Frayed Knot

Gary points out that the Mets went 5-for-5 in the 4th inning Torres - Single Hefner - Sac Bunt (no AB, 1st out) Tejada - Single (1 run scores) then gets picked off (2nd out) Murphy - Single Wright - Single Hairston - Single, Murphy thrown out at plate (3rd out)

I've been spamming here for nearly eleven years.

Ruben Tejada -- hittin' machine Now he just needs to quit getting picked off.

It's all in the wrists!

Ashie62 wrote: Ceetar has been arrested in West Germany for public urination. The public urination doesn't surprise me; the fact that he first took the trouble to time-travel back to 1991 does.

Mejia - 2.6 Acosta - 0.4 Davis - 4.0 Wright - 1.5 Lewis - 0.5 Murphy - 0.5 Tejada - 0.2 Parnell - 0.3

Hampson - 1.0 Parnell - 0.5 RRamirez - 0.2 Carson - 0.1 Wright - 2.5 Turner - 1.1 Tejada - 0.9 Torres - 0.7

About what I expected: a mixture of cheap laughs and actual laughs. Certainly nothing resembling high brow humor, but not insulting either. I suspect 'Family Guy' fans will probably find it a 1/2* to a star funnier than the rest of us.

Atlanta clinches WC slot #1 And for slot #2 StL holds leads of 4.5 (LAD & Milw) and 5.5 games (Arz & Phil) with 7 to play Move along, there's nothing to see here. It's all over save for the speculation about the pitching match-up for the one-game death match.

O's remain 1.5 games back of Yanx for AL East and Oakland sits a 1/2 game behind them for WC #2 But the Angels have climbed to 2 games in back of Oakland and the Rays, after going 1-7 in the games where it really mattered, have now won six straight and are one game behind LAA ChiSox & Tigers are in a dead heat in their contest to see who can suck more coming down the stretch by stumbling against the likes of KC and Cleveland

Young - 3.6 RRamirez - 0.5 Acosta - 0.5 Parnell - 0.5 Tejada - 1.3 Wright - 2.1 Hairston - 1.0 Murphy - 0.5

Dickey - 5.0 Bay - 2.0 Hairston - 1.5 Thole - 1.0 Murphy - 0.5

MiQ: First 7 innings: 2 Hits; 1 Walk; 9 Ks Next 13 innings: 21 Hits; 5 BBs; 5 Ks

And he can embrace all that with or without sitting out tonight's game.

Josh Hamilton is back after sitting out nearly a week with what was first called a sinus infection but now is described as blurry vision caused by too much caffeine and energy drinks -- is there anything that guy is NOT addicted to? -- and immediately hit his 43rd HR to re-take the AL HR lead, one ahead of Miggy Cabrera. Cabrera's RBI lead is at 9, his BA lead at .008 HR Race: Hamilton - 43 Cabrera - 42 Adam Dunn - 41 (2 last night while saving the ChiSox's bacon) Edwin Encarnacion - 41 Curtis Granderson - 40 Edgy DC wrote: As someone noted on Facebook, we are legally obligated to mention Derek Jeter in any discussion of the American League MVP. Lots of media types are making sure to mention his name as well. Hell, forget Cabrera & Trout, if Jeter gets more votes than Adam Jones the Orioles should take it to the World Court in The Hague for investigation.

LeRoux is a good name for a guy on the Pirates.

Power, pitching, and defense. Not sure when we've seen all three in the same game. Now we just need a couple more innings of bullpen and we're all set.

Also, promoting bunts is not exactly the way to Keith's heart anyway. And while I'm sure he's not using any Sabremetric studies to bolster his belief, Keith tends to argue against bunts more often than not, particularly early in the game and virtually anytime with a guy who is capable of putting a charge into the ball. IOW, he's anti-bunt unless the game & personnel make it an advantage rather than merely as a defensive way to stay out of DPs.

- It's Travis Snider, not Todd. But, really, is there any difference between naming a kid Travis vs Todd? - AJ Burnett recently won his 16th game, the first Pirate to win more than 15 in a season since 1991 when, no, not Dave Drabek, but Zane Smith (16) and John Smiley (20) both did so. Drabek won 22 in 1990 (his CY year) but exactly 15 in both '91 & '92. - McCutcheon is actually (sort of) in [u:10v63g3j]1st place[/u:10v63g3j] in the NL batting race if you consider that 'The Melk Man' has taken himself out of the running.

Lefty Specialist wrote: I've been waiting forever for some jerkwad pitcher to go back there and mess it up with his spikes. I'm sure that there's some edict from Bud that says if you do you're suspended for 50 games, but I'd love to see it happen just once, since that logo is visible the whole freaking game. See that's kind of what got me on to this. I mean, yeah, it's on the back of the mound, the one spot in fair territory where cleated feet rarely tread. But you figure if whatever created the logo was, in fact, mess-up-able it would at least occasionally get messed-up even if only by weather or by chance, and that's all before we even bring jerkwads with mischief on their minds into the equation. Hell, doesn't ARod run across the mound after popping out at least once a week or so? But the fact that those logos always seem to be nearly as pristine in the 9th inning as they are in the 1st leads me to believe that there's more than just high-tech stenciling going on with these things. And now, the fact that some have added color and even multiple colors to theirs puts us in a whole new arena here. So maybe this wasn't such a dumb question after all. I expected a near chorus of responses saying something on the order of: 'Frayed you insipid moron, everyone over the age of 9 can plainly see that those things are made by _____________'

Eh, Bobby V's boys took just one of three from the O's, the same record they compiled against the Yanx recently. Now if Toronto start giving them a hard time after laying down for the Yanx (and for just about everyone lately) then you've got a beef. The O's - 1 game behind the Yanx, 1 game ahead of Oakland - have a four game set with Toronto at Camden starting with a good old fashioned twi-night DH later today. Yanx are in Minnesota Oakland goes to Texas

I don't think that's the case. First of all I don't know that Ron & Keith are so dismissive of "new stats" so much as they're simply ignorant of them (Keith in particular). And Gary's statophopia seems to be both long-standing and almost innate. I remember him practically spitting out the words "stats guys" as he denigrated one Sabre-ist viewpoint a few years back. He's also a long-time member of the 'Jeter oozes clutch' crowd, plus will, far too often for my taste, spit out a rather silly stat off the game notes (situational and/or coincidental type stuff) that deserves questioning as opposed to just simple recitation, but he seems far more likely to just let it stand on its own as if the stats' relevance is self-evident. If anything I actually think he's gotten a bit more open-minded in recent years, just is doing so very slowly.

Edgy DC wrote: Keith's a smart jock, but a proud jock. He'll examine received wisdom, but only after you force him to. It would be cool if Gary forced him to more, but Gary can be a suckup with regard to his jock buddies. Gary has also shown himself to be almost Joe Morgan-esque with regard to those damn new-fangled stats that are always running on his lawn.

The Second Spitter wrote: I just found out that Eric Gagn� is our [crossout]pitching[/crossout] steroids coach. Scary. Fixed it for you.

A win today (16-3) but also 3 earned over 6 IP for dark-horse candidate Kyle Lohse.