The Swamp

Ryan wrote:In 100 years, there have been 84 player-seasons in which a pitcher has had the following line at least 7 times:

8+ IP, 2 or less ER, 6 or less baserunners, 4 or more strikeouts

One of them is Johnny Cueto, who just did that in his last 7 starts. The record is 11. His first 3 starts were pretty awesome too, but he pussied out after 7 IP in each.

He's been nasty this year for sure

I think I saw today that he's allowed THREE base runners in scoring position to actually come around and score so far this year. Pretty sick.

He's going all Mario Soto from 1982 at this point. Soto was a beast in '82 and '83 for the two worst Reds teams of my lifetime.

And the good news keeps on coming for the Reds /orange - Votto isn't on the Philadelphia trip due to having a MRI on the same knee he's had 2 surgeries on.

Blue Jays got two runs when the first two got bunt singles.

Gose should bunt .300. He's so fast heh.

Bensell wrote:And the good news keeps on coming for the Reds /orange - Votto isn't on the Philadelphia trip due to having a MRI on the same knee he's had 2 surgeries on.

I think you're starting at first tuesday, ben. Get loose.

Leaguewide OBP right now is .317, which would rank 146th of 165 qualifiers in 2000. Everyone is Ron Coomer.

Good stuff on Tulo, who is basically BaseGod's way of apologizing for the way things went down with Nomar

Yort Tulowitzki.

Cleveland is now the 34th team in the last 100 years to use at least 9 pitchers in 11 or less innings. TLR is only responsible for 3 of them!

Ryan wrote:Cleveland is now the 34th team in the last 100 years to use at least 9 pitchers in 11 or less innings. TLR is only responsible for 3 of them!

I'm willing to be Francona is responsible for a few of those as well. The Indians will need to make a few roster moves since they're using tomorrow's starter in extra innings today.

Sabo wrote:

Ryan wrote:Cleveland is now the 34th team in the last 100 years to use at least 9 pitchers in 11 or less innings. TLR is only responsible for 3 of them!

I'm willing to be Francona is responsible for a few of those as well. The Indians will need to make a few roster moves since they're using tomorrow's starter in extra innings today.

One other one with Boston, yes. The Astros and the Padres both did it 5 days apart, somehow. In 2010 and 2009, respectively.

And the 8th guy was brought on to face one batter?

Rex wrote:And the 8th guy was brought on to face one batter?

Yes, but it wasn't a matchup thing. The eighth pitcher was Bryan Shaw, who replaced Kyle Crockett, a rookie who was called up from Double A late last week. Shaw had pitched in the two previous games and Francona intended on giving Shaw the day off, but he had to bring him in in that situation. If Shaw hadn't pitched the two previous games he certainly would've pitched the 11th inning.

Today's pitching matchup in the Tigers/Rangers game is:

Yu v. Ray

(Say it out loud.)

Wear sunscreen, kids.

Even more awesome that's it's a 1 p.m. start.

Danny Worth was the best pitcher in Detroit today.

Hot take: The Fielder trade has gone from "very awful" to "somehow worse" for Texas.

Here's Mike Trout's stats through 2014:

.270 avg, .872 OPS, 29 runs, 8 HRs, 31 RBI, 5 SB, 25 BB, 56 K, 1 assist, 1 error.

Here's Player B's stats through 2014. Guess who Player B is.

.303 avg, .897 OPS, 28 runs, 9 HRs, 37 RBI, 6 SB, 17 BB, 17 K, 5 assists, 1 error.

Giancarlo Brantley

There appears to be a significant defensive gap b/w the two.

I can't believe there isn't more "Ike returns to Flushing" discussion. Man....

rass wrote:I can't believe there isn't more "Ike returns to Flushing" discussion. Man....

Good thing the Buccos got that fucker out of there. Gaby!

Valverde, with a great way to honor our fallen heroes.

Praise sweet baby jesus in a manger.

The Mets released Jose Valverde, Sandy Alderson announced after Monday’s game.

Valverde surrendered four earned runs in Monday’s game. He entered with the Mets leading 2-1.

He posted a 5.66 ERA, with two saves, over 20 innings.

Vic Black is expected to be called up to replace Valverde.

Dishonorable discharge.

rass wrote:Dishonorable discharge.

You talking about each one of his pitches or making a joke about him getting cut?

He was talking about his avatar.

The Reds have signed Carlos Marmol to a minor league contract. This should be interesting.

Anyone think its plausible that within the next 10 years or so, MLB will mandate or consider mandating each team have two IFs on each side of 2B? Lowest isoP since 1993, OPS since 1992 and OBP/AVG since 1972 and on a mostly downward trend.

Sadly, I think it is very plausible. Kind of like the prohibition against zone defenses that existed in the NBA.

I like the shifts. Why not reward clever tacticians, as well as punish players who don't have enough bat control to beat shifts?

The obvious solution to the new age of pitching dominance is to tighten up the strike zone. But that would require dealing with the umpires, who appear to be wedded to their custom personalized zones, despite whatever rewards and punishments MLB is handing out after their private evaluations.

I wonder why there is not more talk of MLB moving to using technology to determine balls and strikes? There would be technical difficulties. But they don't seem overwhelming. This could greatly reduce an arbitrary factor that impedes on rewarding skill alone. And you could more easily tweak the strike zone to dial offense up or down in the future, if variations from some norm were deemed to be undesirable.

In my ideal world there would be smaller strike zones, consistently called. And bigger outfields.

DC47 wrote:Why not reward clever tacticians, as well as punish players who don't have enough bat control to beat shifts?

I think this sentence handles both sides of my feelings on it. I love the idea of outsmarting the game with strategy after 100+ years of doing things a certain way, but I hate the idea of a vastly different game pro versus non and of power hitters almost being forced to choose power or average.

I don't think it's vastly different. But I haven't been following a team that shifts all the time. It seems to me that it's a bit of a surprise when a hitter is defeated by the shift, not the other way around. I'm sure there are stats on this, so perhaps I'm about to be proved wrong.

A technique can provide a marginal advantage without fundamentally changing the game. I seem to recall that Bruce Sutter's success led many to believe that pitchers would dominate by throwing the splitter. That is certainly an effective pitch. But it didn't create a big difference in the competitive balance. So many other things were going on that were equally powerful factors (e.g., PEDs, weight training, wider use of the cutter).

It sounds dismissive, but ... if it didn't work, they wouldn't be using it. Anecdotally ... http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?pl ... osition=1B" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Fangraphs had a write up about bunting against the shift and, basically, bunting is much harder than people think and few players can beat the shift with it consistently enough to make it worthwhile. I imagine placing a hit is the same way. Probably enough dribblers to the 3B playing shortstop combined with complete loss of power to counter the ones that sneak through.