chasfh

And they’re seriously thinking of putting a team in Salt Lake, too. They sit at 4,300 feet. That’ll be fun, too.

Been there!

The worst case scenario would be even worse than that—remember how the ‘84 team went to Seattle on top of baseball history at 35-5, and then got swept by the 20-24 Mariners? That started a 4-8 skein that “dropped” us to 39-13, rendering us a mere .750 team. Horrors! 😉 But yes, your scenario is exactly what I landed on as the minimum acceptable result of the western trip would be.

And now you know how the Orioles front office felt last year.

I can't seriously entertain the idea that playing extra innings and playing without gloves are even close to being equivalently stupid.

On the up side ...

My god, Maeda somehow preserved the shutout. But he's not happy with his outing, and everyone can see why. I feel so bad for the guy. His wife must be in tears for him. It's so sad. This might be the end for him. If so, then best of luck to him back in Japan.

Tork is making such good plays at first base these days that I gotta wonder how much of it is pure confidence carrying over from the plate.

GarbageTime-san!

Got a second whole inning from Guenther and he is at 24 pitches. Last year, 24 pitches in a big league outing was his max, but he threw over 24 in several outings in the minors last year. He threw 37 and 40 in back to back outings last August. So he probably he enough left in his tank to come back out to start a third inning.

We're getting close to Maeda time! But still—starting the eighth with Guenther would probably still be a good idea.

OK, so Guenther got through the seventh in eleven pitches. I think he could come back out for the eighth with Lee up and throwing. Again, would love to put up a three- or four-spot and get Maeda in.

Good news, got another run. Bad news, Sweeney is starting to suck a lot more in every aspect of his game.

Great, that's one run.

Man, Laureano sure did make that one close at third on McKinstry.

MVPKinstry!

Four hits, no runs, eleven strikeouts and no walks on 91 pitches through six. He's got to come out for the seventh, right? Who do we have that's available, besides Maeda? Guenther again? Chase Lee again? They are still optionable and we need the guys we won't be optioning to get a breather after yesterday, right? I think he comes out in the seventh to see if he can get three quick outs. Tell you what, though: I'd like to put up another four or five runs here so we can get GarbageTime-san into the game to eat up some outs.

We got a little lucky on that Baez tag up from first to second on the flyout to right. If the throw were on the bag, he was doubled off by a mile. But it wasn't, because the Tigers' new calculation is that in the end, we will net more bases and runs being very aggressive on the bases than by being moderate and advancing only on sure things—that by putting pressure on the defense, we will gain more bases than lose outs. And it worked this time, because we got another run out of it. I like this new strategy, and I hope I'm cognizant enough to remember that I like it when it inevitably happens that it looks like we took a stupid chance and made an out or even lost a game because of the aggressiveness.

We are not long—who knows, maybe days—from finally hearing from the administration that they give less than a s*** about approval ratings and they're gonna do anything they want on behalf of "the American people"..

Glad I don't have to listen to this non-baseball interview during the game, but sad that I have to see it take over my TV completely in between pitches, and share the screen during pitches. Did they have any in-inning interviews during yesterday's game that Dan called? I didn't see it all.

Javy Baez paying a lot more dividends at the plate this year!

We did hit the ball pretty hard off Kremer that first inning, so, good sign.

I didn't specify regular season. I said international rules, which practically by definition means tournaments, although Cuba was using them in their professional league when I watched some games there in 2015, which was the first time I'd ever seen anything like that. They do allow ties still—the most recent one was in 2016, which is why the Cubs finished 103-58-1—but my impression is that ties can be declared only when games would be suspended by darkness or equipment failure, or in the 2016 case, by weather with a subsequent league decision not to make up the game. I don't believe it can be a discretionary decision between teams to save their pitching. If weather or darkness is not an issue, they play the extra innings regardless of whether they want to or not. Is that not correct?

Of the Pipeline top 100 guys we have in the minors right now—Max Clark, Kevin McGonigle, Josue Briceno, Thayron Liranzo, and Bryce Rainer—which of these would you be willing to give up this July in exchange for an established major leaguer who gives us a much better chance of going deep into October or even November this year?

I looked into upgrading the panel a few years ago and it ran into the high four figures. I'd rather sell.