baseball

This is so dumb.  But I'm watching it.  And drinking.  Drinking game rules?

OT: Goodbye Rick Knapp hello Jeff Jones.

I guess giving up nearly 60 runs in 6 games vs the Mets and Giants will make the pitching coach go bye-bye...

Major League Baseball announced the rosters for the 2011 all-star game today. Four Tigers made the team: Alex Avila (starting at catcher), Verlander, Cabrera, and Valverde (wut?).

The most ridiculous inclusion is the desiccated corpse of Derek Jeter (he of the hilarious .260/.324/.324 line), who is starting despite being maybe the 10th best shortstop in the AL this year. The most ridiculous omission is Andrew McCutchen, who isn't even on the fan-vote list for the last spot despite putting up a .289/.390/.493 line as a fricking center fielder. He's easily one of the 3 or 4 best position players in the National League, and he's not even eligible for the pity spot. Well done, MLB. Well done.

Any other selections/omissions that strike anyone as noteworthy?

I am posting this purely as a PSA for those of you, like myself,  who might not generally click on the links under the mgo.licio.us section. If you are one of those souls, you absolutely MUST click on the "don't click here" link (Brian just wants to Bogart all the fun for himself, I suspect).

Seriously, click on that link NOW. Your life will be so much better for having done so.

Alright, so I'm interested to hear if any of you fine folks out there have bought MLB 11 The Show. If you have, what do you think of it in general? And I typically do RTTS with a pitcher, so if anyone has done that with MLBTS11, let me know.

From what I've heard and read from others, it seems like the graphics are still stellar, the hitting is harder (but more realistic, e.g., you're not hitting 10 home runs every game), the announcing sucks, and the main difference is the analog controls for hitting, pitching, and fielding. I haven't heard or read anything specific to RTTS with a pitcher though, so I'm curious to hear if there are any changes with that. I currently own and really enjoy playing MLBTS10 and I don't think I'll pay full price for 11, but I'm interested to hear other opinions.

Michael Rosenberg: Switching Tigers pitcher Phil Coke back to bullpen not so easy

http://www.freep.com/article/20110630/COL22/106300568/Michael-Rosenberg-Switching-Coke-back-bullpen-not-easy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

followed by:

Phil Coke moved to the bullpen, Charlie Furbush promoted to starting rotation

http://www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2011/06/phil_coke_moved_to_the_bullpen.html

Apparently, it really IS that easy

Nice job as usual, Rosenberg

PS  my formatting sucks.  My apologies