A's to suck this season, including Billy Beane. The fact that they're only six games out of first place right now will probably cause Beane to hold off on pulling the trigger on this deal. Though if Oakland falls out of it by the trading deadline, then all bets are off.

What happens when you take a team that's 20-11 since June 1st, currently sitting with the second best winning percentage in the National League, and add one Carsten Charles Sabathia to the mix? Ladies and gentleman, we've got a new favorite for the National League pennant. Maybe that's hideously reactionary, since we're talking about a team that's still 3.5 games behind the Cubs and tied with the Cardinals for the NL Wild Card at the moment, but I don't think so.

OK, time for a breather. It's only July 6th. It's too soon to be talking about favorites. What's clear, though, is that the Brewers think that they can make a run at more than just a playoff spot this year. With Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder starting to come around at the plate and Manny Parra finally finding his footing in the rotation, they were going to be real contenders without Sabathia. Now they've added the reigning AL Cy Young winner to their mix without taking anything away from their Major League club. They've got to be liking their chances at Miller Park right now.

The question now? What does the rest of the National League do? The Cubs, lest we forget, are already a really good baseball team, with six regulars posting above average OPSs this year, four starting pitchers with above average ERAs, and a good bullpen, so maybe calling the Brewers the favorites is a wee bit premature. The Phillies are quite good, but their rotation is painfully thin. The entire National League West should probably start with a prayer. Remember all those NL Central jokes everyone made last year? Put 'em on the shelves, because right now it looks like it's going to take an upset for someone from another division to get to the World Series.

While the All Star teams won't be announced until later tonight, we have a pretty good idea who most of the starters will be thanks to the fan voting. What we usually have to wait a bit to find out about, though, is who the starting pitchers will be in the game. That won't be the case this season, as word has leaked out that this years starting pitchers will be Cleveland's Cliff Lee and Arizona's Brandon Webb.

Cliff Lee, who had to fight for a job in Cleveland's rotation this spring, will be the starting pitcher for the AL, the Post reported. Lee is 11-1 with a 2.26 ERA.

He'll go against Arizona's Brandon Webb, who will be playing in his third consecutive All-Star game and getting his first starting assignment.

It's pretty hard to argue against either selection, as Cliff Lee has been one of the lone bright spots for the Indians this season, and Brandon Webb is, well, Brandon Webb.

In the American League, Terry Francona probably could have picked either Lee, Joe Saunders, Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay, and Gavin Floyd without getting too much flak for it. Other candidates in the National League included Aaron Cook, Ben Sheets, Edinson Volquez, and Tim Lincecum, but it looks like Webb's reputation preceded him.