Frayed Knot

And unlike most Atlanta deals, even when they seem to be just dumping salary, they didn't get much useful back in that trade. In the meantime I've lost track of who's paying BJ -- now Melvin -- NOT to play this year as 2017 is the final year of that five-year deal he signed w/the Braves. It's some combo of the Braves, Padres, and/or Blue Jays. After the Jays released him in April he hooked on with the Giants on a minor league deal but is listed as having played just one game w/AAA Sacramento. Still just 32 y/o

deGrom vs Jon Gray (he matches the weather) Gray is a former #3 overall draft pick for the Rox (2013 - U of Okla) Was 6th in ROY voting last year but he was DL'd from mid-April until late June so this will only be his 6th start of the year. His two starts since his return have both been pretty good: 11.2 IP, 4 ER on 15 Hits, 15 Ks, 2 BBs vs Arizona and Cincy The Rox in general have been a bit better than League average at preventing runs this season which, considering the home park, is pretty remarkable. Their team ERA+ figure (113) puts them behind only the DBacks and the Dodgers (Mets = DFL at 86) Maybe more remarkable still is that most of their starting staff is 24 and under and I don't know who half of them are. We'll get Tyler Chatwood on Saturday (the old man of the group at 27) and 24 y/o rookie Jeff Hoffman on Sunday

For an [u:860aulv1]UN[/u:860aulv1]-deal in July comes news that the BoSox have DFA'd Pablo Sandoval 2-1/2 seasons into his 5 year/$95 million deal. Total return for their investment: 575 ABs, 14 HRs, .237/.286/.360 -- essentially a replacement level player and even a negative one once his (lack of) defense is factored in. A hunnert mil just don't buy what it used to. Sandoval turns 31 next month. Tough to find a worse recent FA signing than this one and, while I'm not going to claim I saw a disaster of this proportion coming, it did seem to me back when he was signed like the Sox had uncharacteristically abandoned their Moneyball-ish tendancies and instead were buying a wee bit too much into Sandoval's 'clutchness' factor given his playoff record for the Giants. And maybe the bigger problem is that they traded away his logical replacement over the winter in Travis Shaw (now tearing things up for Milwaukee) for some bullpen help, Tyler Thornton, who's missed the entire 2017 season to date due to shoulder (Thoracic Outlet) surgery

Michael Pineda: partial UCL tear in elbow, getting second opinion but TJ surgery has been recommended.

Frayed Knot wrote: Quintana's not having the year this season like he did in 2016 when he was an AS and got some CY votes, but he's 28 and is under control thru 2018 when almost certainly one of Lackey or Arrieta won't be back. Actually it turns out that Quintana is under a long-term contract with team options for both 2019 & 2020 so the Cubs can get up to 3-1/2 years of use out of him at reasonable rates: $8.5 / $10.5 / $11.5 for 2018/19/20 So now the question remains whether he's going to be the 3.5 - 5.0 WAR/year pitcher he was from 2013-16 or the 0.9 WAR guy he is this year.

In an interview today, Manfred reiterated that he thinks the technology being accurate enough to call automated balls & strikes in MLB is still "years away" without getting into into any specifics as to whether 'years' means something closer to two or ten. As I mentioned before, I suspect (hope?) this might have something to do with not wanting to start a fight in advance of the next negotiations with the umpires union (don't know when that is). On the other hand, he did sound like he may be leaning favorably towards a pitch clock to cut down on dead time and seemed to give a strong nod to the idea of capping the number of mound visits per game.

Sideline reporters are, IMO, virtually always irrelevant so I don't hang that particular fault on Rosenthal. It's more the fault of the ingrained thinking that convinces networks they're required to have one. The bigger story is the idiocy of having the guy who probably breaks more national baseball stories than anyone and his employer decides, right as they're heading into deadline season, to take his main format away.

I've had to apologize for a wet butt a few times in my life, but never to one. I hadn't heard about Rosenthal's situation and now that I read up on it ... it's kind of weird. FOX Sports is apparently making all of their "writing" 'video-only' leaving guys like him no place to write and no way to break stories unless there's some accompanying film, and even then the few things he has filed get buried behind all the stuff from FOX's "stars" like Cowherd who have their own shows and therefore get priority whether the "news" from them is interesting or not. Meanwhile, he's still with FOX and will still work their GotW. Just no writing because, after all, why would a news outlet want writing from a writer? Quintana was long rumored to be a MFY target for this season but apparently there wasn't much of a push from their end on this. Either that or the Cubs just surprised them with their swiftness.

Garrett Cooper - 6th round draft pick in 2013 out of Auburn U.; 6' 6"/230; 26 y/o; BR/TR Hitting REAL well in AAA [.366/.428/.652] but keep in mind that it's Colorado Springs although he's hit reasonably well in prior minor league seasons as well but you figure that the emergence of Thames from Korea made him expendable. Yanx have tried seven different 1st basemen already this year and I guess this signals that they don't believe Greg Bird is due back anytime soon. Cooper will probably hit six HRs his first week because that's what big MFY players do even if their careers go on to suck. IIRC from when we played them, the Brews had no LHRs in their pen so Tyler Webb is probably going to find a lot of work as they try to hold off the Cubs.

That trade looks like it pretty much cleans out the Cubs' (high A) Myrtle Beach roster. So while no one of the guys headed to the ChiSox are on the verge of the big leagues, Jimenez, as mentioned, is the big prize, a corner OF with plenty of power potential who was in the Top-Ten among prospects in the recent mid-season updates while still just 20 y/o. Quintana's not having the year this season like he did in 2016 when he was an AS and got some CY votes, but he's 28 and is under control thru 2018 when almost certainly one of Lackey or Arrieta won't be back.

Yeah, you hear all about 'the adjustments' he's made since his trial last year which have resulted in his both his high BA and walk rates even as the vast improvement in his K-rate still leaves him at 36% which is only low when compared to the 50% from last season. Now of course the pitchers will try to adjust to his adjustments and that dance will go on as long as he plays. At this point you have to treat his 3x size sample from this season as more real than the 2016 numbers but I suspect his true water level is probably somewhere in between the .329 hitter he is now and last season's .179 Those High-HR / High-Walk / High-K rates, coupled with the size factor, certainly makes Dunn a logical comparison. The biggest difference so far is BA and that Judge is neither immobile nor defensively inept as Dunn couldn't move the way Judge does AND he had stone hands.

I believe the trivia answer is Tony Perez (extra inning HR in the 1967 ASG)

Well the game is official now that we've had the traditional upcoming FOX show plug with the actors in the prime seats. Now the question is, how quickly after the cameo did the actors abandon those seats and go hit The Clevelander?

He used to kill the Mets back in the day (was 19-0 IIRC before they finally beat him) but, man, it would be great to see Juan Marichal pitch just one more time.

I have nothing against Judge, but part of this hype is of the ESPN-variety. The HR Derby is what they consider to be the best thing in baseball anyway so, absent a comet to rally around since Jeter's retirement -- I suspect most Bristol employees couldn't pick Mike Trout out of a photo lineup -- Judge becomes their ready-made star. Earlier today I him referred to as "the star that baseball so desperately needs", as if the sport is in danger of folding if they don't get one real quick.

Being in StL had Keith bringing up both Schoendeinst and Whitey Herzog which in turn sent me to BB-Ref to see if Whitey also was still alive (yes - 85) Funny how I knew that Red was but less sure on Whitey. Get those two together with Blue Moon Odom and trot them out on your next July 4th game before it's too late. Back to the subject of older players who are still alive, the Times had a moving piece on Jim Bouton last week. Reading that piece on Bouton last week immediately reminded me of the Times' piece that Jim's son had written many years ago. Michael Bouton's Father's Day op-ed to the Times Sports section, probably in 1998 and done totally without his father's knowledge, was essentially a call for the end to the petty feud which had for many years kept Jim out of the yearly NYY Old Timer's Game. Bouton had been very popular with fans during his brief NYY run but not so much with management and so was never invited to the annual OTD game -- both because of BALL FOUR but for other reasons as well; the Yanx were cheap, petty and used to getting their own way and Bouton had the nerve to say so publicly. Michael made the case that the feud was was senseless and had gone on too long, particularly so as it was the first summer since the death of Jim's daughter/Michael's sister in a car accident several months earlier. For those who read BALL FOUR when it was still more or less contemporaneous and remembered nothing more than the brief references to Laurie Bouton as a feisty little girl trying to make her way in a family with two brothers and a jock father, that letter served as a real kick in the gut and helped to spread the story of his sister in those pre-internet days when every little fact about everyone didn't circle the globe within two days. The letter did in fact shame the Yanx into finally un-black-listing Bouton and when this recent Times piece mentions that Jim's stroke occurred on the anniversary of Laurie's accident, well that was almost too spooky for words.

Just give me something that I can hold on to / to believe in this team is just a hard way to go

The league Presidents would probably each wind up in the wrong locker room after it was over. Oh wait ...

The Frazier kid hit another 3R HR for the Yanx and they wound up getting the tying run to the plate in the 9th, but there were no miracle comebacks today. After peaking at 15 games over .500 (38-23) and 4.0 games up in the AL East on June 12, the Yanx will go into the break 3.5 in back of Boston and essentially deadlocked with Tampa for the two WC slots (w/Minn & KCR hot on their heels) as a result of going 7-18 since that high water mark. Meanwhile, the Cubs deficit to Milwaukee is starting to get real, now 5.5 games as not only are the World Champs still spinning their wheels three months in but the Brews have won 8 of 10 and are suddenly nine games over at 50-41. Maybe the winner of the NL Central won't just wind up being the tallest midget in the circus after all.

Tough to project the team being hit with everything short of a cholera outbreak.

Houston tacks on a few in the 9th to go up [u:mfrbk6eg]18-0[/u:mfrbk6eg] (and still batting) on the Blue Jays. Certainly looks like they'll go into the break with a 60-29 record!! No NL team has topped the 108 win mark since the '86ers did it although several AL teams have finished seasons winning more than 2/3 of their games since then ['95 Indians, '98 Yanx, '01 Mariners]

Amazing how well the ball carries in the bottom half of the innings but not in the top.

80 pitches for Matz to get through the first four innings. Lynn, on the other hand, just 44

Pirates in the midst of a 10-run top-1st off of the Cubs and Jon Lester ... and they're still batting. Lester just now getting pulled now. I can't imagine too many saw the Cubs looking at two games under .500 heading into the ASB Brewers hang a 3-spot on the Yanx in the top of the 1st. Of course they did that yesterday also but then opted to take the rest of the game off.

This game is a prime example of one that was sailing along for six innings ... but that was more than an hour ago. Once we hit the 7th though it was like the brakes got slammed on and the last 12 outs have gone by at a snail's pace. The NYM 'basket of deplorables' bullpen hasn't helped.