chasfh

Man, I spent ten accidental seconds on MLB.tv listening to Craig Monroe growling about the opposing pitcher "walk[ing] the walk" and "talk[ing] the talk", and man, I couldn't reach for the switchover to the radio overlay fast enough. You people who live in the Tigers territory—I feel sorry for you.

That's how I interpreted it—or misinterpreted it, if you prefer—so OK, I'll concede. If we're going to offer up one-time position-player All-Star-with-another-team Nick Castellanos as counterpoints to the original post, then we might as well offer up one-time position player All-Stars-with-other-teams Eugenio Suarez, Avisail Garcia, and James McCann as well, and, probably this year, Willy Adames.

MCS specified All-Stars, and these four guys were all named to the All-Star team while they were still Tigers, and all four after Fryman. Know who wasn't? Nick Castellanos.

Al Avila, Robert Fick, Brandon Inge, and how could we forget Curtis Granderson, for cry eye.

They’ll just keep pushing it down until they get enough bodies to reliably put four or five pitchers in every game. Every organization has at least 20 pitchers on their 40-man for that reason alone. Some have as many as 22 that I’ve seen. Did some guy in the back of my bullpen get hurt? That’s fine, bring up another one. What, he’s gotta go on the 60-day? Fine, move the next pitcher in line onto the 40 to replace him. Teams have plenty of fungible arms they can throw at that strategy. And just think how much money they’re saving merely by moving the bottom of the 40-man in and out of the active roster.

lol

My first car, a '73 Vega, had AM-only installed in it and I got a cheap converter aftermarket unit installed so I could get FM (in glorious mono). My mother, on the other hand ... when the lot of us were passing through our teenage years and many of us would borrow her car for whatever reason (our dad would never, ever, ever even consider letting us borrow his car), she actually paid extra to remove the standard AM/FM stereo to replace it with AM-only radio. Two reasons: (1) she hated when her sons would borrow the car and leave the station on WABX going full blast when she started it up; and (2) she didn't particularly care for music, anyway, so she had no use for that newfangled FM.

Yeah, she's black, all right. So?

I don't understand what's so confusing about that because it's standard baseball stuff, but whatever, OK, I guess ..

To the degree that Never Trumpers want to see MAGAs fail so they can take back their party, OK I guess? It's still a process, and NTs losing all those primaries in 2022 is a part of it, so they got their revenge by backing moderate Democrats in the general and either seeing MAGAs lose (e.g., Kari Lake), or at least making life miserable by making MAGAs just squeak by (e.g., Ken Calvert). If MAGA doubles down on the crazy for 2024, it's only going to be worse for them. So, they must have plans they are putting in place to actually undermine and/or steal their elections, because that's what it's going to take for them to win in all but the most extreme districts.

JD was a moment in time that might not be replicated. He was one of the first, almost ten years ago now, to seek out a data-driven personal hitting coach during the offseason to help him either augment or overcome what the Astros were teaching him. In the parlance of sabermetrics, JD exploited a market inefficiency before his opponents, i.e. other hitters, caught on. And we were the lucky beneficiaries of that, although too late to help us during our division-winning run. He was easing into his best stretch run of his career, and fucking Al Avila couldn’t get rid of him for a bag of used batting practice baseballs fast enough.

“First of all, I don’t love that you use two hands …” It was such an instant classic that Colin Jost had a callback to it during Update.

Victim culture run amok.

What have you done for me lately

I didn’t realize until I looked him up just now just what a sneaky good career Travis Fryman had. He was a 34-win player across 13 seasons, and he could pick it at third. Five-time All-Star who cleared some $45 million in salaries. Not bad for a guy with a 104 career OPS+.

I actually use the 40-game rule in my OOTP league: I set a starting lineup/rotation/bullpen for the season and let it go forty games without changing it (too much), just to give all the slow starters time to prove to me that I shouldn’t DFA them.

Is it too early for thoughts and prayers? I got a busy day today so if we can just do that now and get it out of the way, that would be great.

Tork was not close enough to the bag to take the throw and just step on it. He had to take the throw while backpedaling toward the bag and then lunge for the bag with his foot. That should be considered unacceptable. He should have been standing on the bag already and come off it only to retrieve an errant throw, which this throw was not. Moving to first in anticipation of a catch and a throw to him should be automatic as soon as he determines it's a pop-up on the infield. He needs to work on that.

A major league first baseman should always position himself for the double play, every time.

Well, that sucked.

Fly out not a sac fly. Almost as bad. This is it, Akil. You want to prove you belong once and for all, this is it.

Schoop with the walk! Oh god, please, McKinstry, don’t hit into a double play to end the game …

Can’t lose 110 without losing 100 first. 😉

Just noticing for the first time that Wingenter has a face that resembles Engleberg the catcher from the original Bad News Bears.