The injury bug is not the worst ever, but I think it is the worst from any team that has been able to stay in first.
Walker Buehler tossed his second 15K complete game of the season Saturday. The Dodger record is 3 in one season, and we still have a couple of months to go.
What about the Indians – known for their starting rotation:
Probable starting pitchers at beginning of season
Kluber out since May 1st (7 starts) and not back yet.
Carasco (12 starts) inconsistent most of the season turns out he has leukemia. On the IL since June 5.
Clevenger (10 starts) missed more than two months early in the season then placed on the IL after his first game back.
Most likely fill-ins:
Danny Salazar out all of 2018. Pitched four innings in one game. Now back on the DL
Cody Anderson 2 starts now on 60 day IL
Jefrey Rodriguez 8 starts now on 60 day IL
Good news, Yanks sweep Red Sox, close to ending their season.
Bad news, Hicks to the IL and Loaisiga may have had another set back in minors.
I was at Friday’s and last night’s Red Sox-Yankees games. It was good to see the Bombers in good form despite all the injuries.
But what most surprised and gratified me was the number of young people I saw in the stands. I was sitting in the Upper Deck, and it seemed to me the majority of fans were in their 20s, including many women, with very few over 40. And although these were the cheap seats in Yankee Stadium, this being a Red Sox game they weren’t that cheap. It made me optimistic for the future of the game.
(At both games, I had groups of 20-something young women sitting next to me. Coincidentally, in both games the one next to me had never been to a baseball game before. I had to explain to one what a grand slam was, and the other what a ground-rule double was.:D)
Yankees playing well through adversity. I never saw a guy hit himself with foul balls in both legs in the same at bat before, damn that must have hurt. Amazing how they call up a guy like Ford and he delivers in the clutch. Sure was sweet to add to the Red Sox’s misery, how the mighty have fallen this year.
While The Blue Jays are having an unglamorous season, there’s a core of young players like Vladdy Jr., Cavan Biggio and Bo Bichette (with Lourdes Gurreil Jr nipping at their heels) who are proving themselves to be potential hotshots, with Vladdy leading the bigs in RBIs since the all-star break.
Charlie Montoyo wasn’t quite as smiley as he was at the beginning of the season.
ETA: And this week VG became first Jay rookie to be player of the week twice.
Bo Bichette is off to a hell of a start; in eight games he’s got 15 hits, including six doubles and three home runs. He’s also made four errors, so he is exciting on both sides of the ball.
Vlad Jr. is quietly having a fine season too (though like Bo, he makes a lot of fielding errors.) He didn’t do a lot his first few weeks and so the hype died down, but after fritzing around .200 for awhile he’s up to .279, and in half a season’s worth of games has 13 homers and 49 RBI, with a respectable K-W ratio so it’s not a fluke.
I remain convinced that Vlad has a pretty good chance of basically being another Miguel Cabrera. Everyone compares Vlad to his Dad, but the similarities to Cabrera are striking. They are physically very similar and are both righthanded hitters with incredible bat speed, plate converge, and batting eyes. Both made the majors at 20, and their numbers in their age 20 season are interchangeably similar; Miguel hit .268 with 12 bombs in about the same number of games. (Vlad’s season totals for the year will go higher because he can play 45-50 more games, but right now they’re eerily alike.) Both came up playing positions they clearly are not ideally suited for - Cabrera played third and left field, Vladdy plays third - and Cabrera moved to first and Vladdy obviously will eventually. That is, I think, Vlad’s future; a first base slugger who can win batting titles and home run titles. He is a truly awesome hitting prospect.
Bo is harder to put a projection on. He wasn’t tearing up AAA this year.
Cubs have failed to win 10 straight series on the road. But they are also currently leading the NL central, having just swept the Brewers at home. In fact, their home win percentage is close to 70%, whereas on the road it’s under 40%. That’s a split of over thirty points.
It’s like they’re two different fuckin teams. The Idiot Clone Roster gets on the jet for away games.
As far as I can tell, no other team in the major leagues this season has a split greater than twenty points between home and away performance, while the Cubs are standing at over thirty. I don’t know what the dealio is here. There’s still time for some regression to the mean, but right now I’m wondering what the greatest historical split in performance has been. That’d be a weird record to take, if they’re close. (I doubt they’re close, but it still feels pretty weird to me…)
Yeah, he’s only “disappointing” compared to the ridiculous pre-season hype. In a weak year, he’d be a decent Rookie of the Year candidate.
Oh, I suspect he’s got a good shot at winning this year. Though there are some really good rookies this season they are disproportionately in the NL: guys like Tatis and Alonso and Reynolds and Soroka. The AL is weaker, or at least that’s my impression in a quick scan of the top rookies in WAR. Looks like the only AL players who are above Guerrero’s 1.8 score are Brandon Lowe (2.9) and John Means (3.5). If I were a bettin’ man I’d bet on Guerrero because a) there’s a good chance he’s going to keep getting better and b) because celebrity counts and who’s ever heard of Means or Lowe?
It’s possible I missed somebody, of course. Guess we’ll see.
Yordan Alvarez.
Hmm. Reds may have something in Aristides Aquino.
(Who, to be clear, is my pick for rookie of the year assuming he doesn’t fall too far off his current pace.)
I actually did a search on rookies by WAR yesterday and as God is my witness I had no idea who Lowe was.
Vlad Jr. could absolutely win ROY if he plays well the rest of the way. If he gets hot and get above 20 homers, he will get a lot of votes. If the season ended now I’d vote for Means all week, but there is still a lot of baseball left to play. I’m not sure the precedent is great though. Toronto has had two ROYs - Alfredo Griffin in 1979 and Eric Hinske in 2002, and Alfredo didn’t have another year that good for a decade and after he left Toronto, while Hinske never had another year even close to it.
In other Jay rookie news, Bo Bichette is the first player in major league history o get his first 10 extra base hits in fewer than ten major league games. He’s just ripping the ball, it’s quite something.
Lowe is pronounced ‘lau’ (rhymes with wow) so that might have thrown you off.
If Means keeps starting and maintains anything close to his 2.56 ERA at Camden Yards, then he probably deserves the honor. The Yankees have now hit 38 home runs in 9 games in that park. I don’t even know what the hell is going on anymore. Is it the ball? Is it the stadium? Is Baltimore pitching just that bad? Guys like Brett Gardner and Cameron Maybin are hitting oppo jobs. Means gets the ball tonight. We’ll see.
What the hell happened with the Mets? Guess it was a good idea for them not to blow up the team in trades.
At least fans have something to cheer about for awhile (as of today, they’re a game and a half back in the wild card race).
They got on a good run of their starters pitching the way they were expected too.
Indian’s Oscar Mercado is 1.3 with only 67 gays played, but he’s now the regular center fielder.
They also recently feasted on the Marlins, White Sox and Pirates. Their road gets rockier as the rest of August goes: Nationals, Braves, Royals, Indians, Braves again, Cubs and Phillies.