Sammy Sofa

Now THAT'S an impressive meltdown.

The Reds' pythag record is 62-53 vs. their actual record of 56-69. They are a decidedly better team than their record indicates.

Pirates escape the 6th with no damage.

Rangers manage to hang on and beat the Brewers 1-0. Pirates up 8-4 in the bottom of the 6th, but Cardinals threatening with 1st and 2nd with only 1 out.

That Pirates/Cardinals game looks like it must be wild.

Classic "the save is actually in the 8th inning" coming up.

You don't wear pants under the hockey shorts. The bottom of your legs are covered by extra long socks that go over your shin pads and are held up with tape. I'll leave it up to you to decide if that's better or worse. So, what you're saying is...

Also not gonna lie: "sandbox" is a pretty great auto-correct for "bandbox."

Its not meant to be a burn its just a fact, unlike you I want everyone on our roster to do good. With that said 2 HR over 48 games for your #3/4 hitter in the year of the HR isn't very good.

He wants to get on base with only 2 HR in just under 2 months. This is not the burn you think it is.

Holy thread title was WAY off on the game time, Batman.

cl smooth, welcome to the suck.

They are grasping at straws See, you're this close to self-aware. Do you think it would make sense to just move the better hitters up in the lineup so you always have the best 3 guys going 1-2-3? Or do you think their lack of a "real leadoff hitter" is a problem?

I mean, they made the call to move Heyward to the leadoff spot, which is something you seem to think is tantamount to a baseball war crime.

Everyone knows teams do that. It's widely considered to be dumb and meaningless when you're talking about things like a dozen AB or less. It's old timey meatball horsefeathers. Why do all these teams who spend millions on analytics do it if it was totally meaningless? You would think Theo or Jed would say something when they go over things with Joe everyday. Why does Maddon insist on treating almost any leftie he has in the bullpen as a LOOGY? Why is Almora still getting ANY starts when he has been catastrophically bad for well over an entire calendar year now? These are just things that always happen in baseball. To assume that any decision this FO or management staff is automatically sound is silly. Just the very presence of Almora on the team still at this point shows they don't always make the right choice.

Everyone knows teams do that. It's widely considered to be dumb and meaningless when you're talking about things like a dozen AB or less. It's old timey meatball horsefeathers.

Only 13 of those PA came hitting 5th and 30 came 7th despite the same PA total between the two spots. 5th .200/.385/.200/.585 in 13 PA vs LHP .367/.466/.617/1.082 in 73 PA vs RHP 7th .172/.200/.276/.476 in 30 PA vs LHP .367/.429/.571/1.000 in 56 PA vs RHP In a more sensible world, this would be the moment where you realize the whole point was the absurdity of acting like tiny sample sizes based on lineup spots shows where a player should hit. Here, I'll make this as simple as I can: Heyward has been leading off for 10 games. In the last 24 games, his line is only .258 .313 .438 .751. OK, so maybe you think that is only dragged down by his time leading off. But his July line is a shaky .309 .333 .420 .753 inflated by a .421 BAbip. He was clearly struggling well before he went to leadoff, and had his numbers boosted by a very lucky BAbip. In August so far, his slash line is worse, but his BAbip is a wretched .160. He swung from being lucky while slumping to being REALLY unlucky on top of slumping. This all points to a guy struggling at the plate, as he did in May. To extrapolate that to mean he is only struggling because he is leading off makes no sense. Heyward should be moved, but because he isn't well right now, period. If he starts performing like he did in April and July, it would be foolish to not try him at leadoff again.

You spelt I picked the best year since it fits the narrative better despite always bitching about SSS wrong. That "good" year with RISP has him up to .193 lifetime which only Mike Zunino is lower among players with 400 or more PA in the situation in all players fangraphs has listed in modern history. Yes, he is fine with RISP this year, and it's absurd to act like past performance somehow negates that. You're just spitting in the wind at this point when you've descended to the point that you basically WANT him to also be terrible with RISP this season. And, again, I put that out there just to counter how you were flat out wrong declaring him to be "comically bad" this year. I don't think the small sample size of his numbers with RISP this season means he's magically shrugged off that weird blind spot for good, but he is doing relatively fine in that situation right now.

Well, that's certainly a weird take.

Wait, wait, wait....so your response is to blatantly shift the goal posts to now argue that he must have just bad luck of the draw seen more LH pitchers when hitting 7th vs. 5th? Come on, man. When Heyward was hitting leadoff the first time Joe was moving him from 1st to 7th on some days so I would bet those bad 7 hole numbers were due to facing LHP and getting dropped down. Heyward only has 91 PA against LH pitchers this season.

OK? It's 2019, and that's what he's doing THIS season. So now you want to go with the smaller sample size? Yes, because it's not some bizarre micro sample piggybacked on the back of some weirdo meatball narrative. This is simply, "Kyle Schwarber has not been bad with RISP this season."

Schwarber has a .222 .351 .486 .837 line with RISP this season, which is clearly not "comically bad," with a BAbip of only .216 for a guy who usually is around .260, so, yeah, he's been reasonably unlucky in those spots. He's under 200 lifetime OK? It's 2019, and that's what he's doing THIS season. Also: his career RISP numbers carry a .200 BAbip to his career BAbip of .260, so, yes, again, reasonably unlucky. Let me pose a scenario to you: It's late in a tie game, and the Cubs have a guy on 3B with Schwarber up to bat. He's facing a struggling RH pitcher. He has a career .115 .350 .115 .465 line with only a guy on 3B in a mere 40 PA. Do you PH for him?

Wait, wait, wait....so your response is to blatantly shift the goal posts to now argue that he must have just bad luck of the draw seen more LH pitchers when hitting 7th vs. 5th? Come on, man.

Schwarber has a .222 .351 .486 .837 line with RISP this season, which is clearly not "comically bad," with a BAbip of only .216 for a guy who usually is around .260, so, yeah, he's been reasonably unlucky in those spots.