Day 107 – The Josh Hamilton Show

I decided I would not include the all star festivities in my travel plans for various reasons.
1) I want to be able to enjoy the whole all star week of festivities when I attend. If I went now I would only make the HR derby and the Game.
2) Being in NY, hotel costs are a lot more plus I’m sure the tickets were a little more expensive than it would be at other stadiums.
3) I could use the break.

Of course I still watched the HR derby on TV (or should I say the Josh Hamilton show). However, by the end I was barely paying attention to it. I usually work on something while watching the derby and as the derby went on I found myself paying less attention to the TV and more to my computer. The problem is they have too many rounds and eventually the HR’s they are hitting are nothing new. The other problem is players have become more selective at the plate, sometimes for no other reason than to get a breather. The players have realized that to win they need to have some energy left for all 3 rounds so they are taking more pitches in order to catch their breath.

The Josh Hamilton show was really impressive and I do believe I mentioned something about him back in April after watching him crush a few homers off Jays pitching when they were in TEX. The guy has got some amazing power and now we see why this guy was a 1st overall pick.

Cudos to Justin Morneau for winning the derby (that’s right Hamilton did not). That very well be a flaw in the set-up, but I guess the thing is if you don’t wipe the slate clean before the finals you could have the possibility that the winner would already be decided before the hitters go in the final, eliminating any dramatic conclusion. That’s exactly what would have happened here, Hamilton was so far ahead based on cumulative HR’s there would be no point playing the final.

I have to say Morneau was my darkhorse pick. While most people were predicting a LH hitter would win, I didn’t hear anyone mention Morneau. They all went w/Hamilton or Utley or Berkman (if he was going to hit LH). Yes it had a lot to w/him being CDN but he also had the experience of being in it before and he was LH.