The Dodgers - fuck.
Without Kemp and Ethier, they hit like the Mariners.
Congrats to Melky, Panda, and Buster!
Go Giants!
Erm, and Cain, of course, I’m not sure he’s starting.
Joe
The Captain, Cano and Grandy too… Nova should go.
Reds get Votto, Bruce and Aroldis Chapman.
GO REDS!!
Down 1-0 right now…damn Arroyo’s pitches are junk.
Damn…split with the Giants. I hope we sweep the shit out of the goddamn dirty Dodgers.
The Blue Jays send only Jose Bautista, which I find surprising for a team with a plus-.500 record. I’m not sure why Adam Dunn is going and Edwin Encarnacion isn’t, but I guess it’s just one of those things.
Toronto’s best player is probably Brett Lawrie, to be honest, not Bautista, when one considers Lawrie’s amazing glovework. But you can see why they’d prefer to send the best home run hitter in the major leagues over the last three seasons, rather than the kid with four months of big league service.
Dee Gordon must die.
That is all.
Seconded.
Definition of optimism: When today’s Dodgers’ Facebook post notes that the team is undefeated in July.
Since mhendo’s been periodically updating us on the degree to which the Orioles’ success this season is all about the one-run and extra-inning ballgames, I can’t help but note this bit of symmetry: they’ve been outscored 355-329 so far this season, so while their record is 42-36, their Pythagorean W/L projection is 36-42.
And about those one-run and extra-inning games: the O’s are 14-6 in one-run games, and 9-2 in extra-inning games. Both of those counts include five one-run extra-inning games, and the O’s were 4-1 in those games, so subtracting out the double count, they’re 19-7 in games that were either one-run or extra-inning games. If they were 13-13 in those games, their W-L record would be 36-42, matching their Pythagorean projection exactly.
Sigh. I am so glad June is over. Winning 2 out of their last 13 (? I think it was 13) was painful. Nice to see that the magic wore off on everyone all at the same time.
Oh, and there were rumors that the Dodgers were in on Jed Lowrie and Carlos Lee! Then it backed out to just Carlos Lee… and then only if he agrees 
The All Star Break can’t come soon enough.
Incidentally, the Small One and I went to yesterday’s distressing Blue Jays game.
Announcers love to babbly endlessly about how runners should be aggressive on the basepaths, but it’s funny how they never say anything when it costs you. In the first six innings of the game, “aggressive” baserunning caused the Jays to throw away FOUR baserunners. Four runners lost and outs made that were totally unnecessary, and so all kinds of breaks given to a pitcher who didn’t have sensational command. How does the game proceed if they don’t throw runners away like that? Likely very differently.
Will the talking heads say anything? Nope.
Are announcers still throwing that sort of shit around, after all these years?
Even if Bill James and the rest of the early sabermetricians hadn’t done the math on this 30+ years ago, any dummy could work out the potential gain/loss from aggressive baserunning pretty easily, and realize that you shouldn’t try to take the extra base unless the odds are heavily in your favor.
Aggressive baserunning, if it fails, burns one of your 27 outs, and burns one of your even more scarce baserunners. If it succeeds, you haven’t gained an extra baserunner; you’ve just got the same baserunner one base further along. You’ve somewhat increased the odds that you’ll score that baserunner, but that’s all you’re gaining. But if it fails, your chance of scoring that particular baserunner drops to zero, and the out you use up substantially increases the defense’s chances of getting out of the rally without any further damage.
Like with all one-run strategies, there’s an argument for using them in the late innings of a close, low-scoring game. But the rest of the time, forget it.
Can’t believe anyone’s still spouting this crap.
Of course, as soon as I posted this (June 28), the Giants went on to score 2 runs over the next two games to round out the month. Oh well, at least the June Swoon didn’t start until the last weekend of the month this year 
On another note, is the outfield at AT&T Park really that difficult for opposing players? twice in the last series a Reds outfielder misplayed a ‘routine’ fly ball in a way that would make a Little Leaguer hang his head in shame. I know that right field can cause headaches with ‘triples alley’ and weird bounces off of the archways, but the play in the 9th yesterday, and the play in left field in game 1 of the series, looked like simple cases of “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, oh crap, I don’t have it!”
I keep wondering why any person playing for the Astros wouldn’t want an opportunity to play elsewhere. But I’m sure Carlos has got his own reasons. I’d love for the team to make a solid move, but I’m not sure the options are all that great for us right now.
On the plus side, Mark “Nearly-Legless” Ellis has already had a rehab start and should be back soon, Kemp will be back after the ASG, Ethier could possibly play again this week, and Guerra and Lilly aren’t supposed to be far behind. AND, even though we’ve got to play the Reds and D-Backs this week, Cincinnati might be without the services of Votto for this series. If we can survive this week somehow, who knows?
Unfortunately (well, for an Orioles fan like me), Baltimore’s results are starting to more accurately reflect their stats. They are 3-9 over their last 12 games, are now 6 back of first, and only half a game ahead of Boston.
The Red Sox have been steadily climbing the ladder over the past month, and despite the assertion by ElvisL1ves that they are just a .500 team, it seems to me that this isn’t the case. They are currently 5 games over .500, and the only teams in the American league with a better run differential are the Yankees and the Rangers. Boston’s X W-L calculus has them at 45-34. I take RickJay’s point, made last month, that this sort of pythagorean stuff can be a bad indicator when only a limited number of games are used, but i think Boston has a shot at the Wild Card.
The Yankees continue to win, and Jeter makes another All-Star team on the strength of one good month and playing in New York. Since May 6, his line is .248/.307/.300.
This kerfluffle between The Reds Dusty Baker and the NL All Star manager Tony LaRussa is certainly…interesting.
Baker has come out in the local press here and essentially accused LaRussa of snubbing starting pitcher Johnny Cueto (9-4, 2.26 ERA) and 2B Brandon Phillips (.285, 10 HR, 46 RBI) because of their involvement in the bench clearing brawl in 2010, a brawl that was incited by Brandon Phillips calling the Cardinals “little bitches”…a brawl that also featured Cueto kicking former Reds catcher Jason LaRue in the head with his cleats…which in part caused LaRue to retire.
But it gets more bizarre…in addition to the “you snubbed me because of the brawl” reason that Baker is contending, Cueto had this to say:
"I see that I have great numbers,” Cueto said. “I thought the way I pitched this year, I’d have a chance to go to the All-Star Game. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if the manager of All-Star Game is (ticked) at me because I went out with one of his girlfriends.”
Um, Cueto is in his 20’s…LaRussa is what…70? What woman could they possibly be sharing?
Anyway: 
Here’s the link: Dusty Baker blames Tony La Russa for Reds’ All-Star snubs of Brandon Phillips, Johnny Cueto
Buncha whiny-ass bitches if you ask me… 
Not to mention that TLR actually selected a Red (Jay Bruce), and no Cards, and said he would have picked Cueto if he weren’t starting on Sunday. Kinda funny that even after he’s retired the Reds still have a bee in their bonnet over Don Tony.
Also I’m not even convinced Phillips deserves to be there over Altuve or Hill.