I’m pretty sure Aledmys Diaz of St. Louis is at or above Seager’s offensive stats in most categories save for HRs…another rookie shortstop, and not on the ballot for the ASG. I think Seager is considered better defensively and Dodger Stadium does deflate hitting stats a bit, but I think you’d find that Diaz’s batting stats are right up there with Seager’s.
A few years ago, I heard during a broadcast that the current batter was the career leader in 3-2 counts.
The 30-53 Reds have fired pitching coach Mark Riggins. That’s not really a surprise, even though the fact is that Cy Young couldn’t teach these guys how to pitch if they can’t pitch.
The Reds are leading the league in giving up:
Runs: 498 (2nd: 437)
Earned Runs: 457 (407) 5.51 ERA is worst, of course.
Home Runs: 144 (107)
Walks: 364 (312)
I mean, this is just horrible, and no new coach is going to improve things until the Reds get improved pitchers. I expect Price to be following Riggins out the door shortly, and like Riggins it won’t be for any reason other than that the team can’t provide him with players who can play.
I saw a report today that if the Reds’ pitchers keep giving up home runs at their current pace, they’ll break the team season record for HRs allowed by about 40 (the current record holder is the Colorado Rockies, who gave up 230 HRs in 2001).
Also it must be noted that the NL record for most home runs given up by a pitcher in a single game is 6, by Sloppy Thurston of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932.*
*there are two other pitchers tied for the record but none have as great a name as Sloppy Thurston.
*Excellent *fireworks after the Palm Beach Cardinals - Jupiter Hammerheads game tonight. The game showed why these guys are still in A ball, but what the hell.
I hadn’t been to a minor league game in years - I’d forgotten how much fun they are. Kinda takes your mind off your MLB team’s woes.
And living in Louisville, the Reds are the local MLB team. And their AAA team is located here. It can be a little weird rooting against them.
I’m very thankful, however, that the Cubs are having a chance to change their recent slide by playing Cincinnati.
I think I heard it said that the second half schedule is a lot easier for Chicago (in theory).
I hadn’t even heard of him. He sure has a pretty stat line though. I wonder is Seager’s hit streak will get him some national attention that he clearly doesn’t need after being rookie of the mo the for June for the NL. It’ll be interesting watching this glut of young shortstops we have right now battle it out for the best over the next decade. Hopefully they all stay healthy.
Texas gave up 17 runs to Anaheim the other day and 12 today to Boston, who themselves are coming off being shellacked by Minnesota the other night.
In fact it is highly likely the Reds’ pitching will improve, simply because it is exceedingly unlikely that a team could continue being that terrible. They are SO far out of whack that just by sheer probability, they’ll pitch better. I mean, either Alfredo Simon’s going to pitch better or he’s not going to pitch at all.
Consequently, the new pitching coach will get credit for improving things even if the Reds continue pitching badly, just because they won’t pitch AS badly.
That’s basically the same argument you made a couple of months ago, yet here we are. The Reds have used 27 pitchers, including 12 starters and 9 who have made their debut this season. They don’t have a lot of options.
Sorry, when did I say anything about the relative ineptitude of their pitching staff? I said I’d always take the under on 100 wins or 100 losses, even with the Reds. I stand by that; it’s a good bet, even if on one team you end up paying out, you’ll win on most. The Reds have an excellent chance to win 63 games, even though they’re on pace to win 58. It doesn’t take a lot of corrections to go from “Awful” to “A little less awful.”
No, it wasn’t about the staff; it was about the team in general. My mistake.
The Reds don’t have anything to correct with. In my opinion. Yours obviously varies.
Anyone would be an improvement on Alfredo Simon. They can pick a guy off waivers. Paul Simon would be an improvement.
Teams with many players under 0 WAR can improve easily unless they have some organizational reason for sticking with them (young prospect, lack guts to admit it’s a bad contract, etc.) Just replacing Alfredo Simon and JJ Hoover with a couple of AAA veterans from anywhere would improve their second half by four, five games.
The Cubs need bullpen help and I’d be ok with trading Kyle Schwarber to get it. After seeing the Bryant collision yesterday, I went back and watched the game when Schwarber got injured. Schwarber is a defensive liability in the outfield and I can’t see him staying at catcher, even with Ross retiring and a trade of Montero. Maybe a team that isn’t loaded with infielders can make Schwarber a 1st baseman or an AL team can use him as a primary DH and emergency outfield and catcher, a very intriguing skill set to have.
I’ve said before that Schwarber would be an absolute demon in Yankee Stadium, or as a DH in Houston. With those short porches…
The Indians have beaten the Tigers all 11 times they’ve played each other this season. In those games, Detroit has been outscored by a whopping 77-24 margin. I’m not sure “utter dominance” really covers it. Mike Aviles sums it up thusly: “They’ve outplayed us. There’s no better way to put it. They’ve outpitched us. They’ve outdefensed us. They’ve basically outplayed us every way you look at it.”
I’m not sure the Cubs would get max value from a guy who ripped up his leg and can’t play until 2017.
Don’t get me wrong, Schwarber is the real deal among lefthanded power hitters and if I’m an AL team I’d love to have him… but a player on the 60-day DL just screams “gimme a discount.”
In Blue Jays news, apparently they’re bringing back Chris Colabello soon off his 80-game suspension for juicing. I am absolutely flabbergasted; if you had offered to bet me one hundred dollars when he was suspended that his Jays career was over I’d have taken that bet. I cannot believe they’re bringing him back and I plan to go to a game just to boo him.
IF he was a long time Blue Jay or something that’d be different, maybe, but he had half a flukey season and the team’s love for him (they released Danny Valencia to give him more at bats, which still pisses me off) is inexplicable. So now they’re going to bring Roidabello back and that means, inevitably, that someone, probably Justin Smoak, will sit so an old juicer can play based on half a good season. What bullshit.
This isn’t really baseball news, per se, but…
Not content with screwing the taxpayers of Cobb County out of hundreds of millions of dollars for a new baseball stadium, the Braves and the Cobb County commissioners are now asking local businesses and the Braves fans to bend over even further and take another rogering.
At the urging of the Braves, the commissioners passed (without any public input) an ordinance that prohibits any private parking lots from operating within half a mile of the new stadium on game days. At a stadium where there will be basically no direct public transit access, this effectively hands a complete parking monopoly to the team.
In case anyone is naive enough to wonder what effect that will have on parking prices, when Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder was handed a similar deal in Landover just after buying the team, he immediately took advantage of his monopoly by jacking up parking prices from $10 to $25.
One ray of hope in the Cobb County deal is that it could be overturned by a lawsuit. That’s what happened to Snyder and Prince George’s County, who were sued in a class-action, with the county forced to rescind the parking ban. As the folks at Deadspin note, the “public safety” argument being used in Cobb County to justify the parking ban is very similar to the one used by Snyder and PGC.
If America’s pastime is baseball, then baseball’s pastime is apparently screwing American taxpayers and fans for the benefit of billionaire owners.
I can only imagine what would happen if the Blue Jays pulled a similar stunt. The CHEAP private lots run $20 on game days. If they had a monopoly, to park you’d have to sign over the ownership to your car.
When my wife and I go to Padres games, we sometimes drive, and sometimes take the bus.
If we take the bus, it’s $5.50 each to get to the park and back, for a total of $11. The bus stop on our end is about a block from our house, and at the other end we have about a 10- to 15-minute walk to the park.
If you want to park right near the stadium in the official lots, you’re looking at $20-30. We usually park up on Broadway, about 10 to 15 minutes walk away, in an open-air lot. It costs $8.00, making it cheaper (and more convenient) than taking the bus. If the game is a popular one, however, those lots can fill up very quickly.