Clem Fandango

Nomar Mazara hit a home run the other day that Statcast labeled as having a projected distance of 491 ft. He hit it above the exits on the upper deck in RF. The discrepancy between that and Home Run Tracker is huge. Even with HRT's "TrueDistance" meter it estimated its distance at 453 feet. Given how far the ball's landing spot actually was from the fence distance he hit it over (about 350 feet)... I'm starting think Statcast has home run distances all wrong, all the time. I mean the link above is Mazara's "491" foot home run, which HRT labeled at 453 feet. Statcast labeled this Stanton home run as 475 feet, but it's HRT longest home run of the year so far at 490. If you had a gun to your head and had to decide which home run ball was hit farther, you pick Stanton 11 times out of 10. I do not have any faith in Statcast's HR distance tracking metrics at all. I know this is a weird crusade to start, but I love watching dingers after the day is over and I keep up with all this stuff and it upsets me to see a ball that was hit well into the upper deck in the RF of a short field is being considered hit further than a ball crushed to deep left center in an enormous pitchers park.

Yeah, it makes sense from a connect the dots perspective, but I don't think the Cubs go hunting for a corner OF'er unless all our corner OF options are just 100% hot garbage. That said, 1) I would kill to see Joey Bats on the Cubs, if only for half a season, and 2) I would kill to see him on the Cubs in the playoffs against the Pirates or Cardinals.

Group D, otherwise known as The guys I never would've expected in a thousand years to show up there

Looks like someone went on fiver.com and hired a graphic designer. I actually Tweeted them the other day and told them they should fire their graphics person because their graphics were a disgrace to the rest of the league.

http://replygif.net/i/1322.gif

I've wanted Matusz as a Jake 2.0 reclamation project for a while now. Was once the #5 prospect in all of baseball. Jake never cracked the Top 60. Given Baltimore's horrible pitching philosophy, I would not be surprised if the Cubs can fix Matusz and, at the very least, turn him into another Hendricks type.

Prior to May 21st, he had started only 8 games and pinch hit the rest. Over 47 AB's he was batting .319 His last three games he has gone 10 for 13. 9 of his 10 hits have been singles. His slash line over these three consecutive starts is a joyful .769/.786/.846/1.632 He is also 40 hits away from 3,000 MLB hits. Including his Japanese league stats he has a total of 4,238 hits presently. Ichiro is awesome.

Or save graphics with overly saturated colors in them on the low jpg compression setting. Or use the first graphic they find for logos when they google "Cub slogp" into google image search. Or be bad at making graphics.

This is inhuman

This was, indeed, a very enjoying read. Also, I don't think I've ever seen this full length Bryzzo promo before reading this: http://m.mlb.com/video/?content_id=577538883

There are rumors that baseball is talking about changing the strike zone and IBB for next season. They are talking about raising the strike zone to just above the knees because too many strikes are being called below the knees and is leading to batters either striking out or walking 30% of the time. The change would hopefully put more balls in play and create more action. The other rule change would be the intentional walk. Not getting rid of it all together, but changing so if someone wants to intentionally walk someone the manager or pitcher/catcher can just hold up 4 fingers and the batter automatically takes a base. It doesn't save a ton of time, but it does eliminate dead air. I kinda like both rumored solutions. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15633876/mlb-competition-committee-agrees-changes-strike-zone-intentional-walks

GEORGIE!!!

Thanks for playing Peavy tonight, Bochy!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j313/AllyourbasicGerrardo/noscream.gif

I just noticed they basically only have one infielder and a utility guy, and they're both pretty bad. Meanwhile Dilson Herrera (MI) has 8HR and a .894 OPS and Ty Kelly (super utility guy, seems like) is batting over .400 with a 1.053 OPS in AAA (and he's also had high quality K:BB ratios over his career). Ty Kelly also looks like Tywin Lannister http://d3k2oh6evki4b7.cloudfront.net/req/201604090/images/headshots/3/3176556d_mlbam.jpg

He's still getting on base at a great clip, and Heyward has also been turning it around lately and getting on base at a great clip as well. Just cause Fowler isn't on base 50% of the time any more doesn't mean the team isn't being given opportunities to drive in runs. If anything, with Heyward turning it around they should be getting more opportunities to score runs, they just haven't been coming through.

https://gfycat.com/GenerousAppropriateCatfish

Not a fan of not completely obliterating crappy teams, but a win is a win.

My roommate and his friend heckled Shane Victorino with mom jokes when he was on the Phillies extensively with insults that made no sense so much that it got a chuckle out of him apparently. Things like "Your mom burned the meatloaf!" and "Your mom wears a coconut bra!" Also, this is the best player reaction to heckling I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTGnh0rcQsc

And Danny Valencia. I knew I was forgetting someone! Good call.

Also Khris Davis hit 3 homers last night, including a walk off Grand Slam http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v709053083/texoak-davis-crushes-three-including-walkoff-slam He is now the third person in the last week and a half to have a 3 homer game. The others were Aaron Hill and Lorenzo Cain

Kemp narrowly missed hitting a dinger on the roof of the Supply Company building in San Diego. I'm unsure if that's ever happened, I suspect it has, but this thing was pretty majestic. http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v708891983/sfsd-kemp-cracks-a-moonshot-in-the-9th-inning

I know Trout is worth far more than his contract, but no player of this caliber, at this age, has ever been moved with this much money owed to them either. Obviously he's worth every penny, but teams still need to find a way to shoehorn in a $33 million a year contract for three years. In taking on Trout, some teams would maybe have to facilitate a secondary trade or a salary dump, which I'm sure they'd be happy to do, but Trout's contract can still be a boon for some teams and I imagine would be a bargaining point in negotiations to not give up as much talent in return. And I think if we look at any trade to compare this to, I'd suspect the Johan Santana deal is the closest. It was trade that had the contingency of him getting a contract extension, and he was arguably the best pitcher in the majors at the time. Trout's contract is 6 years $144 million. Presently he is owed $134 million over 5 years. The contract extension Santana signed was 6 years $137 million. He was entering his age 29 season at the time so the ages don't match up, but he was arguably the #1 pitcher in baseball who had just come off a 5 year run of ownership over the American League. The return for Johan Santana was a then slap hitting Juan Pierre clone in Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey. That's... not great.

I'll reiterate here what I basically said on the first page, which agrees with you. Off limits: Rizzo, Bryant, Russell Available: Whoever the hell they want.