squally1313

The Phillies, 'led' by a pissed Jake throwing his team under the bus, coming into town. Would it be too much to continue their misery and get another sweep?

Didn't read it, but based on Fangraphs, this seems flawed. His FIP and xFIP is actually higher against lefties than righties, seems to basically be a .111 vs .370 BABIP. Either way, he's making his first start this year, so if we can knock him out early their bullpen will be a mess the rest of the series.

Obviously they aren't going to rush Darvish back, but this is a spot Monty could help as well.

And when 'mediocre' is an 88 win pace, you know w'ere in a good place.

where did i imply they were in uncharted waters? i'm saying it's really annoying that they're in this position again 2 months into the season, sustainable or not. if you're not frustrated, then more power to you, but there is plenty to be frustrated about so far. I get that it's enough for them to hang on how good the team SHOULD be and hopefully will be in the second half, as the Cubs did last year. But for a lot of us, that doesn't make the long stretch where they do struggle/are inconsistent to be any less annoying to sit through. There's this repeated response that any thinking along the lines of, "why is this good team playing better" is basically just parroting r_mack. Or that being frustrated with them again getting off to an up and down first half is somehow over the line, as if, something that was really annoying the previous season shouldn't be annoying the very next season simply because it happened before. I mean, even with all of this, they're playing at an 88 win pace. Literally the only bad thing about 2016 is that it got people thinking that winning 100+ games is something that happens with any regularity. This is a generally stupid sport where people write off most of the wins as 'well that team sucked so it didn't really count' and then dwell on the losses like they have extra significance. It's not been a fun year, but at least we aren't Dodgers fans.

This. I'm not sure how this announcement did anything to make this better. The players didn't want this, and they aren't getting fined directly and there's no way on-field penalties. Make the NFL fine their shitty owner and then it'll just be more of a controversy when the owner calls out individual players.

It's so annoying that the dumbest horsefeathering people in Chicago media basically created this story out of nowhere.

Someone tell Montgomery he shouldn't accept his paycheck today (that's how paychecks work, right?)

Yeah, going .500 against +.500 teams and taking care of business in your other games makes for a pretty clear path to the playoffs.

I was on the ESPN broadcast hoping for 2016 WS flashbacks every few minutes...so much for that. They just blamed the brick wall for Melky not catching that ball, not the fact that it was scalded, the sun is brutal, or (most importantly) Melky is a terrible defender in his second game this year.

It would be shocking that he could get back to his normal terrible control, more in line with his most recent two seasons? I don't think it would be shocking. Dude has to figure it out, of course. He's had one season where his BB% was under double digits and he has never ever been above average as a major leaguer. No one needs him to be an 'above average' major leaguer, whatever stats you're using to determine that. We've got four starters who are clearly better that are all signed for multiple years. There's an upside that's admittedly very hard to see right now, and there's a track record of being an effective fifth starter. If you think that he's going to finish this year as some historic anomaly of lack of control, sure. But his career, and 120+ years of baseball history says his walk rate will come down.

Alright this is like six steps past meatball-y.

It's a little more fluky, but he's still putting up a .366 OBP against righties this year. His power disappears, but he's definitely shown improvement against them so far this year.

We were at Redmonds and going into the bottom of the eighth I closed my tab out, asking for bottles of champagne when I did so. Right around the time Davis was heading to the plate, I realized that our buckets of beer, which we thought was fiscally responsible, was actually $40 for 5 Budweisers. Between that and thinking I jinxed them by asking about champagne, it was a long half hour. Basically just sat in the corner in silence.

In two innings of terrible pitchers, by far the worst. Middle middle 85 mph spinner. That aside, it's fun thinking about how there's an Indians board out there somewhere with posters lamenting all the terrible highlights they'll have to sit through the next two days.

Jesus Christ my heart just dropped watching that clip.

The couple things that stood out to me on the 400th rewatch of the tenth. 1. It was pretty clear, especially after two strikes, that Zobrist was just trying to punch something to the opposite field, and Cleveland still left quite a bit of room down the line. 2. The Montero single was pretty much a tailor made double play ball, but the middle infielders were playing in for some reason. Going through the thread again, it's filled with people (probably correctly) ripping Maddon. But I could see Cleveland having similar managerial complaints.

It seems like you accept Russell is, at the very least, equal to Turner. So when comparing cores, isn’t it telling that for the Nationals, Turner is untouchable, while for the Cubs, we have superior talent that needs to be taken care of first?

I think he was referring to that weird play where Freeman was stealing second and it bounced off his foot rather than a routine single to left. I was probably over the top in my post above, but you can still make good defensive plays on what start off as fluky/unusual plays (ie the ball bouncing off his foot). We obviously shouldn't expect Schwarber to throw out a lot of guys trying to steal second at home, but he played it really well.

Robbing that home run with his bare hand was great but the stars all aligned perfectly. I mean he was in the perfect spot, there was no wasted movement, and he timed his jump perfectly - but it still super lucky that the ball happened to be right where his hand was, not to discredit him or anything.

This is an inordinate amount of word garbage.

I don't know if the actual timing works out (note: it definitely doesn't), but if you combine all the teams current streaks, the Central is on a 16 game winning streak right now. Cardinals W2 Brewers W2 Pirates W4 Cubs W4 Reds W4 (lol Dodgers) Edit: By the same method, the NL West is on a 15 game losing streak.

After not having won or lost more than two in a row for the first 21 games.

wRC+s Bryant 182 Schwarber 148 Baez 145 Contreras 121 Zobrist 115 Almora 108

Chatwood has the lowest FIP of the starters. And the highest xFIP.