TruffleShuffle

that sounds a little unreasonable.

i doubt it. he doesn't strike out as many guys as pedro in his prime, and he's been really lucky this year. .268 BABIP with a 20% LD rate, and 0 HRs allowed. he's allowed 45 fly balls; his career HR/FB is a shade under 10% meaning that he'd "normally" have given up 3 or 4 HRs by now. his numbers should be excellent, but once the fly balls start going over the fence and he has a couple of bad starts, that ERA will probably end up in the mid 2's or something. this is true, but part of having a 2000 pedro season is getting lucky. pedro had a .237 BABIP in 2000. he was amazing, but it's pretty unlikely his ld% was low enough for that to be reasonable. also, i think greinke is a special enough case that it's reasonable to believe that his career hf/fb rate isn't going to reflect what he does this year. that's true, but even if his HR/FB rate is better than his career numbers, he's still toward the low end of the HR/FB spectrum. it's unrealistic to expect that the current "great greinke" would have a rate of anything below 5-6%. as for pedro's 2000, you're right about how lucky he was on balls in play. i think that, luck-neutral, pedro's best season was 1999. he was 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA, had 13.2 K/9 IP and just 1.6 BB/9, and a .325 BABIP. his ERA was almost below 2, pitching half his games in a hitter's park, and he was probably unlucky on balls in play. simply absurd. late '90s pedro was something else, the type of domination you had to stop and watch. i remember watching a game at yankee stadium in 1999, this during the heart of the yankees' dynasty, and pedro threw a 1-hitter (a home run) and struck out 17 while not walking anyone. it was simply incredible. that was up there with kerry wood's game for being as dominant a performance as i'd ever seen.

120/122. missed the trailblazers and raptors.

oh well, thanks for winning 2 of the 3 dusty baker's reds.

they should DL him and strap him to a treadmill for 15 days.

Can we stop with the Stevens love? They guy has walked 7 guys in 13 innings, why do you think Lou wants another guy with command issues in the pen? I know I can deal with a few more walks than ideal if he can do even half as well as his current .089 BAA. His walk rate has been fine in his 300+ innings prior to this year, I don't think his first 14 IP this year are enough to make me think he's a wildman now. I cringe when I say this, but... A sudden increase in wildness is often a sign of an impending injury in a pitcher. in that case we should prepare for our entire bullpen to blow out their arms soon.

yeah fortunately larussa burned through his pen playing matchups so they're left with the terrible boyer trying to close it out.

thanks for that "ball one" blue

one too many concussions, apparently.

solid 9th inning for franklin, 2 home runs allowed (one to a pitcher) and 2 line outs. about time he came back down to earth.

strikes a-hole

liar liar pants on fire.

not sure how to do a screen shot, but this is fail by ESPN: http://games.espn.go.com/frontpage/baseball

maybe soto just sucks now, i dunno. i just have a hard time believing that a guy who was really good last year can fall apart in a few months.

i doubt it. he doesn't strike out as many guys as pedro in his prime, and he's been really lucky this year. .268 BABIP with a 20% LD rate, and 0 HRs allowed. he's allowed 45 fly balls; his career HR/FB is a shade under 10% meaning that he'd "normally" have given up 3 or 4 HRs by now. his numbers should be excellent, but once the fly balls start going over the fence and he has a couple of bad starts, that ERA will probably end up in the mid 2's or something.

russell branyan was a really good signing by the m's. good power good patience, can play 1B (adequately) or 3B (poorly) or DH and give above-average production for $1.4M. if bavasi was still there i'd say they might go for the deal.

espn only ruins things if you turn that channel on or go to their website.

that's on lou. wuertz was a pretty solid reliever and lou hated him. hendry basically had to give him away away because lou wasn't going to use him. i still have some faith in heilman because he was good from 2006-08, plus we gave up cedeno (who's still terrible) and garrett olsen, who probably wil never reach his ceiling as a #5 starter. someone has to get the walks down though. the whole staff is walking too many guys and it's killing them; the bullpen has been especially bad.

man he sucks

i think we have finally found a game where cyno liked the officiating.

I wonder why Hendry loves this guy so much? It doesnt matter now, because his career is done. The only way Hendry gets Fox now is as a coach, because hes not coming back from that injury. what happened to him?

More on Lou than anyone else. He clearly was pulling a "that'll learn 'em" tantrum. he should have a tantrum about his bad managing. if he'd started the inning with guzman or heilman, the result might have been different. it's a one run game and your starter has thrown 115 pitches, you go to one of your better relievers. you don't leave your starter in to face the top of the lineup and then put in the dregs of the bullpen.

well thanks for putting this one out of reach cotts/patton

i picked up kyle lohse in this league and he's since had two bad starts... you can bet i'm keeping him around!

Its much easier to fold. They're going to get paid either way. lol