2018 regular-season game chatter

phillies have hit four homers in four innings and are getting killed

six games for urena

piddly ass

in the NHL you get 10 games (in a season half as long) just for coming off the bench during a brawl, whether you hit anyone or not. (certain fourth-liners -- and they know who they are -- will do it anyway if someone important is being overwhelmed.)

i'm not sure what the suspension guidelines are vis-a-vis the players union, but acuña's just as much a member as ureña is (as were darvish and yuli gurriel in the world series last year). but six games is a joke -- he might miss one start, and if he games the appeal process, not even that. and he's playing for a shitty team with nothing to lose, unlike the braves, if they were to retaliate

baseline of 15 games for starters in a cut-and-dry case like this and go from there imo. and fine everyone who came out of the bullpen

Basebrawls aren’t even interesting

Especially if you’re an outfielder, apparently.

Mookie otm. Plunking is dumb. It's going to be a 101 mph fastball to the head one day.

MLB must be talking to announcers who keep plain or tacitly promoting those pre-historic baseball ideals also, the irony that it happened to a Braves player wasn't lost on me.

Jose Urethra:
How about suspending a starting pitcher 5 starts instead of 5 or 10 games for a severe infraction? That has some impact to a team vs a suspension of 5 to 10 games where the pitcher will miss 1 start maybe 2.

Jeff Sullivan:
Suspensions aren’t about games missed as much as they’re about salary missed. If you suspend Urena five times as long as you’d suspend a position player, that means Urena is forfeiting five times as much salary. How is that fair, from a player perspective?

Not to mention that the impact a starting pitcher can make in one game is roughly equivalent to the impact a position player can make over four or five games, anyhow

I’m not arguing the idea of sending a stronger message; I hate things like what Urena did, and I think he should face a more severe penalty. But it’s not going to be easy for MLB to establish a new precedent, given that this is how things operate now, and if Manfred came out and suspended Urena for the rest of the year, the union wouldn’t be happy about it.

cubs and pirates just split a four-game series in which pittsburgh scored five runs and chicago scored four

Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler and Steven Matz were not pitching Sunday. So why not take a seat in the stands? From @Cut4:https://t.co/RZnTuwptlN

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) August 20, 2018

<3

If following occurs rest of way there’d be 8-way tie at 88 wins for NL best record, just to show how close it is (since I like chaos I am rooting for this):#Braves 20-19#Phillies 20-18#Cubs 17-22#Brewers 19-17#Cardinals 20-17#Diamondbacks 19-18#Rockies 20-18#Dodgers 21-16

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) August 20, 2018

I’m just going to predict right now that a NL team will win the 2018 World Series

#teamentropy

by pythagorean record / run differential, the mariners are maybe the luckiest team ever?

https://i.imgur.com/OrJamit.png?1

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-mariners-still-look-like-an-all-time-anomaly/

https://i.imgur.com/R3rEJGQ.png?1

lol the 2017 padres

edwin diaz is amazing tho

one-run games:
OAK 26-10 (.722)
ATL 16-8  (.667)
SEA 31-16 (.660)
two-run games:
SEA 16-3 (.842)
LAA 4-23 (.148)
games decided by more than three runs:
SEA 13-28 (.317)

I'm 100% in the Rockies-as-NL-West-Champs bandwagon.

today the Cards and Brewers have the NL WC lead

lol matheny

ex-mgr of the year

Current Fangraphs projected standings have ATL, CHC and ARI winning their divisions (88, 92 and 89 wins) followed by these:

LAD 88
STL 88
MIL 87
PHI 87
COL 87

Could be quite a scrum.

whoever the commentator is in this facebook live stream of the rangers/a's game: "so the rangers are looking much more ... hitter-ish ... today"

yasiel just snapped the bat over his knee, very finely executed

BOS-NYY in London, June 29-30

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/2019-mlb-schedule-released-yankees-red-sox-in-london-albert-pujols-st-louis-homecoming-among-key-dates-series/

I wonder if they'll get any jetlag days before and after those games.

as you might suspect, yes. per BOS schedule, 2 before and 1 after.

kinda wonder what sort of input the union has on such things

spanish soccer players are considering striking because la liga unilaterally decided to stage a regular season game in the US

i assumed it was part of the last CBA, as with the opening games in Japan

I wonder if they'll get any jetlag days before and after those games.

― a shomin-geki poster with some horror elements (WilliamC)

London's nothing compared to Japan. Only 2 hours more than PST.

matt holliday is starting for the rockies this afternoon

for a sec i thought you meant pitching

Only in Japanese high school baseball? A two-run game-ending suicide squeeze.

https://deadspin.com/japanese-high-school-team-advances-to-the-semifinals-on-1828530452

The other team immediately committed sudoku after the game.

a calculated act, no doubt

via David Laurila of FG:

Going into (Saturday) night, Max Scherzer had a record of 52-19 and a 2.95 FIP since the start of the 2016 season. Corey Kluber had a record of 52-19 and a 2.99 FIP.

Yanks defense looked terrible against White Sox tonight. Tim Anderson pretty much had a speed in little league type at bat and trip around the bases while the Yanks tried to find the ball.

strength of schedule the rest of the way

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/strength-of-schedule-and-the-pennant-races/

xp the yanks have a tendency to look like a little league team in the field sometimes, which could be an unfortunate result of having so many youngsters out there at once.

but honestly it was super embarrassing--higashioka couldn't locate a ball that was one foot from him and anderson stole home, voit misplays a ball on an infield in with no outs--not only did the runner score but the hitter made it to second.

i could go on

Half their starters are on the shelf but yeah it’s pretty grim out there. Boone has also not been managing the transition from starters-> the greatest bullpen of all time (tm)

sometimes people ask what the definition is of a competitive at-bat pic.twitter.com/xUyQDLYwQx

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) August 29, 2018

Tyler White's walk off HR was hit 96 MPH at a 44 degree launch angle... Hit probability 1%. Similar batted balls were HRs 0% of the time. #MinuteMaidSpecial

— Daren Willman (@darenw) August 29, 2018

yeah saw that live, I thought for sure it was a lazy fly to left

what is . . . ~bunting~

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-do-you-see-2

https://bastian.mlblogs.com/covering-the-bases-game-133-2e4f31d06dda

look at that shift lolol

Stanton is the fifth fastest (not youngest) to 300 HR: Ralph Kiner (1,087 ganes), Ryan Howard (1,093), Juan Gonzalez (1,096), Alex Rodriguez (1,117), and then Stanton (1,119).

Also the ninth youngest (28 years, 295 days).

is anyone else struggling with the mlb app's gameday audio lately (like over the past couple of weeks)? way more buffering and "playback failed" errors, to the point where it's almost unusable? or just me