Did you actually stay up until nearly 4 AM to watch that? I would be beyond pissed… I consider myself blessed to live in a place where all the games start by 7:30 at the latest. I don’t know what I’d do if games didn’t *start * until after 10 PM.
5-0 shutout of the Lovable Losers, Yadi gets 2 homers, Waino gets a win and a shutout for his ERA.
It was a good day.
Announcers and sportswriters love to say that a particular player “was just a triple short of a cycle.”
It always reminds me of those McDonalds Monopoly giveaways. “I’m just Marven Gardens [or whatever] away from a Maserati!” Well, okay, but there’s a reason you don’t have Marven Gardens–they hardly distributed any of them. Same with a triple. I always roll my eyes a little when I hear someone do the “just a triple short” thing.
Anyway, today Michael Conforto of the Mets was “just a *single *short of a cycle.” He had a double, a homer, and the elusive triple, but not a single single. Now that’s a case where the “just a ____ short” phrasing seems justified.
(In fact, I would suspect there have been more full cycles in the history of baseball than there have been instances of a player hitting a double, a triple, and a homer, but no single.)
Regression to the mean is finally catching up with the Orioles.
They’ve lost their last four games, all by exactly 1 run.
Jeter’s retirement ceremony was well down last night. Shame Tanaka & Severino were terrible yesterday though. At least the Yanks took 1.
It’s awfully early to talk about this, but I and a friend were discussing “who would the Blue Jays All-Star be?” Every team has to have one.
It is, to my mind pretty decisively, Kevin Pillar. Pillar is on pace for a legitimately terrific season. He’s playing way better baseball than I thought him capable of.
Marco Estrada is also in the running, I guess. Which, again, I never would have imagined.
Pillar’s worthy, but your post makes me think back to some truly crappy All Stars. I wonder who the worst ever All Star player was. As a Red Sox fan I think back to Scott Cooper, the third baseman after Boggs left. He was the lone Red Sox All Star rep two years in a row, and he sucked.
Surely Alfredo Griffin is the odds on winner, in 1984? The year he played the whole season and only drew four walks?
Of course, if you don’t know the story, the reason Alfredo got put on the All-Star roster is he had a ticket to the game. His friend Damaso Garcia, who’d been selected on merit, invited Alfredo to come along, and so he did. But then Alan Trammell got hurt, and couldn’t play, so Joe Altobelli named Alfredo to the team because, well, he was in town.
Way too early to be talking about the WS but I have had this weird feeling over the past 2 years that a karma series between Houston and St Louis might be coming sometime in the next few years. Houston sweeping St Louis in the World Series - unthinkable two years ago when the hacker-gate scandal was exposed - could actually somehow happen.
Wow, I did not know that story. Checking his b-ref, his OPS+ that year was 48. One of the worst years of his career, and his only All Star appearance. Yeah, he’s probably the worst ever.
I’m pretty sure that he was a fans’ selection to the All-Star Game in 1983, but Reggie Jackson had an awful year that year. His batting average was .194, and ISTR that it was sub-.200 at the time of the game (I remember the announcers commenting on his inclusion likely being the result of his reputation, rather than his performance that season). He only hit 14 home runs in 116 games, his slugging percentage was only .340, his OPS+ was 74 (after being 147 in '82), and his WAR was -1.8.
Hoyt pitched again - a mere 2 strikeouts in 1.1 innings, giving him 18 in 8 innings.
I briefly tuned into the Astros-Marlins game last night, and found an endless interview going on in the booth while a baseball game was happening somewhere in the background.
Apparently sharing giggles with Tony Perez was so important, that it was deemed a distraction to show what was taking place on the field (Jose Altuve was up with the bases loaded). They did condescend to flash back to baseball for brief snatches and to show a split screen so we wouldn’t miss a second of the interview snorts and cackles.
Altuve, not realizing how insignificant his role was in the night’s entertainment, singled to knock in two runs. But ESPN quickly got back on track with more fascinating insights from Tony and the gang.
I’d suggest Mark Redman, the Royals’ obligatory All-Star in 2006. He had a 5.27 ERA at the All-Star break, and it was 5.95 as recently to that as June 20.
ESPN is the station that kept Joe Morgan on the air despite organized protest and currently has the just as dumb Jon Gruden doing football. ESPN is the Troll of stations. They deliberately see how far they can push us. They have offered terrible coverage for decades now. It takes a lot to be worse than Fox with Joe Buck & all those years of McCarver, but ESPN has steadily won as the worst sportscasting network.
Reggie was brutal that year but I will give him a pass over Griffin because he was a star. He was coming off a home run title and was already a pretty clear cut Hall of Famer. Griffin had no such pedigree and the circumstances of his selection are comical.
Mark Redman, though, might be an even worse choice. He was a very strange selection indeed. The Royals were a dreadful team and had no worthy All-Stars, but they had some guys who at least were good players, like Emil Brown or Mark Grudzielanek.
ETA: The Scott Cooper example is equally puzzling in retrospect, but Cito Gaston was picking those teams and he was quite determined to bring as many Blue Jays as humanly possible, which messed up some of the positions.
In fun history facts; tonight the Jays got back to back bombs from catcher Luke Maile and pitcher Marcus Stroman.
Now, you might think a Blue Jay pitcher hitting a home run is the most amazing part, but that did happen just 14 years ago (Mark Hendrickson.)
What’s rather more amazing is just that a catcher and his pitcher went back to back - that has not happened since 1970.
I still don’t understand how baseball allows pitchers to intentionally hit batters and stay in the game.
I don’t know if it’s an official rule but it seems like there’s generally a process that involves a warning first and then ejection. The warning isn’t necessarily issued during or between innings - I’ve seen games where teams were already fired up at each other over something that occurred the previous game(s) and were warned before the first pitch, and sure enough, some guy gets popped and the ejections start.
Betting on the A’s last night would have been the easiest money ever on a sports bet. The Red Sox were favored for some reason (-110). The game was in Oakland, the Sox were coming from a 2 game series in an NL park (St. Louis) with no days rest. So the schedule alone is unfavorable, but throw in the fact that Boston’s starting pitcher was making his MLB debut…like I said, easy money.
The good news is David Price is the starting pitcher today. The bad news is that it’s for AAA Pawtucket.