O-o-T-S -- Week of May 2

[Frayed Knot]

A couple of interesting series starting up tonight:

- Cubs @ Pirates
First meeting of the year. Cubs start with a 3.0 game lead in the Central


- Nats @ Royals
The middle series for Washington on their 10-game StL (3) to KC (3) to Chicago (4) road trip which they started with a 3-game sweep of the Cards.


- Phils @ Cards
Maybe just a non-descript four game series between a couple of 3rd place teams. But it might be a good read on the early trend towards the thinking that the Phils are going to be a lot better than previously thought and maybe that the Cards this year are going to be somewhat less than their rep suggests.

[Frayed Knot]

-- Nats now 4-0 on their tour de Missouri
Doing it mostly with pitching right now (RA = 4, 1, 1, 0 over their last 4 games) and not with Harper (1-17 w/9 Ks)



-- Cubs keep-a-rollin' with a 7-2 win over Pitt. Arrieta vs Niese tonight.



-- Phils behind Jeremy Hellickson jumped out to a 3-0 lead ... before giving up 10 unanswered including a 3R HR by Wainwright (9th of his career)

[Frayed Knot]

I shut baseball out of my mind the second the final out fell in Markakis's glove last night, so at least most of the rest of the baseball news I didn't get this morning turned out to be good.



- the best of it all was Papelbon coughing up 3 in the 9th to finally give the Nats a loss on their tour de Missouri.
Nats though continue to get good pitching, Roark this time. Harper continues to slump (0-5), Murph hit his 3rd HR


- Cubs continue to wreck everything in their path (and maybe even their past) as they thumped Niese & the Pirates again.
They now have a 5 game lead over Pitt and 9 over StL. They also already have a bigger run differential this season (+89) than the +83 they finished last season with when they won 97 games.
Not sure if anyone else in either league is even half that good in RS/RA (Mets = +36)


- Phils continue to get surprisingly good pitching as Aaron Nola & friends shut out the Cards 1-0


- and the Yanx (8-16) lost their 6th straight which is always a good thing to know.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

On top of the MFY loss, Arod popped a hammy and goes for an MRI today. He professed it may not be serious by reminding writers he wasn;t running hard when the injury occurred.

Orioles can wreck the entire MFY season this week.

[Edgy MD]

I'm not so sure the Cubs are as good as all this.

For one, their lineup has three guys playing like MVPs, but they are the only three guys with an OPS+ over 100 (numbers for each below). Zobrist has been meh and Heyward has been horrible enough to qualify for the 2016 Yankees.

c Miguel Montero (DL) 74
1b Anthony Rizzo 160
2b Ben Zobrist 98
ss Addison Russell 80
3b Kris Bryant 139
lf Jorge Soler 55
cf Dexter Fowler 185!
rf Jason Heyward 56

The bench has been Bambi's Bandits-quality spectacular, but how sustainable is that? It's all about the arms with them. And if you still have faith that the Mets big three can match up with theirs, then the Mets have every hope of disappointing them as starkly as they did last year.

[TransMonk]

I'm also skeptical that their rotation will perform as well as they have over the course of a long season.

[TransMonk]

Nats at Cubs four game series starts tomorrow. Something's gotta give!

[Frayed Knot]

Cards score twice in the 9th for a walk-off win and the series win vs Phils

[TransMonk]

The Cards put down the Phils 4-0 this afternoon behind a strong performance from Jaime Garcia.

[Frayed Knot]

As frustrating as deGrom's night was, there was some REALLY bad pitching Thursday night elsewhere in MLB.

- The Rox hung a 13-run top of the 5th on the Giants, starter Matt Cain then reliever Vin Mazzaro taking the brunt of that one. So that's now a 12-run and a 13-run inning vs SFG pitching just one week apart.
Even worse was that the Rox starter, Chris Rusin, apparently couldn't handle the pressure of working with a slim 17-3 lead and was unable to finish the bottom of the 5th and thus qualify for the win. He was yanked after retiring just one of the seven batters he faced in that 5th, leaving with two runners on and a manager unwilling to trust him with a 17-7 lead.
The reliever was able to get out without costing Rusin any more runs and, oddly, the remainder of the game passed by scoreless on only four combined hits; probably all the hitters were tired out by then.


- As Gary mentioned at some point last night, the city of Chicago was hosting four 1st place teams last night as the Nats were at Wrigley the same time as the ChiSox were hosting the BoSox.
Not sure exactly what was going on in the AL side but that game somehow turned into a 3 Hour 57 Minute slog-fest even though the final score was a relatively normal 7-3 in favor of the Sox Rouge.
16 walks issued probably didn't help speed things along.

[TransMonk]

How does a current Mets fan root in the Marlins/Phillies series that begins today?

I'm not sure if I'm proud that four of the top five records in the NL belong to teams in the East...or petrified.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Hope neither team sweeps, I guess.

[Ceetar]

TransMonk wrote: How does a current Mets fan root in the Marlins/Phillies series that begins today? I'm not sure if I'm proud that four of the top five records in the NL belong to teams in the East...or petrified.

do we need to root? I don't particularly care which of them comes in third.

[Frayed Knot]

Wind blowing out at Wrigley this afternoon: HRs by Rendon (solo), LaStella (2R), Rizzo (solo), Zobrist (solo) and Zobrist (3R)
7-2 Cubs thru 5. Both Lackey & Scherzer still hurling.
Also 3 more hits for Murphy (double + 2 singles)

[TransMonk]

Nats put up 4 in the 8th, but the Cubs hang on to win 8-6.

It would be nice to see the Mets take advantage tonight and cut into that Washington 1.5 game lead.

[soupcan]

Cubs are almost as scary as Murphy.

[TransMonk]

Ceetar wrote: do we need to root? I don't particularly care which of them comes in third.

That's some 2007 hubris right there.

It's a long season. What if Harper slips on his hair gel, the weight of Strasburg's ears pinch a nerve in his neck and the Nats can't recover to compete? Couldn't one of MIA or PHI (or both) continue to breathe down the Mets' neck all season?