Virtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates

My 2009 Mets fell to the Red Sox in the World Series 3 games to 2, punctuated by a 14-5 drubbing in game three.  Yeowch!

Because of the good showing my budget for 2010 got upped by 9% to a whopping 191 million (for the whole organization, that is), so I basically became the NL Yankees in the off-season.  Let John Lester walk, signed John Lackey to be my #2 starter, Matt Holliday to play left field, Freddy Sanchez to play second, and retained the services of Victor Martinez behind the plate.

My rotation going into 2010 is:

J. Santana
J. Lackey
S. Kazmir
H. Kuroda
M. Pelfrey

And my lineup:

SS J. Reyes
2B F. Sanchez
3B D. Wright
LF M. Holliday
CF C. Beltran
C V. Martinez
1B C. Delgado
RF J. Franceour

And we still have started off the 2010 season 0-2, dropping two to the Phillies.  Lackey pitched great in game two, losing 1-0 even though we outhit them, but game one did not go well for Johan.  For some reason I just do not pitch well with him.

Oops!  4 games to 2.  I typed that up real late last night.  

Down 2-0 in game three of my opening series against the rival Phils, Scott Kazmir is wild, hits three batters and is ejected in the third inning, demoralizing sweep looming.  Then Brian Stokes and Bobby Parnell combine for 6-1/2 innings of shutout ball, the offense wakes up and we win 8-2, the big blow being a three-run pinch-hit double for long in the tooth Jim Edmonds.  Baseball is funny like that.

42-46 at the All Star break.  We're in last place in the AL west, 6.5 games behind the 1st place Angels.  Everyone except us in the west has a winning record.

Hitting is fine and HR's are up from last year, but we're still 12th in the AL in that department.  Beltre, Thames, and Clement are all tied with 13 for the team lead.  Balentien hit some last year, but has 0 so far this year.  I think I'll trade him for a LH LF if I find a taker.  Such a great year last year too so this is disappointing.  LaHair continues to blossom and has 9 HR's with a decent average.  He lead the team earlier in the season.

Our bullpen is doing well with a 4.34 ERA, but Isringhausen isn't quite what I hoped for.  He's not killing us, but he's not shutting them down either.

Felix Hernandez has a disappointing (for a #1) 9-8 record.  Bedard and Morrow are sucking gas at 5-10 and 3-6 respectively.  Bedard started the season 3-0 so you can really see how far he has fallen.  Morrow is so inconsistent and is gone by the 3rd inning in a lot of games.  Sanchez and Davies on the other hand have been great pickups for the #4 and 5 starters.  Both have winning records and are probably the reason we're at least stalking this season.

Need to get on a hot streak.  Every time I win 2 or 3 in a row we lose 3 in a row.  At one point we dropped 6 in a row.  It's not to late to make a move, but we need to do it now.

With college football done, and my wife starting to do a lot of cat stuff again, I FINALLY picked up the High Heat franchise last night mid-2010 season (having started in 2003).

Got a win against the Yankees, then blown out by Seattle.  8-11, 3 GB in the East, but the young starting rotation looks REALLY promising.