Both New York teams and both LA teams are leading their respective divisions. No major surprises except maybe the Rockies doing slightly better and the White Sox doing slightly worse than I expected.
The weather will warm up soon, right? Horrible night for Cubs v White Sox.
Watching the Rangers and they sure are playing better so far this season. Still a work in progress but better. Watching with closed captions because I’m old and hard of hearing and the neighbors might not be Rangers fans. Dave Raymond said “Woody has been encouraging the players to swing with intent.” The CC typist (is it a machine?) wrote “Woody has been encouraging the players to swing within tent.” Nice mental image, no?
I suppose the Curse of Bob Short may have been lifted with the Nats’ World Series title of 2019. Still, 1970 stings. 35 years is a long time to go without baseball.
Yanks had a big rally late at the expense of Toronto’s bullpen and defense. 11 straight wins now. Lead the majors in Wins and winning pct.
#2 in Team OPS. #1 in HR & RBIs. Amazingly only 13th in Ks.
At the same time, #2 in ERA, #4 in Ks, #19 in BBs.
All this leads to a narrow lead in Run differential!
Tonight’s game favors the Yanks as far as the pitching matchup. Nestor Cortes who is off to a great start with a 1.31 ERA, .87 WHIP, 28 Ks & 5 innings per start vs. Yusei Kikuchi who has a 5.52 ERA, 1.91 WHIP and 13 Ks. Averaging only 3.2 innings per start and the bullpen is the Blue Jays weakness.
The bullpen has been solid actually, despite last night. Their weakness has been the offense, surprisingly enough.
Sorry, I was taking the long term view from what I saw before the season started. I thought they lacked bullpen depth to be as good as many of the experts were predicting. Oddly, hitting is suppose to be a very big strength for them, which is scary as they probably will get cranking.
Considering how many things have gone wrong - Teoscar hurt, Danny Jansen hurt, the offense sputtering, Brad Zimmer and Cavan Biggio have been disasters, Raimel Tapia is atrocious, Hyun-Jin Ryu hurt, and the hardest schedule in MLB so far - I am absolutely delighted with 15-10.
I was going to also note Matt Chapman has been the Matt Chapman of 2020-2021 instead of the 2018-2019 one we were hoping for, but he literally hit a home run as I was typing this so that seemed overly negative at this moment.
I know the weather is awful, I’m watching Angels vs Red Sox. Is Fenway Park nicer in person than it seems on TV? It looks the worst of both worlds: an older park and yet advertising everywhere.
Fenway is not a great park, it is just old. Lots wrong with it.
Wrigley is a grand old park.
Washington Nationals continue to struggle. Last night’s game had an odd quirk - the Nats pitcher Patrick Corbin pitched a complete game loss. I would think that that is fairly uncommon.
Red Sox pitcher Matt Young once not only pitched a complete game loss, but he threw a no-hitter! (with lots of walks). But yeah, pretty rare nowadays.
Young only went eight innings - the Sox were on the road - so MLB doesn’t recognize it was an official no hitter anymore.
Seven walks, yipes.
The Reds are now 3 and 22, nearing record ineptitude. Their hitting is poor and their pitching is awful.
But take heart, reds fans! The 1973 Cardinals started off 5 and 20 and were in first place (by half a game) by the All-Star break!
Seems…unlikely…that the Reds will emulate the '73 Cardinals. But hey! Ya never know. (Yeah, okay, in this case you do…)
I’m not a big fan of Fenway, though I know many people like it. The high walls make it feel rather prison-like from the main seating areas. I found it disappointing in general. Agree with @What_Exit – Wrigley is better if you want an old ballpark. (Tiger Stadium was as well.) (Though it’s way better than the Metrodome, Exhibition Stadium, and particularly Olympic Stadium in Montreal.) Just my two cents.
So, did Corbin pitch a complete game yesterday?
Yes. Here: MLB Baseball Player Stats & Stats Leaders - Complete Games.
He and Buehler are the pitchers with CGs so far.
There have been 5-inning complete games. That stat isn;t dependent on whether a game went a full nine innings.
OK. No-hitters have to go nine innings. Complete games can go as few as five innings. Anyone see a discrepancy here?
Those stats seem inconsistent (I know, I know - welcome to baseball!). If he pitched a complete game and no hits were recorded, then he pitched a no-hitter. The game went 9. It’s just that Cleveland was ahead and didn’t have to bat.
Darn you @jaycat! 
Yes, but ‘complete’ game is a somewhat trivial stat. A no-hitter should be 27 outs, or more. Getting 24 outs isn’t a comparable feat.
For consistency, a complete game should be 9 innings or more, rather than degrading the achievement of a no-hitter with shorter performances.
ETA: Jeez, there have only been 2 complete games so far this season? Yikes.
FYI there are a lot of free games on the MLB app today:
MLB.TV | Live Stream Baseball Games | MLB.com
If you’re lucky, you could get to see the Reds win their fourth game of the year!