The All Star game is tomorrow, and without looking it up few if any casual fans could guess the two starting pitchers in this years Mid Summer Classic. Dan Haren of the Oakland Athletics and Jake Peavy of the San Diego Padres will be throwing the first pitches tomorrow as recognition for spectacular seasons thus far.
Sure, both pitchers throw in "pitcher-friendly" ball parks, but half of each pitchers starts are on the road. In fact both players have better ERA's on the road than at home. Peavy's earned run average on the road is a shockingly low .94 while Haren's is a modest 2.29. These guys can straight deal, and seemingly no one knows who these guys are.
Dan Haren, the one time St. Louis Cardinal was traded in a controversial move in 2004 for highly touted "Big Three" member Mark Mulder and hasn't looked back. Since the trade 26 year old Haren has put up 34 wins to Mulder's 22. Sure Mulder has had injury problems the last two years but what do you expect from a guy that averaged well over 200 innings from 2001-05, damn Billy Beane is a genius. I could see this kid was a baller when, in 2004, in the World Series, Haren threw 4 and 2/3 shut out innings against the hot hitting Red Sox on the biggest stage in baseball. I guess La Russa and co. weren't willing to develop pitching and went for the high priced free agent instead. (ps Daric Barton was also included in that trade)
Jake Peavy, the hard throwing 26 year-old righty has been compiling sub 3 ERA's for the past 4 years (well except for 2006 where Peavy had shoulder problems following the World Baseball Classic[ which is a good idea just no time to play the thing, considering seemingly every player got hurt after that]) but I digress. 2004 2.27 ERA 2005 2.88 ERA, and no one really talks about this kid. Maybe because its the West Coast and no one really gives a shit about sports over there since its always beautiful and the women have augmented racks, but damn this kid can toss. The only real knock on Jake is his lackluster playoff performances with an 0-2 record with an Earth shattering 12+ ERA. Then again he was going up against the Cardinals ace on the road, I think his name is Carpenter or something, so he has had some stiff competition in those games.
Anyone that argues against these two starting in the All-Star game need to go back to their
homerism message boards and get a box of tissues. Haren is is top 4 in nearly every statistical category imaginable while leading the American League in ERA and 2nd in Walks + Hits per inning (Whip). Plus he has a killer beard!
Same goes for Peavy who leads the NL in Strike Outs and Whip and 2nd in ERA.
Then again maybe these dudes will throw their 2 innings of perfect ball in the All-Star get over looked by some cheap RBIs ghey-rod picks up and continue to be in the background pitching at 11 oclock EST. But don't say I didn't warn you when they hoist the Cy Young trophy over Beckett and Zambrano.
yes this is Jake Peavy downing Jager straight from the bottle
WHAT A BEASTTTTT
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