Frayed Knot

So they can kill rallies and potentially injure themselves.

And suddenly it's Guthrie with six straight retired and through 3 innings in under 40 pitches. Not that the pitch count is a big deal tonight but, aside from that whole bases-loaded/no-outs deal, he's being very efficient otherwise.

The problem with going to Affeldt this early is that you lose your main LHR for later in the game ... but I think the part of the LHR for later on tonight will be played by Madison Bumgarner.

Deuces Wild - 2 runs each in the 2nd

Yeah, the original ban against making announcements during active post-season play was put in because one year Steinbrenner, pouting that he wasn't in that year's WS, chose game 7 to announce one of his Billy Martin hirings (or was it firings?) in order to steal the headlines away from the sport itself and onto himself (now tell me again why he deserves HoF induction?) I think the difference here is that no one in the Cubs org is saying anything publicly and there's no announcement expected (last I heard anyway) until Friday when things are all over. Somebody's leaking to Heyman though. from MLB.com: Joe Maddon is on the verge of becoming the Cubs' next manager, according to CBS Sports' Jon Heyman, who earlier reported a deal was done. Maddon's agent and two Cubs sources say they do not have a deal. "We don't have a done deal," said Alan Nero, Maddon's agent. "We continue to talk to several clubs. It's not to say we won't have a deal done in the next few days, and if we do, it will be announced."

Mets � Willets Point wrote: I hope we get a classic game 7. Kind of a weird post-season this year in that, in the early rounds, the games were often good but the series themselves were over quickly: - 1st round = 3, 3, 4, & 4; LCS = 4 games & 5 games ... just 3 games over the minimum, aka: 23 games out of a possible 34 While in the WS, the series has been back and forth but the games themselves, mostly blowouts: 6 runs, 5 runs, 1 run, 5 runs, 10 runs. Would be nice, like you said, to have the clincher on the line in the late innings. I wouldn't even care how things turned out if that were the case.

Edgy MD wrote: It's good to see Sickels note that Amazin' Avenue was ahead of him and everyone else on seeing the defense. Amazin' Avenue is part of that whole 'SB Nation' network so there's a decent amount of cross-promotion among those sites. But even then, AA wasn't talking about his D until around the time he was called up. The key is why no one seemed to notice it 3 or 4 years ago. What he's not saying is that Lagares improved because he plays defense differently. And that's the key. He didn't see what was there because he was looking for different things --- And nor did just about anyone else apparently. Nickels does some scouting on his own but he also relies on the word of other scouts plus whatever network of contacts he's developed over the years. He wouldn't just be basing his reports on brief AFL observations alone. He even notes how Baseball America's reports were more or less the same as his: "fringy" speed and a LFer's arm. Maybe, for whatever reason, the defense just wasn't there until sometime in 2012 or so. That explanation doesn't make a lot of sense but, like he says, weird shit happens all the time.

Even though I'm not the uber-nerdy prospect-head with nine fantasy teams going at once that tend to make up the majority of participants at John Sickels' 'Minor League Ball' site (arguments about who should be the 14th best prospect in each system are beyond both my knowledge and my interest) one of the things I like about that site is that Sickels makes it a regular point to go back and examine past evaluations (both his and others) in an effort to see where they were right, where they were wrong, and/or what's changed in the interim. Yesterday's topic involved one Juan Lagares (and, no, auto-correct Nazi, I don't mean Juan Laggers) and seeing how, going back to 2012, reports initially viewed him as a bat-first left-fielder or future utility man. It's not really clear exactly what changed or why his defensive skills were missed by early observers, but clearly things did as both the naked eye and all defensive metrics put him at the top of his position from almost the minute he reached the majors. Sometimes, as John himself says at the bottom of the comments section, "It is a good example of how we basically don�t know shit. We know more about baseball than we used to. We are learning more every day. We can make better predictions. But they are still just predictions, and Weird Shit will still happen sometimes."

I think John Schiambi is the p-b-p radio guy. Not sure who's doing color.

Hunter Strickland gives it up easier than a Kardashian. And, btw, what are the odds on a team with two guys named Hunter?

Royals aren't exactly smacking the ball - but they're all dropping in.

Edgy MD wrote: I'd appreciate seeing that report, but I'd be happy if it turns out that way. It was just a line from one of the recent stories about the wall (I forget exactly where) citing those 7 & 4 figures as coming from NYM sources.

I think the Mets have a lot of belief that, if not the difference-maker going forward, it would have made a lot of difference for Granderson in 2014. One report I read talked about the Mets figuring that the proposed new fences would have netted the team an extra 7 HRs in 2014. Maybe a chunk of those were Granderson's but you wouldn't think it would be all of them. The same report and them calculating that it would have cost the pitching staff an addition 4 HRs allowed. As the basketball player once famously said: 'Whoop-de-damn-doo'

Was thinking about how reluctant the Phils have been about trading away any of their aging stars over the last few years the Phillies -- and yet the one guy they did opt to deal was Hunter Pence!!! It was the July 31 trading deadline 2012 when they sent him to SF for a package of catcher Tommy Joseph (still in minors), P Seth Rosin (now back with the Phils org after flitting between four different orgs), and Nate Schierholtz (a 4th OF who had 66 ABs for Philly before moving on). I realize that his lack of a big contract at the time made him easier to deal than some of the others, but it all seems so odd in retrospect.

Reynolds has a shot at being more than a utility guy. Not a guarantee, but it's too soon to hang a ceiling as a utility guy on a 23 y/o. Nimmo has more than a decent shot, although 'Big Power' is probably not going to be the thing that's his ultimate calling card.

Not much to get all in a twist about in other words. At the same time, it's also not enough to think it's going to have a positive effect on Wright & Grandy, the supposed reason for the move in the first place.

The Angels' Nick Adenhart is the better comparison here. Also on the prospect lists (although not quite as high as Tavares) and both had just taken the first bites of their ML careers when killed in auto crashes. In Adenhart's case he had just made the 1st start of the season and 4th of his ML career the night before.

Dodger fans have got to be tearing their hair out wondering why their ace lefty can't pitch that way in October.

Centerfield wrote: 1. We will need a right handed power hitter in the NLCS next year against Bumgarner. Hell, I'd settle for a guy who can make contact against him. 2. James Shields does not look at the plate while delivering a pitch. He doesn't do it as much as that Japanese reliever on the BoSox a couple of years ago (not Uehara but the other one) but, yeah, I noticed that for the first time in his last outing.

Damn! -- RIP

No real need to speculate about FA terms now as Cepedes is only available via a trade and as a one-year fix at the already set price of $10.5 mil as per his original contract. That that initial deal runs out at the end of 2015 is the reason Oakland was willing to deal him in the first place and is again the reason (along with some less than impressed coaches apparently) why Boston is making him available now. So adjust your trading proposals accordingly.

Zvon wrote: Man, the Giants were teeing off late last night. They're still just "teeing off" with mostly singles. Last night they just happened to have a bunch of them: 16 hits, 13 singles. Fortunately for them, it's not like KC is hitting for much power either.

While we're on the Cepedes front in our OF search: Bill Madden suggests that the BoSox are willing to trade him this winter, probably for pitching help. Seems that there were some initial discussions after the trade about a 4-5 year extension onto his original deal which runs out after 2015, but that Cepedes recently fired his agent and is now casting his lot with Jay-Z's 'Roc-Nation' agency with the intention of making a splash (a la Robinson Cano) as a FA a year from now. He also throws in nuggets about Cepedes's "open disenchantment" with Boston and his unwillingness to listen to coaches. �He marches to his own drum and the coaches all hate him,� said a Red Sox insider.

And the rout is on. So if this game ever actually ends (I'm figuring around 1:47 AM at this point) it looks like SF will have tied things up 2-2

Ashie62 wrote: We are going to have to agree to just disagree. Hey, I'm merely cautioning peeps about getting overly enamored of Cepedes on account of his first good season (which he's been unable to duplicate in the two years since) or on account of his prowess in what is essentially a glorified version of BP (the ASG HR contest). Duda, Granderson or maybe d'Arnaud? That's for comic effect, right? No, those are current NY Mets who hit HRs at rates similar to, or greater than, what Cespedes did this year despite your claims that the Mets haven't had a "scary slugger" like him since the days of Strawberry or Kingman.