Premature No-Hitter Alert

I'm jumping the gun slightly, but after a typically douchey diving catch by Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia of the Tito Landrum Express is taking a no-hitter into the 7th inning.

This could help ease Tito's pain during a rough week against the predictably unstoppable Jabberwocks.

Thursday Lynx

While I lured you in with a header and picture that made you think I was going to talk about the Atari Lynx, I am only here to deliver baseball links to you.

I will, however, tap your nostalgic brainstem by leading you to this post about how good a team Monty Burns put together.

Poor Zack Greinke. And if you are not into FanGraphs yet, get there. It's cool and nerdy all at the same time. Just like us.

If you didn't see this opening day play by Mark Buehrle, you have probably been under a rock/not subscribing to cable.

Enter your combatant in the royal rumble of baseball. Don't worry, David Eckstein has already been suggested.

If you don't frequent Baseball Reference, then you are missing out. A list of all Albert's homeruns. Awesome. Who was his first major league HR RBI? Of course it was Ray Lankford.

Lastly, this.

And remember, this is a great place for you to post your links. Don't hold back.

MLB At Bat 2010 for the iPhone

In case you were wondering...I picked up the cheaper version of MLB.tv, which is the cheaper version of MLB.tv (and I got 20$ off by checking a box, recieving a free issue of Sports Illustrated, and then cancelling my SI subscription - we'll see if they still try to screw me over on that).

Then I bought the MLB At Bat iPhone app. I had it last year, and it was pretty nice. This year it's even better.

Pros:

1. It's sharp. Even on 3G it looks good. There is no jumping, just some pixelization on occasion. You can definitely read the score at the top of the scree and all of the graphics.

2. They have cool overlays with translucent backgrounds so you can check on things while still watching the game.

I can view the box scoreOr I can check out the defensive arrangement, runners on base, and even park dimensions. I can also see what is going on around the league. Lastly, I can pause, go back 30 seconds, and even choose the home/away feed. I'm confused by my ability to use the pause button and choose the home and away feed because those features come with the premium version of MLBtv that I didn't buy. But maybe they come with the iPhone app.

3. You can always listen to a game if watching it is not appropriate/possible. You get to choose the home/away audio feed for that as well. So if you are at work and you get a buzz just listening to Mike Shannon you can switch to the away feed. Also, the radio has no blackouts, so you can listen to things happening close to you (the Giants and A's for me).

Cons:
1. You have to roll with your location services on, which I'm pretty sure eats up your battery. Something is eating up the battery quicker than usual.
2. A couple of times my 3G went out and told me watching the game was not possible at that time. If you plan on using it with 3G, take note. I am always bathed in wifi, so it's not a big deal for me. Except for the fact that all of that wifi is probably mutating my minijakes.
3. It's 15$ in addition to buying mlb.tv.

Choose your own adventure, but I'm pretty glad I bought it. It made work not sux to the max today - and it's only day 3 of the season.

Pressure, much?

One home run and apparently Jason Heyward now holds the future of black baseball on his back.

Follow up to "New Stats"

I was going to release this beast later, but Matt's post about New Stats made me think that now would be a good time for this post (mostly because I can't paste a table into a comment). While the odds are low that someone will get a no-no or a cycle on opening day, I bet someone will get a cycle or no-hitter during this season. Both feats are rare, but they do happen.

Cycles 2009 2008 2007 2006 Felix Pie Stephen Drew Mark Ellis Chode Figgins (J) Ian kInsler (G) Christian Guzman Aubrey Huff Gary Matthews Jr Melky Cabrera Mark Kotsay Fred Lewis Carlos Guillen Jason Kubel (M) Carlos Gomez Luke Scott Orlando Hudson Adrian Beltre Jose Reyes (M) BJ Upton (O) Troy Tulowitzki (J) No-Hitters 2009 2008 2007 2006 Johnathan Sanchez Carlos Zambrano Clay Buccholz Anibal Sanchez Mark Buehrle (H) John Lester (T) Justin Verlander(B) Mark Buehrle (H) G= Gilkey's Eyeballs, O=Olerud Helmeteers, T=Tito Landrum Express M=The Old Mill, B=Jason Bere's Sluggers , J=Jabberwocks, H=Hamiltoes

Let me know what you think of the new categories. I din't get much argument, and I like rooting for a no-hitter and a cycle like nobody's business, so I don't feel bad about it. But I would like to know what you think. I assume this post will get bumped down for opening day (and it should) but I wanted to put this out there. Maybe after the draft poll is done, we can poll on this. Or use the comments. It's all good.

New Stats

I thought in honor of our new stats, hitting for the cycle and no hitters, I'd give you the short list of who has accomplished those feats on Opening Day. (Note: I'm no stat keeper so feel free to research this yourself.)

Gee Walker of the Detroit Tigers is the only player to hit for the cycle on Opening Day. That happened on April 20, 1937

Orlando Hudson hit for the cycle on April 13, 2009 for the Dodgers Home Opener, but not Opening Day.

Cleveland's Bob Feller threw the only Opening Day No-No on April 16, 1940.

I also wanted to remind everyone before the season officially gets underway of our league's special "Dead Man on Campus" rule. If a player on your roster dies during the season, you are allowed to trade that player for any other player in the league. There is no exception to this rule so Brett I don't want to hear any bitching when someone goes down and you have to give up someone.

Thursday Links

I'll redo links this year. Let me know what you like/don't like to read about. If you don't like it, but someone else does - I'm going to put it up. If no one likes it, I'll keep it to myself. Also, if everyone reads Joe Posnanski every day and you don't need me re-alerting you that he wrote something insightful and great, I can quit posting those. Also, let me know about when you think it should be. I used Wednesday last year because it worked for me, and broke up the week well.

Here are some links:

First, make sure to vote in the auction draft poll on the left side of the blog. 4 people give it thumbs up. Here is a quick article from THT about one man's opinion on the auction system.

The rest of these posts are about the game of baseball (pretty much).

Two from Flip Flop Fly Ball - I'm moving to Arizona. Also, an interesting look at the most common surnames in the bigs. Are you on the list?

Great post about unearned runs from Joe.

Interesting story about a book about why my baseball cards are worth nothing while I thought they would be.

All-time HR leaders by team. It's a fun game to block out the right side of the screen and try to guess the player. The second half is top season total per team. This guessing game is harder, though since the era of the juiced ball/player is upon us, most of these are people who played while we were alive.

Lastly, make sure to get your predictions in:

Matt's post post about division predictions

Matt's post about fantasy predictions

and if you want to subscribe to this in your google reader/other reader...

http://laligabaseball.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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Really lastly, this.(short video)

That is all,

Jake