It’s not like these guys are Brien Taylor….

Doug Bird on FoxSports.com wrote an article about recent prospects who never lived up to their hype. It looks like this:

1. Andy Marte
2. Hee Sop Choi
3. Wilson Betemit
4. Felix Pie
5. Rickie Weeks
6. Andy LaRoche
7. Joel Guzman
8. Edwin Jackson
9. Shin-Soo Choo
10. Russ Adams

Game 3: 2-1 Padres. Again. Seriously.

I’m so fucking disgusted watching this team lose a 3rd straight game to the ham-and-eggers from San Diego, I’m just going to keep this short. 11 runners left on base, 0-9 with RISP tonight, 2-21 in the series so far against world-beaters Josh Banks, Randy Wolf and Cha Seung Baek, the latter sounding like something you get at an Asian massage parlor if you’re a generous tipper. Seriously, when you have Pelfrey, Santana and Perez giving up a combined 3 runs and you can’t win any of the 3, something is seriously wrong. Can someone tell me why Omar feels the need to carry THREE FUCKING CATCHERS when his bench is as thin as it is, with Church going all Eric Lindros? $140M payroll and the starting OF is TATIS BULLSHIT, Monkey and TSTBTASL. Good fucking lord.

30-31, 6.5 out and I can’t believe Pedro is pitching a must-win game in San Diego on June 8th.

PS. No ball tonight, as the Mets apparently left theirs in San Francisco. I’d say they left their hearts too but they never had any to begin with. Way to get out-pitched, out-hit, and out-played by a last place team. Fuckers.

Boy, that escalated quickly… I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

The Mets just went through a week where they held a press conference to announce absolutely nothing and then took 2 out of 3 against the Marlins, followed by 3 out of 4 against the Dodgers. Beltran was hitting, hell even TATIS BULLSHIT got some key hits. Everything seemed to be clicking… and then Oliver Perez took the ball Monday night in San Francisco. Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” and that’s how I feel every 5th day when OP gets on the bump. It might be right away like last night but there is always that one inning where he totally self-destructs like the Predator. All that’s missing is the Billy laugh.

Tell me if you heard this before. The Mets are riding a wave of momentum only to have a lefty start the next game and get knocked out in the first, only getting one out. I guess I should be happy that Perez only gave up 6 to Glavine’s 7 but it’s a real kick in the balls either way. Pedro comes back tonight and while I don’t expect the Pedro of old, seeing his #45 out there always makes me feel better than OP’s #46.

Your NL All-Star Team?

Well, the first early results of the All-Star voting are in.  The AL looks pretty much as it should.  The NL, however…..what a mess!

1B: Berkman, Pujols, Lee – That looks about right.  All three are having great seasons, but Berkman is just far and away the better first baseman this season.

2B: OK, Chase Utley is the obvious choice and he is running away with the vote, but how in the Hell are Kaz “my anus hurts” Matsui and Mark DeRosa ahead of Dan Uggla?  Look, I love DeRo.  He’s on my team, but there’s no way he, let alone Matsui, deserves to be ahead of Uggla.

3B: Larry, Wright, and ARam – Pretty much how it should be.  Chipper is having a monster season, with Triple Crown implications, and deserves every vote he gets.

SS – The only problem I have with the voting here is Theriot over Jimmy Rollins.  Again, Theriot is on my team, so I would normally support him, but Rollins missed an entire month of the season and still  has Theriot beat in most statistics.  No way should Theriot even be considered for the All-Star team.

C – I loves me some Geovany Soto (but not in the same way Solly loves Mike Piazza).   I think he’s, far and away, your NL Rookie of the Year.  With his current age, I hope he keeps it up and becomes a perennial All-Star for the Cubs in the same way that guys like Banks, Santo, and Sandberg were.

OF – This is where the huge clusterfuck comes in.  Soriano had a horrible April, which doesn’t scream All-Star to me.  Sure, historically, he heats up and has a decent remainder of the season, but an All-Star needs to put up good to great numbers from Day One.  Fukudome, while having a great OBP and Avg. at home, really hasn’t done squat on the road.  Again, an All-Star needs to be able to produce both home and away.  (This is where the Japanese voting skews the totals, but that’s another rant altogether.)  Griffey – he’s getting in on name alone.  Guys like Braun, Frenchy, Mclouth – and how in the world is Chris Young not in the top 15? – all need to be considered over the top guys getting votes now.

The NL All-Star voting is a prime example of the reason the fans should not decide on the teams.

Amazing what blue pinstripes can do.

As you may or may not know by now, the Cubs have signed former Angel/Cardinal/Padre, Jim Edmonds, to a one year deal. Seeing as how Edmonds was one of the most hated players by the Cubs’ fan base when he was with St. Louis, it’s amazing to see how much this has divided the current crop of Cub fans. Over at the Cubs’ Official message board, there are “fans” who are calling other fans traitors simply because they have said they will root for him on the Cubs. (Funny how these same “fans” have no problem rooting for Derrek Lee, a key contributor to keeping the team out of the World Series in 2003.)

Here’s my take on the whole situation. As a fan, you root for the name on the front of the jersey, not on the back. Besides, it’s only costing the Cubs a pro-rated league minimum salary. If he doesn’t work out, it costs them virtually nothing. Look at it this way, the Cardinals, the team looking up at the Cubs, are paying Jim Edmonds $2 million to play for us. Personally, I find that rather amusing.

Don’t get me wrong, I hated Edmonds as much as anyone, mainly for the fact that he was a Cub killer. But there are a lot of examples of players with a chip on their shoulders playing lights out for a season. If Edmonds can help the Cubs get to the World Series, I guarantee he will be treated just as much as a hero as everyone else on that team.

It will be interesting to see how the Cubs themselves respond to Edmonds. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he has had some disparaging remarks about the Cubs in the past. I know he has felt that Zambrano has plunked him on purpose on more than one occasion. (And frankly, he’s probably right.) We could very well see a Michael Barret-esque confrontation in the dugout if Zambrano feels that Edmonds didn’t go all out on the field. If nothing else, the remainder of the season is going to be entertaining.

Cubs getting the Pacific Rim job done.

According to East Windup Chronicle, The Cubs have signed a supposed “stud” shortstop out of Korea (still in high school) by the name of Lee Hak-ju. (I’m sure there’s a joke for Solly in there, but I’m not sure what it is yet.) The guy who scouted Lee for the Cubs is the same one who scouted Derek Jeter in high school, and he says that Lee has better overall tools than Jeter did at that stage. This is the description from the Chronicle:

Lee is a shortstop from Chungam High School. The paper lists him as being 6′0, 170 lbs., but he’s closer to 6′2 and probably heavier. I saw him practice last week and it’s the only time I’ve seen him play. But as someone still new to the scout game it was a great experience just to watch him. To use the familiar adage, he was a man amongst boys. It was as if an MLB player had stumbled onto a field in rural South Korea and started taking ground balls. The balls just ambled into his glove and his catch and release was so quick — it was a textbook example.

But that glossy description shouldn’t overshadow his arm, which is also clearly big league. I saw him field a ball across his body, and moving toward third. He didn’t stop, he just pulled up a little and threw it on a line to first.

Reports say he is also blazingly fast. His time down the first base line is approximately 4 seconds, which compares with guys like Jose Reyes, Carl Crawford, and Joey Gathright. Add that to the fact that he is left handed, and the Cubs may have their own version of Reyes in the next couple years. It will be interesting to see how fast he moves through the system. Let’s hope it turns out better than the Cubs last Korean project, Hee-Sop Choi.