Chase-Utley

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Baseball is BACK!”] [/caption] Games start at 1300 today, so I’m still pre-season. This is also a much shorter prediction post than years past, but that’s what you’re getting. NL Playoffs: East: Braves Central: Reds West: Giants Wild Card: Dodgers I love Philadelphia’s rotation, but their offense has too many holes. No Utley, no RF, Ibañez is not great, Howard is getting figured out and has no protection…it just leads me to the Braves because they don’t have any huge issues, but are solid. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. It’s that time of year again, the MLB All-Star game is upon us! Last night was the Home Run Derby and, despite being in his team’s stadium, Albert Pujols did not quite manage to make it to the third round. Instead the final competition was between Prince Fielder, of the Milwaukee Brewers, and Nelson Cruz, of the Texas Rangers. In the end, Fielder took it and even bashed in a homer over 500 feet. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. I don’t tend to report on tennis news, but I happened to watch various parts of the Federer/Roddick match on Sunday, so I thought I’d say a few words on it. It’s worth nothing that this is probably one of the most lopsided rivalries in tennis. In fact, the 2 wins by Roddick (of 21 matches) is so embarrassing I’m sure that he wishes people would stop calling it a rivalry so he wouldn’t have to hear that stat. ...

We’ve reached the home stretch for the baseball season, so those of you who get bored of reading about baseball should only have a few more days left. Game 1 did not go quite as well as I’d hoped, with the Rays losing to the Phillies 2-3 in a game that was well-pitched by both sides, just a little better by Hamels. Kazmir’s loss was sealed more or less early in the game after an Utley 2-run blast in the first and a Carlos Ruiz infield RBI that brought in Shane Victorino. He didn’t allow anything else, but the damage was done. ...

This will be in a sort of liveblog fashion. First off, let me state that I hope we’ll get a NL win this year, I’m so tired of seeing the NL lose to those AL jerks… Lineup announcements: Slight cheering in the NL until they reach Mets players, then booing. How great is that? In AL, booing at the Red Sox players. Yankees fans can do something right, I guess? If only I can get them to boo the Yankees too. ...

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. As I write this, something terrible has occurred: The Marlins are sitting in second place in their division, 1.5 games behind the : shudder: Philadelphia Phillies. “How could such a tragedy happen?” I can hear you all ask. The answer is pretty simple, the Fish have gone two for five in the last seven games they’ve been on the road. As I said before, this road trip would be a true test, and we’re not really passing it. We dropped two to the Mets, two to those dastardly Phillies, and this most recent game on Monday to Atlanta (remember, I’m writing this on Tuesday). Really, our only strong hope is to pick up these next three games against Atlanta and hope the Phillies cool off a bit on their homerun nonsense. ...