March/April MLB game thread
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The Mets scored 4 runs on bases loaded walks plus another on a bases loaded HBP; I wonder what the record is for 'RBIs off of walks in a game'
Hogan Harris had a spectacular line of 0.1 IP , 1 H, 5 BB, 6R, 6ER (162 ERA)
Hogan Harris had a spectacular line of 0.1 IP , 1 H, 5 BB, 6R, 6ER (162 ERA)
*17
(though the last one was with a position player pitching, so does that count for depression purposes? I dunno)
One slim silver lining for the A's, they've got someone better than anyone on their staff waiting in the wings at AAA:
Imagine having to sit through a second game of a double header after watching 17 walks in the first.
Hogan Harris was making his major league debut. I thought Mark Kotsay should have taken him out sooner and not leave him in to be embarrassed like that. He clearly had no command and was melting down, and should have probably been pulled after he hit Nimmo in the back with the bases loaded.
This was the full deGrom experience tonight. Four no hit innings, looked dominant, and then the injury.
Kershaw is just a joy to watch at this point. He’s topping out around 91, but the curve is nasty as ever. 7 innings. 0 runs. 9 K. 3 hits. Canha got him with a bloop single on pitch 13 in the 7th which was his 99th of the game. McNeil follows with another soft single. Pham Ks for the 3rd strikeout of the inning. Masterful work. 105 pitches.
It's amazing that Kershaw is a sure slam dunk Hall of Famer but he just now got 200 wins. Will Clemens be the last to get 300 wins?
I know I know the win stat is not that important but I remember seeing excellent pitchers reach 300 wins in the 80s and 90s and now here we are.
We may not see many more 200 game winners, much less 300. The youngest guy with over 100 career wins is Gerrit Cole with 134 and he's 32 years old. The closest guy under 30 years old is Jose Berrios with 73 wins.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/W_active.shtml
Randy Johnson was the last to get to 300 (Glavine and Maddux also followed Clemens), and he most likely will remain the last. The top 5 pitchers in wins all finished their careers long before World War 2, which probably isn't a coincidence. Safe to say the 300 barrier is unlikely to be broken again in the same way the 400 win barrier has been unbroken for close to 100 years: the game has changed.
Verlander might make it. He's at 244 in his age 39 season. Johnson, Glavine, Clemens, and Maddux all won between 30 and 75 games in their 40s, so he'd need to be like them for it to happen.
I stand corrected. Point remains valid though. The game has changed a lot.
Is this the part where I remind kids to stay off my lawn?
Yeah, I had ruled it out happening again a few years ago, but Verlander might make me a believer if he is really committed to it. The game has really changed which makes it so much harder to rack up wins, but at the same time, we see athletes pushing the boundaries of longevity in almost every sport, including Verlander who won the Cy Young last year. If he plays until he is 45, he could realistically do it.
Arizona has had a great start to the season and are fun to watch, but they need to just dump Bumgarner.
$23m this year and $14m next year. He hasn't even been replacement level since he landed in AZ. Just a brutally bad contract, made moreso by the fact that it seemed like a bad idea the day it was signed.
Can't wait for the postgame interview. Supposedly he was screaming "it's just rosin" at the umps.
For at least 3 or 4 years now I've been amazed at how well he does, at least when he's able to stay healthy. His fastball looks like batting practice, but he keeps hitters so off balance it doesn't matter.
I know we hate him, but man, Machado is so good.
View: https://twitter.com/TalkingFriars/status/1648799030766616576
View: https://twitter.com/TalkingFriars/status/1648799030766616576
And then about 3 minutes later, Machado is the one getting robbed:
View: https://twitter.com/JustinCToscano/status/1648800444674895872
View: https://twitter.com/JustinCToscano/status/1648800444674895872
I know weather and school are factors, but some of the game attendance around the league is abysmal. 4k in Oakland, 7k in Cincinnati. The three game series between SF and Miami didn’t draw more than 9k in any game.
Maybe almost half the league being under .500 has something to do with it.
Maybe almost half the league being under .500 has something to do with it.
Bumgarner could be losing his spot to Brandon Pfaadt any day now, so I guess he'd better get his talking out while he can.
Oakland needs to move to Vegas or Portland
Cincy is a horrible market but most of that is because they’ve been horrible for a long time. If they didn’t have their history, they would have moved to Nashville already.
Marlins need to move anywhere
The Guardians/Tigers series had a rainout the first night and then for some reason they started their traditional doubleheader the next day at 1:00 pm... followed by an afternoon game on get-away day even though both are off tomorrow. So they played an entire weekday series without a game reaching 6:00 pm. I think because fans could exchange the Monday tickets for any game this year and it was still miserably cold on Tuesday they went out of their way to try to keep people from attending. I didn't see the attendance for today's game, but less than 10,000 showed up to see two games yesterday.
Apparently there have been 3 pitchers ejected for foreign substances since the rule was enacted.
Guess who the umpire was for the other two.
Same as today's, Phill Cuzzi
Boras as it again with his silly quotes (although legit this time), the "Cuzzi on field spectrometer":
View: https://twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/1648813722855407617
View: https://twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/1648813722855407617
Crew chief Dan Bellino didn’t hold back after the game. He said the stickiness on Scherzer’s hand was the worst he has seen in three years of inspections, and was even more than the first time they checked him earlier.
I saw that and it seems like complete bullshit, no? Either it's just rosin or it's not. There doesn't seem to be a "the rosin is too sticky" measurement. Basically, the umps power tripped and are spitting nonsense justifying the ejection of a guy who is surely going to make a massive deal out of this.
From what I have read, the only acceptable rosin bag is the pre-approved one on the field. Scherzer admits that he used rosin that was in the tunnel. MLB has been clear about only using approved rosin bags.
It could be that the pitch clock isn't giving pitchers the time they usually wanted to get themselves rosin-ed up on the mound. Pedro gave a demonstration on TV about how stick you can make rosin just by rubbing it for a while between your hands and fingers. When you're on the clock, you don't have that time. That's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you're a pitcher or someone who wants spin rates down and contact up.
If he's "rosining" up off the mound when the rules don't allow for it, the pitch clock isn't an acceptable excuse for doing so. Every pitcher has to deal with the pitch clock. If they're getting by with just the approved rosin on the mound, then so can he.
If everyone is using the same rosin, shouldn't it stand to reason that they'll have a similar feel of stickiness when checked? If they're checking Scherzer and finding his hands are excessively sticky relative to everyone else, aren't they right to be suspicious that he's doing something different/extra? Maybe this particular umpire/crew is too sensitive or too quick to jump to ejection, but I don't think they're doing their job if they think something is off and they ignore it.
I wonder whether the Scherzer incident in any way grew out of this
https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/04/15/twins-rocco-baldelli-blasts-umpires-controversy-yankees-domingo-german
https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/04/15/twins-rocco-baldelli-blasts-umpires-controversy-yankees-domingo-german
Great. He used an approved substance but applied it a few feet away from where he was supposed to. It gives the league cover to enforce but doesn't mean the rule isn't idiotic.
No. There is no standard for how sticky the pitcher's hand can be other than an umpire can't find it "too sticky" ...whatever that means. This is obviously a dumb rule destined for arbitrary enforcement by umpires who routinely feel the need to become the story at any given time.
So why wasnt this similarly enforced against German? He admitted to using Rosin in the dugout also, didnt he?
It is legal to use rosin, and especially with the pitch clock now, it makes sense to apply it in the dugout so you can save time between pitches.
The completely arbitrary and ridiculous part is having some imaginary line for 'overuse' that literally only one umpire has enforced so far (Scherzer is the third pitcher he has done this to, no other umpire in MLB has done it).