then coronavirus happened, 2020 baseball

Uhhhh what the fuck is this @Athletics @AthleticsPR?? Good on Liam for shutting that shit down but your guy is throwing up a Nazi salute, twice. Don’t care if it’s a joke, that’s not cool. Everyone in that uniform is setting an example, and this is bullshit. pic.twitter.com/YnllNST2Py

— Robert (@robert_etc) August 6, 2020

wtf

I had to do a double take when I saw Bundy’s line. Who is even going 9 innings right now?!

you can read the replies this time

MLB has announced schedule changes for a number of teams that have been affected by postponements: pic.twitter.com/TSnZ9N6uzf

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) August 6, 2020

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/08/cardinals-postponed-again-covid-19-outbreak.html

A plane banner reading "Houston Asterisks" will fly over the Coliseum in Oakland before the Astros game today

— 2020 Astros Shame Tour (@AsteriskTour) August 7, 2020

*settles in after a hard week of work*

alright, ready for the cardinals to finally play a game tonight, here we go boys

oh

guess i'll go paint a plant, fuck

Zack Greinke must really hate his teammates 😂 pic.twitter.com/efuA8zQaEA

— The Rickey Henderson of Blogs (@RickeyBlog) August 8, 2020

This DETvPIT game is insane.

wow finish in Oakland last night with A's coming from behind in the 13th to beat Houston

Did they start with a man on second 4 innings in a row??

they did; neither team scored in the 10th-12th

https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=401225875

I'm surprised more teams aren't rostering something like an "extra-innings" specialist PH:

High speed, bunt/IF-chop for a hit, moves the runner to 3rd and mitigates the double play risk for the following batter.

lol they both successfully bunted the runner over to begin the 10th; didn't try that again

i love when a ghost runner game runs 4:13

sorry, I think it needs to be less of a sacrifice situation but more of a bunt-for-a-hit pure-speed play. Because 0-outs, men on 1st & 3rd and SB-speed on 1st = 90+% run-probability.

So, the #Cardinals, if they are to play a 60-game schedule, now would have to play 55 games in 49 days. That assumes they play the Pirates Monday, far from a given. https://t.co/eyHxQNYMWa

— Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) August 7, 2020

guy who knows anything at all about covid19 voice: there's no fucking way they play monday's game

MLB is on record that they are fine with some teams playing <60 games

This DETvPIT game is insane.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, August 7, 2020 8:29 PM (yesterday)

omg haha, they are continuing where they left off...

Altuve commits his 3rd error... of the inning. twitterers say he's officially rattled.

It’s too late for me to make any money on this or win the bold prediction lottery but I could totally see a team approaching 40 wins in this... event. Between variance and the ongoing threat of death I can see a bunch of high end players just vanishing or developing “symptoms” if the team starts 10-20 or something like that

W. Yacksel Ríos

Playoff spots are determined by winning percentage, so it can be an advantage to miss some games -- fewer games = less regression to the mean. There is no way that the Cards will be forced to make up more than seven games. Cue the controversy when a 30-30 team misses the playoff cut and a 26-25 team makes it in.

Guys I think there might be an asterisk over this season

madison bumgarner: 17.1 IP, 7 HR, 8.62 FIP, hardest-thrown pitch today was 87.7

one day i'll write up a whole thing about how the "if you throw 650 innings before age 24 your arm won't make it to 30" thing is very real

(unless you're sutton or maddux or blyleven and you didn't really need your velocity anyway)

Wasnt Maddux a hard thrower for the first half of his career?

not really, the most generous sources i can find say he occasionally hit 93 in the beginning. his velo still dropped and it didn't matter because he's greg maddux.

i'm hopeful that kershaw can last 5 or 6 more years off his wits and ability to evolve, assuming he can stay off the IL

Hitting 93 in the late 80's/early 90's meant you were a power pitcher! Not many guys threw harder than that, but he didn't become dominant until he found his control and started winning Cy Youngs every year. By that time, he understood that he didn't need to throw hard to succeed.

Bumgarner's velo might go up as the season goes on (he wouldn't be the only guy messed up by the short July "spring" training) but the move from Oracle Park to Chase Field isn't going away.

Clemens and Seaver threw a lot of innings early, but they were under your 650 threshold, and are obviously exceptions anyway.

The league OBP is .311, which would be the lowest since 1972, another year that led to an important rules change. Since the rubber was set at 60'6" in 1893, there have been just 11 seasons of lower OBP.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) August 10, 2020

I wonder if the notion of a 60-game season (and prospect of an even shorter one) is causing hitters to press a little, knowing you can put up some big small-sample numbers

One last note: Until 2018, there had never been a season with more strikeouts than hits. In 2020, strikeouts are now 17% more common than hits.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) August 10, 2020

High speed, bunt/IF-chop for a hit, moves the runner to 3rd and mitigates the double play risk for the following batter.

those guys generally make the starting lineup though

Just opened it up, haven't read it--baseball-related piece from Christgau.

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/quarantine-me-to-the-ball-game?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy

those guys generally make the starting lineup though

― frogbs, Monday, August 10, 2020 7:12 AM (two hours ago)

The "You Can't Steal 1st" crew:
Mallex Smith, Alex Engel, Derek Fisher, et al.

Hitting 93 in the late 80's/early 90's meant you were a power pitcher! Not many guys threw harder than that, but he didn't become dominant until he found his control and started winning Cy Youngs every year. By that time, he understood that he didn't need to throw hard to succeed.

Bumgarner's velo might go up as the season goes on (he wouldn't be the only guy messed up by the short July "spring" training) but the move from Oracle Park to Chase Field isn't going away.

valenzuela and drysdale are the models for most hot young things

Clemens and Seaver threw a lot of innings early, but they were under your 650 threshold, and are obviously exceptions anyway.

― clemenza, Monday, August 10, 2020 10:02 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's boras corp's number, though i remember reading about it plenty on fangraphs before that (maybe not with the exact 650/24 cutoff). i've been interested in it since then - there seems to be a lot of truth to it and if a team has any concern for their young pitchers' careers (they don't lol) they should follow it hard

i'm interested in how minor league/college ball fits in though. i've never really bought the idea that those innings aren't as hard on a pitcher's arm, at least before modern times when teams are more cautious

minor leaguers are kept on very short leashes, but there are different incentives at work in college.

nc state had carlos rodon throw 134 pitches on short rest in 2014 and had him pitch 132 innings the year before that at age 20. you probably can't directly blame those facts, but he has had a *lot* of injury problems

lol

Mets starter Marcus Stroman has opted out of the 2020 season. He has accrued enough service time to reach free agency this winter. He'll do so not having thrown a big league pitch this year.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 10, 2020

2020 bases-on-balls:

Carlos Santana (1B, CLE): 23 (17 GP)
The entire Washington Nationals team: 27 (12 GP)

.188/.451/.250 is quite a line

Mike Clevinger will not make his scheduled start Tuesday against the Cubs after violating health and safety protocols this past weekend in Chicago.
Clevinger reportedly went out in Chicago on Saturday night with fellow Indians starter Zach Plesac, who had to take a rental car back to Cleveland once word of his violation came to light. Clevinger instead flew home on the team charter, after sitting through a meeting about Plesac's transgression on Sunday. Clevinger, like Plesac, will be quarantined for 72 hours and tested daily. Adam Plutko is going to take the mound in his place on Tuesday at Progressive Field versus the visiting Cubs. Clevinger could slot back in this weekend in Detroit.

And after another St. Louis player tested positive, the Cardinals’ series against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates, which was to have run Monday through Wednesday, was postponed Sunday. On Monday, MLB announced that St. Louis’s doubleheader at the Detroit Tigers on Thursday also had been postponed. The Cardinals have not played since July 29; 17 members of the organization (10 players and seven staff members) have tested positive since last week.

Manager Mike Shildt revealed Sunday that some members of the organization have had to seek treatment in an emergency room after experiencing symptoms. John Mozeliak, the team’s president of baseball operations, said one player and one staff member had gone to a hospital, but neither was admitted for treatment and both are at home.

“There are people that have symptoms and have had a few visits to the ER for some IVs and a little more clarity,” Shildt said during an interview with KMOX Radio. “Nobody has had to stay [in the hospital]. But there are people dealing with — I mean, this is real. And people are experiencing a lot of the symptoms that we hear about, that are associated with this. A variety of them. Most of them are experiencing multiple ones. Seems like they rotate with them. And, again, nobody is in close to any critical shape, but people are having to deal with some things that aren’t comfortable at all.”

'you went to the emergency room? what??'

'i needed a little more clarity'

Plesac and Clevinger to Francona and Carrasco: Drop Dead

Wearing a neck gaiter may be worse than no mask at all, researchers find

...“These neck gaiters are extremely common in a lot of places because they’re very convenient to wear,” he said. “But the exact reason why they’re so convenient, which is that they don’t restrict air, is the reason why they’re not doing much of a job helping people.”

The high droplet count could be linked to the neck gaiter’s porous fabric breaking up bigger particles into many little ones that are more likely to hang around in the air longer, Fischer said in the video. This effect makes wearing them possibly “counterproductive,” he added.

“It’s not the case that any mask is better than nothing,” he said. “There are some masks that actually hurt rather than do good.”

https://i.imgur.com/vWmX7Pt.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/pI29DnS.jpg

i'm unhappy with the word 'gaiter'

me too. i didn't know what it was until reading that article, but somehow i immediately knew which kind of mask it referred to