I never heard of an immaculate inning until a few years ago. It may be rare but I prefer a guy who gets the side out in three pitches rather than nine.
It’s more democratic.
I’ve just seen on the Brewers’ Facebook page that they have assigned outfielder Lorenzo Cain for assignment. He’s 36 years old, and was hitting only .179 this season; his contract was up at the end of this season anyway.
The move comes on the day that Cain reached 10 years of MLB service time, and was apparently a mutual decision between him and the Brewers.
Cain has always been a really good player, but circumstances made his career way shorter than he deserved - he has only played 1171 games. He got a very late start, and has been interrupted by a number of injuries.
Agreed; I’ve always liked him as a player.
Also, it sounds like he’d already decided that the end was nigh. From an interview earlier this week with The Athletic:
Cain will always be one of my favorite Royals.
In no small part because of this play in Game 6 of the 2015 ALCS.
The Nationals retired Ryan Zimmerman’s #11 jersey today.
It could be one of these Sundays with a lot of blowouts and double digit runs. I don’t like the early starts on Sunday, but I’ve been enjoying the Nationals beating up on the Phillies, 8-3 bottom of the 5th.
The dodgers are playing Cleveland … that’s a bit interesting … and I see the cubs are back in their historical position aka the cellar … the Braves bounced back from the last time I looked at the standings toh
In a weekend series that absolutely nobody cared about, the second-worst team in the majors, the Royals, took 2 of 3 from the worst team in the majors, the A’s.
However, with those 2 victories, the Royals are now only the third-worst team, as they are now percentage points ahead of the Reds.
Nats starting pitcher Eric Fedde pitched six scoreless innings of two-hit ball against the Orioles today, and actually, the last four games, the Nationals’ starting pitchers have been doing pretty well. It’s the bullpen that drives me to drink, though. Let’s see if they can maintain the lead.
Not tonight, though! No runs allowed and only three hits by the Orioles! BANG, ZOOM go the fireworks, and put a Curly W on the board for our second win in a row.
one thing for sure after a slow first 2 1/2 months a lot of teams are waking up
tho unfortunately a lot of them are in the NL and the NL west …
The Blue Jays are dominating All Star voting, and yet they’re 12 games behind New York, and only barely in first place in the wild card hunt… which kind of illustrates the abject stupidity of how All Star voting is designed.
I mean, not all of this is undeserved. Vladimir Guerrero is an immensely talented, popular young star who’s a hell of a hitter even not playing his best. Alejandro Kirk is an excellent player and there isn’t an obvious established superstar at that position. But, like… here are the votes for catcher as of yesterday
Kirk, Toronto - 1,057,088
Trevino, New York - 387,983
Perez, Kansas City - 266,604
Like, fuck off. Should Kirk be in first place? Sure, that’s a defensible position. Is the voting system broken? Clearly; there is something allowing Canadian fans to stuff the shit out of the vote. Kirk and Guerrero have pretty much already won, and Bo Bichette is winning so far at shortstop for no good reason. Danny Jansen is fourth among designated hitters. Danny Jansen ISN’T A DH. He literally has not played a single game as a DH. He’s only played 17 games at all, in fact. Come ON.
Well the Yanks are the best team in baseball right now, but it is mostly due to pitching. Only Judge is really an All Star of the position players. So it is kind of an odd year.
Should we go back to in-stadium paper ballots? Maybe it was a little better back then but it still had flaws.
Well sure. Yankee dominance is on both sides of the ball, actually - they lead the AL in scoring - but the offense is very spread around, despite Judge. The Yankees do not lead the AL in WAR at any position except the starting rotation - not even right field, because Aaron Judge only plays there half the time, he’s been in CF a lot. I do know the fans don’t vote for pitchers, but you really can’t explain Blue Jay dominance to this extent. Kirk and Guerrero? Sure. Why is Lourdes Gurriel doing well though? Matt Chapman?
Yes.
Bill James, honestly, solved this problem 35 years ago. His idea was simple and brilliant; do ballots at stadiums, let people stuff the boxes, whatever. But then you don’t rank players by raw votes; you rank them by how they do in each stadium.
So let’s say Yankee and Blue Jay fans stuff the boxes for Jose Trevino and Alejandro Kirk, as you’d expect. Fine. But what happens now is that all the votes cast at Yankee Stadium and Skydome are added up, and the guy in first place gets 10 points, the guy in second 7 points, etc. down to five places or whatever. So Trevino will get 10 points in New York, Kirk 10 points in Toronto, and they likely get 7 points from each other’s home market. It’s more or less inevitable that in a lot of ballparks the home favorite will win the 10 points. What’ll happen though is that fans in OTHER parks will probably rank Alejandro Kirk second on their ballots, and he’ll be elected the starter. Vladdy Guerrero might lose some markets to Ty France. On the other hand, Bo Bichette will not get enough support in other parks to win, and Lourdes Gurriel will do well in Toronto and nowhere else, which is how it should be. A player will need broad support from all markets to be elected. True superstars like Mike Trout or Mookie Betts will likely win other markets straight up and coast.
The Bill James solution was good. I miss the old days when you mailed in the Gillette All Star ballot. If you want to stuff the ballots, it cost you a stamp for each one. Sure, let the fans vote at the stadiums, but only give one ballot per ticket. Better yet, let the coaches pick. They know the players a lot better than the fans. I want to see the best players, not necessarily the most popular ones.
The Yankees are playing the best ball I’ve seen from them in some time. This year’s team seems to have a lot more life to them than the past few years. I don’t know if it’s the chemistry or if they’re just more confident playing behind these pitchers or what. They aren’t afraid to play little ball when they have to, they get their share of homers but I’m seeing a lot more moving guys over, taking the extra base, and even (gasp) laying down a bunt once in a while. They’re getting more offense at catcher than expected, Trevino has been a nice surprise and they’re both quite adequate defensively (sharp contrast to the lost Sanchez years). I think the biggest problem has been lack of productivity from Gallo and Hicks though Hicks seems to be coming around a bit of late. The team is so much more fun to watch than the last couple years, I just wish I lived in the NY market so I could see them more.
Salvador Perez should be a (baseball) household name, IMO.
I’m about 50/50 on this. I’m glad to have seen Chipper Jones at the ASG in person in 2012, even though he was hardly the best 3B available. I love the idea of a team of future Hall of Famers, not a team of “these guys have had a really great first half, and we had to get someone from the As”.
But I also like to see the occasional phenom pitcher who comes out of nowhere, regardless of how the rest of their career pans out.
Yes absolutely want to see the aging legends take a final bow. Maybe allocate a few slots for guys who are likely to retire in the next year or two. Willie Mays was a shadow of himself the last few years of his career but he was still Willie Mays.
Exactly.
The AL outfield is tough. I want to see Judge, Trout, Alvarez and Julio Rodriguez. And you can’t move one of them to DH, because Ohtani. My votes:
American League:
C: Salvy
1B: Vlad
2B: Merrifield
3B: Ramirez
SS: Boegarts
OF: Trout, Judge, Alvarez, J-Rod
UT: Ohtani
SP: Cole, Verlander, Gausman
RP: Clase
National League:
C: Realmuto
1B: Alonso
2B: Jazz
3B: Machado
SS: Turner
OF: Betts, Harper, Soto
UT: Goldschmidt, Acuna
SP: Burnes, Alcantara, Scherzer
RP: Hader, Jansen
I cheated, and I still want to see so many others. I usually vote for long-term stars, because the manager is going to flesh the roster out with guys like Bichette, Tucker, Freeman, Devers, Buxton, etc.
I think we don’t appreciate how many good players are playing right now. I’m going to the Indy Indians game today, and am bummed that Cruz and Roansy already got called up.