Frayed Knot

Desmond Jennings, leading off for Tampa

bmfc1 wrote: From Twitter: Giants OF Melky Cabrera has been suspended 50 games without pay after testing positive for Testosterone. Well I think everyone in the majors would test positive for testosterone. Me too for that matter and I barely played in high school.

Young - 3.5 RRamirez - 0.3 Rauch - 0.3 Parnell - 0.1 Tejada - 1.0 Thole - 0.5 Hairston - 0.5

Well maybe someone should tell Lupica that Kuroda threw a CG 2-hitter at Texas last night. Those two hits (both singles) for the Rangers match the number of DPs they hit into and also the number of times they were picked off in game 1 of the series. There are still two more games to go in this series, but it would have been nice if the visiting team had actually shown up for either of the first two.

25 years ago, in the summer of 1987, Gregg Jefferies was the hottest prospect in baseball. He was considered a sure-fire future All Star and an expected mainstay for the New York Mets. Take [recent Orioles call-up] Manny Machado and [current Texas SS prospect] Jurickson Profar, combine them, and you have an idea about how much hype Jefferies was receiving. And he deserved it, too; he was a remarkable prospect. John Sickels does these every once in a while, looking back on both the minor and major league careers of veteran or retired players in order to examine how they were perceived at the time vs how things turned out and maybe figure out if and when someone could have seen the gap. Full article

Whatever it is I hope it's something that he really, really believes in otherwise, once he changes his mind, he's going to feel and look like a dick for the next, oh say, six or seven decades.

Tie games on the road are so mentally draining. There's just no margin for error and, if you don't score in your half, you're faced with the task of: hold them-score-hold them again in order to win. And, looky here, another walk by the pen!!

And now, unless we go 1-2-3 in this inning, we're going to have to change pitchers again, regardless of whether we score or not.

Miguel Cairo has been getting paid to play baseball for 22 years now. And if told back when he was a Met that he was going to continue to pull down a major league salary for at least another 7 years I don't think any of us would have believed it.

Ceetar wrote: confirmation bias, but Warthen's mound visit resulted in a walk. I don't trust what he tells them. Do you think maybe he told him to pitch carefully to the good fastball-hitting lefty with a base open and the #8 RH-hitting backup catcher on deck?

If you were a baseball player named Xavier Paul, wouldn't you change your name to Paul Xavier so you could be the first MLer with a last name starting with X and grab all of those records? I'd definitely have to think about it.

I don't want to scare anyone but the last 2-1/3 innings of NYM relief pitching involving 4 different pitchers has produced a combined 6 walks plus an HBP and 2 hits.

Weird game so far -- scoreless yet base runners all over the place and heading for a 3-hour+ pace.

Zvon wrote: Crap. Youngs done, leaving with no room on the bases for anyone else. Allowing both the 8 & 9 batters to reach base twice each was his ultimate undoing. Ramy-Ramy deftly gets him out of it but any chance for a personal win for Young is gone.

Derek Lowe on the Yankees is just so right. It's like the universe self-correcting. It's like water finding its level. He has a 0.91 K/BB rate this year. That's awesome. So, naturally, last night he debuts in the Bronx against Texas with 4 full innings of 2-hit, 0 BB, 4 K ball Prompting the brilliant Mike Lupica to say on his show today that he thinks Lowe will be the #2 in the playoff rotation. That's just fuckin' absurd. Let me guess, his logic has something to do with either: - the mysteriously transformative properties of the mere act of putting on a Yanqui uniform? or - the fact that Lowe had a lousy season followed by a good playoffs eight years ago means he can simply decide to do that again?

Young just can't stand the success of a 1-2-3 inning. And now they're into the 4th time through the lineup

Young decides to try the NOT putting the leadoff guy on route here in inning 4. So far, so good. Hope he tries it again in the 5th.

Maybe we're seeing why Terry has been reluctant to bat Valdy down further in the lineup -- ie. bunting out of the 6th spot. Yeah he was bunting for a hit rather than a sac (and may have ben safe) but it's only a good move in that situation if it works.

And Young slithers out of things yet again. If I were a 3rd base coach in the NL I'd send just about every player on just about every fly ball to the NYM OF The odds of the throw being wild, not being properly cut, being fumbled by the catcher, or possibly all of the above, are just too good to pass up.

The leadoff double this inning is the reason I rarely like the walking the 8th hitter to get to the pitcher with two outs strategy of the previous inning.

I know it's not my 'turn' but, hell, somebody had to start it. Scoreless 1st inning as Young gets around a leadoff single. And, hey, Mat Latos. Just in case you were wondering whether douchy arm tattoos look even worse on guys with really fair skin ... the answer is yes, yes they do.

And just think how quickly Johnson would have been run out of here if he [u:1i425s7c]hadn't[/u:1i425s7c] gotten that dropped 3rd-strike to Ike just in time. Finding the ball was one thing, but the boy damn near gave me a heart attack as he took his sweet-ass time getting the ball down there.

The timing does seem a bit odd. But whatthehell. Kelly fucking Shoppach, he was supposed to be a big star, or am I conflating him with Saltalamacchia? Shoppach was, in his day, considered a good prospect but, as we all know, that's only occasionally a sign of future stardom. I suppose you'd have to consider his career as somewhat disappointing particularly since he seemed to peak at age 28 before taking a pretty big dive after that. But, despite the low BA, he takes his share of walks (career walk rate = 0.89) and slugs often enough (19 of his 35 hits this season for XBs) to make the occasional difference. Haven't kept up on how he's considered defensively these days

Ceetar wrote: Edgy DC wrote: Derek Lowe on the Yankees is just so right. It's like the universe self-correcting. It's like water finding its level. He has a 0.91 K/BB rate this year. That's awesome. So, naturally, last night he debuts in the Bronx against Texas with 4 full innings of 2-hit, 0 BB, 4 K ball

- Atlanta probably thought hosting San Diego was a good time to close the gap in the East while Washington was out in SF Except they acted like us and got out-hit 12-5 while losing 4-1 - Ryan Vogelsong, who had maybe been the Giants best pitcher over the last month or so, got smacked around by the Nats for 8 earned runs in less than 3 innings. The SF defense made it a bit worse than it should have been as the brief half-inning I saw (the 7-run top of the 3rd) included the infield muffing three consecutive plays with 1-out and the bases loaded, although somehow all were scored hits. Nats scored all 14 of their runs by the 5th inning. - Make that two bad outings in three games for Ryan Dempster with Texas. He was perfect thru 2 innings but then started the 3rd: Single - Single - Bunt - Walk - Grand Slam (Swisher) - Walk - Single - Single - Sac Fly Yanx continue to hit like idiot savants. Exactly half of their runs this year are via HRs and, despite hitting like shit with the bases loaded (.236) they have more XBHs (14) than they do singles (11) and nearly as many GS (9) as singles. - Tampa gets the Mariners this week and won their 7th straight to keep pace with the Yanx (4 back)