Frayed Knot

Darren Daulton, 55 - Brain Cancer

Edgy MD wrote: The Dodgers pull their guy while he's throwing a one-hit shutout, with no walks, and eight strikeouts. They're saving him for a major league opponent.

Did Matz have any swing-and-misses tonight? There were probably a few, but every strike he got in this game seemed to be either foul balls (a ton of those) or borderline strikes where the call went his way.

Well, if this LAD team breaks the '86 Mets' mark then this NYM team will be to blame on account of their (soon to be) 0-7 record. The Dodgers aren't +7 on anyone else, not even the other NL West teams against whom they have, or will have, many more games head to head. Good thing we missed Kershaw, huh? The '86 team should show up one day and beat these current Mets up.

Can this game be any more of a nightmare? When the LAD hit it hard they get hits, when they hit it soft they get hits. When Matz gets ahead he manages to allow walks anyway, when NYM batters get ahead they manage to K anyway. And the only reason Matz lasted through 3 innings on his 70 pitches is that two of the nine outs he recorded came via baserunners, so instead of 15 pitches/inning that you'd like to see he's taking 10 pitches per out. He's the only guy who can go from a scoreless 1st inning and the network in a commercial to barely surviving the frame when the most predictable set of occurrences happened after the overturned SB call.

Fairly quiet as war films go as, rather than being the typical big war picture epic, it was really just a very small slice of a small part of the war. But it was well done.

Edgy MD wrote: Neil Walker debuting at first? Part of an earlier double-switch, he didn't start there. It's not often you hit 3 HRs and get blown out, but we're somehow managing.

And Dominic Smith was the PCL Player of the Month for August

Annnnd, now we're losing. The biggest problem today was that our first nine batters amassed 3 HRs + 2 singles + an error, and yet produced just the mathematical minimum of 3 runs I knew then that not cashing in at least another run or two was gong to come back to bite us.

So the Braves signed Sean Rodriguez -- ex of the Pirates -- to a 2-year deal last winter, but he almost immediately got into a fairly serious car wreck leading the Braves to make a deal for Brandon Phillips as Rodriguez was expected to miss a big hunk of the season [several posts about this on Page 1 of this thread] Rodriguez got back ahead of schedule right after the ASB ... but now 37 ABs into his Braves career they deal him back to the Pirates in exchange for a minor league prospect. This can be a cruel game sometimes.

Today's give-away is a #52 chain which, although I've yet to see it, is apparently something that weighs you down to the point where it makes it tougher to chase fly balls into foul territory.

I accidentally listed this game in the 'LA Consequential' thread as being at 7:10 when it is in fact a 4:10 start. I simply assumed it was a night game because the 'Pons are all in favor of Saturday night games (even those in April, May & September when it makes no sense) but this one comes to you (or most of you anyway - check your local listings) courtesy of our 'friends' at FOX Seth Lugo vs lefty Rich Hill The now 37 y/o Hill is 8-4; 3.35 overall and 5-1 in his last 7 games including a W on June 21st vs the Mets He's an ex-Cub, Oriole, Red Sox (twice), Indian, Angel, Yanqui (14 games / 5.1 innings), and Athletic - and has got to be the most anonymous 13-year vet pitching in the game today But he's also pitching the best ball of his life over these last 2-3 seasons so he's our task for this afternoon.

d'Kong76 wrote: Ron and Keith getting on our LF's cesadaisical effort. Naw, man, I always give max effort.

Just keep checking them boxes Amed.

A quickie 4th inning (10 pitches) may have bought deGrom enough slack to pitch the 6th.

You know the game is moving slowly when they're nearly two full innings behind a higher-scoring Yanqui game despite starting at the same time.

deGrom has thrown more than 4 innings worth of pitches so far but has yet to get his first out in the 3rd.

I'm bothered less by 1 of 15 Sunday games each week being at at night than I am by the fact that most Saturdays no more than 3 or 4 day games out of 15, and sometimes not even that many. oe: speaking of which, I mistakenly listed the Saturday game in this series (above) as a 7:10 game when it's actually 4:10

I love the Sunday night games, while the broadcasting sucks, at least it gives me something to watch that night. As mentioned elsewhere, the Mets will be playing the part of the party of the second part during the Sunday broadcast. Dodgers you probably don't know: * If I were to ask you to name the guy who is 4th in WAR on the 2017 Dodgers -- behind only Kershaw, Seager, and Turner -- most of you would need a lot of guesses before coming up with Chris Taylor Drafted in the 5th round as a SS in 2012 by the Mariners, he was dealt to the Dodgers in June 2016 for one of their former 1st round picks and, prior to this year, had a paltry .234/.289/.309 ML line across 300 ABs. Well this year he's playing mostly every day (90 games) and mostly in LF (although also 3rd, SS, 2B, CF) where he's hitting a ridiculous .313/.379/.534 with 42 of his 100 hits going for extra bases * Austin Barnes is the backup catcher to Yasmani Grandal so you wouldn't figure him to get into too many games, except that the Dodgers also use him at 2nd base including getting a couple starts there and he's responded with a .413 OBA over 160 PA and 17 of his 38 hits have been for XB Barnes is a 27 y/o former 9th round pick by the Marlins (went to LA in the Dee Gordon deal) who had only 61 ABs in 2015 & '16 combined Getting out of nowhere contributions like this is how you play .700 ball for an extended period. Of course having MLB's best ERA by more than 0.6 R/G over the next best teams (Arizona & Cleveland) and nearly 1-1/2 R/G better than league average helps a bit too.

Ashie62 wrote: Double d's on the mound. Morganna is making an appearance? Actually, I suspect she was MUCH larger than DD

Edgy MD wrote: Collins sneaking up slowly (too slowly) on second place. Slowly?!? He's a mere six away and by the end of this weekend he'll likely be ... umm, probably still six away. Never mind.

Which means if Terry IS back next year ...

Three errors behind him in the first four batters he faced was probably not how Sonny Gray envisioned his MFY debut (two muffed grounders and an air-mailed throw from RF). And at least Cleveland ace Corey Kluber didn't follow the recent 'suck vs the Yanx' trend as he went all the way on a three-hitter. Jaime Garcia models his pinstripes for the first time tonight in game 2 of a big four game series for each team: Cleveland is 2.5 up in the Central and the Yanx now 2.0 in back of Boston and have several teams on their tail in the WC race. And Aaron Judge (benched last night) is 11 for 67 (.164) w/4 HRs since the AS break ... just sayin'

So just when you thought it might be safe to go back to CitiField, the Dodgers, 76-32 on the season and 21-3 over their last 24 games (all three losses coming to Atlanta) come into town tonight. And so considering as how they’re definitely cruising into the playoffs and we’re almost as definitely NOT going sneak into a WC slot, you might figure, well, what’s even the point here, aside from not visibly soiling ourselves on the field? The answer is that we’ve got to help knock them off their current winning pace. As most of you probably already know, no NL team since those 1986 Mets has won 2/3 of their games (3 AL teams -- 1995 Indians, ’98 Yanx, 2001 Mariners — have finished a regular season with better winning percentages since). But now this year’s Dodgers, having now completed exactly 2/3 of their season, are on a pace to go 114-48, six games better than the ‘86ers. We of course can not allow this to happen so we need to both take care of business this weekend and keep track of their progress for the remainder of the season. Friday 7:10 -- deGrom vs Yu Darvish [6-9; 4.01; 1.17] making his LAD debut Saturday 4:10 -- Lugo vs (LH) Rich Hill [8-4; 3.35; 1.18] Sunday [u:23jqjr7p]8:10[/u:23jqjr7p] -- Matz vs (LH) Hyun-Jin Ryu [3-6; 3.83; 1.37 in 15 starts]

smg58 wrote: I think more players are starting to realize that sometimes you're better off accepting the offer, though. Because they realized what a drag on FA-gency it was to have a QO attached to their necks. Go back, I guess it was three years ago now, to when Ian Desmond plus a couple other players coming off good years went virtually ignored and wound up signing short-term deals from less than the QO because teams knew signing them would cost both money and the draft pick. In the end it was a bit ironic that, by reducing the number of FAs who had compensation attached as compared to the old 'Type A / Type B' system which predated it, the QO system wound up making the few who did qualify for draft picks in return even more tainted and avoided. Now that the number qualifying will be reduced even more starting with this winter's crop, the new rules might make it tougher still for those who will draw the max compensation.