It’s May 1, so I start looking at the standings as well as my fantasy teams.
So far, I find the new rules amazing except for the silly ghost runner. I’ll be happy if the AL East stays with the Rays on top or at least anyone but the Yankees.
Bryce Harper returns tonight Bryce Harper reportedly cleared for Phillies return just 159 days after Tommy John surgery
Now that we have a full month of games played under the new rules, according to this summary page from Baseball Reference:
Seems about right. I’ve watched perhaps 10 or 12 games, and have seen only one of each violation.
I thought the pitch clock might create some stress while watching (like in the NFL when the damn quaterbacks can’t seem to stop futzing around and just run the play)
In practice, though, it’s easy to forget it’s even there most of the time and just enjoy a nicer pace of the game.
I also suspect that, as the season goes on, the players will get increasingly accustomed to the pitch clock, and the new pace of play, and any “stress” will be further reduced.
Also, related to stolen bases: Ronald Acuna Jr. is currently leading the majors with 13 stolen bases, and there are eight players with 10+ steals.
Projecting out to a full season, that’d give Acuna about 62 steals, and those guys with 10 steals today would be stealing 50-ish over the course of the year. Definitely an increase over recent history, but no one’s yet threatening Henderson-levels of steals. 
Apologies if this was mentioned in last month’s thread, although I couldn’t find it via a search.
I thought that my Royals were bad (they are), but they are not the worst team in baseball thus far. That dubious honor belongs to the A’s, who, entering May, are 6 and 23. (Royals are 7 and 22).
9 days ago, after 21 games, the A’s had scored 73 runs and allowed 173. That is the quickest in MLB history that a team has allowed 100 more runs than it has scored.
The much-maligned (including by me) Patrick Corbin went 7 innings against the Cubs today, giving up just 3 hits and 2 runs.
So the Orioles have played a weak schedule, yada yada yada, but they still have the 3rd-best record in MLB as of right now, after holding the 2nd spot for a decent while, which means they’re at least beating up on the weaker teams. The starting pitching overall is suspect at best, but they’ve once again quietly built a great bullpen. They’ll probably regress a bit as the schedule gets harder, but it’s a lot better position to be in going into a tougher stretch than where they started last season. They seem to have picked up right where they left off last year.
I still realistically don’t expect that much out of them, but signs are all indicating they will be a tough out this season and a legit problem next year and going forward from there.
Since Eric Hosmer and Trey Mancini have underperformed offensively for the Cubs thus far, Chicago promoted its #6 overall prospect, 1B/DH Matt Mervis, who cracked an RBI single in his first game.
The Cardinals, who spent $85 million to sign three-time All-Star catcher Wilson Contreras, have decided to move him to outfielder/DH, replacing him with Andrew Knizner, who’s played 198 games in four years with the club and has a lifetime BA of .202.
Starting 10-24 will make you try weird things. Who could have expected the Cards to be this bad?
They’ve had big problems with pitching, but their pitching staff hasn’t been all that different from last season, and is performing well below expectations. One difference is that they have a new pitching coach this year. Another, of course, is that, for the first season in forever, they haven’t had Yadier Molina as catcher.
The A’s are selling Summer Passes for $99 for 37 games. $2.68 for each game.
They barely had him last year, though - he played 77 games at catcher.
Vida Blue, who’d been a star pitcher for the A’s championship teams in the 1970s, and who won both the AL Cy Young and MVP awards in 1971, has died, at age 73. It looks like this is breaking news, and the ESPN story has few details.
I’m actually in the middle of reading Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic which is a book covering the A’s in the early 70s. Started reading it after the Vegas news and I now I get an alert to Blue’s death.
He was the last switch hitter to win the AL MVP.
That is a GREAT piece of trivia, and a fact of which I was not aware.
Of course, in 1971 he had 121 plate appearances and had 12 hits, and batted .118.
in a move that I said was going to be inevitable :
I wonder if thats why they didn’t spend much in the offseason …
That’s a pretty speculative piece. The move itself would make a lot of sense, but that is an article about another article, about an anonymous polling of MLB execs.
” One in-the-know person confidently told McDaniel that it’s thought Ohtani and/or his camp will “use” the San Diego Padres and New York Mets “to run up the price” before the 2021 American League Most Valuable Player signs with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“He wants to and will go with the Dodgers,” that unnamed individual explained.”