Hello. Please pay attention to the Cleveland Guardians. Especially Steven Kwan.
And don’t be all “Hurr, our team swept the Guardians” when you’ve got one more game to lose. 
We will not be swept!
Best record in baseball right now (.727), highest run differential (+52) and a new baby manager who’s just sliding in nicely to take over for one of the greatest managers of all time (Terry Francona).
We’re having fun 
Yeah, I’d have guessed he was already dead.
The concept of “manager” is not a consistent one throughout baseball history. We refer to Connie Mack and John McGraw as “managers,” but they were basically their team’s CEOs and, in McGraw’s case, the team’s primary hitting and fielding coach. Whitey Herzog, while we call him a “manager,” was in a lot of ways closer to John McGraw than he was to any modern manager. Herzog RAN HIS TEAMS, and had the front office attempted to interfere with his duties as field manager he would have torn heads off and ultimately resigned if necessary. He ran star players out of town if they wouldn’t stay off cocaine. In the early part of his Cardinals run he was also the general manager, and everyone knew he had huge influence over the GMs that followed him.
There is no equivalent today. No current manager has any real say over personnel moves, and many of them probably don’t even set lineups or make broad decisions about player usage.
The Blue Jays have a player right now, Daniel Vogelbach, who simply does not play. He has no clear role at all, so he gets an at bat once in a blue moon. The team’s manager, however, has no power, so Vogelbach sits there doing nothing. Whitey would not have tolerated that. He’d have quit first. Every player on his team had to have a purpose. It might be a small role, but he had to have a role, one thing he did well enough that he could always be called upon to do it.
The Blue Jays have been playing all year with only three outfielders on the team, sticking an infielder out there when need be. Kevin Kiermaier, center fielder, got hurt, so they called up rookie Addison Barger… an infielder. Yes, they only have two outfielders.
So in his first game they asked Barger to play left field. He immediately botched his first play, turning a catchable ball into a triple.
In the past week, the Cubs have sent Kyle Hendricks, Seiya Suzuki, Cody Bellinger, Drew Smyly, and Justin Steele to the IL, and designated Garrett Cooper for assignment.
They’ve added Matt Mervis, their top prospect Peter Crow-Armstrong, and Hayden Wesneski from the minors, and Patrick Wisdom has been reinstated from the IL.
Mike Trout leads the league in home runs with 10, but 8 of them are solo shots. Basically a summary of his entire career.
Jackson Holliday is back in the minors.
Since I may not get another chance this year, I’d like to point out that today the Mariners are leading their division.
Royals scored 7 in the top of the ninth at Detroit this afternoon and won 8-0. Two of the runs came home on back-to-back pitches, both of which hit the batter with the bases loaded.
I’ll bet that pitcher feels like a horse’s patoot.
Whew. Cringes all around I’m sure!
The Guardians have been trying to get our CF and RF settled. Steven Kwan is firmly set as an amazing LF. We got rid of our CF Miles Straw who was great in the field but just a letdown at the plate (6 HR over 6 years in the MLB). So now we’re just trying dudes out but they are all working pretty well. And we got Ramon Laureano from Oakland who knows his way around RF.
Anyway, there’s been a lot of talk about how we have to train outfielders and get someone ready for CF and have people ready to fill in for Kwan and Laureano. I guess we got a coach specifically for that. Being someone who ended their career in AAA Girls’ softball, it just never occurred to me the nuances between each position. I mean, it’s the outfield - you chase down balls and you catch 'em.
But hearing from the guys who are being trained in CF, and the manager talking about them, I guess there’s a ton to know about how balls come off bats and how they curve and whatnot. Tyler Freeman (our new CF) said the other day after a play where he had to reach to the side and back for a ball “he hit it off the end of the bat and as a rightie if you hit it off the end of the bat it’s going to spin the other way, and I didn’t recognize it at first.”
Pretty cool, the ins and outs and nuances of the outfield.
Anyway, I’m sure you guys all knew all that and I’m a big dummy for being fascinated but it’s really nothing I ever really considered before!
BTW the Guardians are still in first place with the best record in the AL and highest run differential! (Royals creepin’ up on those runs tho what?!)
We’ll be playing the best team in the NL this weekend, Atlanta. Yay?
He’ll be fine. Baseball is hard, and he was the second youngest player in the majors. Jackson Chourio is the only player younger than him in the majors, but has already had several years in the minors versus Holliday’s one.
His big-league teammates Rutchsmann, Gunnar Henderson, and Colton Cowser all did very poorly their first trip up, and they are all now crushing every ball they see.
I don’t doubt it a bit. Hell, Pete Crow-Armstrong went 0 for 14 during his first call-up, and has been knocking the cover off the ball since he got called up to replace Cody Bellinger.
Today’s Nationals-Marlins game features six players in the starting lineups hitting under .200. Including Christian Bethancourt, who is 0 for the season.
Finally! Judge, Stanton, Rizzo, and Verdugo all homer in the same game. This team could be the reincarnation of Murderer’s Row if they could all get hot at once. What a cold couple of weeks it has been for the Yankee offense.
Absolutely crazy game today between the Nationals and Marlins, Nationals now winning 9-7 after being down 7 runs.
And another 15 runs today already and Judge has gone 3 for 4 with a homer and got his average up to .211 finally.
17 hits already.
What team is this?
The team with a tiny 1 game lead in the AL East. The Yankees.
MLB is going to address the uniform situation after numerous complaints. The changes are expected to take effect no later than the start of the 2025 season.
Here’s a novel idea- get MLB out of the business of dictating uniforms to the teams. Let them find their own suppliers and made to their own specifications.