Sign of the Apocalypse # 23756 - The A’s beat the Braves 7-2.
Since a reliever got the win, Oakland’s starting pitchers still have a record of 2 wins and 22 losses (not counting pitchers on the IL, in which case it would apparently be 2-26). Amazingly, Athletics’ “closer”, Jeurys Familia has only 1 loss.
I didn’t know this until I just looked at Familia’s season stats, but he was DFA’d in early May. Besides his 1 loss, he had 0 wins, 2 Saves, 1 Hold, and 2 Blown Saves this season in 14 appearances.
Huh. That’s what I get for relying on Baseball Reference and Google for up-to-date baseball news.
And Marcus Stroman threw a one-hit complete game shutout in the Cubs’ 1-0 win over the team with the best record in MLB. Wander Franco led off the 7th with a bloop single, which was the only Tampa Bay hit.
The lowly Kansas City had a perfect game going into the 8th inning, and ended up 2-hitting the Cardinals on the way to a 7 - 0 win.
In the good news category, Liam Hendricks returns to the mound after battling cancer:
Liam Hendriks returns to big league mound after cancer battle (mlb.com)
That’s very cool.
So the A’s are now on a blistering 32-120 pace. That was their only blowout win this year, and only the third game they have won by more than one run.
Can the Blue Jays just fucking release Anthony “Popcorn Boy” Bass already? Aside from being a shit pitcher, Bass embarrassed the team earlier this season with his weird “flight attendant made my wife clean up” social media claims. Then a few days ago he shared an insane Instagram post (shared it, it was made by someone else) in which the person said Target was in league with Satan to make kids gay. That not an exaggeration; it literally said that. Today he “apologized,” but why the Jays just don’t cut his sorry ass I cannot fathom.
That’s only 152 games.
That should be 32-130.
They have won two in a row! I believe that is their longest winning streak of the year.
That is correct. But it’s their SECOND two-game winning streak.
And, with these two victories, they are now on pace to win 34 games this season.
On a walk off no less. A walk off error, but still.
I’m disappointed. They’re gonna do something boring like go 50-112.
Ah missed that. They should make a movie about it.
Another fun stat. The A’s do not have a losing streak of less than two games.
Patrick Corbin gives up 3 runs to the Dodgers on his first 7 pitches of the game. Somehow, the Nats are up 8-5 in the 8th.
Alas, two games is still their longest winning streak of the year. They lost to the Braves today.
Corbin didn’t have a great start and yet his ERA barely changed.
Washington’s insistence on sending Corbin out there every fifth day is about as clear cut an example of sunk cost fallacy as one can name in MLB. He is NOT going to get better; he’s a replacement level pitcher at best, and that is now a permanent fact. He’s 33 and his stuff is no longer good enough to consistently fool major league hitters. Why the Nats are wasting innings on this guy… well, again, sunk cost fallacy, I guess.
Sadly, he’s not nearly their worst starter. Both Chad Kuhl and Jake Irvin have higher ERAs.
He has improved this season though. In 2022, his ERA was 6.3, as of today it’s 4.9. The NL overall ERA is about 4.5, so he’s gone from about the worst to a little below average.
Yeah - his ERA+ this season is 85, so he’s about 15% worse than the average pitcher.