TWiB Notes - Week of Sept 4-10

[Frayed Knot]

* Has a four-homer game ever occurred twice in one season before? I doubt it, but it has now as Arizona's JC Martinez joined Cincy's Scooter Gennett's feat from earlier in the year.
The odd thing about Martinez's night last night was that he had just a K and a HR in 2 ABs as the game entered the the 7th inning. He then HR'd in the 7th and the 8th and was scheduled to be the
5th batter in the 9th but his mates got a few hits ahead of him to get him up with just one out in the 9th where he put up the final two runs in the 13-0 whupping the Snakes put on the Dodgers

* Speaking of the Dodgers and D'Backs, I don't want to say that the ridiculous lead LA had in the NL West is in trouble but it has shrunk from 21.0 games down to 12.5 just in the last 10 days.
25 games remaining for the Dodgers although Tuesday & Wednesday are the final two head-to-heads vs Arizona

* The 11 game win streak the D'Backs are on isn't even the longest in MLB right now as Cleveland romped to their 12th straight yesterday.
The 4.5 game lead they had in the AL Central less than two weeks ago is now up to 10.

[Edgy MD]

Winning 11 in a row while the previously invincible team in front of you is losing nine of 10 is awesome. Thanks, terrible Sports Illustrated cover!

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

4 Homer games have in fact occurred in the same season -- Same month in fact -- when future X-Mets Mike Kablammeron and Sean Green did it in May of 2002.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Sawx one up the Pats with better and more advanced cheating!

Washington Post

[Zvon]

Duda goes KaBOOM! off Bartolo.

[MFS62]

I'm sure there must be a way for someone to eliminate the black space around this, but:
http://www.dickiethon.com/forum2008/download/file.php?id=31997&mode=view

Later

[Zvon]

d'Kong76 wrote: Sawx one up the Pats with better and more advanced cheating! Washington Post

[fimg=400]https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/21314838_130518714241772_3245835951523903926_n.jpg?oh=2119953096404f11b7b1882d78b2f3ff&oe=5A5950B7[/fimg]

[Frayed Knot]

'Siri, how do you make a double switch?'

[Edgy MD]

Pablo Sandoval has now reached a franchise-record oh-for-his-last 37, and the Giants have been continuing to send him out there. But he's on the bench tonight as the Giants lead 7-1.

[Chad ochoseis]

Frayed Knot wrote: * Has a four-homer game ever occurred twice in one season before? I doubt it, but it has now as Arizona's JC Martinez joined Cincy's Scooter Gennett's feat from earlier in the year. The odd thing about Martinez's night last night was that he had just a K and a HR in 2 ABs as the game entered the the 7th inning. He then HR'd in the 7th and the 8th and was scheduled to be the 5th batter in the 9th but his mates got a few hits ahead of him to get him up with just one out in the 9th where he put up the final two runs in the 13-0 whupping the Snakes put on the Dodgers

First time in baseball history that a player has hit home runs in the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings of a game. And he's an FA this year...

Frayed Knot wrote: * The 11 game win streak the D'Backs are on isn't even the longest in MLB right now as Cleveland romped to their 12th straight yesterday. The 4.5 game lead they had in the AL Central less than two weeks ago is now up to 10.

The Indians' streak is now up to 14, and they're now within three games of the Astros (who have themselves won six in a row) for the best record in the AL. I hadn't been paying much attention, but I watched part of yesterday's game this morning on MLB.tv. Mike Pelfrey, of all people, shut the Tribe down for four innings in middle relief, but they held on to win a weird game that featured eight total walks in the first inning. So far, it's the only game during the streak where the starting pitcher didn't get the win for the Indians.

[Frayed Knot]

While the DBacks upped their streak to 13 as they completed a sweep of the Dodgers in LA, the one streak they did NOT continue was the one where they didn't trail in a game for 97 consecutive innings.
They blew that when they gave up a run in the bottom of the 1st last night. They immediately tied it in the top of the 2nd so I suppose one could go digging to find out the last time they trailed for an
entire inning but that gets a bit too esoteric for even baseball nerds.

The NL West lead is down to 10.5 which is still not close enough to be interesting although that gap is exactly half of what it was just 13 days ago.

[Frayed Knot]

A couple of sample games from last night (Wed)

Cubs 1 - Pirates 0
At Pitt so they went the full 9 innings, but just one run on a total of 9 hits plus 7 walks. 67 total batters came to the plate (75 is about average) and there were ZERO mid-inning pitching changes ...
and yet the game still managed to take 3:05


Angels 1 - Oakland 3
8-1/2 innings, 4 runs, 14 hits + 7 walks, 2 mid-inning pitching changes, 71 batters = 3:10


What the fuck are they doing during these games? How long would they have taken if there were like runs and hits and scoring and stuff?
It's bad enough that the 2:40 or so average many of us grew up with is now 3:05-3:10, but games like these are the type that used to run [u:3udl17jk]2[/u:3udl17jk]:10 or maybe 2:20, but unless there were like 15 different
replay reviews (which itself would be disturbing) those games sound like there was a lot of standing around doing nothing and THAT, more than the time of game itself, is the bigger problem.

[Frayed Knot]

ChiSox 1Bman Jose Abreu had singled, doubled, and homered in Saturday's game, so when he came up for his final at-bat in the 8th inning the announcers naturally went to the most unfulfilled expression
in all of baseball; "he's just a triple short of the cycle"
The 6' 3" - 255 lb Abreu with 10 career triples then proceeded to hit a triple.

[Frayed Knot]

18 straight for Cleveland.
One more and they'll need to sign Scott 'Pickin Machine' Hatteberg to a contract.