Marquee match-ups

assuming I get in from Iowa on time, J0rdan and I should be seeing Sale vs Oswalt on the South Side Tuesday night.

Saw Volquez vs. Latos tonight - top notch.

will put on Yu v Sale now

well 4-3 in the 2nd, so much for that

Hamels v Sheets is close, but Cole's thrown more balls than strikes at this point.

trying to root for Philths this weekend, not easy

:O

Kershaw-Vogelsong should be good. I missed the obvious limitation of this thread when I opened it up: it's the same 12-15 names shuffled around.

Halladay-Hudson could go anywhere.

u forgot that the Philthies are in total punkass mode.

Which of the three words in "could go anywhere" didn't you read?

Hard to get a more statistically even match-up in the most basic columns than Bumgarner vs. Kershaw:

ERA -- 2.97 (B) / 2.90 (K)
IP -- 164 (B) / 171 (K)
H/9 -- 7.4 (B) / 6.9 (K)
K/BB -- 4.7 (B) / 3.9 (K)
W/L% -- .650 (B) / .647 (K)

And they have identical WHIPs of 1.014.

who wouldve thunk - david price vs.............luke hochevar

... and the mighty Royals come out on top!

Cueto/Miley = Cy Young/ROY?

It was a good matchup. Johnny Cueto pretty much did what he has done all year. Cueto is so much more efficient than he was in past years and seems to have another gear he can get into later in the game. He was filthy in his last inning which was the 7th.

Wade Miley pitched a pretty good game. He works really fast and throws strikes. I don't know if it is his motion, but there is something about his motion that seems to confuse hitters on where the pitch is going to be located. He got quite few swings and misses for a guy that tops out around 91-92. Really just gave up some singles and lost one run on an error by the D-back shortstop. Chris Welsh was impressed stating he reminded him quite a bit of former Red left-hander Tom Browning.

Verlander-Sale, a game separating their teams at the top; best match-up since Dickey-Sabathia a couple of months ago.

If you were watching the ESPN broadcast, you caught an amazing statistic: other teams are hitting .131 against Verlander after he passes 100 pitches. (Not that small a sample, either, seeing as he's exceeded 100 every start this year.)

Hell of a dugout tantrum from Sale. He looked psychopathic after he gave up that HR to Delmon Young.

Verlander-Sale again

Rained out

Verlander and Sale ended up crushing the Twins and Indians (no runs allowed by either) instead of facing each other ... too bad.

Verlander/Anderson (on ESPN tonight) qualifies, right?

The best starter in the NL is going tonight, if anyone's interested. vs. Josh Johnson, but still.

I had to think for 30 seconds on who Anderson is.

"Mister Anderson"

Darvish-Greinke in a few

Scherzer-Harvey on TV today.

Aargh--looking forward to Scherzer/Harvey/Cabrera all day, I've got the Red Sox-Dodgers instead. I guess the reasoning is that the Jays are actively pursuing the Red Sox for a divisional crown.

scherzer!

through four:

harvey 8 H, 2 K
scherzer 1 H, 8 K

two pretty good rookies about to get going, Fernandez vs. Teheran

Good call--lead story on cnnsi.com this morning.

http://mlb.si.com/2013/08/31/mariners-taijuan-walker-wins-debut/?sct=mlb_t11_a2

Didn't realize it was Scherzer-Sale tonight.

Cliff Lee vs. Kris Medlen right now is a real beauty. Scoreless, 3 hits total, 11 Ks for Lee and Medlen just gave up his first hit in the 6th.

Lee's final line: 8 IP, 3 hits, 13 K, 0 BB, 1 run. May qualify as a tough loss.

Game time 2:07

almost feel bad for clifton, but then not

Game scores: Medlen 83, Lee 85

Hell of a game, nice heart-attack moment from Janish in the 9th.

less sympathy for a guy who can't decide whether to pitch in Philly or Arlington, two shitholes of the universe.

tbf he didn't go to miami/the bronx, but yeah

Kershaw and Fister tomorrow night could be great.

?

doug fister's having kind of a ho hum season right?

his peripherals suck, but 12-5, 2.55 always looks nice

in any case, he's hardly a match for kershaw, who will now probably give up nine straight hits

Posnanski had an interesting column on Fister a week or two ago--basically that the Tigers traded him because of a baseball-wide "deep suspicion and profound lack of confidence in pitchers who cannot throw 90 mph."

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/the-need-the-need-for-speed/

I look at Buehrle's collapse here and I think, "There's good reason for that--eventually, your unimposing stuff catches up with you." But for the moment at least, Fister's year looks pretty good to me (I'll call the ERA and K/BB ratio a trade-off with a hit-per-inning). He's not Kershaw, no.

(Related note on how different things once were. I started watching Mark Fidrych's famous Monday night game in 1976--someone sent me a DVD of the complete game a few years ago, but it wouldn't play on my old DVD, so I let it sit there; it plays on the newer one. Holtzman was starting for the Yankees; it was his third start for them after coming over from the Orioles. They flashed his stats before the game: 5-5, 2.92, 114 IP, 116 H, 36 BB, 29 K. That's 2.2 K/9. Science-fiction.)

fister's strikeout and hr rates are of concern, but he's a solid 'back end' starter, and at the moment probably rather better than a combination of buck farmer and robbie ray

those are two names you made up, right?

http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/David+Dombrowski+Jim+Leyland+Announces+Retirement+NahGKx-AzFpl.jpg

Farmer and Ray are now out of the picture. Enter Kyle Lobstein.

"Lobstein's the fifth guy right now," Ausmus said. "We'll see how Lobber, how Kyle throws and we'll go from there."

the ol' lobber

Gausman-Rodon, maybe. Gausman has been consistently mediocre as of late--Game Scores between 41-54 in seven of his last eight starts.

both guys that had an elite season in SF and then went straight to the AL East.

I'm a day late here, but SI's cover 50 years ago:

https://i.postimg.cc/DwNKhg7W/seaver.jpg

I'm not sure if they were ever matched up head-to-head; Seaver faced Cuellar twice in the '69 WS, and I think Palmer retired before Seaver moved over to the A.L. Those motions...would have been a fine marquee match-up.

Hah, amazing...They overlapped for one season, 1984; Palmer's last year, Seaver with the White Sox. Palmer barely pitched in '84--three starts, 17.2 IP for the season--but one of those starts was against Chicago, and, sure enough--wouldn't doubt that the two teams lined up their rotations so this would happen--Seaver was the opposing starter:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA198404230.shtml

Attendance: 16,939.

i feel like even back then that was very bad

That'd work out to somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4 million for the season, which probably would have been pretty good for the White Sox then (or most teams outside of NY/LA/Boston/Cubs). But considering the match-up, not much. I remember that part of the story that went with that cover was the rough seasons both Seaver and Palmer had in '74; both went on to win the Cy in '75. Palmer pitched 10 shutouts!

Okay--back to Skenes and Skubal and the marquee matchups of today.

Kershaw-Scherzer Friday night.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6531078/2025/08/06/clayton-kershaw-max-scherzer-rookie-meeting-diamondbacks-dodgers/?campaign=14496169&source=athletic_targeted_email&userId=3098904

(Probably paywalled, sorry.)

If you can't read it, here's the punchline of their first match-up as rookies in 2008: "Imagine going to the ballpark to see a game between Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson, but get disappointed they get scratched for a young Max Scherzer and a young Clayton Kershaw." That's who was bumped for them.

wheeler/skubal was a good one from a couple of days ago

Deinitely--in a world without Paul Skenes, probably the two Cy Young winners (although Sanchez leads the NL in bWAR).

As excited as I am about Scherzer/Kershaw, even if they're both sharp, they're basically five-inning pitchers now. It'd be a miracle if both--maybe even either--lasted into the 7th.

I'm hyping this enough to guarantee that they'll both be knocked out in the second inning:

https://www.mlb.com/news/clayton-kershaw-and-max-scherzer-historic-pitching-matchup

They've each gone 6+ in 3 of their 5 most recent starts! I am romantic enough to believe, seeing the other on the bump is enough to timewarp each individual to their prime selves for one final start

well, it wasn't a miracle but it wasn't 5 innings either. Max was pretty wild and did well to survive a turbulent 1st, did well to limit it to a mookie homerun (fingers crossed he's finally back to form). Kersh threw a typical 2025 start: mostly soft contact, not many strikeouts, lots of nasty breaking stuff outside the zone getting wiffs for a 2 strike weak contact grounder. Got BABIP'd for his 1 run but fair enough when you're working with an arsenal of soft stuff.

Considering where both Scherzer and Kershaw are in their careers, that game more than lived up to the hype.

They were both good. Between the HR and the line-drive DP, felt like the Jays got beat by Betts more than Kershaw--might have been 3-0 if Betts doesn't make that play. Of course, Schneider's catch bailed out Scherzer too.

I'll probably be miserable all day.

:(

Gray vs. Imanaga is scratching some itches.

Gausman (excellent in four of his last five starts) vs. Skenes (Paul Skenes).

Skubal-Brown (#1 and #3 in A.L. pitching bWAR).

Combined line for Skubal-Brown:

13 IP, 8 H, 5 BB, 16 K, 0 runs (Skubal was better); still 0-0, headed into the 10th.

(2nd half) Snell vs. Skenes tomorrow

Not sure what the quality will be, but big name matchup of Ohtani/Verlander on Friday

skenes/greene tonight

Gausman/Misiorowski tonight.

mclean/yamamoto :)

Real!

Skenes vs. Wheeler, obviously.

Did not expect Skenes to be the one to give up 5

Unless there's a rainout, I think I'll be seeing him Sunday at Rogers.

https://www.mlb.com/news/cam-schlittler-vs-trey-yesavage-preview

It says "marquee matchup" right in the second paragraph.

after some delay, final lines:
Schittler: 6 IP, 2 ER, 8 H, 2 BB, 7 K
Yesavage: 6 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 0 BB, 8 K

struck out Judge 3x

And then Varland a fourth time.

Aw, Yesavage has been pushed back a day. Him vs. Sale would have been a good one tomorrow.