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If only statcast had the technology to measure the launch angle and exit velocity of yankee balls that have been hit off of your chin.

Goo Punch
Goo Punch
Hank Chinaski
Hank Chinaski

Good fucking riddance. 

spystud13

spystud13 2371

Posted
Posted
23 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Here's something you don't see every day:

Capture.jpg

 

Quote

In this the least eventful pitching appearance ever?

It’s tough to argue against that.

Andrew Mearns of MLB.com’s Cut 4 points out that there have been 12 zero-pitch outings in the last decade alone, but all of those included action in the form of a baserunner being picked off base. In those instances, the pitcher actually did something and recorded an out in the process.

Perez literally did nothing other than warm up. Mearns points to Mike Stanton’s zero-pitch outing for the Washington Nationals in 2005 as the closest scenario. It’s the only other outing since 1908 where are a pitcher didn’t throw a pitch or record an out. That’s because Stanton balked in the winning run before throwing a pitch.

Perez’s outing was certainly among the strangest relief appearances we’ve seen to this point in MLB history. But it’s one likely to increase in frequency based on the rules in place.

https://sports.yahoo.com/indians-reliever-oliver-perez-made-history-without-throwing-single-pitch-190924574.html

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EMAWesome

EMAWesome 101

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Posted

Listened to either some Royals analyst or ex-player talking about the 2004-2006 Royals (because when you are 25-51 and went 5-21 in June what else is there to talk about in relation to the Royals this year) this morning.  As bad as those teams were he actually said something that surprised me.  In 2004 Royals scouts did not have cell phones.  The guy also said he was in the club house when officials from the team started going through the medicine cabinets and replacing all the name brands with generics that year.  Of course that was also the time span when Ken Harvey and Mark Redman made the American League All-Star team simply because somebody playing for the Royals had to.

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TornACL

TornACL 7686

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

95% of fans outside the NL West have no idea who that is.

He was sitting on the waiver wire in my fantasy despite hitting 11 home runs in his first 100 or so at bats. 

I hate the Dodgers but so glad I swooped him up. 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54016

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Really good from Stark:

Quote

It’s the 4th of July, and you know what that means.

We’ve made it through the snow, and we’ve made it through the rain. We’ve made it through 103 degrees and we’ve made it through 23 degrees.

We’ve made it through all the strikeouts. We’ve made it through all the shifts. We’ve made it through dozens of no-hit-alert vibrations on our phones. And above all, we’ve made it halfway through another baseball season, now that every team has finally played at least 81 games.

So what should we take away from the last three months? Thanks for asking. Now here they come – 12 Things We Learned from the First Half.

1. Whatever happened to the greatest free-agent class ever?

Our first inclination, when we began working on this story, was to do some sort of mini-power rankings of the World’s Most Amazing, Colossal, Star-Studded, Franchise-Altering, Gazillion-Dollar Free Agent Class of 2018-19. And then reality set in.

Outside of Manny Machado, which of these Amazing, Colossal, Star-Studded, Franchise-Altering, Gazillion-Dollar Free Agents has actually helped his marketability over these last few months? Not Bryce Harper. Not Clayton Kershaw. Not Josh Donaldson. Not Dallas Keuchel.

Oh, there are Craig Kimbrel and Nelson Cruz, in their own select categories. And Nick Markakis, Michael Brantley and Patrick Corbin, in the not-quite-so-star-laden tier of this class. But those megastars who were supposed to drive this market? They’ve mostly been driving it into the repair shop.

“We don’t really start our free-agent work until August,” said an executive of one club. “But when we do get to work on it, it could be so hard to value these guys – because when we look at most of these players, there’s a good chance we’re going to have to say, ‘Can he return to form?’ And the problem with that is, you know he’ll be asking for money as if he already has.”

2. The American League has turned into the NBA

Has there ever been a league quite like the American League in 2018? Why, of course there has. It’s called the NBA.

You’ve got your official Super Teams – the Astros (on pace to win 104 games), the Yankees (on pace to win 107) and the Red Sox (on pace to win 108). You’ve got a fourth team – the Indians – that looks as if it might win its division by 20 games. And you’ve got the Mariners, A’s, Rays and Angels, who are good enough, or at least respectable enough, to fill out your playoff field. But then …

There’s baseball’s dark hole, which is already ugly, with a chance to get uglier. You’ve got three teams – the Orioles, Royals and White Sox – plummeting toward minus-200 run differentials (or worse). And you’ve got at least three others – the Rangers, Blue Jays and Tigers – getting set to trade away a bunch of veteran players, which could set them on a course to lose 95 to 100 games.

“I can’t ever remember a situation in any league like this,” said one AL exec. “Can you?”

Of course not – because it’s never happened. Not in any sport LeBron James doesn’t play, anyway.

3. The AL superpowers could be historically great

The Yankees are built to mash. And they’re mashing. They’re on pace to hit more home runs in a season (275) than any team ever. And Giancarlo Stanton hasn’t even locked into his Bambino blue-heat phase yet. The record they’re chasing is 264, by Junior Griffey’s 1997 Mariners. That Mariners team had six players who thumped 20 or more. These Yankees could have six dudes who hit 30-plus. They’re a force of modern baseball.

The Astros, meanwhile, just blow you out. Their plus-172 run differential is by far the largest we’ve seen on the 4th of July in the last 75 years. Only the ’98 Yankees (plus-155) are even within 20 of them, And if the ‘Stros keep this up, they’re heading for the biggest plus-minus by any team since Red Rolfe’s legendary 1939 Yankees put up a staggering plus-411. Yikes.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox merely have a shot at the winningest season in the history of their franchise, complete with the greatest run differential in the history of their franchise. Both of those records are held by Tris Speaker’s 1912 Red Sox (105 wins, plus-255 differential). And this team is on pace to challenge them both.

There has never been any league – ever – with three 100-win teams. But let’s remind you again that the reward for one of these three is probably going to be a fun-filled date with James Paxton in the Wild Card game, with nothing riding on it except their beautiful 106-win season. And that plot line is going to hover over the entire American League for the next three months. 

4. The Cubs, Nationals and Dodgers didn’t get the memo

Would you please remind us next spring never to make another prediction for the rest of our lives? Playing all-knowing psychic is just a messy line of work. And nothing proves that better than the current state of the National League.

The only thing us know-it-all prediction geniuses knew for sure three months ago was that the Cubs, Nationals and Dodgers were pretty much locks to win their divisions. So naturally, they’ve spent a grand total of 16 days in first place combined. And almost half of them were by the Nationals, in the first week of the season.

At least the Cubs (13 over, with a plus-101 run differential) and Dodgers (30-13, with a plus-76 run differential, since May 16) are trending in the right direction. But the Nationals are turning into our planet’s biggest mystery since the Bermuda Triangle.

Here’s how they’ve fared since June 6: A 6-17 record (worst in their league) … zero streaks in which they’ve even won two games in a row … shut out six times … a 5.43 staff ERA, worst in the NL … and no wins by a starting pitcher other than (wait for it) Eric Fedde – who earned a “win” in a 17-7 game.

“Everyone wants to get on board with that team because they’ve got this guy and that guy and this guy, and they’re all stars,” said one NL exec. “But they’re missing something. And they’ve been missing something for a while now. And it can’t be the manager, because they’ve had five of them (since 2010).”

5. The race for the No. 1 pick could be epic

Somewhere in Texas, Bobby Witt Jr. knows all about this. But over the next three months, the furious battle for the right to choose him – or someone just like him – with the first pick in the June 2019 draft has the makings of an all-time scramble for the baseball dungeon.

The Orioles are on pace to lose 116 games. The Royals are on pace to lose 114.

The Orioles just went over five weeks without winning a single game against a team from their own league. That’s 0-17 – including an incomprehensible 0-15 month of June – if your hard drive just exploded trying to calculate it. And not surprisingly, no team in the interleague era had ever done anything like that.

The Royals, meanwhile, just lost 18 games in a row when they didn’t throw a shutout. No team had done something like that in 111 years.

So here they are, on the 4th of July, careening toward triple-digit losses at a rate that no living human has ever seen. Want to guess the last time two different teams had winning percentages below .300 on Independence Day? That would be 1912 – when Hippo Vaughn’s pre-Ruthian Yankees started 19-46 (.292) and Curly Brown’s always-entertaining St. Louis Browns roared out of the gates at 19-47 (.288).

Don’t go scrambling through the draft records to see what awesome No. 1 pick those juggernauts got out of that, because baseball forgot to invent the draft for another half-century. But this year, while a bunch of teams appeared to be chasing the No. 1 pick by consciously trying not to win, the Orioles and Royals weren’t one of them.

“They weren’t tanking,” said one AL exec. “They were both semi-trying.”

And shouldn’t that be a lesson to tankers everywhere!

6. The Manny Machado Derby is about to consume us all 

It’s the 4th of July, and Manny Machado has almost as many home runs (21) as the Orioles have wins (24). But we regret to announce there’s pretty much a zero-percent chance that Machado will become the first player in history with more homers than his team has wins. And that, obviously, is because a month from now, his jersey can’t possibly say “ORIOLES” on it. Can it?

Anything is possible, we suppose, in Baltimore, where Dan Duquette keeps reminding his trade partners what the Cubs gave up for Aroldis Chapman (i.e., premium rental property) just two years ago. And those trade partners, of course, keep reminding the Orioles of how little the Tigers got back for J.D. Martinez just 12 months ago.

But just as the Tigers decided eventually last July that they had no choice but to make the best deal they could for Martinez, the Orioles are in pretty much an identical position. So if they don’t get Machado moved – to (pick one) the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Phillies, Braves, Indians, etc. – it “would be organizational malpractice,” said one rival exec.

7. It’s the year the hits disappeared

It’s only the first week of July. But this sport is about to break a record that nobody seems to have noticed except us.

MOST STARTS IN HISTORY ALLOWING 1 HIT OR NONE*
85 – 2015 (all season)
81 – 2018 (through July 2)
(* – starts of 5 IP or more)
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Now think about this for a moment. We’re about to see more starts of one hit or none by the all-star break than we’ve ever seen in any full season in the history of baseball? Um, is that good?

Well, it’s a sign that pitching is more unhittable than ever, for one thing. Check out the trend in how the league has hit against starting pitchers over the last couple of decades:

YEAR             AVG    OPS
2018                .248     .730
2017                .261     .767
2008               .269     .760
2000               .274     .790

But clearly, that’s not all that’s going on here. Starting pitchers also get the hook earlier now (5.48 innings per start) than at any point in history. So 40 years ago, if Tom Seaver had a one-hitter through five innings, guess what? There was a nada-percent chance he was coming out.

Nowadays, though, as you might have noticed, nobody thinks that way. Defenses are better deployed. Every reliever on earth throws about 98 miles an hour. So the plan – every night – is to get those starters out of the game before they start to fade. And the bottom line is, it’s harder to hit than it has been in nearly 50 years.

Hits per game are at their lowest level (8.38) than at any point since 1972. So here comes that next no-hitter alert on your phone, in 3…2…1.

8. It’s the end of the four-times-through-the-lineup era

In a related development, how many games do you think we’ve seen all season in which starting pitchers navigated their way through the lineup four times (meaning they faced at least 36 hitters)?

The correct answer would be (yep) none. And if that keeps up, this would be the first season ever in which not a single starter made it through the opposing order four times.

The closest anyone has come: 34 hitters, by the Padres’ Clayton Richard just last Friday in Texas.

As recently as the 2000 season, 55 pitchers made it through the lineup four times. But that number has been steadily declining, and had shrunk to six or fewer in each of the last six seasons.

So who was the last big-league starter to pull this off? It was – who else? – America’s favorite 44-year-old strike-throwing machine, Bartolo Colon! He did it in a 106-pitch complete game for the Twins last Aug. 4. That was nearly 4,000 games ago. But the question is, will any pitcher ever do it again?

“The only way,” said one exec quoted earlier, “is maybe at the end of the year, if someone like a (Chris) Sale or (Justin) Verlander gets into a huge game and says to the manager, ‘I’m not going home Oct. 1, so I’m not leaving this game.’ But that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

9. It’s the year of the boy band

Juan Soto is 19 years old. He has a .978 OPS for the Nationals. He has a chance to have the greatest season in history by a teenager.

Gleyber Torres is 21. He has a .913 OPS. He has a higher OPS than any player on the Yankees except Aaron Judge.

Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr. are teammates on the Braves. Albies is 21 and leads the National League in extra-base hits. Acuña is 20 – with an .818 OPS.

So how many seasons in modern baseball history have given us four hitters this young who had an OPS of .800 or better (and 400 plate appearances or more)? That answer is zilch.

have been 15 seasons with two young stars that good – from Mike Trout/Bryce Harper to Hank Aaron/Al Kaline to Jimmie Foxx/Mel Ott. But the only season that even brought us three young hitters who fit that description was 1969 (Johnny Bench, Richie Hebner, Carlos May).

But this year, if this group stays healthy and keeps doing what it’s done so far, they are going to make history – together.

“That’s where this game is going,” said an AL exec. “The young players in this game are really good – and they’re good sooner than they’ve ever been.”

10. Edwin Díaz could save 60 games

The closer for those Seattle Mariners might be baseball’s best-kept secret. The only kind of game his team ever seems to play is one-run games. There might be one reason, above all others, that the Mariners seem to win them all. That reason is named Edwin Díaz.

No one has ever saved 40 games before the all-star break. But don’t put it past him. He has 33 saves already. He’s on pace to save 62. Only one reliever has ever saved that many. That was Francisco Rodríguez (62) in 2008.

But don’t measure Díaz by his saves. This, said one AL exec, “feels like utter domination.”

Díaz’s numbers in those 33 saves: 0.27 ERA, 54 strikeouts, 11 hits. And the league is hitting an absurd .130 against him in save situations, with two extra-base hits.

He leads all AL closers in WHIP and strikeouts. And if he sat down next to you on a bus, you’d probably have no idea who the heck he is. But this might just be the year when Díaz goes from anonymity to massive stardom.

11. Mike Trout has gotten downright Ruthian

One AL exec we interviewed for this piece objected strenuously when we tried comparing the greatness of Mike Trout with the legend of Babe Ruth.

“He’s the best player in baseball,” the exec said. “And he’s the best player ever.”

Ever? The logic here is actually tough to dispute. There’s no way we should ever find ourselves comparing baseball in the 1920s to baseball in the 21stcentury. In the Bambino’s day, there were no African-Americans playing baseball and no Latinos playing baseball. There were no airplanes and no light bulbs. And there was no science behind anything. So the athletes are indisputably better now. And the game is way more difficult to excel in now.

So with that as context, let’s remind you that Trout is on pace for 45 homers, 24 steals, 141 walks, 324 times on base and an OPS close to 1.100. He’s also on pace to rack up nearly 13 Wins Above Replacement. That’s a number reached by just one position player since 1900. Right you are. That would be the Babe, in 1923.

But if Trout doesn’t get to 13 Wins Above Replacement this year, just give him a few months.

“This is his best year ever, and that’s the scary thing,” the same exec said. “He’s still making adjustments. He got wise to us. He figured out that we’d found some holes and occasionally we exploited them. And now those holes are closed. And that’s what he does every year. He figures out what he’s not great at, and then he gets better.”

Best. Player. Ever. Who wants to argue?

12. Jacob deGrom is the unluckiest pitcher ever

Baseball seasons just don’t get any more bizarre than Jacob deGrom’s season. Do they?

In 10 of his 17 starts, he has allowed one run or none. He has been the winning pitcher in two of those starts. But that’s not even the bizarre part.

The bizarre part is that his team has only been the winner in three of those starts.

We keep re-reading those stats over and over, but they don’t change. The Mets are 3-7 when their best pitcher allows one run or no runs.

The Elias Sports Bureau checked back all the way to 1893, the year the mound was set at 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. They found that no pitcher in the last 126 seasons has been through more games like that in any of those seasons – meaning no pitcher’s team has ever lost  more than seven starts in which he gave up no more than one run.

There are others who are tied with deGrom at seven. But remember, this guy still has half a season left to go. No telling how many more great starts his team might lose.

This is not a commentary on “pitcher wins,” by the way, because this isn’t even about pitcher wins. This is about team wins. Or lack thereof. And nothing explains that, except, possibly, for this: They’re the Mets.

“All this is,” said one of the execs quoted earlier, “is just an interesting, Jayson Stark-type tidbit. But no one in baseball is judging him any different because of it. Every five days, I’ll look at his latest game, and I’ll shake my head and say, ‘That poor bastard.’ And then I’ll move on, because what else can I say? It’s crazy.”

 

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On 7/4/2018 at 11:01 PM, UTexasFight said:

It’s the 23rd year of Coors Field.
They had their 10th 1-0 game there today

The Astros have had 3 at MMP this year alone... and it feels like they've had even more.

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MC Fresh Breath

MC Fresh Breath 4074

Posted
Posted (edited)
25 minutes ago, spystud13 said:

They say Robbie won’t be their everyday 2B when he gets back, will be interesting to see what they do. Nellie not being able to play any RF fucks their versatility. 

It's a tough puzzle, for sure.  Cano obviously isn't eligible for the post season.  At the time he was made ineligible we all cracked jokes, right?  I can go back and dig them up, but I agreed with them, and probably made a few myself.  A bunch of "like that's a punishment for the Mariners."  Then lo and behold they go on a tear.  So, since *at the moment* it appears a WC game is likely (I sure hope we don't dig this post back up in a few months after some horrible collapse), you obviously want the players who will be able to play in that game with the most starts. How to achieve that and not mess things up with your currently disgraced all star 2B, team chemistry, e.t.c, I don' t know. 

 

Edited by MC Fresh Breath
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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54016

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28 minutes ago, spystud13 said:

Fucking crazy how the AL postseason is basically locked already. Just a matter of the East winner. 

For how good their record is, it's crazy how screwed the Mariners are looking in their first playoff appearance in 17 years... I'm assuming they're not passing Houston, which I feel is a pretty good assumption. 

Fangraphs projects them to win 94, 4th highest in the majors.  If they do that, they get BOS/NYY for 1 game on the road. 

If they win that, they get to play either BOS/NYY/HOU in the ALDS. 

Dayum.

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