Yeah i know but i've literally not seen him pitch for a few years so its cool to see him on the mound again.

*sends a broom to every Tampa fan*

:D

Its getting annoying when Johan Santana lets in two runs right away and is lights out the rest of the game, but the Twins can't put in even one run.

Barry Zito was a victim of that today, he let in 2 (of 4) over 7 and the A's could only muster a run, he's 4-7 now :-\

I hope the Miz is the man and Zito is actually coming to the Twins, but that hasn't been discussed yet and the Twins are probably going to get Miguel Batista, and I have no problem in that!

Win win really, Zito's gonna start winning eventually

Yeah, I don't think it would be smart to trade Zito at all

BRAVES ARE 1 BACKKKKK

YEAHHHHH

Never thought they would be 1 back. :$

And holy shit we get Giles back after the break most likely. This is gonna be good.

BTW I've heard trade rumors for Andruw Jones. I wonder if the braves would do it.

I assume the only thing holding the Braves back from trying to dish Jones would be if it would mess up the team chemistry, because his hitting is no reason to keep him around.

With that said, I have to root for the Braves in this situation, because I can relate to their situation. Like the Braves, my track team had a great winning tradition, six straight True Team State Championships going into this year. This year we obviously weren't the best team in the state anymore, and it showed early in the season, but as the season went on everybody stepped it up and pulled it together because of the great tradition of our team, and we ended up getting 2nd place by 4 points, and if you know True Team scoring that is VERY close. That is exactly what the Braves guys are doing right now, they know they aren't the once dominant Braves, but they are no pushover, and the tradition in their organization is getting their players to play better than they normally would, and because of that I am rooting for them.

God ESPN pisses me off. We don't want to see Cubs/Cardinals, Cubs/Astros, or Astrors/Reds every week assholes.

We want to see the Twins/Royals damnit :mad:

Man KC suck so much this year, especially considering how much they'd been tipped to be in the running

He's having an awful awful season. Lucky for the A's Mulder and Hudson aren't.

He doesn't suck. If he sucked he would'nt have won 20 games and the Cy Young a couple years ago. Zito has eben getting off to rough starts, giving up 3-4 runs in the first couple innings and the A's haven't been able to come back. If you look at his ERA after the 3rd inning it's the numbers you would epect from Zito. As soon as he figures out how to get off to a good start he'll be fine.

HAHAHA THE BRAVES ARE IN FIRSTTTTTT

K since it's right at midseason I'm gonna make predictions on how they will finish.

NL West
x-San Francisco
y-Los Angeles
San Diego
Colorado
Arizona

NL Central
x-St. Louis
Chicago
Milwaukee
Houston
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh

NL East
x-Philadelphia
Atlanta
Florida
New York
Montreal

AL West
x-Oakland
Texas
Anaheim
Seattle

AL Central
x-Chicago
Minnesota
Detroit
Cleveland
Kansas City

AL East
x-New York
y-Boston
Tampa Bay
Baltimore
Toronto

NLDS: Dodgers over Phillies, Cardinals over Giants
NLCS: Cardinals over Dodgers
ALDS: Yankees over ChiSox, A's over BoSox
ALCS: A's over Yankees
WS: Cardinals over A's

NL West
x-San Francisco
San Diego
Los Angeles
Arizona
Colorado

NL Central
x- Chicago
y- St. Louis
Milwaukee
Houston
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh

NL East
x-Philadelphia
Atlanta
Florida
New York
Montreal

AL West
x-Oakland
Anaheim
Texas
Seattle

AL Central
x-Chicago
Minnesota
Cleveland
Detroit
Kansas City

AL East
x-New York
y-Boston
Tampa Bay
Baltimore
Toronto

NLDS: Cardinals over Phillies, Cubs over Giants
NLCS: Cubs over Cardinals
ALDS: Yankees over ChiSox, A's over BoSox
ALCS: A's over Yankees
WS: Cubs over A's

(Hey, I can dream :()

Good to see Contreras pitching a great game against the Tigers, 4 decent starters and maybe Jon Lieber sorting himself out looks promising for the post season

And how about them Twins going down to KC tut tut :p

Kevin Brown played a minor league game though and only lasted two innings, I think he gave up like 6 runs. So he isn't really reliable.

The Twins will take the AL Central, the White Sox don't have the makeup of a team that can continue winning.

how come?

They have a great offense that just got it's best player back and they have 3 great starters.

The Twins only have Santana (of the most underated pitchers in the league though) and an anemic offense.

He's been on the DL for a while now though so he's bound to be rusty and there's a long way to go til the playoffs. He was 7-1 and went 6+ innings in 11 of his 13 starts, that's pretty reliable, especially with an offense like the Yanks' to back you up. If Mussina can get his era down a bit and Vazquez and Contreras carry on like they've been going this year that's a potentially great rotation.

Agreed i definitely think it's White Sox all the way in the Central

Frank Thomas is pretty much out for the season, they have bad defense, and they don't have chemistry. Radke is terribly underrated aswell, he has a great ERA but no run support.

Its not going to be a run away either way, but I think the Twins will still take it in the final week because of experience and chemistry.

Shannon Stewart is now back, so now for the first time in months we have a solid 1-5 in the batting order. (Shannon, Guzman, Mauer, Lew, Hunter). Then add a fifth starter and bring back Mike Ryan, we will be right back in there. Joe Mays will be back in a month for long relief and Jesse Crain will come up when he is ok too. Once things flatten out we will be a lot better than we were in the first half, which is why I don't think Chicago will run away with it at all

Barry Zito finally won again last night, only gave up 1 run over 7, the A's will have the best rotation going i reckon

The typical A's post All-Star Break run

According to TBS, White Sox got Carl Everett for two relievers, i forget the names but one of them was 6'11"

The Sox got Carl Everett back? Thats a mistake.

Jon Rauch?

yeah

If you guys have never herad of a kid from Oakland named Bobby Crosby, watch for him.

Why? They just lost the Big Hurt for 2 months. Ordonez, Konerko, and Everett is one of the best 3-4-5's in the league. I know you want to pretend like the Twins are better than the White Sox cuz theyre youre team and all but its pretty obvious the White Sox are the better team. The White Sox had been leading the Twins without their best player so why would anything change now? And I dunno about you but I'd take Loaiza/Buehrle/Garland/Garcia over Santana/Radke/Lohse/Silva any day.

Everett sucks, he is no better than Matthew LeCroy and LeCroy sucks. He missed most of the first half, but in that time he was hitting 250. He isn't the kind of guy who generates a lot of runs and he doesn't have the winning experience.

Yeah Ordonez was injured most of the first half, but so was Shannon Stewart and Joe Mauer. We haven't had a fifth starter all year, Terry Mulholland has been starting, in a few weeks we are guaranteed to have either Kris Benson or Miguel Batista because of our ample farm system.

Oh, no we just lost a series to the Royals...seasons over...Even though three of our starters didn't play and our DH is just coming back from the 60 day DL...That series meant absolutely nothing because we didn't lose any ground while playing our Triple A team.

What makes the Twins good is not having the best players, last year the White Sox had better players than the Twins, but they have absolutely no chemistry. Adding Everett is the last guy they need, he did shit for them last season and will do shit for them this season. They need to go out and get a Kenny Lofton or Ray Durham type guy back, so they have someone for Konerko to drive in.

You can think the White Sox are a great team. You can tell me that they have better players than the Twins and I would probably agree with you. When it comes down to chemistry and knowing how to win big games, the Twins have the advantage and that is why we will take the division again.

Yeah He's the future...

On a different team though

somebody will probably be pissed, but I think the A's would be smart to move to Portland