Transmogrified Tiger

That is an....adventurous defensive alignment, especially in the outfield on a day where outfielders will be surely getting action.

If that's the case, it really underscores how much we could use another lefty bat since you have Russell batting 5th (i know he hits righties better but still). If Heyward or Coghlan had a pulse they'd be hitting higher. Russell ®, Heyward, Coghlan, Ross ® and Lester is rough. On a non-Lester night you'd have Montero too. I don't think that's really a captial P problem, could it be a bit better? Sure, but the improvement comes most from Heyward and Coghlan meeting minimal expectations rather than making a bunch of personnel changes(Russell is going to stay in the lineup, for example).

To really underscore the point, right handed hitters have a sub-.500 OPS against Martinez.

106 pitchers have 100 IP, Hendricks ranks 16th in FIP. Also I don't see a lot of evidence for Hendricks' ground ball rate taking off once in the Cubs org, but when someone dared to say Hendricks is a #1 there's less time for accuracy than there is for condescending to homer fans.

Russell is 20 months younger than Contreras.

as I always say, he's the hot ham and cheese of relievers

Arenado is nearly 2 wins worse than Bryant and his unadjusted offensive numbers are worse, so screw him anyway.

Yeah, if he was truly hurt, it would've been real easy to DL him for a week instead of banishing Grimm back to Iowa.

[tweet] [/tweet] [tweet] [/tweet] [tweet] [/tweet]

That is a surprisingly desperate combination of moves.

Matusz is a free agent after the season. He obviously won't be in high demand, but it's hard to have a ton of optimism about him as a future contributor because it's extremely unlikely he'll be under team control for more than year.

They have a AAA team right? I mean the 2006 Cubs gave starts to guys like Marmol, Juan Mateo, Les Walrond, Ryan O'Malley, Jae Kuk Ryu, Wade Miller and Jerome Williams. None of them worked out, but at least they got a good look at Marmol and turned him into a quality reliever. Maybe that would have happened without auditioning him, but it certainly didn't hurt him. Point is that there is absolutely no future with Jered Weaver and the Angels season has long since been lost. I'm sure there's a AAA pitcher that's worth looking at, or a Brian Matusz out there. At least those options have a non-zero chance of impacting the organization in the future. Salt Lake SP with more than 2 starts this year: - Nate Smith - This is the one person they could call up that would make sense, although he's not really any good - Skaggs - already in the MLB rotation - Chris Jones - 27 years old, 7+ ERA in AAA - Kyle Kendrick - 31 years old, 5+ ERA in AAA, hoping to slightly change his last name to trick a future MLB team into giving him a contract - Kyle McGowin - 24 years old, 6+ ERA in AAA - Zach Nuding - 26 years old, 6+ ERA in AAA - David Huff - 31 years old, near 7 ERA in AAA - Yunesky Maya - 34 years old, near 6 ERA in AAA - Blayne Weller - 26 years old, 15.00 ERA Now those stats are a little exaggerated because Salt Lake is a hitter's paradise, but I think it makes the point. Right now the Angels rotation is Shoemaker, Skaggs, Nolasco, Weaver, and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Jhoulys Chacin(also a pending FA) already got banished to the pen for being worse than Weaver. There's nothing there.

This is the team that gave 9 starts to the ghost of Tim Lincecum. Weaver is starting mostly because there is almost literally no one else to do it.

I don't see any point where Contreras is entirely on the left side of the line. If that's a correct call(I'm gonna say no), then that's a rule that needs changed, because the base itself is out of the baseline in that case.

Is Bryant in a deeper crouch than normal? He almost looked like Szczur in that at bat.

[tweet] [/tweet]

Not sure what that guy's talking about. La Stella is listed at 1 year, 124 days of service time on BR prior to this year, and a service year is 172 days. You also earn service time on the 15 day DL. La Stella earned a little under 120 days of service time this year prior to being optioned, so for a very rough approximation he's at like 2 years, 75 days. As a guy who won't be a first division starter, losing a month of service time definitely hurts since he's more likely to be non-tendered than to get a starting job and stay on a roster for seasons at a time, but there's no threshold that he's falling short of by being sent down right now. EDIT: My guess is that guy saw the 1.124 on BR and didn't realize that it wasn't including this season, in which case getting sent down would keep La Stella from reaching 2 years of service.

That was the first time the Mariners were on Sunday Night Baseball in over 12 years.

Speaking of Carl's Jr, let's take a moment to remember his outing. O'Malley: K swinging Martin: K swinging Cano: K swinging Cruz: K swinging Seager: 3-1 groundout Gutierrez: K looking 1 thru 6 in the Mariner order and he hardly needed a defense behind him. Dirty, dirty, dirty stuff.

Something based around Soler/Odorizzi makes a lot of sense to me and seems to pretty fairly weight current performance/team control/future upside. That of course means the asking price is probably Schwarber and Baez.

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2016/7/31/12339702/52-51-chart

Rondon probably goes 2 innings. For the 13th you probably consider Hendricks or Hammel. EDIT: Not Hammel

Ross was hitting in his spot in the order. are you sure? Oh that's my bad, I forgot Ross entered in the top half.

Ross was hitting in his spot in the order.

Aoki choking up about 8 inches, he's basically swinging a souvenir bat