The Yankees and Red Sox have a storied rivalry involving players. Bucky Dent, Aaron Boone, Babe Ruth. These are some of the names that make these games tense. But before the 2017 mid season series, both teams suffered setbacks. Yankees starting pitcher Michael Pineda is most likely out for the season with a partially torn UCL. There have been rumors that the Yankees would deal Pineda at the Trade Deadline, for he is in his last year of his contract. Now, the Yankees are stuck with an injured arm. Pineda is seeking a second opinion, but it looks grim for the tall righty. On the Boston side of the things, the Sox management parted with possibly the worst contract in team history, Pablo Sandoval. The former San Francisco hero signed a five year, $95 million dollar deal with the Red Sox after winning a World Series with the Giants in 2016. Sandoval played just 161 games over his first three years of the contract. The Red Sox owe him more than $50 million dollards over the last two years of his deal.
Tag: 2017
Quick Review: All-Star Week
The 2017 All-Star week was fun with festivities, but the game itself was on the slow side. It was a game of pitching dominance, allowing one run on both sides in the ninth. The only home run for National League was Yadier Molina and the American League was Robinson Cano’s game winning blast in the tenth inning. Craig Kimbrel collected the win, Andrew Miller the save, and Wade Davis the loss. Cano was named the All-Star Game MVP for going 1 for 2 with said home run.
The night before was the energetic Home Run Derby. The defending champ Giancarlo Stanton lost in the first round to the eighth seed Gary Sanchez. Mike Moustakas lost to Miguel Sano, Cody Bellinger won over Charlie Blackmon, and Aaron Judge came up from behind a 22 home run mark set by opponent Justin Bour. In the semifinals, Judge won against another rookie sensation, Cody Bellinger. Gary Sanchez fell to Sano. Sano did end up losing to Aaron Judge, who is your 2017 Home Run Derby champion.
The Bleacher Creature Archives Coming Into Play!
As you probably know, The Bleacher Creature has had some content and categories that have been a washout. We will know be featuring a section with the old categories! Enjoy and please share with your friends if you want to bring back some of the old content!
The Training Dilemma: Inside the Intense Training and Surgeries That Kills Our Players
It is the 21st century. Everybody desires to be the best at something. They need to be the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest. They need to be consistent, young, and energetic. These traits have transitioned not only from the real world, but the baseball kingdom. Take a look at Noah Syndergaard. He claimed to gain 17 pounds of muscle in the offseason so he could throw harder. As if 100 miles per hour wasn’t enough, he had to push himself to the next level. Now, he is currently on the disabled list with an ailing bicep and lat. Also note, the other four Mets’ starters have also had stints on the DL.
Giancarlo Stanton. Another human monster. Weighing in at over 230 pounds, he is the biggest position player in the MLB besides the Yankees’ Aaron Judge. Stanton has never played a full season since 2014, which was cut short when he took a pitch to the face. He has spent time on the shelf due to hand and wrist problems.
Players these days are getting hurt due to over working themselves. Back in the day, hurting yourself in baseball was never heard of. If you did end up hurting yourself, you played through it. Take Mickey Mantle for instance. Mantle dealt with injuries every season of his 18 year career. Despite dealing with constant pains, he was able to put together a great career, perhaps the greatest career for a switch hitter. He was also smoking and drinking at the same time, wrecking his body even more. If Mickey could play through it, why can’t today’s players work through injuries? The answer is simple: medical advances.
Ever since Tommy John underwent ground breaking surgery, the medical world has been rapidly progressing. Now, there are treatments for every thing. Draining fluids of joints, removing damaged ligaments, even taking out ribs to relieve pressure. It is no secret that some players abuse these procedures to increase draft stock. Some players in high school undergo Tommy John surgery to get it out of the way. What some of these people don’t seem to know is that these surgeries don’t leave you with a fresh ligament or elbow. In fact, they could weaken the body. The process for TJ surgery is to remove the damaged ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in the arm and replace it with a less used UCL from the wrist or other joint. As mentioned before, it might seem the human specimen has a fresh UCL, but they do indeed have a ligament performing a role it wasn’t created for.
When you put the over training factor into this mix, things get a whole lot worse. As shown in the Giancarlo Stanton/Noah Syndergaard point, players are training harder than ever. But now with these players having mix and match tendons and ligaments, the bodies can’t handle these. You can’t expect a wrist ligament to withstand the same pressure a elbow UCL has.It’s just bound for disaster. The reason why players are getting hurt so easily is now clearly exhibited. You just cannot have the players waking up at six in the morning to do workouts when they have the ligaments where there not supposed to be. If Major League Baseball wants to protect their players, they should put workout caps and surgery bans to limit injury. Besides, what’s a little decrease in velocity and home runs compared to people living their lives in pain and in casts?
BP Report with Jacoby Nolnaho: Old Timers’ Day
On June 25, 2017, I arrived at Yankee Stadium at 10:00. It was the 71st annual Old Timers’ Day. After an hour of absolute nothing, the Yankees greats finally took batting practice. Since these legends are getting up there in age, the baseballs were not flying out. My one (and only) chance came when a weak dribbler hit against the wall. Four time World Champion Jeff Nelson came over a tossed me the ball (For those of you who don’t know, I have actually met Jeff Nelson at an AT&T grand opening celebration). And as many of pitchers have noticed, the seams on the 2017 baseball around more thin and tighter wounded compared to the 2016 baseballs. This has been thought to have happened after the incline in home runs. Old Timers’ Day was fun, but it was extremely hot.
For the actual game, I was sitting in home run territory right near the left field foul. Despite an epic comeback from a 7-0 devastate, the Yankees fell to the Texas Rangers 7-6. In this game, Yankees outfielder Aaron Hicks left with a rib cage/oblique injury and took an MRI. Team officials say he will be out 3 to 4 weeks.
Topps VS Donruss
Everybody knows the baseball card tyrant of Topps. Being the “Exclusive Trading Card Partner of MLB” and all, they make some pretty great products. But often overshadowed by this big name brand is the low key Donruss. Donruss makes trading cards with players but they airbrush any logos and team names out (They lost their licensing deal years ago). The following review is of Topps Series 1 and Donruss Baseball. Remember, these are my opinions only, so don’t go on ranting. The goods of each product get a thumbs up and the cons of each product get a thumbs down .
Topps:
Good job incorporating players’ Instagram and Twitter feed on the back of the card. This should bring in younger fans who love social media.
Great colors on the back of the cards, makes it very easy to tell which team the player is on.
Manu-relics look incredibly nice making them easy to collect.
Certain inserts are cool such as the 1987 subseries and the 5-Tool subseries.
Thumbs down to the standard relics. They are white and mostly colorless, making them boring to collect.
The card stock is kind of flimsy easy to bend.
The borderless design is kind of annoying because is the cards get damaged, it is pretty obvious.
(Four up, three down)
Donruss:
The design for Donruss is great with the white and simple lines and dots.
The printing on the back is very low end and is blurry. It looks like I could off printed them from a public library printer.
Good job to the inserts. The numbered ones are very cool.
Autographs are cool and I like how the relics are vertical unlike the traditional Topps horizontal format.
The packaging is very cheap and papery. It is easy to puncture and is not appealing. It is white and appears dirty.
(three up, three down)
Overall, Topps secured the win. With appealing packaging and cards over cheap printing, it is pretty clear that Topps is the winner.
BP Report With Jacoby Nolnaho: Zack Hample
On April 16, 2017, I went to my first game of the 2017 MLB season at Yankee Stadium. After some train mixups, delays, and cancellations, I ended up at the stadium five minutes before the gates opened. Thanks to Clear, I was able to get on the fast line and get a Peeps purple plush. They are huge! After putting the plush in my backpack, I ran down to right field. Things got off to a slow start. Tommy Layne and Tyler Clippard threw nothing into the stands. After a disappointing Yankees BP, the Cardinals took bat. My friend caught a Matt Carpenter home run and gave it to me. Later, Zack Hample showed up. For those of you who don’t know who Zack Hample is, click here. Zack and I had a nice talk. We both had our umpire hats on and red shirts. He told me he caught 8 balls today. He signed my ball. On the ball, he put 9,535. This stands for 9,535 lifetime balls. I only have four!
For the game, the Yankees won 9-3 over the Cardinals.
Topps Royalty
Topps is the only baseball card brand in 2017 that is actually associated with MLB (Topps owns Bowman, so Bowman doesn’t count). Panini, Donruss, and other brands are not officially licensed by MLB. Each year, Topps makes a lot of common series such as Series 1, Series 2, Update Series, Topps Heritage, Topps Chrome, and Allen & Ginter. What some do not know is that Topps also releases other series that are more expensive and rare. These are usually Hobby Shop exclusives, but they are still popular. Topps High Tek, retailing around $50 dollars, use new card technology to make the cards transparent. Topps Finest, retailing at about $99 dollars a master box, features players of all years and two autographs or relics per mini box. Triple Threads, retailing at about $200, contain extremely high chances of autographs and relics. Topps Museum Collection, retailing around $250-$300, contains 20 cards for each master box. Each Master Box is divided into four Mini Boxes with five cards per mini box. But what makes these cards so expensive? Well, each mini box contains either a autograph or relic. In total, each Master Box has one on card autograph, one normal relic, one special relic (one double, triple, or quadruple relic), and one auto-relic. These cards are sometimes refered to as Topps Royalty because of their expensive price and high odds.