The Red Sox are making a bit of a charge in the AL East. The Yankees, Orioles, and Rays have each lost their last couple of games, while Boston has won 5 in a row.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are also still three teams in baseball on pace for 100-loss seasons. The Padres and Cubs are, at their current pace, looking at 55-56 wins, while the Rockies are set for exactly 62 wins.
And the Dogers-Angels rivalry gets heated up, with runs galore. Both starting pitchers are getting lit up like Christmas trees.
That’s what .500 teams do - they put on brief charges (against lesser opponents), then go on brief slumps (when better teams arrive on the schedule), and never sustain either for long. They have some great talent, yes, but they just have too many holes in the lineups they’ve been able to put on the field. Again, that’s just typical of .500 teams. As Bill Parcells likes to say, “You are what your record says you are”, and Boston is a .500 team - and on merit.
God, everything about baseball on FOX annoys me. I’m watching the Giants/Athletics game.
Their so-called Scouting Report on pitchers contains a whole bunch of meaningless bullshit. The report on Madison Bumgarner, for example, is that he “pitches beyond his years.” Yeah, really useful scouting info there, assholes.
In the commentary booth, color guy Eric Byrnes spent the top of the first inning blowing smoke up the ass of Oakland pitcher Tyson Ross, saying “Looking at him up there, i don’t think i’d like to face this guy.” I dunno, Eric: the way you hit, you probably would have been happy to step into the box against a guy with a season ERA of 6.11, a WHIP of 1.74, and an opponent batting average of .318.
And the FOX Key to the Game for the Giants is: “Starts at the top (of the order).”
Genius.
When one bears in mind that Byrnes is a complete doofus who gave up his major league career to go play slo-pitch, the comment makes more sense. I’m sure Ross is harder to hit than slo-pitch.
I have no idea why some guys get announcing jobs. Some turn out to be good at it; some are indescribably terrible and yet they go on for years.
Yeah, not a fan of Byrnes either. I hear him often on the radio - he does a lot of radio in SF - but hadn’t heard him call a game before. I like Fleming a lot, but Byrnes is grating. He sounds too much like Jeff Spicoli.
Joe
I’ve been to games at Chavez Ravine, and to games in San Francisco, but tonight will be my first Dodgers/Giants game. Don’t really have much of a stake in the result, but a close game would be nice. I’m sort of bummed that Zito is on the mound for the Giants.
Going to have tacos in the Mission for dinner, then head out to the ballpark.
I had the pleasure a few years ago. I was kind of shocked at how nice the Giants fans were to me, considering how much some Dodger fans can be dicks when the two teams play. And that was even before the Bryan Stow incident (or the Giants fan who got stabbed in the Dodger Stadium parking lot two years prior to that).
This is really going to be a crazy year in the AL East. Yanks have the second best record in the majors and the smallest lead of the last place team in their division with no one more then 6.5 out.
Watching them beat Dickey last night and then the Mets getting to CC was a double shocker. CC really hasn’t looked as sharp this year as prior years. On the bright side he is almost always at his best after the All Star Break. He heats up when the weather gets its hottest.
Dickey, even on a bad night really shows off a great knuckleball. Best I’ve remember since Phil Niekro.
Oh, fuck me to tears!
mhendo, I hope the tacos were good, at least.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a nail-biter.
We had a fun evening. My wife grew up in San Francisco, so i got on the Giants bandwagon with her and the rest of the crowd.
Zito looked pretty bad in the first couple of innings. He gave up a few walks and was a bit lucky to get away with them, but he settled down and ended up pitching 7 good innings. The Giants also got a bit lucky in the first, with a soft single that Gordon couldn’t quite make a play on, then a bloop single that fell in the hole, and then a shot that bounced off the first base bag and over the fielder’s head.
The Panda had a big night, with a couple of doubles, and Melky Cabrera continued his good form with a few hits and plenty of contributions in left field.
It was a beautiful evening. It’s such a great place to watch a ballgame.
Tru dat.
And at the team level, that’s even more true in baseball than in football. Over 162 games, all those one-run wins and the times you won by playing over your head will almost* always be balanced out by their opposites, while in football, a few key plays really can be the difference between 9-7 and 12-4.
*The 1969 Mets proved it isn’t always true. But pretty damned close to always.
Now 4 of Toronto’s 5 starting pitchers have been injured in a span of ten days. Only Ricky Romero remains able to pitch.
They’ve signed Jamie Moyer, inasmuch as they’re literally starting to run short on Triple- and Double-A starters.
The difference between an average team .500 (81-81 and playoff bound team .550 (~89-73) and probably the best team in a year .600 (~97-65) is that they win 10 11 or 12 games out of 20. Even that’s not a whole lot of difference. But you can see how easy it would be to differ that much in a football season. There’s about a 9% chance that a truly .500 team would win 89 games in a season so, with two leagues, we should see that about once every five years. (The Indians could well be that team this year. Their W-L is very high relative to their net runs.)
Check out this “catch” by DeWayne Wise. That ump should be suspended for gross incompetence.
How is that even possible? I’ve never seen that before. How do you not have to show the ump the ball?
I’ve joked often about people receiving style points, but I’ve never seen one actually issued.
Jack Hannahan got ejected later, after he saw the replay and argued.
Not MLB, but Raul Mondesi, Jr. made a big rookie mistake in rookie ball. I was shocked that Raul Mondesi has a kid old enough to be in rookie ball. It seems like just yesterday that Mondesi won ROY for the Dodgers, but it was actually in 1994. I feel old.
He didn’t ask to see the ball?
Is this a joke?
I’ve always thought that in this very situation there’s no way an ump could tell, if a guy left the field of play, if a fielder had maintained control of the ballthroughout the play… but Wise DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE BALL?
Yankee fan here as most of you know.
That ump did a terrible job and it is this kind of crap that will get us saddled with a lot more instant replay. I’m not really in favor of it but when umps keep making the case for those that are, it makes it tough to argue against it.