Frayed Knot

So how many times in his upcoming life is Carter Bruce going to have to explain that, no, it's not Bruce Carter but Carter Bruce?

It didn't hit me until maybe the 7th inning last night when I all of a sudden thought to myself: 'Hey, no Chapman at the end of the game ... Kewl!!'

Injuries and a lefty starter means it lineup shuffling time Zack Cozart, SS Tyler Holt, RF Joey Votto, 1B Eugenio Suarez, 3B Adam Duzall, LF Tucker Barnhart, C Ivan De Jesus 2B Brandon Finnegan, LHP Billy Hamilton, CF Curtis Granderson, RF Asdrubal Cabrera, SS David Wright, 3B Michael Conforto, LF Neil Walker, 2B Wilmer Flores, 1B Juan Lagares, CF Kevin Plawecki, C Bartolo Colon, RHP

Finnegan is the guy who, in 2014, went virtually straight from the college World Series (w/TCU) to the ML World Series. In between he was KC's #1 draft pick (17th overall), then had just 27 innings of minor league ball and 7 innings of ML pitching before becoming the Royals' go-to lefty in the post-season. His ride through 2015 wasn't nearly so smooth as he bounced around five different teams on three different levels (AA, AAA, ML) for two different orgs marked notably by the late July trade to Cincy as part of the deal sending Cueto to KC.

Murphy may be hitting .400 (or thereabouts) but he ain't got no 8 homers!

soupcan wrote: No one has any faith in Pittsburgh? They're part of the top 6

Cindy is a respectable 9-10 so far this season despite the fact that they've been matched against the tough top of the NL Central in 13 of those 19 games. Now they got a big-time thumping in most of them: losing 6 of 7 vs the Cubs (out-scored 60-20 in the process) while splitting 6 against StL (1-2) and Pitt (2-1) Outside of that they swept 3 from the Phils and took 2 of 3 from the Rox. They've also been at home for 13 of their 19 games, so I think we can draw the conclusion ... that it's far too early to draw much of a conclusion.

Ceetar wrote: Milestones this year: Passes Piazza for the Franchise HR lead. 1000 runs, 1000 RBI, 6000 AB, 400 Doubles, 800 Walks,200 Steals That would be Strawberry for HRs: needs 15 to tie, 16 to pass As for the rest ... 1,000 Runs -- needs 60 from this point on 1,000 RBI -- needs 40 400 Doubles -- needs 11 800 Walks -- needs 55 200 Steals -- needs 5 ... those all seem doable. Would be a nice year for milestones if he could reach them all. Is on pace right now to play in 133 games.

Dialing back the Arrieta freakiness a bit further to take in his last 24 starts - dating back to late June 2015 24 starts, 20-1 record plus 3 ND. Cubs won 2 of those 3 so the team is 22-2 in his last 24 starts 178 Innings with 91 Hits allowed 33 BB vs 173 K 17 ER allowed = 0.86 ERA 4 HRs allowed vs [u:27caqtf5]3 HRs hit[/u:27caqtf5]!! So that's more no-hitters (2) than losses (1) over a four month span and almost as many HRs hit as allowed. And how did he lose that one game? That was the game where the Cubs got no-hit by Cole Hamels making his Philly phinale.

The Braves biggest problem this season seems to be evident, at least if we're to take this series as a blueprint for their offense. They banged out a more than respectable 32 hits over the three games but totaled only 34 total bases in the process: 32 singles + 2 doubles

Monk beat me to it but I'll leave this up anyway for the details Frayed Knot wrote: A Brian Dozier 3R HR off of Strasburg in the 8th breaks the tie and gives the Twins a 4-1 lead in DC Be a nice day to pick up a game in the standings. (but aren't they all?) So the Nats got 2 in the 8th and then, still down a run, Dusty sent Harper, who had been getting the day off, up to PH leading off the 9th ... and he HR'd to tie the game. Twins scored a run in top-15, then got the first two Nats out in the bottom half ... and then maybe out-smarted themselves (though I'd have probably done the same thing): - with no one else left on his bench, Dusty was forced to stick with his pitcher to bat, a guy who happened to be Ollie Perez who has ZERO plate appearances since he was a Met in 2010 - but Ollie is still only on deck at this point so the Twins opt to walk Danny Espinosa, thus putting the tying run on, in order to pitch to Ollie - they oddly decided on a pitching change first (don't know what the reasoning behind THAT was) - Espinosa stole 2nd and then Ollie, on a 1-1 count, laid down a bunt which the catcher promptly hurled into RF ... Tie Game! - after a HBP put runners on 1st & 2nd, MdD, who HR'd earlier leading off the 1st inning, flied out and so we're on to the 16th

We weren't going to turn two on that play but going for the force seemed like it carried a minimum of risk and that would have at least kept the DP in play for the next one. For all of Familia's problems in that inning, he did get three broken-bat grounders to SS which could have resulted in more than just the two outs we were able to get.

A Brian Dozier 3R HR off of Strasburg in the 8th breaks the tie and gives the Twins a 4-1 lead in DC Be a nice day to pick up a game in the standings. (but aren't they all?)

That was one of those, 'it's the 9th inning and we've got nothing to lose by challenging the call even though there's zero chance of it being overturned' strategy. And so another two minutes was wasted.

Don't forget their mascot. [fimg=400:2medrs46]https://screenshadowsgroup.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/groucho-1-named-imposter.png[/fimg:2medrs46]

Bueller? Bueller? Conforto's double in the 6th breaks the 1-1 tie, sets up 2nd & 3rd w/1 out, and ends the Blair pitch project for the Braves.

A few details on de Trials of de Kid -- basically a newborn version of apnea; "When he would fall asleep, he would stop breathing," said deGrom. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/174109324/degrom-back-with-mets-after-sons-emergency

NYM HRs 1st eight games = 2 NYM HRs next eight games = 23

Lefty Specialist wrote: David Wright: Not dead yet. That'll teach them to semi-pitch-around Grandy.

Edgy MD wrote: d'Kong76 wrote: I don't know how late restaurants are open in Atlanta but I hope he found a couple of t-bones for Granderman and Yo... and he had a salad. I think d'Arnie earned a few onion rings with that snag he made in the first on the foul pop. Nice tag/hold-on at the tail end of the Yo-throw play too.

d'Kong76 wrote: Harvester didn't look too bad ... Didn't look so good neither. Some of the hits were softies, but he also threw a ton of pitches by letting batters stay alive longer because he's getting so many fewer swing-and-misses so far. But he got the 'W' (thx mainly to Grandslamerson) and so is no longer on pace to go 0-30 for the season.

Yeah, just what this game needed, another delay. The funny thing is that when I reported on the weather forecast (earlier in the thread) and talked about the possible rain delay it turned out that I was looking at Atlanta, [u:2opaywtv]Idaho[/u:2opaywtv] on the Weather Channel website (I didn't even know that there was an Atlanta, Idaho); Atlanta, Georgia had an entirely different outlook. The result turns out to be the same except that there's NOT supposed to be any steady rain after this passing shower.

Braves are doing the pull down the number thing to signify remaining games in their park. John Smoltz was today's puller-downer. It's still early in the process yet so I'm not sure how many Lincoln-Mercury dealers have done the honors so far.

Cutting guys down at the plate helps a bit. One thing that does work against a Braves comeback is that they have a grand total of [u:5opdgnlw]THREE[/u:5opdgnlw] HRs so far this season. Shyeeet, Curtis may match that before this game it out.

Not extremely comfy. We're going to need at least 4 innings from the pen to get through this one. Of course they're going to need at least five. Tons of pitches thrown by both sides and, between that and the early umpire injury, we're looking at 3-1/2 hours or more for this one.