Frayed Knot

John Franco and John Kruk will be the color commentators tonight. I haven't been watching this new NBC version of Sunday Night Baseball (mainly because it's been mostly on their PEACOCK channel) so I don't know if, instead of using a fixed team of announcers, they've been using a rotating stable of 'locals' like this for each game or not. Seems like an odd move if they have but I guess they figure it keeps the fans of the two scheduled teams a reason to tune in and keep the paranoids from claiming 'Bias!!' each time they don't like what some color guy just said.

On Saturday all the NL East teams won (except the Mets of course) so we lost ground all around. Today only Miami won with the Braves & Nats losing (to MIL & SFG).

"Your Holiness, I'm Joseph Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal" -- Former StL Cardinal outfielder Joe Medwick to Pope Pius XII during a visit to the Vatican

Was it over when the Germans bombed the Mets pitching staff? Yeah, it pretty much was.

Wagaman's throw to 2B on Harper's double is off-line (by a lot), Semien's error after a nice play.

Remember fans, the replay reviews will only be used to overturn obviously incorrect calls and the process will be quick. That one, like a lot of others, was neither. It was another one of what I call 51% calls, the type they swore would never happen and it took, what, like three minutes, or 50% longer than a between innings break. 'We can't tell for sure but we think it's more likely he didn't catch it than did so we're going to overturn it'.

In early Saturday games: - the Jays returned the favor to the ass-kicking they got from the Cubs yesterday by scoring 3 in the 7th then 5 in the 8th en route to an 8-6 win in a game the Cubs led 5-Zip thru 6. - the Reds pounded out 15 hits today for a 10-2 win which is bad ... but it was against the Yanx so that negates the degree of badness. If we wind up losing out to the Reds (y'know, like we did last year) it's our own fault.

Not sure why you didn't just tack this stuff on the the (T)WiB thread that you yourself started this week, but .... - the Brewers just had the tying runner thrown out at the plate for the 2nd out in the 9th for an eventual 3-2 loss. The Brewers are good enough not to HAVE to win Misiorowski's starts, it still suxx to lose them.

So while we're currently suffering from a case of Weekend Series Interruptus, the rest of the sport moves on. Important series going on starting tonight include: Nats @ Rays; Brewers @ Braves; Giants @ Marlins; and the Reds continue their New York/New York stretch with three games in the Bronx following a day off in NYC for the visiting Cincinnatians. Managers used to think of a day off in NYC as the worse thing for their players. Just getting back the same 25 you came with was tough enough. btw, Braves are facing Misiorwski tonight, the Reds get Schlittler. (If Schlittler has a dominant game against your team did they get Schlitlered-upon?)

Recent tradition in the NFL has awarded the opening game of the season, a stand alone Thursday Night three days prior to opening Sunday, to the Super Bowl winner. So when the Baltimore Ravens won the SB in February 2013 the baseball schedule was already out and it so happened that Orioles had a scheduled home game on what would be the NFL opening Thursday to kick off the 2013-'14 season. And since Baltimore also has a shared parking baseball/football area, the Ravens had to ask the Orioles to change their schedule. The O's, god love 'em, refused sending the NFL and their paid spokesmen (media members) into a major hissy fit decrying that some minor sport like baseball wasn't getting out of their way on command and breaking their long-running 'tradition' (it was probably less than a decade at the time) of the SB champ getting to lead off their season at home. The Ravens still got that lead-off game but it was played 2,000 miles went in Denver. I suspect it's the other way around since MLB's September sked would be out months prior to football's so the NFL would know ahead of time which two (,maybe three) September Sundays the Phils would be at home and could easily give the Eagles a road game those days, or a Sunday night start, or one of the Monday/Thursday games that week. October would be tougher since everything on the baseball end is a constantly moving target so then it's probably MLB's turn to at least tinker with start times of games.

Three words: Shared. Parking. Lots.

Gain a game on the Phils plus a half on everyone else. Nats & Marlins were off while the Braves got rained out, which means they have to schedule a make-up game with the Giants at some point. Oh, and the Yanx lost to the ChiSox.

Nah, Jersey Fried Chicken doesn't have the range of spices of KFC.

Good to have a laugher every once in a while ... wait, what?

I think I've forgotten what Devin Williams looks like.

Somebody's got to play 1B for the next three innings. oe: Oh, I see Wagaman's done some of that too.

Greatest foul tip EVER!! assuming it actually was a foul tip

Tough call to make, but I thought it was the right one ... even before the hit.

I think it pretty much goes without saying that to put a hurtin' on Alvarado here would be real sweet.

And in keeping with my earlier post about Bichette and Soto rarely having good games simultaneously, tonight Soto has 2 HRs plus a walk ... but only 2 RBIs in part because Bichette, despite how how he's been recently, has three weak outs in three ABs so far.

Two days late with this update -- HOW DID YOU GUYS ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?!?!?! -- but here it is. So we see some progress for the front half of June but still just in small increments. This pretty much synchs up with the one-step-forward/one-step-back nature we've seen from series to series for much of the season.

The Phils are just barely above us in scoring runs: PHI = 4.11 RS/G for 22nd place; NYM = 4.05 in 25th. They're even a tick lower in OBA and several lower in BA. Their OPS is higher (though only marginally) because they slug better but, once their home field is factored in, their OPS+ is a shade lower [86 vs 88] iow, neither team is hitting worth a damn this year. The part that surprises me is that their runs allowed average is Higher than the Mets [PHI = 4.35 RA/G vs NYM = 4.28] all of which leads to the Phils being six games over .500 with a negative 18 run differential while the Mets are eight games under with -17. So near identical RS/RA numbers [Mets = 300/317 vs PHI = 304/322] but a full seven game gap in the standings. The Phils are a ridiculous 15-6 in one-run games (Mets 7-12). Trea Turner's off year -- from a 121 OPS+ in '25 to just 65 this year -- is the real surprise to me although he is kind of sneaky-old (33 next week). Stott and Bohm are going through less dramatic drops this year but drops they are while Realmuto, at 34 and with all those games/innings under his belt and in his legs, is a more predictable candidate for an offensive plunge as compared to the 28 & 29 y/o infielders. Really only Brandon 'Swamp Thing' Marsh is having a good season, the best one of his career in fact and he's actually out-OPS'ing Harper by a hair.

And Beck strikes out Riley and the Braves lose a DH !! That's 7 of the last 8 for ATL

Braves refuse to go down. They now have the tying run at the plate with one out and teh bases loaded, 7-4 Giants, bottom 9. SFG pitching change coming up. Ozzie Albies up, 7-5 Giants, some guy named Beck for the Giants but I'm pretty sure it's not Rod Now 7-6, runner on 3rd, two out, Beck vs Austin Riley.

Gained ground today on the Nationals (who were in the #3 WC slot as the day started), the Phils (who got smoked today albeit to the Marlins) and the Braves by at least one game and maybe one-1/2 as they lost the suspended game from Tuesday earlier this afternoon, and are in the midst of losing (5-2 Giants in bottom 7) the regularly scheduled Wednesday game as well.