Robinson Cano in the minor leagues wearing a Spongbob uniform, I didn’t have that on my bingo card for his career!
The Cubs have kept the Yankees to 3 homers through 7 today. Unfortunately for the Cubs the Yanks have used other ways to put up a 17-spot so far…
And the 3 homers are from the unlikely pair of Matt Carpenter (2) and Kyle Higashioka. Carpenter is 3 for 4 with 7 RBIs. He is now hitting .333 for the Yanks.
And Higgy just hit his 2nd homer to make it 18-4.
What is it with double digit scores today? Arizona, the Yankees and Baltimore are all in 2 figures today, and the day is only half over.
Absolutely no statistics involved, but I do also notice that Sunday day games seem to be more likely to be blowouts. And it could be a team that lost the first two of a series coming back Sunday afternoon and putting up 12 runs to demolish the other team.
In the Yankees-Cubs case, The Yanks exhausted the Cubs staff the first 2 games and they were running on fumes. Though Keegan Thompson failing had to be a crushing blow. He was 6-2 with a 3.17 ERA before today.
I’m getting seasick watching this Sunday Night Baseball game with all the split screen and interview nonsense. And this was a game I was particularly looking forward to.
Weird record set yesterday.
Higashioka homered on a 35.1 mph pitch from Cubs first baseman-turned-pitcher Frank Schwindel in the eighth inning of Sunday’s 18-4 Yankees rout at Yankee Stadium, marking the slowest pitch ever tracked by Statcast to be hit for a home run.
From here: Kyle Higashioka hits home run off Frank Schwindel
In the greatest slump-busting story since Mark Grace was playing, it turns out Joe Madden got his head shaved into a Mohawk last week to fire the troops up, mere hours before getting fired. No one on the team got to see it. 
Speaking of which: the Giants gave up on their 1st round pick can’t-miss-phenom, the next Buster Posey (Joey Bart). Sent him back to AAA to see if he can remember how to hit, and traded for catcher Austin Wynns from the Phillies. (I notice that he spent part of 2021 in the Mexican League, which immediately made me think of Tom Berenger’s character in Major League.)
Bart was hitting something like .150 and striking out 50% of the time.
After just one start, the Nats’ Stephen Strasburg is going back on the injured list. FML.
Anthony Santander isn’t vaccinated so gets placed on the restricted list while the Orioles play the Jays in Canada.
Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies has been placed on the 60-day IL with a fractured left foot, which he suffered on an awkward swing in his team’s 9-5 win over the Nationals in DC last night.
Also in that article, in what I hope won’t be a portent of things to come, Nats right fielder Juan Soto slipped and hit his knee on the bench in the 9th inning and was replaced in the game, and Davey Martinez will see how he feels today.
The Nats selected the minor league contracts of RHP Jackson Tetreault (who will start tonight in Game 2 against the Braves), and RHP Reed Garrett.
Juan Soto will have the night off tonight because of the aforementioned minor injury.
Strasburg has been diagnosed with a stress fracture in his second and third ribs.
If he never pitches again, which is certainly possible, he will have been paid something like $2 million per inning since 2019, if I have that right.
In the second game of today’s double-header, with the temperature still in the 90s, the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas had retired 17 in a row and gotten two out in the 9th and a two-strike count when Pittsburgh’s Cal Mitchell drilled a ball to dead center field for a ground rule double, ruining the no-hitter.
Last year that would have been a “not a no-hitter” 7-inning no-hitter.
We could start a betting pool to predict which of the following oft-injured pitchers (Strasburg, deGrom, Sale) will pitch the most games for the rest of their careers.
Their combined total could reach double figures, especially if one or more of them are converted to relievers.
The center fielder for the Cards, Harrison Bader, was playing relatively shallow in left-center and still almost made a great play on the drive by Mitchell. Had he been playing at normal depth, he likely would have caught the ball.
Yes, even playing quite far forward, he almost caught it.