2022 MLB General Season Chatter: Ghost Runners On The Half-Billion Dollar Infield

i don't really care what it's called as long as 2022 MLB is in the title somewhere for search purposes

― na (NA), Monday, April 4, 2022 1:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Hello also to additional wild cards, designated hitters, and SD and TX fighting for the most expensive infield possible.

woooo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gnEZ8NFI-E

should've made a nebulous rolling rap thread-esque title indecipherable to everyone else

trick SNA normies into accidentally clicking on a baseball thread out of curiosity and then trap them here forever

come for the enigmatic thread title, stay for the willie mcgee highlights and baseball cards

They'll come to ILB for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your general chatter thread, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

it's a small thing, but i don't want umpires giving explanations. much quicker and more dramatic to make a gesture

see also in hockey when they do a goal review -- much better to just have the ref point at center ice to denote a good goal

i want the explanations, but i want them to come via choppy telephone calls, with a new person on the other end of the line every time

Should be done more like an obnoxious gender reveal, where the people in the front rows are in a degree of physical danger from ill set-up explosive devices

habemus strikum

geez

…While…she…is…in…surgery…for…a brain tumor……………………,………:…? https://t.co/Q6rkTUYtCh

— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) April 4, 2022

Only one year left on the Albert Pujols contract

Holy shit. Had no idea about the brain tumour part!!!

former pirate great austin meadows to the tigers, btw; at $4m for 2 bWAR he was getting too pricey for tampa

Still no deal for Conforto. He turned down both a nine digit extension from the Mets last year, as well as qualifying offer this year, and now he might have to wait for the draft to pass.

that is brutal

although he was not great last year and probably should have taken the QO

Boras client? Didn’t this happen to a few of his guys a few years ago too?

Yeah, my guess is that Boras promised Conforto there would be a big market for him, even after the lackluster season.

I’m sure everyone looks at what he got for Hosmer and thinks well why not

sensible policies for a happier america

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/opinion/baseball-nationalize.html

Meanwhile Ramirez signs an extension at a massive discount.

Bleacher Report with some interesting predictatrons... including Manoah for Cy young (yes please!) and Roberts for MVP.

i guess we didn't do a predictathing this year, huh?

i enjoyed this result from the 2022 ZiPS projected standings

https://i.imgur.com/LYLNHK3.png

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-hopefully-not-horrifyingly-inaccurate-2022-zips-projections-american-league/

same record after 162 games, but somehow Jays have better playoff and WS odds?!

you can read the intro of the link for the methodology.

it involves running a monte carlo simulation with ONE MILLION virtual seasons.

https://awfulannouncing.com/schedules/your-2022-mlb-regular-season-broadcasting-primer.html

i am going to be watching so many free streams this year. fuck all of these billions of exclusive ways to watch things

happy opening day!

yeah i'll probably be streaming too. i don't think there's even a way for me to pay to watch white sox games legitimately without buying an entire cable package. i'll probably resubscribe to mlb.tv at some point later in the season when the price drops.

this is first year i won't be paying for mlb.com in...a long time.

the dealbreaker for me was the poor quality of the official mlb.com streams. i became accustomed to the the feed hiccuping and stuttering around every 5 minutes or so, almost always right as someone hit a ball or as runners were tearing around the bases. the official feed would often go all pixelated/low quality on me, i'd have to refresh the window several times per game, etc.

then, i'd switch to any one of the many unofficial streams, and it's almost always a perfect quality stream, zero interruptions the entire game, with the commercials removed. so much better. also, you don't have to move 1000 miles away from your favorite team to watch your favorite team's games that you paid for

btw, my go-to source for streams these days is

sp0rtsurge.net

ATLANTA -- Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. acknowledged an internal rift with former teammate Freddie Freeman during an interview late Wednesday, saying there's "nothing" that he'd miss about the first baseman.

definitely wasn't expecting this lol

i'd read Freeman got on his case a while back about admiring a home run that turned out to not be a home run and i guess he's been stewing about it since

very happy that today is here, even if my team is not playing today

i got MLV Extra Innings through DirecTV again this year for 139.99 and includes MLB.TV and i have never had an issue streaming

happy opening day from my family

https://i.imgur.com/S67FXmm.jpg

i'll be watching Waino pitch this afternoon!

VERY NICE! are you there right now? god, to hear the organ and see the clydesdales is just the best

going to the home opener in Milwaukee, pretty excited

KM you and I are now enemies until October

oh goodness no. I'm in Toronto. i just want to watch baseball, and I choose Wainwright over Witt.

JOIN THE LIST FROGBS, let's fukken do this

also, check this out, lol

Noah Syndergaard calls #Angels new team to beat in LA, says slumping Mookie Betts "could use a protein shake" 👀 pic.twitter.com/n0WZke885U

— FAX Sports: MLB  (@MLBONFAX) April 5, 2022

is that real?!

shit. i posted on the hot stove thread that ke'bryan hayes had just gotten an eight-year extension. he struck out, missed a couple close plays in the outfield (it's very windy though), and just came out of the game with an apparent wrist injury. all in the first inning.

what list

oh, i was just kidding. the legions of people who don't understand that the cardinals are america's team

;)

Cheers from this Ruthian Omni Canine and Ever-Slumping Human Vegan
https://i.imgur.com/iocS7vH.png

whats a better nickname for Chicago, Scrubs or Cubes

<3 francisF

Scrubs is perfect

Cubes is funnier though

scrubs sounds better spoke out loud, cubes reads better on a screen

aw, i ain't got no dog :(

Bring on more dog/owner opening day photos.

2022 version of a shutout from Wainwright, Goldschmidt on base all five AB.

Half-serious about the first part...should they redefine what constitutes a shutout from the starter, or do you just close the book on that stat forever (or at least let it become the equivalent of triple play)?

is this for sure Wano's last season?

also: me and the bean in our finest Jay gear:
https://i.imgur.com/7w8vWqA.jpg

it isn't for sure his last season. pujols and molina both claim they will retire, but waino hasn't. it's widely assumed he will, but i'm not sure why. i could see him going until the next big arm injury, and he's had a lot of them. don't want to jinx him but i think this is the longest he's been non-injured since like 2014. so feels like he's due, ugh. but on the other hand, he often said last season, in reply to the "how you still throwing well when you're old?" questions, he would often say that his arm had hurt badly the last several years, and that he hadn't felt truly 100% for so long, until now, etc.

if he has a repeat of his 2021, i think he would be tempted to stick around for 2023 to try to run the win total up into the low 200s. not sure how important the HoF is for him (seems to be important for a lot of them), but he's kind of a 0-2% edge case contender right now, whereas a decent 2022 and 2023 makes it slightly more plausible that he sneaks in and is one of the pitchers ever selected, etc. that would rule

aw, super Jays fans! should be an excellent season all the way to the end

my 2022 projection for the season is: it's going to be great all the way to the end, a real classic

sorry, not sure where a bunch of words went, but i meant

he sneaks in as one of the worst pitchers ever selected, etc. that would rule

you know KM when you were in Chicago I was gonna ask if you wanted to see a baseball game...baseball ILX is not as great as hoops ILX but it would be fun anyway

i still make trips up to chicago and milwaukee pretty often! or at least, i will at least a couple times a year, i bet. :) i'll let you know if i'me ever near when there's a game! gotta check off watching a game with all the ILBers

Anyone else trying to watch an MLB game through apple? I was watching earlier and then it suddenly stopped.

I am, it did stop for like 2-3 minutes but then came back.

Mine hadn't come back and I keep getting an error message, but it must be on my end. Switched to the laptop.

i got MLB Extra Innings through DirecTV again this year for 139.99 and includes MLB.TV and i have never had an issue streaming

so i jinxed myself as i tried to listen to the radio while taking a shower and it kept fucking up and then the problems continued in my car as well

not sure what to do with my baseball fandom these days

grew up in pittsburgh, met willie stargell at spring training, but there's no point at all in supporting the pirates these days

worked for mlb for 13 years and, having been laid off last year, refuse to spend any money on them

honestly disappointed that the CBA showdown didn't result in the destruction of baseball because the way the pirates/orioles/a's/clevos operate is absurd

kinda rooting for the mets tho! FFS

One of us one of us

It’s only been two (long) games but I’m really enjoying the addition of Starling Marte

The Mets seem like they have a few more grinders than in years past/

"To have the....I'm trying to think of a clean way to say it....the NERVE to change."
-Jim Edmonds#STLCards    #stlcardinals #JimEdmonds #JimEdmondsisms

— Jim-Edmondsisms (@jimedmondsisms) April 9, 2022

mookieproof I didn't know you worked for the league!!!

2022 non-MLB update:

Roki Sasaki delivered arguably the greatest pitching performance in Japanese baseball history last night. The 20-year-old Lotte Marines phenom not only threw a perfect game — NPB’s first since 1994 — he tied an NPB record with 19 strikeouts. Sasaki also set a record. After retiring the first two hitters he faced on ground balls, the right-hander fanned 13 consecutive Orix Buffaloes batters. Pitch counts weren’t a problem. Sasaki reportedly completed his perfecto having thrown just 105 pitches.

(xpost) Also intrigued--tell us more.

meant to make a joke yesterday about how the pirates were 0-2 but having been outscored 15-2 meant their pythagorean was like 0-5. then they ruined it by scoring runs today

so yeah i started working for m1bam in 2007. my group ran the m1nor league baseba11 website, so we were way (too much) into prospects. like it was a huge deal for us when matt wieters made his big league debut. and also when harper tore through the minors but seemed to do most of his damage in parks where there was no TV.

worked nights for a while, where you instantly developed a hatred for the california league (and the pacific coast league only slightly less). west coast games start at 10 eastern, where i live, except for bakersfield, where the field was built facing into the sun, so it started at 10:30 in high summer. also the entire cal league, apart from san jose, is a fucking launching pad, so those games would stretch into the late morning for us.

the main thing that's weird is that m1nor 1eague games mean absolutely nothing. (which is why the extra-inning ghost runner is awesome. unless you want to call it a tie, which is even better.) i mean it's more fun winning than losing, but the guys on each m1nor league team are competing *against each other* to be promoted.

when someone had a big day, we did a phone interview. these guys are so inculcated with 'just trying to help the team' that's it's always an exercise to get anything interesting -- you had to come out of nowhere with, like, 'you just got promoted from huntsville, alabama to rochester, ny in april -- do you even have any appropriate clothes to wear?'

i wasn't very good at interviewing, tbh. i hate phones.

brad e1dred was an enormous power-hitting quad-a guy who at one point played in colorado springs (which is in itself a joke). so one day he hit four homers or something, and i was the only person monitoring all the games, and i missed it, so i ended up calling his cell phone like two hours later. he was at home with his wife, and i could hear kids in the background, and he was so fucking nice. to this day i love him.

anyway the whole m1nor league structure was indeed half-assed. so it wasn't *entirely* unreasonable for MLB to just . . . subsume it. and if you look at it in portions -- attendance at appy league or pioneer league games was negligable -- it makes financial sense. but the finances required to support those teams is basically a rounding error for MLB teams, and now MLB has a significantly smaller footprint throughout north america. they are in the process of financially incentivizing themselves out of existence.

at one 'town hall' meeting (hate that term) years ago, manfred opened by saying what an 'honor' it was to represent 'these 30 owners'. and that's exactly what the commissioner's office is. they may have stopped literally awarding a title belt for teams who best stifle arbitration salaries, but that is absolutely who they are -- and it's a much more meaningful trophy to manfred than the 'piece of metal' world series trophy.

Fwiw i watched g4ri bettm4n forge his wife’s signature on the back of a check

Both these men are monsters

i do appreciate that g4ri bettm4n gets booed at all his public appearances

Ill see manfred in 6 months

what are you going to do

Boo

that sounds about right

The Orioles are so bad that the Rays sweeping them, but with two of the games close, worsened the Fangraphs projection for the Rays by 3 wins

— Jordan Ellenberg (@JSEllenberg) April 11, 2022

ha ha wow, that is amazing.

That just... didn't happen? The rays started the series with 83.5 and ended with 84.7.

Facts don’t matter when you are making a witty tweet

aw. that's much less hilarious.

the rays were projected to win ~84 games? Pretty sure they'll outpace that

I thought they were projected to be in a 4-way tie with every other non-BAL team in the AL East

wait a second, are we talkin more than one projection here

their projected win total went down 0.3 games, not 3.0 games

even so

wait a second, are we talkin more than one projection here

― Karl Malone, Monday, April 11, 2022 6:33 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

is ratemyprofessor.com still a thing? i'm going to leave a terrible review and then not give him the "hot" pepper

Anyway, I knew the Brewers couldn't hit, but I didn't know they can't-hit-the-Orioles-staff couldn't hit

they're getting all the bad luck with RISP out of the way in the first week

Alec Bohm on @NBCSPhilly Phillies postgame on saying

“I f***** hate this place” during game

“I said it. Emotions got the best of me. Do I mean it? No. It’s a frustrating night for me. These fans, they just want to win. They’re great. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that” pic.twitter.com/YxjO2gqTIJ

— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) April 12, 2022

Huge chorus of boos as Machado comes to the plate in San Francisco. Is he hated particularly by Giants fans or has he just become the heel of the league or what?

I didn't realize Robinson Cano was back playing.

"Well, where are you going to go?" Cincinnati Reds president Phil Castellini told Scott Sloan and Mo Egger on 700-WLW when asked why fans should remain loyal. "Sell the team to who? That's the other thing: You want to have this debate? .... What would you do with this team to have it more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exist? It would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else.

"Be careful what you ask for."

unexpectedly, i will be attending the cardinals/royals game tonight! ah yes, the stories "I-70" rivalry! those hated royals! /sarcasm voice
Pujols is starting tonight, and i am very excited about seeing him. also, he's totally due for a hit

hope he crushes one for ya

It really is kind of nuts that there are two major league baseball teams in the state of Missouri

Looks like he crushed one for ya!

i was within 500 feet and heard it! from outside the stadium. :(

i can't complain, i didn't expect to go the game and got free tickets at the last moment. but we were in a large group and were standing outside in line during the first inning, so i heard the PA announce his appearance, heard the crowd roar and the fireworks and all that (and same for Arenado just before him), but didn't see it! still, i was there, sorta

he had a great game overall, too, 3 hits!

Maybe he’ll get one of those “last season” summer-long adrenaline boost and ends on a high note.

maybe. i hope so. i want to believe. but it did strike me, earlier today, that pujols pretty much can't be released or cut or whatever from the team. no matter how bad it gets, we're all going down in flames together. :-o

#STLCardenales: El retorno de "La Máquina". 🤖 pic.twitter.com/wEhxnEdqey

— Cardenales (@cardenales) April 13, 2022

Guys

Chloe Grimes, an 8-year-old @raysbaseball fan who is currently battling cancer, was on the call when her favorite player, Brett Phillips, hit a homer. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/5HGc8lfqSs

— Cut4 (@Cut4) April 13, 2022

"𝘾𝙝𝙡𝙤𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣!"

Brett Phillips finds out about the magical moment that happened when Chloe was being interviewed while he hit a home run! @RaysBaseball #RaysUp pic.twitter.com/qyVy2ccumb

— Bally Sports Sun: Rays (@BallyRays) April 13, 2022

<3

man i love that guy

it's opening day in milwaukee!

is it worth tuning in early? do the old hall of famers come out and wave?

i'll say this - there were some boos for willie mcgee in milwaukee (i guess in reference to 1982) and that is just the wooooooorst. you do not do that to willie, there has never once been an excuse.

otm

i understand the fans in milwaukee had been tailgating in extreme wind for over 7 hours at that point. but you can do that to anyone except willie mcgee, he does not deserve that

Willie McGee would have left Kershaw in. Willie McGee gets it.

willie mcgee will have no comment on the kershaw situation

cup safety reminder

😳 (Escobar is okay) pic.twitter.com/10ofpoRfsf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2022

god knows i love willie mcgee -- i actually have a baseball purportedly signed by him. (my only signed baseball.) but tbh it's pretty cool that any brewers fans remember shit from 40 years ago

see also (and i hate both teams) new york rangers fans still shouting 'potvin sucks'

Potvin, stance aside, does suck though

True (can't remember why, though).

Byron Buxton is hurt.

I was at the home opener in Milwaukee. Fucking hilarious watching everyone trying to tailgate in the 30 MPH winds. Shit was flying everywhere. Our table flipped twice. Game itself was fun too. I got to meet Tim Dillard. Also got to watch Pujols attempt one of the worst stolen bases of all time

The cardinals announcers were quick to point out that he had stolen his last 14 bases in a row without getting caught, he was the ultimate smart runner, etc.

I glanced at his stats and those last 14 SBs in a row date back to 2015! This is the smartest, most choosiest, slowest human being of all time

I (unsurprisingly) love Potvin.

New Tom Seaver statue at Citi Field looks good. First statue for a NYC sports team apparently.

So the angels opted to walk Corry Seager with the bases loaded instead of pitch to him?!

man i understand why the ghost runner is happening and i know it's never going to not happen again, but as soon as it happens i just check out. might as well end it on a coin toss.

Love that the Orioles crowd was so loud that Chapman couldn't hear the Pitchcom. Ended up walking in the winning run anyway.

Most pitchers seem to be having a hard time as soon as the noise rises above golf level

Looking fresh in his 2001 Mariners uniform, Ichiro fires one down the pipe! 🐐 pic.twitter.com/Qe9ZPifIH7

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) April 16, 2022

2022 non-MLB update:

Roki Sasaki delivered arguably the greatest pitching performance in Japanese baseball history last night. The 20-year-old Lotte Marines phenom not only threw a perfect game — NPB’s first since 1994 — he tied an NPB record with 19 strikeouts. Sasaki also set a record. After retiring the first two hitters he faced on ground balls, the right-hander fanned 13 consecutive Orix Buffaloes batters. Pitch counts weren’t a problem. Sasaki reportedly completed his perfecto having thrown just 105 pitches.
― Karl Malone, Sunday, April 10, 2022 11:15 AM (one week ago)

last night was Sasaki's next appearance, and he threw another 8 perfect innings! was taken out in the 9th.

Roki Sasaki is being pulled after 8 perfect innings. Naoya Masuda is coming in, he posted a 2.24 ERA in 64 innings last season. Sasaki has retired 52 straight batters and counting, we'll see how far that streak continues next week. Here's Sasaki's last strikeout from the day. pic.twitter.com/hFmXnRa8h4

— Kyle Kishimoto (@kylemoto10) April 17, 2022

163 kmh = 101.3 mph :-o

sorry, kph. i was born in iowa

Nah you had it, km/h is how I usually see/write it

this is a really fun substory of the 2021 season: every time a team visits the blue jays, they have to identify who sucks ass

Multiple unvaccinated Red Sox to skip Toronto trip https://t.co/i6JLxRb6jg

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 18, 2022

The A’s had three idiots. Including one of the relievers they got for Chapman lol. I think Puk was the biggest name that had to stay home because they’re so very very smart.

I cannot lie, I LOVE those yellow Red Sox unis

A’s just had to place 6 players on the covid IL. This includes all three unvaxxed dudes who couldn’t come up to Toronto lol

oh my god the idea of turning on a red sox game and seeing them in yellow and bright blue jerseys is deeply offensive to me. like, whoever thought that was a good idea should be subjected to a congressional inquiry

it would be a massive understatement to say that I hate the fucking shit out of allowing active players to partner with sports betting companies. Fuck this entirely. https://t.co/CcY1DtLk4I

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) April 20, 2022

"but i always bet on myself to win!!"

imo MLB absolutely *loathes* the idea that money involving its product can be made without it getting a cut. (see also when it argued that it could copyright baseball stats)

this attitude, like its attitude toward its players, is taking it places it should be avoiding. but so it goes

this guy

Tommy Pham on Luke Voit's slide into Tyler Stephenson: " If Luke wants to settle it, I get down really well. Anything. Muay Thai, whatever. Like I said, I've got an owner here who will let me use his facility. So fuck 'em. I'm out."

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) April 20, 2022

dallas keuchel's pitching strategy of throwing every pitch in the strike zone at less than 90 mph somehow isn't working out

85 mph pitch in the exact center of the strike zone to jose ramirez with the bases loaded, sure

lol they have a doubleheader and i guess TLR is just going to let him wear it?

they finally took him out after he gave up 10 runs with no outs in the second inning

helped along by four (!) errors

Scary moment there with Story taking a fastball from Berrios to the head. Looks like he’s ok now

this might belong on a stats thread, but i figure more people will read it here. for those of us who frequently refer to fangraphs WAR (fWAR), they've updated their defensive statistics for 2016-2021 to replace UZR's "range" with Statcast's "fielding runs prevented" (or Outs Above Average; OAA). good move! the change only affects statcast era (2016-current).

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/

as you might guess, the change benefits those players whose defense is rated more highly by OAA then UZR (and vice versa)

the biggest beneficiary is nick ahmed, who gains 6 fWAR overall. in particular, his 2018 season (.234/.290/.411, wRC+ 84) went from 1.4 fWAR to 3.0 fWAR, thanks to his apparently crazy-good defense.

there are charts at the link that show you gains or loses, overall. as a cardinals fan, it's interesting to see paul dejong lose quite a bit of his value, particularly as his defense is the foundation of his game. but it looks like statcast/OAA rates his lower on defense than UZR

also, nicky lopez's defense now gets him 6.0 fWAR last year, very impressive

why the switch? i don't know much about how UZR is calculated vs statcast

a’s drew 2,703 last night vs baltimore — their lowest attendance since 1980

this is generalizing way too much, but Outs Above Average (which is a statcast thing: here are last year's leaders) is calculated using cameras that know where the fielder started (something UZR doesn't know) as well as the velocity of the hit, the trajectory, where it landed, etc.

UZR was and is used calculations based upon play-by-play data. it can be back-calculated to ye olden times of baseball based on box scores and work done by Baseball Solutions to provide more batted ball data. but obviously, they don't know where lou gehrig was standing when the ball was hit, how far he had to run to get it, that kind of stuff. there's still a place for UZR because we'll never know that kind of stuff. but for modern baseball, OAA is way more useful/accurate as a fielding metric, i think.

note: the Fangraphs WAR calculation uses multiple measures for defense: it wasn't just UZR, and it's not just Statcast/OAA now. the recent switch is just a replacement of UZR's "range" component.

i also think that UZR maybe always had a tough time handling shifts, whereas statcast can easily handle that

joe . . . say it ain’t so

Here's my problem with what happened at the Yankees game -- nobody, and I mean nobody, is looking out for the fans. You have Dave Roberts pulling Kershaw with a perfect game. You have Aaron Boone IBBing Miggy with 3,000 hits on the line for a tiny strategic edge. 2/3

— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) April 21, 2022

the rare bad joe p take. i didn't click through but i assume he's getting roasted.

it's a small thing, but i don't want umpires giving explanations.

otm, this is terrible. umpires are supposed to be the judgment of doom, striking silently and surely. now they speak up and they've got these dumb little voices. if i wanted that i'd watch the lol NFL

the posnanski tweet is terrible! the tigers are playing at home this weekend, so many chances for miggy to get his hit in front of home fans.

with all the hoopla i assumed they were going on the road tomorrow

"nobody thinks of the fans who can afford to skip work and take in a day game!"

“They’re really, really behind you around here… my fuckin’ ass. What the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fuckin’ players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fuckin’ nickel-dime people who turn up? The motherfuckers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the fuckin’ game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fuckin’ living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin’ world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin’ playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them motherfuckers. Rip them fuckin’ cocksuckers like the fuckin’ players. we got guys bustin’ their fuckin’ ass, and them fuckin’ people boo.“

Posnanski just posted a long column on the Cabrera walk (beginning by saying he never should have tweeted, because "Twitter is the enemy of argument"). Great, as always.

Listen, we either die young or live long enough to become counterrevolutionaries.

Also he wrote a book about joe paterno after sandusky so *shrug emoji*

idk why people can’t discern between the kershaw and miggy situations—they’re completely different in pure baseball terms. roberts removed a pitcher who hadn’t given up a base runner yet with an eye towards the future, boone was making a tactical decision to help his team win the game

I didn’t read the Posnanski piece - but I’m not sure why anyone would think it’s a managers job to pander to the fans. Their job is to win games. There’s probably more room for debate with Kershaw - but with Miggy, the fans boo’d because *they* wanted to see hit 3000 in person. He’ll get plenty of chances.

It was an unnecessary sign of respect and poor strategy. Cabrera hadn't been IBB'd since 2020, going back at least 800 PAs -- all with hitters weaker than Meadows behind him!

First base was open. He was walked to load the bases, to open up the possibility of a force play on all four bases, instead of none.

it wasn’t a sign of respect, i think it’s what almost any manager would do in that situation

Also, Kershaw asked to be taken out of the game. He wasn’t begging to stay in and overruled by his advanced stay-addled poindexter manager. He asked to come out because his arm isn’t built up enough. That point keeps getting missed, but if a player asks to come out for injury concerns and you force them to stay in and make history, uh

Baseball is fun and fans want memorable things to happen, but we aren’t entitled to these things any more than some Star Wars fan is entitled to the thousandth rebooted spin off mini series taking place on the fourth moon of Naboo.

boone couldn't take out lhp luke luetge because of the three batter minimum, so walking right-handed miggy to face austin meadows (terrible against lefties in his career) was a sound strategic decision.

Baseball is fun and fans want memorable things to happen, but we aren’t entitled to these things any more than some Star Wars fan is entitled to the thousandth rebooted spin off mini series taking place on the fourth moon of Naboo.

― Karl Malone, Friday, April 22, 2022 10:23 AM (four hours ago)

this is technically true but i disagree w/ it in spirit. there is a symbiotic relationship between baseball (or any sport) as a game of competition and as a product of entertainment. there will be no fans if there isn't something at stake (championships), but also if the game isn't fun to watch the fans will leave and there will be nothing to sustain the competition (taking this to its logical extreme). so it's in baseball's best interest to care about whether it is harmful to the sport for i.e. pitchers to be pulled in the 7th inning when they have no hitters. i agree w/ voodoo chili that the boone/cabrera argument doesn't hold as much water bcuz aaron boone doesn't manage the tigers, but one of the main things that differentiates baseball from football and basketball is the importance of records and the overall historical context of the sport. it's true that fans can't "expect" managers to care about this stuff bcuz after all they get paid to win not paid to caretake the sport, but thousands of individual decisions have been made by people who get paid to win that have led to baseball being sent into an efficiency death spiral. the league has some control over this and have taken some small measures like requiring RPs to pitch to a certain amount of batters, experimenting w/ pitch clocks etc. things like the kershaw and cabrera cases are more existential than tweaking rules, but i actually don't think it's crazy for fans to expect ppl broadly in charge of the sport including owners and managers to think of things like, how do we make our fans (of the team and the sport) happy? how do we make this sport fun? what is enjoyable about coming to the park or turning on the TV? is it a bunch of RPs throwing 100 mph or is it clayton kershaw going for a no hitter? the owners have always been dickheads of course but i do think managers in i.e. the 70s cared about baseball as a sport beyond what you get out of your typical current day manager. if everyone who makes decisions in baseball passes the buck and says "well look my job is to win a championship" then i think eventually baseball is going to keep moving towards a point where it's no longer a thing lots of ppl in america care about, bcuz as a game it is less compelling than football or basketball to most ppl and it's only being pushed further in that direction. i don't think it's unreasonable to "expect" managers to think about these things because in a very literal sense they are stewards of the game

tragedy of the commons strikes again

this has been playing out in miami recently because they have been batting jazz chisholm ninth and platooning him against lefties despite him having a good season and being quite literally the only reason you might want to pay attention to a marlins game at any point when the team is at bat. of course, mattingly has his answers about how it doesn't matter if you bat first or sixth or ninth and how he has players who make sense as part of a platoon, but for the fans it falls on deaf ears because they're essentially doing everything they can to reduce the amount of times the most (only) exciting player on the team is involved in the game. the marlins *of all teams* should be thinking very hard about what interests the ppl who for some reason are their fans, but of course nobody is actually paid to think that way they're only paid to think about how to win 77 games. (they finally batted jazz first last night and he crushed a homer)

I've seen very good arguments for taking Kershaw out--I singled out one of Sheehan's--but with both Kershaw and Cabrera, I find the "their job is to win" the weakest of all. The Dodgers win probability going into the 8th inning of the perfect game was 99%; their win probability after the reliever let the first guy reach base was still 99%. With Cabrera (from Posnanski),

Using general data — which assumes that Cabrera and Matthews have roughly the same chance of getting a hit — the Yankees’ win percentage actually went DOWN after the walk, from 12.6% to 11.9%.

If you happen to know Tom Tango and ask him to dig as deeply as possible into the data, you could make the case that the Yankees’ chance to win ticked up the tiniest bit from 8.7% to 8.9%.

If you take the latter statistical breakdown precisely — and, let’s be honest, you really can’t — that would mean that if the Yankees and Tigers had that exact same situation ONE THOUSAND TIMES, then walking Miguel Cabrera would win New York...two more games.

In other words, from a pure strategy perspective, it was too close to call.

Kershaw getting injured, that I understand; strategically, I think both moves were basically meaningless.

(Also don't find Posnanski's analysis exactly "counter-revolutionary," by which I assume you mean a guy who's oblivious to analytics--Posnanski is most definitely not that.)

i find myself routinely deciding not to watch a ballgame mainly because i don’t often have 4 hours to kill but also it must be said a large proportion of that time is spent on the tedium of watching endless foul balls, swings and misses, ground balls into the shift, pitchers taking off their hats, wiping their foreheads, taking off their gloves, rubbing the ball, stepping off for the rosin bag, cleaning their cleats, doing self-acupuncture, it’s maddening. my kids certainly can’t hold their concentration on it for more than 10 minutes. unless they remember how fun it is to clown bobby dalbec, then they strap in

i take all those points, especially "thousands of individual decisions have been made by people who get paid to win that have led to baseball being sent into an efficiency death spiral"

i understand the wish, hoping that kershaw would stay in or that miggy could get an opportunity at hitting his 3000th with 2 runners in scoring position and a tie game.

miggy situation i could be bent, i guess. when i was watching, i thought that was his last chance in front of a home crowd for a while. realizing that his next game was a home game took away that factor.

i was also having a weird fake conversation between the pitcher and miggy, during the game. in this fake conversation the pitcher sees miggy before the game and he's like, "listen man, i respect you, but i don't want to go down in the history books as the guy who threw 3000 to you. i'm a rookie. i need to make a name for myself. so i respect you but i'm not gonna groove you anything". then miggy spits on the ground, and swipes the dust across the ground with his cleats, and he goes, "i earned every single one of those 2,999 hits. and you better believe i'm going to earn 3000 off of your ass today, rookie", and the rookie is startled but has even more respect for him. miggy get the 3000th hit, and as the crowd goes wild the rookie thinks about what he learned out there today.

this is dumb as fuck, what i'm saying, but maybe in a small way miggy would want his 3000th hit to not come in a situation where they're doing him a favor. or who knows, maybe baseball is all about favors or intuition or forecast, knowing where to look, guess hitters, dumb luck, and you take every fucking chance you can get.

anyway, i'll be watching the next tigers game

don't feel bad for those thursday fans in attendance because he hit 3 hits the game before that and no way anyone holding tickets for friday thought that was coming the night before

tbh i think analytics *has* destroyed baseball -- its findings are interesting af, but in practice things were better when every nanosecond of the game wasn't strictly micromanaged

cat's out of the bag now, tho -- you can't make teams/managers act stupidly. so it's a matter of changing the incentives, and unfortunately we're nowhere near there being any incentives for reds/pirates/a's/o's to spend money

much respect to certain little things tho -- like the royals breaking camp with bobby witt rather than gaming him, or the nats signing nelson cruz

(none of this has anything to do with the kershaw/miggy situations -- both are entirely defensible, especially the latter. it's not like boone walked miggy four times yesterday, or that miggy now won't reach 3000! it'll just be in front of a slightly different group of fans)

i kind of feel lonely in really enjoying baseball right now! i seriously watch every game, i love it

anyway, don't get me wrong - i was watching both the kershaw moment and the miggy moment, and i wanted both of them to happen, badly. i'm not trying to downplay that. i'm just not outraged or anything. i mean, there was a triple play the other day. come on. every time a big moment almost happens and it doesn't, there's another moment that probably should not have happened but did anyway

for example, that jazz chisholm HR was hilarious because seconds before he hit it, he was taking forever to get back in the batters box, and i think the umpire said something, and yadi said something (i need to watch the jomboy on this -- don't jump to the conclusion that yadi was being a dick - i think in this case he actually did chisholm a favor?) but anyways then chisholm crushes a HR and is very happy about it and does a little dance before touching home plate. and then the two cardinals announcers (especially jim edmonds, who is by far the most vacant man i have ever listened to for more than 10 hours) were like "whoa. whoa now.", and edmonds was like "in the 90s...let me tell you. in my opinion, in the 90s, when i was playing...whoa. that would not have happened. there would be consequences", shit like that.

in other words, all of that was amazing, fuck jim edmonds, and that could not have happened before

Jazz is a lot of fun to watch, and also has got great style.

For the most part I love the slower, more deliberate / cerebral nature of the game.

which assumes that Cabrera and Matthews have roughly the same chance of getting a hit

ridiculous argument given that the entire point of the walk was that they didn't have roughly the same chance of getting a hit. meadows (assuming he means meadows and not "matthews" here) has been hitting under .200 against LHP since 2019 with a 54 wRC+. he's been a straight up bad hitter since then and he's still that bad, his 2022 numbers are just inflated by BABIP. absolute no-brainer walking virtually anyone to get to a guy who is that bad against lefties. boone was right to treat miggy as a bigger threat because he is an objectively a bigger threat. sloppy rant from joe who knows better, i can only assume he just willfully ignored that part to make his argument.

and i don't think mattingly batting jazz 9th had anything to do with strategy in the face of waning fan interest, he was just doing that because he's a hopeless moron who shouldn't be in charge of a team

Agh, the entire point of the walk was because first base was open! There were runners on second and third. If a ground ball was hit in that situation, the only force out is at first base. That’s why you IBB and load the bases - it creates a force out at every base. This is particularly true when it’s a close game and you’re trying to prevent one run from scoring - you don’t care about the extra (third) run on first base, you’re trying to get one out.

There is also a trade off between facing miggy and the next batter, but the loading the bases / force out thing is much more important imo

you also instantly raise the batting average of the next guy to the plate and increase pressure on the pitcher. not a fan

Just read about Nestor Cortes' immaculate inning the other day...After 2 starts and 9.1 innings, he's given up 6 hits and one walk, and he's struck out 17.

All he needs now is a nickname. Cortes, Cortes...can't think of anything.

Nestor the … oh no…

...what a Killer

Cortes the Killer, for sure.

officially it's Nasty Nestor

a real close one in wrigley tonight

A three touchdown lead for the bears

and only one homer!

Rays lost their combined no-hitter in the tenth inning, which makes me think that with the ghost runner, you could potentially throw a perfect game for ten innings yet still lose the game.

Watching Marlins-Braves tonight, and wow is Jazz Chisholm fun to watch, and best name in the game too. 4 hits and 2 steals tonight and he doesn't look like he's even trying hard.

https://i.giphy.com/media/UwlX8g3HF8Uec/giphy.gif

https://www.mlb.com/news/guardians-yankees-ugly-fan-behavior-in-ninth-inning

respect to judge and stanton for doing what they did

love this breakdown. jomboy speaks for me on this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFffJpUEmNY

whoa

BYRON BUXTON 469 FOOT BLAST FOR THE WALK OFF!

(via @BallySportsNOR) pic.twitter.com/wvV1zAIsce

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) April 24, 2022

Reds finally won a game! After losing 11 in a row.

Wow that was a big home run. Also that stadium looks surprisingly empty.

Can't imagine KM is happy, but that was some incredible Mets 9th inning magic/luck tonight against the Cards. Down to their last strike, an Arenado error leads to five unearned runs, including a 2-RBI infield single where Dom Smith won the race to first base. The fans were all standing up waiting for that last strike/out for like 10-15 minutes, and it never came.

yeah, that was a wild one. have to say, i had written the game off as a loss as soon as i saw scherzer was starting, anyway. the arenado error was one thing, but worse was the backbreaking 2-run hit where Goldschmidt caught it but Gallegos got beat to first.

it was a good game, though!

Yeah, it was quite a pitchers duel that until the last two innings. What a great game. Mets broadcasters were very into it.

I happened to catch the end of that Mets game, great comeback and Arenado unlikely error.

Some great games today. Burnes was two hitting the Giants and I already had it in the loss column. He's taken out and a fan was hackling Joc Pederson and he steps out of the box, then hits a mammoth home run. The Brewers came back to tie the score but the Giants end up winning, unbelievable. The Giants are already looking really good.

bee ok is tsunami el gallo (carlos martinez's true name) gonna pitch soon? he was a huge favorite of mine, always rooting for him

"At Your Job Today... Don't Bunt When the U.S. Needs Home Runs." Created by the War Production Board during World War II, c. 1942-1943. From U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Unknown artist. pic.twitter.com/nquWhfon3d

— SABRIconography (@SABRIconography) April 26, 2022

cue stock footage of the bunting derby

panic! at target field

WHAT IN THE HELL JUST HAPPENED CHAOS IN MINNESOTA TWINS WIN pic.twitter.com/MbviwC6lAI

— Jared Carrabis (@Jared_Carrabis) April 27, 2022

Don't know where to put this, but thought it was neat: an interview with Lauren Hutton, talking about a big modelling contract she signed when she was 30.

Inspired by baseball player Catfish Hunter, Hutton demanded one of the biggest modeling contracts at the time to protect herself in a youth-oriented business that "ages out" many women at 30.

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/lauren-hutton-aging-cosmetic-procedures-212402508.html

Thankfully dozed off just before the chaos ensued.

I'm dealing with Apple TV tonight, ugh

bee ok is tsunami el gallo (carlos martinez's true name) gonna pitch soon? he was a huge favorite of mine, always rooting for him

― Karl Malone, Monday, April 25, 2022 8:51 PM (four days ago)

Missed this and I have yet to hear either name. Looking forward to it as the nickname is awesome.

el gallo is one shortlived name that i was a fan of as a poster on the viva el birdos vox messageboard ecosystem. but carlos prefers Tsunami. he tried to make it a thing, but unfortunately his performance started falling off around the same time, along with injuries, so it wasn't to be. but his instagram username is tsunamy0327

I had to sign up for an Apple TV account and enter my credit card number. I don't think I signed up for anything tho.

Might be a little suspect. I don’t remember entering my card number when I watched an Apple TV game.

Looking around while waiting on the game and got excited as I saw no hitter in the Mets game. Sad that it's not the starter.

Thanks for that Michael, I will look into to make sure I'm not charged.

(That)

Met pitchers have thrown over *130* pitches in 7 no-hit innings, so no way they could have done it with just one guy.

<3 took 159 pitches

Wow

sports trivia question of the future. no one will ever get it correct, not even the players involved in the game

Thread for one starting pitcher and four relief pitchers who are doing really well

Apple drone shots have been breathtaking tonight in San Francisco

Why did they skip the 9th inning in the NYY-KC game? Everyone lose interest?

called on account of "fuck it"

Up to sixty players could lose their job tomorrow as teams need to trim their active roster

For the Giants prospective I see them cutting two who are out of options

I dont LIKE the alt KC unis but i see what they’re tryna do

i don't really like david bell but it is gonna be rough when the (3-19) reds fire him after fucking jettisoning anything moveable

hope they bring back jim riggleman

jim riggleman is like the long relief guy of managers

it's true, but i do sort of respect him for refusing to take the usual long-relief-guy-of-managers treatment from the nationals

i didn't mean that in a bad way at all, ha! some guys are born for the role, from what i've seen of him. what happened with him and the nats? can't remember? he told them to shove it?

yup! june 2011, nats had won 11 of 12 but they refused to pick up his option for the next season, so he quit

happy may day, jim riggleman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8tsz2TyERM

wow, robinson cano DFA'd

That’s a lot of money for the Mets to eat, but I guess Cohen can cover it. Cano hasn’t done much to shake the notion that the good parts of his past 3-4 years were ay least partially PED-fueled.

39 years old, too, and after taking all of 2021 off, would be hard for anyone.

maybe a comparison is a-rod, who was able to put together a good year after his own season-long ban, but then fell off hard the following year and was done.

uhh the Reds are 3-20

i bet it is a very Major League (1989) clubhouse in there right now.

votto struggling mightily, as well :(

oh shit, and i didn't even know about the covid until just then. damn, what a shitty time!

yeah it's weird Votto really looked like he had things figured out last year but he just looks awful right now

also it's kind of a bummer that he switched to a new bat style (similar to goldschmidt's new bat as well, i think?) with an extra weight on the knob (...), only to switch back to his old bat recently after the early results with the new bat were so dismal

kind of a bummer because i was really rooting for this new bat to work well, would have been very joey votto-like to pull off

fangraphs still giving the reds 0.1% to win the division

i’d like to see the details of that scenario

The projections take into account the small but real possibility of global nuclear war

all teams except the reds end up in a horrible plane crash and are stranded on a desert island that has negative WAR

However, even in this very very unlikely scenario, the reds quickly exit the playoffs after getting swept in the the division series

uh Rowdy Tellez has 8 RBIs tonight

Wow. 18-4!!
Glad to see Tellez is hitting alright. I want him to play baseball for a long time.

fangraphs still giving the reds 0.1% to win the division

i’d like to see the details of that scenario

Fangraphs also still has the Orioles finishing with a worse record than the Reds, that's just mean

3-22 now, division starting to look out of reach

*suddenly, hundreds of 400-foot worms appeared and began attacking major US cities*

four at home against the pirates this weekend

this is where the greatest comeback in mlb history begins

The Jays announcers tonight said it's time to start the bring-Joey-home campaign. They're evidently under the impression he's playing well in the midst of all this.

More Mets magic as they score 7 runs in the 9th inning to beat the Phillies 8-7! What a rush.

That's crazy

Win probability was at 99.8% for the Phillies at the end of eight innings, so there is hope for the Reds.

speaking of which: https://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/comeback-wins.shtml

Good lord, I had never heard about this game

https://tht.fangraphs.com/tht-live/60th-anniversary-all-time-great-ninth-inning-comeback/

I'm surprised this game (which I was at) wasn't on the comeback list:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN200006300.shtml

First series at Shea after Rocker's 7 Train comments. They had to put netting over the Braves bullpen. Met's scored 10 in the 8th to come back from down 8-1. Place went bananas when Piazza hit the homer.

@Joelsherman1
Pirate starters enter today 0-10, 5.55 ERA, yet will have the far superior rotation in this series to the Reds (99 ERs/100 IP = 8.91 ERA). Worst rotation ERA ever: 6.64 by the '96 Tigers managed by Buddy Bell, father of current Reds mgr David Bell.

erstwhile top-20 prospect mitch keller has not quite panned out

boston’s starting rotation has a 1.81 era over the last 14 games. they have conspired to go 4-10 over that span

What?

Six games were rained out today, that is a lot and must be a huge storm out there

It’s mostly just pissing but it’s been pissing all day

pirates had to use an emergency catcher in the eighth inning today -- josh vanmeter thinks he last caught when he was 14 -- gave up seven runs, and lost to the mighty reds in the first game of a doubleheader

starting catcher pulled a hammy on the bases and the backup had already been ejected for chirping from the dugout. just as well pirates-reds games don't matter because that is dumb as hell

Telling measure of how much offense is down this year: when I looked at Vladdy's line, his OPS+ this year (161) is almost equal to last year's (167), even though his basic slash stats are down quite a bit.

I don't know if i've ever seen anything quite like the futility evinced by this year's Red Sox offense. every game is lost 3-1, 3-2, 1-0. It's really something.

in the last 4 games they've scored 5 runs total

yeah, this is a 101 wRC+ (almost exactly league average) line right now:

.239/.317/.348

I don't know if i've ever seen anything quite like the futility evinced by this year's Red Sox offense. every game is lost 3-1, 3-2, 1-0. It's really something.

i imagine that might be like watching the brewers last year

Lifetime OPS
.682 - Deivi Cruz
.679 - Dee Strange-Gordon
.676 - MLB teams in 2022
.675 - Miguel Cairo
.673 - Yuniesky Betancourt
.672 - Neifi Perez

— Matthew Pouliot (@matthewpouliot) May 5, 2022

heady stuff

look the yankees and dodgers are both in first place so all's right in manfred's world

yikes, we have entered the deivi/neifi bermuda triangle

“teams are going through juiced ball withdrawal, home runs are a hell of a drug, etc”

An interesting fact about former #Angels 1B Ji-Man Choi … pic.twitter.com/hmRRUuE3mm

— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) May 10, 2022

Vin Scully for NBC Sunday Baseball intro;

His voice IS baseball.

Let the incredible @thevinscully welcome you back to @mlb on @nbc and @peacocktv. #MLBSundayLeadoff pic.twitter.com/br3dq9ZYy7

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 8, 2022

lol

The Pirates finally got their first win from a starter in their 28th game, a major league record to begin a season. The old mark was set by the Baltimore Orioles in 1988 when they started 0-21.

also snapped a 16-game losing streak vs the dodgers

Guardians score 6 in top of the ninth to tie game. End up winning.

^^8 RBI for Toronto's (Mississauga's, technically) Josh Naylor--if I read it right, all in the last two innings without a HR?

he hit two homers

I swear I looked at the boxscore and missed that...really didn't make sense, though. Anyway, his minor-league career kind of paralleled Darren Shred's, the guy I coach in middle school who was drafted by the Reds, so I follow him. Darren got hurt (Reds could probably use him now), Naylor kept going.

("coached"--many years ago)

God, the Dodgers starting pitching right now...Six different guys have started games; one has an ERA of around 2.75, the other five have dead-ball-era ERAs.

Stanton and Judge look like an excellent bet for 100+ HR (and 50+ each) if healthy--22 in 32 games. There must have been some 50+ teammates during the PED era.

None--surprised. Still only Maris/Mantle.

really? i'm surprised as well. but yeah, guess there haven't been any.

"if healthy" is the key. stanton has had a very strange career

Looks like the two closest are Ruth (60)/Gehrig (47) in 1927, and A-Rod (52)/Palmeiro (47) in 2001.

It’s wild he doesn’t hurt himself more tbh. His swing is bonkers

"Judge and Stanton join Babe Ruth (14) and Lou Gehrig (10) from 1930 and Mickey Mantle (16) and Yogi Berra (12) from 1956 as the only pair of teammates in franchise history to have 10-plus homers in 32 games."

https://www.mlb.com/news/giancarlo-stanton-aaron-judge-homer-yankees-vs-white-sox

players with 0 walks so far in 2022, sorted by PAs (all stats from before today's games)

68 PAs: Yadier Molina
63: Cole Tucker
38: Francisco Mejia
29: Edmundo Sosa
25: Royce Lewis
23: Jose Rojas
22: Dee don't make a joke about me being Strange-Gordon

i'll give yadi a pass; he's not-quite-a-hall-of-famer (but will obviously get in at some point)

cole tucker has an 11 wRC+ this year and a career -2.1 bWAR. happily he's been sent down

didn't we used to do polls to see who would go the longest without walking? i can't remember how "good"/bad 68 PAs without a walk is.

what's funny was that in yadi's last appearance today, with a full count, he chased an obvious ball four and struck out :P

"obvious" to me as a pro baseball watcher

these guys suck!

*trips over rug on way to kitchen, again*

we did, and iirc 68 PA is a great deal

i'm kind of proud of him. i hope he never walks again!

i don't think he deserves to be a first-ballot hall of famer but i think he will come close and will quite possibly get it anyway. i've enjoyed watching him sweat his ass off for the last 18 or so years

If he gets in and the VC hasn't yet put Munson in, I will complain.

pirates are three outs away from winning a game in which they’ve been no-hit

wow

did it. sixth time ever

So I did read the box score correctly, that's nuts.

Only 24 outs though

Per the Elias Sports Bureau, a no-hitter needs to be at least nine innings in order to be official.

Or what x said

That’s insane. I should probably watch more highlights or something because I would never have know if not for this thread

Of course it’s the reds.

Heard a funny radio call of the last out: "The Pirates have just been no-hit, and THEY'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER!"

Fuck Michele Tafoya.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. pic.twitter.com/cAv8yhHjr2

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) May 16, 2022

the final pitch of the game was a 46.6 mph curveball

should have posted on that all on the He Reigneth thread

this is gonna be the thing that keeps him below 100 rWAR

my brain is fried today so sorry if this is a dumb question, but why didn't ke bryan hayes' RBI count as a hit (in the reds' no-hitter loss)?

Ruled as a fielders choice I believe.

Naturally I'm extremely pleased to see that Pujols throws the eephus

xxp hayes *almost* hit into a double play but beat the throw to first

right ... i don't really get the baseball scoring logic of that not counting as a hit - he hit the ball and ended up on first without an error. i guess the idea is he probably would have been out if he had been the only runner.

right

lol sorry for that last post where i make an argument and then immediately counter my own argument.

the answer was within you all along

The top 5 for household rating are:

St Louis Cardinals – 7.52
Milwaukee Brewers – 5.21
Kansas City Royals – 4.80
San Diego Padres – 4.59
Detroit Tigers – 4.23

it's confirmed: we've got jack shit to do in the midwest

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2022/05/16/mlbs-biggest-untold-story-is-its-mass-appeal-for-advertisers-on-regional-sports-networks/

that pujols pitching performance will go down with the great beltre/colon videos

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/05/chris-paddack-undergoes-tommy-john-surgery.html

The Padres dodged a bullet there, so much so, that that trade seems fishie.

https://i.imgur.com/cDxLCo1.png

*2 New Challengers Enter the Tournament*

oops, sorry - the number on the right is sprint speed (ft/s). they are the bottom 4 in MLB. the number in the column to the left is the number of "sprints" that are being measured

i attributed maldonado's presence a few weeks ago to small sample size, but he has REALLY lost a step. last year he was running 23.5 ft/s, which is still very slow for a baseball player, but muuuuuch faster than he's running now. is he injured?

aaron judge hitting two homers and then bitching about camden yards’ new wall because he didn’t get a third is lame af

Johnny Cueto owns an ambulance that transforms into a portable sound wall with 54 speakers. It's just another reason he is The Most Interesting Man In Baseball. Story at ESPN, free and unlocked, on the legend of leisure -- and, it turns out, work ethic: https://t.co/goh3wgnmGp pic.twitter.com/r3TAMiWFPl

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 21, 2022

Yes let’s glorify the rich and their extravagant lifestyles its totally healthy

It could be this crap.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/yankees-white-sox-benches-clear-after-josh-donaldson-calls-tim-anderson-jackie-robinson-223254927.html

Fuck baseball.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/30/chicago-white-sox-tim-anderson-jackie-robinson

What sucks even more is Donaldson saying he did it to him starting last year, and didn’t understand why it was a big deal now. After Anderson had even let it slide the first time he did it in the game yesterday. Everyone know someone like a Josh Donaldson. Fuck him is right. How many Jackie Robinson tributes has he seen in his life?

I realize Donaldson can be an asshole - but if Anderson was comparing himself to Robinson, it kind of opens himself up to some ribbing.

there's a lot to say on that, but in short, i completely disagree. and regardless, there is no way that the pattern of behavior going back to last year, with Anderson alone (who knows how many other players he is doing this to) is "some ribbing"

it's not something that requires banning or disciplinary action, that sounds like it would be a complete mess. but Donaldson should stfu for the rest of his life

Yeah, gentle ribbing does not lead to on field brawls. Donaldson should know better. It’s not like I need another reason to dislike the Yankees.

yadier molina has joined prince albert in the career 36.00 ERA club

yankees fans both booing tim anderson and chanting ‘jackie’ at him tonight

The Padres spanked The Giants this weekend, they outplayed them in every aspect. This Giants team is not even close to what they were last year.

Posey effect.

On to the Mets...

sorry to parachute into the thread like this, but i was curious *why* Anderson brought up Jackie in that old interview and now having read it, *that* - that he said that - is the dumbest part of all of this!

i thought at least maybe he was the only out player or something. he's the Jackie Robinson of *bringing fun back to the game*?!

Without bringing Robinson's name into it, if Anderson really sees himself as a pioneer of "fun" as that 2019 article suggests, then he's opening himself to ridicule. But it wouldn't surprise me if the name calling had gotten out of hand since then, not at all. To be on the safe side, it would be best for all the players involved in this to STFU from now on.

i'm sure ben shapiro fan josh donaldson simply found TA's comparison gauche, no other reason he'd bring it up 3 years later out of the blue i'm sure

He said he’d brought it up before, which is why he was caught off guard by the reaction.

I just watched the craziest game I have ever seen. Mets went up by three after trailing by six runs. Joc Paterson hit three home run. Giants then were down again by one in the ninth and win 13-12.

Lol Joc said he was chatting with Barry Bonds before the game and said it probably rubbed off on him.

What a game, I love baseball.

I don’t know if anyone deserved to win that game though, pretty bad pitching and lots of fielding gaffes. Ball was flying everywhere like it was Coors field.

Lol Joc said he was chatting with Barry Bonds before the game and said it probably rubbed off on him.

― Bee OK, Wednesday, May 25, 2022 12:46 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

insert flaxseed oil joke

What a great playlist I just made. pic.twitter.com/35mT7nwP99

— Nationals on Reddit (@NatsOnReddit) May 25, 2022

Holy fuck. If my neighbours were asleep, they’re not anymore

the yankees have signed utterly washed-up cardinals legend matt carpenter and are using him tonight as a designated hitter, which seems like a slap in the face to everyone else in the organization

i have just heard about this, along with the news that he shaved and looks weird, and i am desperately searching for info

apparently he was putting up above average production in AAA for the rangers, which would be the first sustained period of non-awfulness for him since maybe 2018?

Our first look at Matt Carpenter in his Yankees threads! pic.twitter.com/H65bm89DQI

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) May 26, 2022

he can still draw walks i guess

David Strathairn, DH

J.D. Martinez is hitting .380 right now, albeit with less power than usual. He's been such an amazing hitter through his career...Weird thing is, his top comps for Similarity Score are Nolan Arenado on the one side (career numbers only) and Jim Edmonds on the other (age specific), two fabled defensive players...Martinez has next to no defensive value, no?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martijd02.shtml#all_appearances

I guess Similarity Scores are based on offense only--I always thought there was at least a built-in position component.

makes you really appreciate arenado and edmonds - both of them similar to JD Martinez (at least at the moment, compared to their career (arenado) or late-career (edmonds), but with astounding defense as well

However, Jim Edmonds is the one of the worst 10 broadcasters of all time, which makes his early HoF bow-out seem better in retrospect. dude needs to not be in the hall of fame and to just shut up for a minute

nevermind. i retract any trace of optimism i had from carpenter's minor league line

There’s also a complicating factor: he’s not hitting the baseball very hard. His average exit velocity in the minors this year stands at only 86.0 mph. That would rank him 230th out of 260 qualified players, via Statcast, and that’s against pitchers who are largely significantly inferior to the ones he’ll face with the Yankees. He does a little better in hard-hit percentage but still would rank in the bottom third of baseball; his 35.5% rate is 187th out of 260, again with the additional caveat that he’s facing weaker pitching. That’s enough to take some of the optimism out of the signing for me.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/matt-carpenter-resurfaces-with-the-yankees/

matt carpenter used to beat the shift with above average power, great contact skills, and lots of walks and deep counts.

i'm not not sure what order those elements disappeared during his decline (which happened steeply a few years ago and only got worse), but to me it looked like the power went first. he had lots of back injuries, too, probably a heavy factor. if his back feels anything like mine does, i have no idea how or why he is still attempting to be a pro baseball man. once his power went, he was no longer driving the ball over the outfielders (or into the seats) but instead right into a wall of shifted fielders. he continued to draw some walks, but pitchers started challenging him more, and he did not meet the challenge and never has, ever since 2018

i think the apple+ broadcast is pretty awful, based on the two that i've seen, once in early season, one last week. among many, many other things, they repeatedly got the names of the players wrong. Not just once or twice, but five, six, seven times. i tuned out near the end.

one thing i DO like about it is the general presentation, and although i'm sure it's annoying to many, i actually like the little pitch-by-pitch probabilities in the corner of the screen.

turns out even those are awful. they're based on a proprietary machine learning kinda deal from nVenue which uses 120 inputs to come up with the probabilities. this fangraphs writer compared it to his own extremely rudimentary model, using nothing but widely available hit-type probabilities based on count. turns out this dude's one-variable model ended up predicting the outcome better than the proprietary secret sauce on apple is using.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-good-are-those-probabilities-on-the-apple-tv-broadcasts/

MLB announcement: Free-agent pitcher Carlos Martínez has received an 80-game suspension without pay after testing positive for Ibutamoren, a performance-enhancing substance. Martínez formerly is of the Cardinals and recently was released by the Red Sox.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 27, 2022

So Carpenter hit one out today.

And this Apple broadcast is god awful

in the spirit of, uh, trying to make connections with baseball players i've always hated, i'm looking at craig kimbrel's career stats, and they're pretty unbelievable. for active relievers (min 150 IP), his career 2.19 ERA is second only to Josh Hader's 2.15 ERA, and Kimbrel's stats (640 IP, 13 seasons) cover twice as many innings and seasons as Hader's (297 IP, 6 seasons)

among the relative old-timers, only kenley jansen (2.41 ERA across 723 IP) and darren o'day (2.56 ERA, 598 IP).

so a tip of the hat to that weird dumb hangy arm thing he does. seems to distract players and has consistently given him an edge through the years

man, i used to root for tommy pham pretty hard, because he was one of those guys with tons of talent who faced so many ridiculous obstacles on his way up, including lots of weird injuries, his persistent eye issues. but wtf is up with this guy now

CINCINNATI -- Major League Baseball is investigating a pregame altercation that occurred on Friday afternoon between the Reds’ Tommy Pham and the Giants’ Joc Pederson.

Pham was scratched from Cincinnati’s lineup shortly before first pitch, with a Reds spokesperson saying he agreed to sit out pending MLB’s investigation.

“MLB is investigating the incident that occurred before the game involving Mr. Pham,” said an MLB spokesperson. “Mr. Pham agreed to not play this evening, pending the results of MLB’s investigation.”

Reds players were taking batting practice at Great American Ball Park when Pham and Pederson met out in left field. Pederson said Pham confronted him and slapped him on the face over a dispute involving the fantasy football league that included both players as participants last year. Several players intervened in the situation, and both clubs’ dugouts and bullpens emptied.

“Unfortunate situation,” Pederson said following the Reds’ 5-1 win. “Kind of stemmed from a fantasy football league we both were in last year. I put a player on the injured reserve when they were listed as out and then added another player. And then there was a text message in the group [chat] saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench.

Maybe take it his convo to the fantasy thread, but I feel like it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do?!

Mets booth were speculating it might be a cover story, a la last year’s “rat or raccoon” fiasco

i require context on that one!

Tommy Pham said Pederson said “disrespectful shit” about the Padres and “fucked with my money”

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) May 28, 2022

i love this, tommy pham should fight everyone in baseball

Thermo: Last year McNeil and Lindor had an in-game squabble down the dugout tunnel, and a bunch of bench members rushed down there to break it up when it got heated. At the end of the game, they described it as an argument over whether the animal they saw in the tunnel was a rat or a raccoon. It was clearly not about that.

Pham caping for the Friars is so strange. He played a year and change and then they got rid of him

i get that some athletes fire themselves up by fixating on ‘disrespect’ but tommy pham is a head case (with a three-game suspension)

also, dallas keuchel has been DFA’d by the white sox

Pham is the idiot in this case. Piecing this thing together from Pham's comments. Joc talked shit about his club, sounds like trash talking to me and probably goes on all the time. But, this is all about fantasy Football, which ended months ago. Pham, instead of dealing with it at the time, let it fester until he saw Joc next. He then went up to him and slapped him while in pre-game warmups. He then gets a three-game suspension which is not being appealed. Life huh?

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to defend the honor of the San Diego padres, we've all been there

lol

San Diego padres

Brilliant.

Joc showed up with receipts of the fantasy football group chat with Tommy Pham, which included a GIF making fun of the Padres last season pic.twitter.com/rCYbFRdwA8

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 29, 2022

not defending Tommy Pham’s actions but Joc Pederson has a very slappable face

sorry what year is it??

https://i.imgur.com/as9pALk.png

it turns out that a while back, time started folding back in on itself. some things change, but others are locked in

i'm still kinda pissed about tommy pham!

i mean if you or i premeditatedly slapped a colleague -- let alone over gambling on sports -- we'd be instantly fired, and rightly so

does he only get three games because joc is a big boy himself? or because the players union would object to more? how would it be different if he'd slapped a clubhouse manager? or an umpire?

i guess tommy pham can't exactly be fired, but he should at least have been suspended far longer

Good points and you're 1000% correct.

So why is Martin Perez suddenly amazing? What the hell.

he had flashes of brilliance for the red sox, i was sad to see him go

We’re maybe 30% into the season and he’s pitched absolutely god like. I have kind of a hard time reading the tea leaves on savant pages - but this looks like a real break through and not just a 9-game fluke (at age 31!). What’s he doing differently this year?? I think this turnaround is nuts

hey when you got it you got it

look up the Azocar outfield assist in the first inning of today's padres game. holy crap, that's pretty much exactly how you play it

I can’t tell if it’s because the play is so smooth, but that looks like some Ill-advised base running.

yeah, gorman isn't the fastest and he's just coming up from the minors, so he's probably not used to the ball being whipped back in so quickly

still, i was impressed.

however, later in the game Azocar almost wiped out CF Grisham on a ball that was clearly Grisham's. that is my least favorite play in baseball, the near-collision. i watch through my fingers.

obvs still preferable to actual collision.
seeing kurt suzuki suddenly drop in the angels dugout the other day was pretty freaky too

KM, Do you know why the Cards gave up on Nick Plummer? He’s looked good for the Mets the past two days. Lot of sneaky power. Small sample size and all.

Honestly, I hadn’t realized he was with the Mets now! He elected (minor league) free agency? I didn’t realize he’s been with the cardinals org long enough to do so.

He has a big breakout year in 2021, after several years of disappointing results. I remember his first round signing being roundly criticized even on the day it happened, and from the start, the few updates I’d see about him were generally of the “looks like a bust” variety. Looking at his early milb stats, they don’t seem _that bad_, but he was also usually relatively old for his levels he was playing at, I think.

Anyway, all that seems like ancient history. His 2021 was really great, enough to get him back in the conversation for the big league roster, but he was blocked in the OF by several others, so I can see why he and the cardinals might have parted way amicably? Don’t know.

1/4 of the Dodgers losses this year have been to the Pirates.

It’s even more than that now. First Pirates sweep in LA since 2000.

Josh Donaldson hurt New York Yankees didn't publicly support him after comment about Tim Anderson

poor guy

Aww.

Cano to El Paso free agency

couldn't have happened to a more wealthy guy

Girardi

Out

oof

https://www.nbcsports.com/sites/rsnunited/files/article/hero/Dombrowski_D_Getty_1052531664.jpg

tough out there for a team of DHs

it's kinda funny that they fired him after a win and then an off-day tho

Great back and forth Mets-Dodgers game today. Going to be exciting if they meet in the playoffs.

Last night Dave Roberts tried to use a position player to pitch in the 9th, but was not allowed to since it was only a 5-run lead. The bullpen coach put up a stink and the umpires eventually allowed the not-warmed-up actual pitcher to take warmups. The whole thing caused an eleven-minute delay. Embarrassing.

The impression I had was that it was clearly against the rules for him to take warmups but it would be insane to let the guy risk injury by pitching without warming up so the umps let the bullpen coach argue long enough for the guy to get some pitches in, avoiding a situation where the umps had to overtly disobey the rule

There should be more of a penalty, like a free runner at second or something. I agree you don’t want to risk a pitcher injury, but it’s a bad look. Sort of like when a team loses their challenge, but then their manager asks the umpires to review a play later in the game, and the umpires oblige.

Interestingly, in the game today, Roberts elected to review a pitch for catcher interference in a key spot. Down a run in the bottom of the 10th with 2 outs, Trea Turner was up with a runner on third. On review, it was ruled catcher interference, and Turner was awarded first. He subsequently stole second, but then Will Smith struck out to end the game. I would have thought you’d rather have Turner up with the game on the line.

Agreed. It should be a penalty that makes the team more likely to lose, not a penalty that creates an injury risk for a player who had no involvement in the mistake (or any player, frankly.)

TS: Joey Votto or Glenn Otto

another joe fired (maddon)

Already plotting the first episode of The Camus 'Cast with Joe Maddon

Maddon traded for the first overall pick in the draft (of 1992)

I was surprised to hear that Maddon was fired (mainly considering his long history with the Angels), but he's in the last year of his contract and hadn't really improved things on the field. His weird tinkering was suited for the Rays (a franchise that more or less exists for beta testing creative management strategies) but not for a team with the resources and talent of the Angels. Even with the Cubs I think he was getting away with a lot of his eccentricities because the team was too good to not win (until, of course, they stopped winning).

amazing last time I looked up the Angels record they were like 26-15 or something and I thought it was great that finally the two best players of the modern era were gonna get some playoff time

they're now 3 games under .500 lmao

i think he was valuable for the 2015/2016 cubs, but less as a strategic manager and more in terms of keeping the tone light and fun, which seemed to help keep the stress off of a team that was very young and didn't have much playoff experience

I still think about how Chapman very nearly blew the World Series and if they could have ever come back from that the next year.

Acuña's 2 HRs last night got a lot of the highlight attention but my favorite bit of last night's ATL game was this Michael Harris II catch: https://www.mlb.com/video/kyle-wright-in-play-out-s-to-sean-murphy

sick grab by a guy i have literally never heard of before

I've seen him make a few others where his reads/jumps off the bat are so good that the catches look a lot easier than they are and don't wind up in the highlights.

Is there trackman data on that it looks like he covered about 50 yards

The Rays’ Cowbell which speeds up just as every 2-strike pitch is delivered to the opposing team is one of the most annoying things in baseball. It’s like playing in a stadium of toddlers

I'm starting to feel really sorry for the Angels.

nah

They lose again via shutout, up to 14.

Still in second place.

AngeLLLLLLLLLLLLLLs and counting

Pff…

The guy screaming "He has two strikes, Tony!" after Tony La Russa intentionally walked Trea Turner on a 1-2 count to pitch to Max Muncy who proceeded to hit a three-run homer is peak chef's kiss. (via @NBCSWhiteSox)pic.twitter.com/C9yaR0ZdBU

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 9, 2022

is tony trying to get fired a month from now?

What would Hawk say?

It just took Shohei Ohtani to finely end the streak.

*finally

Acuña's 2 HRs last night got a lot of the highlight attention but my favorite bit of last night's ATL game was this Michael Harris II catch: https://www.mlb.com/video/kyle-wright-in-play-out-s-to-sean-murphy

― WmC, Wednesday, June 8, 2022 12:53 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

even better is the shot of Andruw Jones's reaction

At his current pace, Jose Ramirez will finish this season with:
105 extra-base hits
48 strikeouts
99 walks
108 runs
168 RBI
45 doubles
12 triples
48 homers
He's got a .294/.394/.647 slash line

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) June 11, 2022

White Sox fans chanted "FIRE TONY (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)" in Saturday's 11-9 loss to the Texas Rangers, referring to Chicago manager Tony La Russa.

The Sox blew a 5-0 lead in the 10-inning affair with the Rangers — contributing to the team's 11th loss in 17 games. The Sox currently sit in third place in the American League Central.

I am so glad this is going terribly for Larussa. Feel bad he’s taking the chi Sox season with him, but fuck him.

The rest of the NL East has woken up: Braves have won 10 in a row, Phillies have won 9 in a row, Marlins have 5 five in a row. The NL central on the other hand….

Larussa sucks but the White Sox record is more due to injuries, regression, and having way too many scrubs in the lineup than the managing.

Listen times are hard in the heartland

When was the last time that two teams in the same division had active win streaks of 10 or more games? Phils and Braves might get there. I have no idea how to check this.

matt carpenter is batting .286/.444/1.000 with five homers in 10 games

my fault for ever doubting him

6 hits, 5 HRs

At this pace, he’s gonna get 18 hits this season

Didn’t realize he played 130 games last year. He hit .169/.305/.275

it hurt my back just to watch him

i still have nightmares of his plate routine, which he does before every single pitch. the first thrust of his hips, the shuffling of the feet. the second thrust. the swing and a miss. ughhhh

ESPN just dropped the funniest nugget of all time

Joe Maddon got a Mohawk to surprise the guys with to help break the losing streak but the players never saw it because he got fired that day 😭😭😭

— Dish (@D1SCHER) June 12, 2022

“Now I’m unemployed and I have a Mohawk” feels like a gag straight out of Friends.

The Giants are sporting black t-shirts with some Fantasy Football 101: “Stashing players on the IR isn’t cheating.”

— Maria I. Guardado (@mi_guardado) June 13, 2022

I've always liked David Price, but pretty easy gig for $32M.

the most hallowed record of them all has fallen

Yadi stands alone at the top!

14,865 putouts as a catcher.

The most all-time in MLB history. pic.twitter.com/tvXlSRsy5y

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) June 14, 2022

such a weird thing, giving the catcher a putout for a strikeout (even if that wasn't one)

props to him for doing it during a 100°/insane dew point day game tho

goldschmidt 6-for-8, 3 HR, 8 RBI in today's doubleheader

I was looking at the career boxes of a couple of the Yankees starters, trying to figure out why they're unbeatable, and Aaron Sanchez turned up on one of their Similarity Scores list. We were as big on him in Toronto in 2016 as we are on Manoah right now. Sad, itinerant tale the past few years, currently pitching poorly for Washington. Until a few days ago, anyway--they released him, and he just signed with the Twins.

(xpost) Currently leading the NL in all three slash stats.

i was just talking about how insane that yankees staff is. two of them showed no indication they had this kind of performance in them previously. one is always injured, and despite his clear talents, his simply being able to make it to the mound every 5th game right now is amazing to me. and then there's Garret Cole. the collective pitching performance that team is getting (including their pen – with Clay Holmes and his absurd 1.8 WAR so far) is unfathomable.

and with Sanchez, I was pretty high on him – even went to Lansing to see him pitch – but the year he won the ERA crown, to me at least, really felt like it was a fluke. he hadn't really worked out all his issues even at that point. Manoah feels like a lot safer bet than Sanchez did (tho I would not have anticipated a cy young calibre performance from him either at this point)!

Sanchez's never-ending blister problem was already an issue, I think, and in general he seemed on the fragile side. Manoah definitely does not.

And also Sanchez had a harder time dealing with control issues.

matt carpenter update:

34 PAs, .286/.412/.964, 275 wRC+

6 home runs, 1 double, 1 single. 5 walks, 9 strikes outs.

over 900+ hundred deep pelvic thrusts while waiting for the pitch

and along with Trevino – i'm starting to wonder what dark magic the yankees are using to get these performances out of people.

Not sure what to expect this weekend for Toronto...especially nervous about Manoah's start, although he's had three great starts in Yankee Stadium to date.

his start is the one i'm the least worried about.
i am tho, quite nervous about this series.

I saw about two dozen cardinals fans on the streets of Boston today before I realized what was happening.

The Braves (14 game winning streak) played the cubs (10 game losing streak) today, and miraculously the Cubs won 1-0.

Anthony Rendon out for the rest of the year again with wrist surgery. That $245M contract is looking worse every day.

Yikes!

The Brewers have designated Lorenzo Cain for assignment. The move comes on the same day that he reached 10 years of MLB service time. Cain and the club came to a “mutual decision” about today’s roster move, per Adam McCalvy of MLB.com (via Twitter). Jonathan Davis was selected from Triple-A to take his roster spot, per the team.

at least if no one else picks him up (or he retires), he reached 10 years

Lorenzo Cain showed up to his first baseball practice in 10th grade wearing a collared shirt, jean shorts and basketball shoes. Then he played 10 years in the Majors, made two All-Star Games, won a Gold Glove and a World Series.

Today, he was DFA’d by the Brewers. pic.twitter.com/HOe5EJuXEc

— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) June 18, 2022

https://i.imgur.com/Es153vP.png

almost all of them made it to the world series, and the others made it to the league championship series or were the 1942 dodgers

wow - 1942 Dodgers, get your shit together!

it's like they weren't even trying, come on

this is probably cold comfort to brewers fans, but by the statcast metrics (EV, hard hit%, xOPA xBA xSLG) he's having a very comparable season to Nolan Arenado, who is doing much better in terms of results so far

fuck, sorry. "he" is Christian Yelich

^-- title of 2022 Brewers thread

He’s looked a lot better at the plate this year, I think he’s gonna go on a sunrun soon

arenado has gone pretty cold since april too

his may was not great (offensively), but since June he's been pretty great again (143 wRC+)

it's funny, goldschmidt was relatively average in April, and then on May 1 it's like Arenado passed him the flame of greatness and then passed the fuck out for a month

gotta say, not trying to stir up NL Central beef, and i like the brewers in general after working a decent amount of games there, but craig counsell has the most perpetually disappointed and possibly pained expression in the game. i could say, "oh, that guy over there has craig counsell-face" and you'd know exactly what i meant, right?

it's kind of endearing i guess, like i want him to feel better

also, sorry to always mention yadi, but speaking of "NL Central beef", it makes me think of how his last appearance in cincinatti will go! it would be kind of perfect for him to get a simultaneous standing ovation plus resounding boo-off

yeah I feel like even if you made a shitty Craig Counsell muppet I'd immediately know who it was supposed to be

it would be a good cue for an actor, I think. "you just had your annual review and you didn't get a raise. i want you to take it like you're craig counsell."

https://cdn.wrn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Craig-Counsell-6.jpg

enhance

https://i.imgur.com/x2r7emn.png

lol the dueling umpire reviews happening in the top of the 9th here, haha

brendan donovan, who for special reasons will always be braden donahue to me, is out.

counsell just smiled!!

but this was the counsell face i was talking about, a little bit more disappointment, like there's something bad happening and it's not his fault or the team's fault, and it's just not fair

https://i.imgur.com/QEFUbBN.png

Burnes is becoming one of those pitchers who's unhittable for reasons no one can quite figure out

https://i.imgur.com/cSzkjfh.gif

https://i.imgur.com/wse1QwM.png

omg