As a Yankee hater, I like that they’re winning right now for 2 reasons. 1) They’re beating the O’s, allowing the Red Sox to creep ever closer to 1st place and 2) they think they might still be in the chase, which means they aren’t sending their good players to actual contenders.
Speaking of the Yankees, it’s July 20 and Jacoby Ellsbury has already set a single season record. And that record is for most catcher’s interferences with his 9th instance this season. Nine times in, what, 300 ABs? That’s kind of incredible. I’d bet most guys go through a full career and that doesn’t happen 9 times.
This prompted me to do some research just now and Ellsbury is also one of only 6 players in MLB history who have had 2 instances of catcher’s interference in one game. And that happened last year! Ellsbury has 23 in his career trailing only Pete Rose with 29.
The Mariners have traded Mike Montgomery to the Cubs for 1B prospect Dan Volgerbach
via http://cbssportsapp.com
Interesting fact; right now Marco Estrada’s BABIP is .193. Were he to maintain that it would be the lowest in the history of the major leagues. Lowest ever. Lower than anyone in 1968, or in the dead ball era. Estrada is 38 points better in this regard than second place (Julio Teheran) which is a greater gap than between Teheran and 25th place.
Estrada of course led MLB in BABIP last year with .216, which is the lowest of any pitcher since 2000. This was one of the reasons I expected his ERA to balloon this year; pitchers generally can’t keep doing that, and if you don’t believe me look at anyone else on the 2015 leader board in BABIP; almost all of them have regressed this year, even if they’re still quite good, like Jake Arrieta.
I don’t know how Estrada does it.
Also, his K/9 went from 6.5 last year to 8.5 this year. Pretty impressive to increase K/9 and lower BABIP each by so much for a guy who’s 33 years old.
I don’t know what happened to the Giants over the All Star break, but please, make it go away. In the 5.5 games since then, in 4.5 of those they have never had a lead. In the other game, they blew a 10th inning lead and lost.
Brandon Crawford’s third error of the game gives the Yankees a 3-2 lead at the end of eight. 
One more case of the Sports Illustrated jinx infecting other print media (the N.Y. Times just did an effusive piece on Crawford.
Well, anyone can have a bad night.
Chris Sale just scratched as White Sox starter, trade in the works?
Even weirder, the Sale scratch is now being reported as a non-physical clubhouse incident.
The White Sox were scheduled to wear throwback jerseys tonight. Apparently Sale was displeased with the jerseys and refused to wear them. Here’s where the rumor goes off the rails–in order to guarantee he would not have to wear the throwback he took scissors to every player’s jersey.
From what I saw before the game went into rain delay the White Sox were not wearing the scheduled throwbacks.
ETA: Jeff Passan just confirmed this on Twitter.
Len Kasper just said something similar on the Cubs feed. They were speculating as to whether Sale would pitch tomorrow instead, or just sent home and pitching on his next scheduled day.
Jim DeShaies (a former major league pitcher) wondered if Sale could wear one jersey, and the rest of the team wear the throwbacks.
Unless the rule has changed, that’d be a “no.” When Griffie joined the Reds, he didn’t like the sleeves on his jersey, and wanted to take them off. Since uniforms have to be, ya know, uniform, the Reds went with the sleeveless uniform tops with the black/red shirt underneath.
Hey, a “true” walkoff triple tonight–Stephen Drew of Washington against San Diego, bottom of the ninth scoring a runner from first. No errors involved. Now I’m looking for them, apparently…
I bitch about a lot of jerseys but can’t understand Sale’s problem .
Woo hoo! Giants finally win again.
A’s win in a walkoff for the second straight night.
From what I read (USA Today, I think), Sale was pissed off because the club seemed more interested in gimmicks and promotions than winning.
It probably didn’t help that it was 91 degrees with high humidity and the jerseys had freakin’ collars on them.
Also, he apparently didn’t cut all the jerseys, just enough so there wouldn’t be enough for everyone to wear one. The team played with a different throwback.
mmm
Chris Sale suspended 5 days.
White Sox are a mess, first the weird Adam LaRoche situation and now this.
They may have turned down a king’s ransom for Sale in a trade earlier but now he’s coming at a discount
In other news, looks like Tim Lincecum has well and truly lost it.