AND THERE GOES THE NO-HITTER! Joey Meneses with a deep homer to center field!
Walker Buehler had Tommy John surgery, and will not only miss the rest of this season, but he’s expected to miss all of 2023, as well.
Came across an odd stat last night. Former Phillies first baseman John Kruk was HBP only twice in his career. It made me wonder if anyone in the modern era played 10+ seasons and never got hit by a pitch.
In yesterday’s Jays-BoSox game, the Bleu Jays scored eight runs in the third inning - all of them after the second out had been made.
Records not including games they’ve played against each other:
Boston: 57-52
Toronto: 55-52
But once you include their head to head games,. Toronto is seven games ahead. They’re different teams when playing one another. It’s very odd.
Next year’s Hall of Fame ballot adds very, very few realistic candidates. Here is a list of all the first year possible eligibles with more than 40 WAR:
- Carlos Beltran
That’s it.
I’ll start a HOF voting thread.
It’s all because you jinxed it.
Schedule release:
There’s already griping about the interleague serieses as well as more natural rival games.
I like the idea of every team playing everyone, how it works in reality is often something different. Super late games for the east coast or super early games for the west coast teams suck as far as fan interest and ratings. I loved late games as a kid, but kids don’t buy the cars and beer advertised during MLB games
I’m not a fan of fewer games against divisional rivals, and over 1/4 of a team’s schedule now being interleague play. But, it’s been clear for years that MLB management wants to treat the AL and NL more like the AFC and NFC in the NFL, than like separate leagues.
I’m not sure inter league play changes anything. Less games against the A’s and more games against the Giants is a wash, as far as time zones go.
Personally, I love the earlier games (as a West Coaster) since I can DVR them and watch in the evening and still get to bed at a reasonable hour. I grew up on the East Coast and those late games were brutal for a fan. The scores wouldn’t even make it into the morning paper.
ETA: The Mariners started this season experimenting with 6:30 starts instead of 7:00. Hugh improvement in my mind for everyone.
The Diamondbacks have played around with earlier starts too, I approve.
Even in the NFL, it was limited to 1/4 of the games (4/16) that were inter-conference. It’s now 5 of 17 games with the schedule expansion. And the plurality of games are still within the division.
For MLB, I’d rather they kept the previous rotation - inter-league play with a division that changes from year to year and ensuring home and home series.
Couple of good things on the schedule, no more weird staggered starts for opening day, and it’s a Thursday so I doubt a game gets moved to ESPN for Wednesday.
Every team plays on July 4, and it’s a Monday. Also good.
Every team on Jackie Robinson Day, it’s a Friday so you’d expect all teams to have a game. But the weirdness of the schedule the last two years has left the occasional Friday and Sunday without a full slate of games.
Roberto Clemente day has all teams in action, it’s also a Friday. I guess MLB is pushing this day as well. Kinda hard in September when so many teams are just playing out the season but maybe it’ll spark so interest in late season games.
Stat-crazed baseball analysts positively drool over exit velocity.
Example: ESPN is going nuts over Pirates rookie SS Oneil Cruz hitting a line drive today clocked at 122.4 mph, “the hardest-hit batted ball in a Major League Baseball game during the Statcast era.”
It went for a single, Cruz’s only hit of the day, raising his average to .199 for the season, in a game the Pirates are losing to the Braves 14-0.
Maybe there will one day be a wing in the Hall of Fame for Exit Velocity Champions.
And it can have the Golden Glove Adjusters Annex attached to it.
Mariners pitcher George Kirby set a major-league record today by throwing strikes on his first 24 pitches. He didn’t throw a ball until his first pitch to the 11th batter he faced, with 2 out in the third. He ended up allowing 8 hits and 1 earned run in 7 innings.
Mariners had a couple of interesting games against my Nats this week, didn’t they? (Also, I’m astonished that MLB keeps track of that particular statistic.)
They seem to keep track of everything, but I’m not sure how the access it. I think you could ask the stat guys “which team won the most Tuesday afternoon away games between 1955 and 1958” and they could tell you.
That is a weird one though. Throwing what would be a strike but the batter gets a hit doesn’t count. The batter swinging at a bad pitch does. A foul tip counts unless there is a two strike count. Does a foul tip when there are two strikes kill the streak?
The streak was for throwing strikes, not for throwing strikes on which the batter did not make contact.
Looking at the box score for the game, Kirby gave up three hits and a run in the first; it’s just that every pitch in that inning was either a strike looking (he threw five of those), a foul ball (one), a single (three), or a ground ball which was turned into a double play (one). All of those “count” as strikes, for purposes of this odd stat. Similarly, in the second inning, he had four strikes swinging, three foul balls (one of which was caught for an out), and one single.
I think a more accurate way to describe it would be “threw 24 pitches that weren’t balls”.