May 2008 Archives

The 2008 First-Year Player Draft is just around the corner and on June 5-6, teams will look to build towards the future by continuing to improve internally or replenishing a farm system that might be in need of some restocking.

Here is a look at what each team might do with its first pick:

Baseball is a game of numbers.

There are numbers that you can rattle off the top of your head like 714 (Babe Ruth's home runs) 56 (Joe DiMaggio's hit streak) and 511 (Cy Young's wins).

There are single-season numbers that people know like their ATM pin numbers like 73 (Barry Bonds' home runs) 262 (Ichiro's hits), but there is one single-season number that haunts hitters like a ghost and it is the number .400.

Nobody since Ted Williams in 1941 has hit .400 in a single season despite a few noble attempts.

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The Detroit Red Wings really haven't been tested thus far, and this should be the series to do it. Dallas is a complete team and in their last series they got the superior goaltending from Marty Turco they needed, when the team was being outplayed. The four game sweep of the Avs cemented Osgood's role as the Detroit starter, but we probably shouldn't assume that Babcock wouldn't go back to Dominik Hasek if he runs into trouble. Osgood has had a fantastic playoffs, but again like his team, he hasn't exactly been tested.

Johan Franzen has an astonishing 11 goals and 3 assists in his team's 10 playoff games. It is secondary scoring like this that wins championships. The way Detroit is playing now, unless they have some rust from that long week off their talent should be too much for the Stars and probably too much for either the Pens or the Flyers in the finals. To try to find a weakness is to point to Chris Osgood, but he can laugh that back in our faces by showing us his 2.09 GAA over the season. I guess it's a testament to how strong Detroit is this year.

That's not to say the Stars can't match up. But they will have to rely on Marty Turco a lot more than Detroit will have to rely on Osgood. Sergei Zubov returned to action against the Sharks and picked up four points (1 G 3 A) in five games. Mike Ribeiro has continued his excellent play with 14 playoff points. Former Conn Smythe winner Brad Richards and captain Brenden Morrow both have 12. The scoring punch is certainly there for Dallas, but then again it was for Colorado and they simply couldn't stop the Wings' offensive juggernaut (21 goals in 4 games).The key will be Turco, because Detroit is going to get their share of chances. If he can keep Dallas in games they have the scoring to be competitive. However, we think Detroit is simply playing too well right now. It's looking like their year again. Detroit in 6.

Stars fans and the rest of the NHL (not named the Red Wings) have reason to smile as Swedish Elite League star Fabian Brunnstrom signed with Dallas this morning passing up the NHL's premier Swedish colony, the Detroit Red Wings (Lidstrom, Zetterberg, Franzen, et al).

What is it that most of us baseball fans like to watch? Great pitching.

What makes great pitching fun to watch? When a pitcher has absolutely filthy stuff.

So how do we define stuff? It's very subjective, because of all the different factors to take into consideration. You can take into account a pitcher's velocity, movement, control, breaking stuff among a few other things.

So after doing a poll with our dedicated readers, whose opinions are held in very high regard, here are the top 20 pitchers that came as a result of polling many different people.

 

No. 1 Jake Peavy

With a tailing fastball that goes anywhere between 92-97 to go along with a very sharp slider and a filthy changeup, Peavy came out as the top pitcher in our circle. He has very good command of the strike zone and his ¾ arm slot allows him to keep the ball down in the zone which leads to a lot of swings and misses at balls in the dirt.