TwiB Notes - August 17 thru 23

[Frayed Knot]

Making sure we get a proper reset on TWiB after a lapse last week.

- Joshua Báez in his second ML game following his 3 HR showing on Saturday: 0/5 w/3 Ks.  Jeeez, what an overhyped bust this guy turned out to be!!

 

Not a lot of hot/sexy series to open this week: Braves are at Twins, Phils & Marlins go head to head, our pursuit of the Nats sees them go to Rangers, Yanx at Baltimore.

A few quirks in that Seattle plays ex-Seattle (Mariners @ Brewers) while the Philly, Kansas City, Oakland, West Sacramento, Las Vegas A's go to Kansas City to face the Royals Think there are any remaining A's fans left in western Missouri/eastern Kansas? Were there ever many in the first place? Their 13 year run in K.C. never saw a winning season and topped out at 74 wins*. In fact, their most impressive feat while there was seemingly shipping future stars to the Yanquis for not much in return in part due to an ownership overlap which was a clear conflict of interest.

 

* They then moved to Oakland and immediately ran off nine consecutive winning seasons which included five post-seasons and three WS championships

[Frayed Knot]

Yanx place Max Fried back on the IL, this time with a left elbow bone bruise ... not a good thing, to happen, I surmise, when you're a LH pitcher.

Yanx open a series in Baltimore against the suddenly hot and in WC contention Orioles on Tuesday

[Frayed Knot]

In the all-Chicago series which started at Wrigley Monday night, Pete Crow-Armstrong hit the first pitch of the game thrown by the White Sox for a HR. And then in bottom 10 he hit the last pitch the ChiSox threw for a HR, aka: a 2R walk-off. He also had a single, double, and a stolen base and it made him a 30/30 player for the second straight season, this one with nearly 1/4 season still to go.

[Edgy MD]

Think of all the fantasy baseball players and prediction market players who bought high on Josh Baez after his first game, rending shirts and gnashing teeth after his second.

Card collectors!  Memorabilia collectors!  Busted!

[Frayed Knot]

It's just too easy to speculate that Edwin's Diaz's latest injury, 'neck inflammation', came as a result of turning to watch the shots he just gave up. So I won't do it.

[seawolf17]

Mariners were down 13-0 in the middle of the 8th in Milwaukee last night... and then the wheels came off, as their backup third baseman gave up nine runs in the bottom of the inning, including an outfielder forgetting how many outs there were and throwing the ball into the stands after the second out.

[Frayed Knot]

Cincy CF Dane Myers dropped the 27th out of the game (hit him right in the glove) allowing two runs to score and the Cardinals to take a 6 - 5 lead.  But it didn't end there. StL sent on to score four more times to run up a 10 - 5 lead in a game which should have been over.

But wait, it gets better. The Reds counter with four runs in the bottom of the 9th ... but then Matt McLain lines out with the bases loaded to end the game: 10 - 9 StL

That one's gonna leave a mark. Cincy was already 6.5 games out of the 3rd WC spot (SDP at the moment) so need every W they can get.

[Frayed Knot]

JdG notched his 2,000th strikeout Thursday night vs the Nationals. It was his 272nd game and 1,661st inning pitched in MLB.

Only Randy Johnson (262 games pitched) and Chris Sale (1,626 innings) reached the 2K mark faster.

[seawolf17]

Methinks 3,000 is highly unlikely.

But goodness, what could have been.

[metirish]

Is JDG headed to the HOF ? 

[Frayed Knot]

8 hours ago, metirish said:

Is JDG headed to the HOF ? 

My guess is probably yes.

Those who question it are going to cite the career totals, or lack thereof. His 272 starts barely ekes him into the top 450* and he only recently notched his 100th win [105 - 73]. The model to link him to is the short-but-great-prime of Koufax: just 12 and 13 (so far) seasons (not all those years were full or close to it) and both had the most dominant primes of their era.  

But even Sandy has deGrom beat by 125 games, some 700 innings and 60 wins all despite exiting the game at age 30. There are parallels but JdG wasn't Koufax so he's going to have to settle for Sandy lite. Not everyone will think that's good enough.

He's currently in the midst of his worst statistical season of his career even if it is still a pretty good year, but he's certainly unlikely to get better going forward.  There's one more year on his contract plus a mutual option for '28. He'll turn 39 & 40 y/o in mid-season of those years. Two good ones would go a ways towards removing doubt and even two decent ones will help a lot as well. It's possible he could pitch past 2028 (we re-built him stronger, faster, and paid him a lot more than $6 million $$) but you can't count on it.

 

 

* Currently tied in 449th place with Steve Barber, a guy who was featured prominently in BALL FOUR as the pitcher taking up a spot on the roster due to his big salary (like $75,000) despite never being able to get out of the trainer's room and onto the field.

[Frayed Knot]

Series of interest for the weekend:

Braves @ Brewers

Cards @ Phils

Jays @ Yanx

Nats @ Marlins

Rays @ Orioles

I include that last one because it's possible -- not like.y, but possible -- for the AL East to send four teams to the playoffs. Baltimore is currently last in the East at 6 games under .500 and the Jays 1.5 G ahead of them. But the 3rd WC right now (tie between MIN & TEX) sits at 2 games under so almost no one has been eliminated. Essentially 12 teams are fighting for six spots and there's 8.5 games between slots 3 and 12.

[Frayed Knot]

Seattle, currently sitting 4.0 games behind Houston in the West and one of six within two games of each other for the final WC slot, will bring up Kade Anderson for tonight's game vs the Cubbies. The 22 y/o 6' 2" lefty was the 3rd overall draft pick just last year from LSU, In 2026, his only pro season, Anderson has pitched to a 1.06 ERA with a 0.64 WHIP (47 hits + 13 BBs in 93 innings) across 18 starts at AA Arkansas. Is that a pitching line I could interest you in?

[Frayed Knot]

So not only were the Phils, winners of eight straight coming into the day, down 4 - 0 to StL entering the 9th, but two of the first three hitters made outs so it was runner on 2nd with two outs. 'Tying run on double deck' as we used to like to say on the school yard.

- Realmuto singles, runners 1st & 3rd

- Realmuto takes 2nd on D.I., Justin Crawford walks anyway so bases loaded

- Edmundo Sosa doubles, all three runners score

- Bryan De La Crus singles, Sosa scores, tie game

- Schwarber HRs. Thanks for coming, please arrive home safely 

Nine straight.

Shit! We have bases loaded, one out and two cracks at it and can't bring in a single runner.

 

 

Braves play the Sunday Night game* vs Milwaukee having lost the first two games of the series while scoring just two runs combined [2 -1 and 4 - 1]. Atlanta's lead in the East is down to 2.5 games pending tonight after sitting at 9.5 just 12 days ago.

* for some reason the SNB game tonight is on ESPN (I thought they quit doing baseball), NBC's game today was in the 3 PM slot (BOS 5 - SFG 4 in the 8th) so that they can run a WNBA game tonight. It's like Bizarro World.

[whippoorwill]

It’s part of the LLWS programming 

[Frayed Knot]

16 minutes ago, whippoorwill said:

It’s part of the LLWS programming 

Of course. I should have known there was an ulterior (read: ESPN self-promotion) angle to it.

[seawolf17]

Bryce Miller became the first pitcher to lose consecutive starts by 17 runs since 1890 or something.

And actually, his last four have been rough and he's seen his ERA jump by a run and a half:

Rk	Date	Team		Opp	Result	Dec	IP	H	R	HR	BB	SO	ERA	Pit	GmSc
14	2026-08-06	SEA		DET	L, 0-11	L(4-6)	5.0	5	4	1	2	5	3.08	93	44
15	2026-08-12	SEA	@	NYY	L, 5-10		6.0	8	5	1	1	5	3.39	89	40
16	2026-08-18	SEA	@	MIL	L, 0-22	L(4-7)	4.2	7	6	1	2	3	3.71	92	29
17	2026-08-23	SEA		CHC	L, 2-19	L(4-8)	4.1	2	6	2	7	5	4.12	104	33

Also, September is going to be rough for him, apparently:

Split	W	L	W-L%	ERA	GS	IP	WHIP
May	1	0	1.000	1.71	3	21.0	0.857
June	2	2	.500	2.19	4	24.2	0.608
July	1	3	.250	4.13	5	28.1	1.235
August	0	3	.000	9.00	4	20.0	1.700

[Edgy MD]

Zimmo.

 

[whippoorwill]

2 hours ago, seawolf17 said:

Bryce Miller became the first pitcher to lose consecutive starts by 17 runs since 1890 or something.

And actually, his last four have been rough and he's seen his ERA jump by a run and a half:

Rk	Date	Team		Opp	Result	Dec	IP	H	R	HR	BB	SO	ERA	Pit	GmSc
14	2026-08-06	SEA		DET	L, 0-11	L(4-6)	5.0	5	4	1	2	5	3.08	93	44
15	2026-08-12	SEA	@	NYY	L, 5-10		6.0	8	5	1	1	5	3.39	89	40
16	2026-08-18	SEA	@	MIL	L, 0-22	L(4-7)	4.2	7	6	1	2	3	3.71	92	29
17	2026-08-23	SEA		CHC	L, 2-19	L(4-8)	4.1	2	6	2	7	5	4.12	104	33

Also, September is going to be rough for him, apparently:

Split	W	L	W-L%	ERA	GS	IP	WHIP
May	1	0	1.000	1.71	3	21.0	0.857
June	2	2	.500	2.19	4	24.2	0.608
July	1	3	.250	4.13	5	28.1	1.235
August	0	3	.000	9.00	4	20.0	1.700

Wow yeah, what’s half of .000?