ESPN.com Going Through My Garbage Again?

Looks like it, with this piece by new writer Keith Law just over a week after my blog on young pitchers.“No disrespect to Johan Santana, but Liriano has the best raw stuff of any left-hander on the Twins' staff”, I appreciate the change in wording, but still copying me so closely is really not very professional. To comment on this piece, I’ll say that I agree pretty much with his rankings, but I have some minor qualms. I’m surprised he sees Zumaya as so obviously a starting option. The guy just doesn’t have very good command of anything yet, so he’d basically have to have his high 90s fastball working the entire game to succeed as a starter at this point. To say he’s the next Bartolo Colon isn’t a huge compliment right off, but it still assumes three things; that he’ll be able to improve his overall command, that he will develop his secondary pitches more, and that he is capable of maintaining his velocity over long stretches (a pretty big assumption as hardly any guys are like Colon in that way).

Another thing is that I personally find Matt Cain pretty overrated from what I’ve seen. If he can really blow away hitters with his fastball then why doesn’t he strike anyone out in the NL in a horrible hitting division? Nolasco I failed to mention mostly because I’m still trying to keep all the Marlins’ rookies straight. Reyes and Lester were very recent call-ups whom I definitely like but I feel like they could go either way towards greatness or the next league average starter. Lester I worry about because he’s 2-3 mph on his fastball away from Ted Lilly and even though he has a handful of very good pitchers, he has no one great pitch as of yet.

And it still boggles my mind how similar Liriano has been to Santana so far. Two guys who both showed immense promise but struggled in the low minors and then exploded on the MLB scene after improving their command while working in relief. And they’re both lefty, throw very hard, and have tremendous arm action and movement on their offspeed pitches.

The other example of my blog influencing the big boys was when the espn writers clearly read my allstar predictions and then copied them. My evidence? I published first, and I can find no other explanation for their picks coming out so logical. We basically only disagree on shortstops and who starts the game for the NL. Glavine’s been pretty average in June is my reasoning for him not starting, but the NL is getting pretty crowded at the top since Webb has come back to the pack. Also I am not impressed by run support (ie wins). Right now perhaps I would lean towards Carlos Zambrano because I wish the guy would get more attention and my jaw drops at his .194 BAA. And at shortstop, I pick Tejada over Jeter in the AL, with fielding breaking the tie (.884 OPS to .887 OPS respectively), and in the NL I have to switch my earlier pick of Renteria to Reyes because just came in second for the “most Mauer-esque hot streak of 2006 award”. Joe Mauer of course is in first for that at this point.

So that just goes to show you, espn.com, that you can’t silence the angry critic by trying to mimic him. I would, however, appreciate some more uninformed articles written soon since I’m kind of at a loss for inspiration lately.