Frayed Knot

As just mentioned by Gary, the time of Tuesday's game has been moved from a 7:10 start to 4:10 in an attempt to get some better weather, or at least less bad weather. Adjust your lives accordingly.

Vientos, Baty, and Siri are a combined 7-for-75 ... jus' sayin' That four of those seven hits are doubles is of little consolation.

=G-Fafif post_id=189002 time=1744065103 user_id=55] Valente Bellozo

6-2 Tiggers is your final. I always like it when my baseball day gets off on the right foot even before my true baseball day even starts. Other series of interest as this week starts: - (7-2) Phillies @ (1-8) Braves gets going tomorrow. Tuesday, Wed, Thurs nights - Nats (3-6) get the task of trying to slow down the (9-2) Dodgers [M-T-W] although LAD is in 2nd place now sandwiched between the (8-1) Giants and (8-2) Padres

Speaking of rough weather at this time of year, the entire Yanx @ Tigers series was preemptively moved to all day-games. Today's game, with the Tigers ahead 6-1 thru 7 innings in front of a crowd of dozens in what is currently 37 degree temps with a 17 mph wind (it was briefly snowing but now at least the sun just came out), was a 3:00 start. Both Tuesday & Wednesday games will start at 1:00 Been a while since a Mon, Tues, Wed series were all day starts. Tiger fans are gonna party like it's 1949!

I seem to remember hearing that Singleton's problem, or at least one of them, was too much dope smoking.

The 1st inning of Game 3 of the Cubs/Padres weekend series at Wrigley consisted of: 18 batters, 5 Hits, 7 Walks, 2 Balks, 3 infield hits, one HBP, 46 minutes, 8 runs This moves the Padres to 7 - 2 and the Cubs to 8 - 5

Walk-Off Wilmer continues his odd and amazing streak. =Gwreck post_id=188929 time=1743985508 user_id=56] Fun fact: with 30 more games for the Giants, Wilmer's time in SF will have exceeded his time in NY.

Briefly going off-topic here, it's nice to see the Pirates Finally deciding not to suck this weekend ... not that they didn't Try to suck. Pitt jumped out to a 4-1 lead vs Yanx, then didn't get another hit in regulation, then gave up three 2-out runs in the 9th to go to extras. Were hitless again in the 10th after the Yanx failed to score. Then handed the Yanx an error in top 11 but survived again. Finally our buddy Tommy Pham doubled in the ghost runner with one out in bottom 11 The Yanx top 9th was going on at the same time as our top 9th so I'm watching the Yanx getting two out RBI hits just as Diaz is doing his HBP-a-thon and I'm thinking that both games are going to go all pear shaped simultaneously. Eventually, both had happy endings.

These early season games haven't been the crispest ones played I've ever seen, but the pitching is holding up their end. Just 22 runs allowed (17 ER) across nine games. That's a 1.91 ERA kids.

Bowden Francis has a dopey first name, some odd looking hand tattoos, and a really bad mustache. And now he's out of the game although I don't think that's connected to any of the above.

Weaver once told a story about how, with the O's coming off multiple seasons with 100+ wins, Davey came into Spring Training with some data and charts and said to Earl, "Let me show you how we can fix this lineup".

Never has 2-fer-13 w/RiSP seemed so clutch. Second game this week we did everything possible to lose and wound up somehow winning anyway.

Winker has [CROSSOUT]two[/CROSSOUT] three XBHs and [CROSSOUT]two[/CROSSOUT] three unnecessary head first slides on a muddy day.

That's it Bassitt, you gave up a hit to Mark Vientos. No more soup for you!

At some point the Jays have to name Alejandro Kirk as their Captain, don't they?

Going 0-fer-6 w/RiSP in just the first two innings was not a good omen.

Winker has two XBHs and two unnecessary head first slides on a muddy day.

We used to ask him if he did any writing but he never answered any direct questions or gave himself away. Mostly he just posted occasionally, often taking the role of playing the 'adult' in a forum when those of us who were there were a quarter century younger than we are now and much of the rest of that place were younger still than us. He'd sprinkle little crumbs of his (claimed) backstory, that of a once promising LH pitcher whose career was curtailed before it ever started and then morphing into divorced and wayward man. But he'd always stay just shy enough of specifics to leave you wondering if the bio was possibly legit or just a role he chose to play for our amusement and confusion. He wrote a lot of good stuff there, but this was his gem.

Yeah, usually. Although I think he stormed out of here angry too. Don't remember the details.

RK and I used to talk cycling together. He was often an angry dude, though.

Note: a new week has started and you ARE permitted to start a new thread. The Braves have finally won this year (10-0 v Marlins) while the Padres (3-1 to the Cubs) and Dodgers (3-2 to the Phils) have finally lost.

And now they've DFA'd him.

Right now I think teams are going to watch and see how he rebounds from his UCL surgery. He didn't have a great season (by his standards) in 2023 [113 ERA+ following seasons of 152, 132, 180/CY] and then missed all of 2024 Nothing dominant from his first two starts this year and his velocity is down a few clicks ... but it's early and that's a very SSS Miami, of course, will want to see how he rebounds too since anything resembling a return to form ups the value of the return haul. With two seasons on his deal after this one there's no rush on either side to do something this early. But, yeah, this will be a BIG topic come deadline time and possibly sooner.

Thanks for the weird history lesson. This is some kind of three card monte scam. They have no plausible rationale for keeping it at this point just some general notion of 'popularity' that runs contrary to every fan I know. Even with the 'Three Batter' rule eliminating LOOGYs and other one batter and fly relievers, teams still find themselves with (at least) eight man bullpens and even then have to resort to frequent rotations to and from AAA just to maintain a healthy and not-overworked crew from week to week. And those frequent rotations got capped last year so those up-and-down movements are harder now. So I suspect the clown-car extra inning rule is all about pitching and was an action driven by GMs*. Covid gave them the opening to implement it and claims of 'fan approval' gave them the cover to keep it. With almost all EI games being settled by the 10th or 11th (and I think you can count on one hand the number of games that have gone past 12 innings under this rule) it looks like there's about 20 innings/year on average that no longer have to be pitched. That's a workload for around half a reliever. * General Managers, not Motors