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9 hours ago, Helobious said:

Josh Hader, the Brewers setup guy, is putting up a historically dominant season so far. I’d wager over 95% of non-nl central team fans have never heard of him. I learned of his existence just a few weeks ago by randomly scanning pitcher leaderboards. He’s rarely mentioned on the MLB social media pages. It’s still crazy to me how vastly different stardom is in baseball vs other sports. 

This is probably my first non asshole-ish response to you ever.  

You should really watch MLB Network(or as someone mentioned listen to mlbradio) because they do an outstanding job on there.  Even your boy Girardi is on there now.  I know you are a Yankees fan, but if you care to hear about all of baseball then you should tune in because they do really well going over all of MLB.  

And the best part is they don't really have any of the loud mouth morons that other stations have (Espn, NFLNetwork, etc) other than dumbass Mad Dog, but he is on during the day anyway.  

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11 hours ago, WBT said:

"Completely blown out of proportion, that's all," Kratz added. "We were discussing the Canadian dollar and flawed systems in our two governments. He was coming from a different side of it, and we were just discussing those kinds of things."

lawl

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25 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Quick Pitch on MLB is my favorite highlights show. Just clips of the games, some interesting stats now and then, and no bullshit announcers who think we tune in to watch them.

 

23 minutes ago, spystud13 said:

And hot hosts. 

It's the best.  I like hearing the actual broadcast calls and they let the highlights flow in a sequential way that actually tells you how the game went.  Sports center used to do that back in the 90s but now they show one HR from a game and then get back to LeBron talk.  And watching Kelly Nash in a tight dress first thing in the morning isn't bad either.

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1 hour ago, Scraps said:

This is probably my first non asshole-ish response to you ever.  

You should really watch MLB Network(or as someone mentioned listen to mlbradio) because they do an outstanding job on there.  Even your boy Girardi is on there now.  I know you are a Yankees fan, but if you care to hear about all of baseball then you should tune in because they do really well going over all of MLB.  

And the best part is they don't really have any of the loud mouth morons that other stations have (Espn, NFLNetwork, etc) other than dumbass Mad Dog, but he is on during the day anyway.  

I absolutely loved MLBN & Quick Pitch (and Heidi), but this season I haven’t had access to it. Getting all my baseball news from MLB’s instagram & whenever I get a chance to peruse the MLB site. Probably not the best way to go. I am tempted to get Vue or something just for that channel. 

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Young blondes in red(dish) dresses need somewhere to go. There's already a logjam of them on Fox News.

I'm guessing that no matter which of these three dashing "journalists" is your personal fave, most surlists would suggest Kelly, Heidi and Alexa all should be taken deep.

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55 minutes ago, spystud13 said:

DeRo for Reynolds would be an unbelievable trade-off. 

I’m a morning viewer and I would riot. DeRo in the morning is great TV.  And Flores is solid, too.  I’ve always been a Vasgersian fan, but MLB Central is a better show with Flores.   

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Stark:

Quote

A relief pitcher plays first base… A catcher pitches – for the 10th time!… All the Reds’ pitchers do is hit home runs….And the Royals string together the most bizarre losing streak of modern times.

But more on that later – because first, the Useless Information Department has this to say about a guy named Mike Trout….

THE ALL-OLDER-THAN-TROUT TEAM

Mike Trout is 26 years old. This important announcement is brought to you by the Useless Information Department’s Time Marches On Division – because it has noticed that rest of us seem to act as if Trout has been around forever.

Trout has passed Harmon Killebrew, Mike Piazza and Vladimir Guerrero in career Wins Above Replacement this month – and he’s 26 years old. He has already had more top-two MVP finishes (four) than Hank Aaron, Mike Schmidt or Ken Griffey Jr. – and he’s 26 years old.

So let’s put that in perspective. We now present a bunch of players who feel like they’re just starting out in this game – but every single one of them is older than the best player in the game. No kidding. So here it comes – the All-Older-Than-Mike-Trout team!

1B – Jesus Aguilar (27)
2B – Joey Wendle (28)
SS – Marcus Semien (27)
3B – Christian Villanueva (27)
OF – Mitch Haniger (27)
OF – Scott Schebler (27)
OF – Mac Williamson (27)
C – Christian Vázquez (27)
DH – Max Muncy (27)
BENCH – José Martínez (27), José Pirela (28), Aaron Altherr (27), Michael A. Taylor (27) and Matt Duffy (27).
SP – Ross Stripling (28)
RP – Raisel Iglesias (28)

And we could easily make a whole ’nother team just like it. But you get the idea, right? What we actually should be asking ourselves what Mike Trout wants to be when he grows up – because maybe this whole best-player-in-baseball thing is just his warm-up act.

STREAKERS OF THE WEEK

What we have here is the most innovative losing streak of the last century. Presenting your 2018 Kansas City Royals.

Starting with their game of June 3 and ending with their 5-4 win in Milwaukee on Wednesday, the Royals went a messy 3-18. But that’s not the big news here.

The big news is that you can break those 21 games into two fascinating categories:

Record when they threw a shutout: 3-0.
 Record when they gave up a run (or also lots of runs): 0-18.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Royals managed to lose 18 games in a row when they made the mistake of letting the other team cross home plate.

So how bizarre is that? Allow the Useless Info Department to fill you in.

— Last team to lose at least 18 straight games in which they gave up a run? That would be Runelvys Hernandez’s 2005 Royals, who lost 19 in a row like that. But wait! That wasn’t the same thing at all. That team lost 19 in a row, period.

— So in fact, the Elias Sports Bureau tells us, the Royals were just the third team ever to pull off a streak like this. (Or is it two streaks?) And to find the other two, you have to travel all the way back to the Roosevelt administration.

By which we mean the Teddy Roosevelt administration. That was back in 1907!

That year, Stoney McGlynn’s 101-loss Cardinals went through a stretch in June and July in which they lost seven in a row, threw a shutout, lost three in a row, threw a second shutout, won one before throwing a third shutout, then ripped off eight more losses in a row. So that’s a 19-game losing streak in games where they allowed a run (or 11).

But even that didn’t measure up to the exploits of Bill Bergen’s 1907 Brooklyn Superbas. The not-so-Superbas made it all the way from Opening Day (April 12) to May 18 before they finally won a game in which they gave up a run. They were 3-20 at that point (and 0-20 when they coughed up a run). But they did have a 1-1 tie along the way where they did, in fact, allow a run. So that’s a little shaky.

However, if you’ll recall the baseball history lesson we learned from the Indians’ 22-game winning streak last year, ties don’t count in either winning or losing streaks. So they get to be part of this list!

And then, a mere 111 years later, along came these Royals. Their season definitely isn’t bound for glory. But at least it’s produced the weirdest, most historic 18-game “losing streak” of our lifetimes. And perhaps it’s taught us all a valuable lesson.

Kids, just be sure not to give up any runs and everything will turn out fine.

TRAVELING MAN OF THE WEEK

If Edwin Jackson hasn’t pitched for your favorite team over these last 15 years, just grab a bin of popcorn and wait a while. He should show up any minute now.

And if Edwin Jackson hasn’t pitched for your favorite team, well, clearly, they’re not even trying – because Edwin Jackson has pitched for every team.

Oh, all right. Not every team. He’s missed 17 of them, if you want to get technical. But now that he’s a proud member of the Oakland A’s (this week), he’s officially one of baseball’s most historic figures.

He has worn the uniform of 13 teams now – tied with the great Octavio Dotel for most in history. So let’s review this spectacular feat:

  By adding a bunch of A’s, Jackson has played with the incredible total of 763 teammates, believed to be the second-most in history (behind Terry Mulholland!). That’s 109 more for Jackson than Dotel by the way, in case you stopped counting in 2013.

And Jackson is one of just six men known to have played with more than 700 teammates. The other five we could find, with the help of MLB Network’s awesome research team, are these guys:

Terry Mulholland 791 (11 teams)
Matt Stairs 725 (12 teams)
Rickey Henderson 725 (9 teams, not counting the A’s four times)
Carlos Beltrán 719 (7 teams)
LaTroy Hawkins 703 (11 teams)

Shocking footnote: Of those five, just one also played with Jackson (or Dotel). That was Henderson – who happens to be the only Hall of Famer on either of their teammate lists!

  Jackson once played with Fred McGriff – who retired so long ago, he only has one year left on the Hall of Fame ballot.

 Jackson played with Ron Coomer – who retired 15 years ago.

Jackson once played with Robin Ventura, Alex Cora and Dave Roberts, who have all since managed in the big leagues.

Jackson has started a game for 11 different teams. That ties him with – guess who? – Bartolo Colon for the most among active players. Only Mike Morgan (12) has started a game for more teams than either of them. But let’s just predict right here that record is not safe.

Jackson’s new home stadium is the O.Co. Coliseum. Believe it or not, he has only pitched there for two different teams. But he has pitched at Wrigley Field and Petco Park for six different teams. And he’s twirled at PNC Park, Citizens Bank Park, the new Busch Stadium and the Trop for five teams. He gets around, this dude.

In Jackson’s first game with the A’s, he got to pitch against Victor Martinez – whom he has now faced with four different teams. Sadly, he missed the injured Miguel Cabrera – whom he has faced with six different teams. But coming up in a couple of weeks, unless Jackson is on team No. 14 by then, is his most epic matchup of all, when the A’s play the Giants. If he pitches to Andrew McCutchen in that series, Jackson will be battling him in his eighth different uniform. Talk about crazy eights.

So how does a guy get to play for 13 teams anyway? He books a lot of plane tickets! That’s how. In Jackson’s case, he has been traded six times – three times at the trading deadline and three times in the offseason. That includes deals that brought his old team Max Scherzer, Matt Joyce and Danys Báez – but also includes deals that brought his old team David Holmberg, Zach Stewart and P.J. Walters.

In other news, Jackson also has been released three times. In a related development, he has been a free agent nine times. And counting the minor leagues, he has played in 24 different towns. His baseball-reference page looks more like a list of flight departures at the airport than a baseball career. But that’s a good thing, actually – for minutiae-seeking columns like, say, this one.

But you know what’s really amazing about all this? Edwin Jackson has played for 13 teams while never getting a Cy Young vote, while winning just one postseason game, while compiling an ERA of 5.00 or higher for seven different teams, while (as my pal Tim Kurkjian reminds us) never winning 20 games for any of his 13 employers.

But there he was this week at Comerica Park, starting a big-league baseball game for the A’s, his seventh team just since 2015, and even hitting 96.8 miles per hour on the Statcast meter.

Asked, by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, where that 96.8-mph heater came from, Edwin Jackson quipped: “I try to be young once a week.”

MYSTERY PITCHER OF THE WEEK

It isn’t true that Chris Gimenez has pitched more games these last two years than Clayton Kershaw. But he has pitched more times (seven) than, say, Hisashi Iwakuma (six), Nathan Eovaldi (six) or Shelby Miller (five).

In the major leagues. In real life.

And you know what? That’s kinda fun. And definitely kinda quirky.

But the heck with quirky – because now Chris Gimenez has made history. OK, so it’s only position-player-pitching history. But that’s actually one of my favorite kinds of history.

Last Saturday, Joe Maddon pointed him back toward the mound, to finish off the Cubs’ 11-2 loss in Cincinnati. Incredibly, it was the 10th outing – the 10th!!! – of Gimenez’s distinguished pitching career. (And by distinguished, I definitely mean we’re going to totally ignore his 9.90 ERA.) So now it’s time to put that in perspective. You’re welcome!

GETTING FOXXY – OK, how many position players in history, you ask, have ever pitched 10 times in the big leagues?

That’s actually a tougher question to research than you’d think, because once you get back to the 1950s and ‘60s, you discover there were a lot more Shohei Ohtani wanna-be’s than you might expect. (And yes, I’m talking about you, Willie Smith.)

So I disqualified any position player who ever pitched in at least 10 games in any season. And here’s what I found. (Cue the percussion section.)

Chris Gimenez is the first position player to visit the mound at least 10 times in his career (without appearing in 10+ games in any season) since …

Jimmie Foxx!

“Jimmie Foxx?” gulped Cubs analyst/humorist Jim Deshaies, when Useless Info passed along that little tidbit. “He doesn’t exactly fit your stereotypical emergency pitcher.”

Yeah, you think? When he wasn’t busy whomping 534 homers, Foxx also pitched 10 times between 1939 and 1945. And his 534 homers are the most of anyone in history who A) pitched and B) wasn’t named Babe Ruth.

THE POPEYE FACTOR – Gimenez threw 19 pitches in his outing Saturday. All 19 were categorized by Statcast as “fastballs.” As opposed to “not-so-fastballs,” since 14 of them were clocked at 64-69 miles per hour – until, sneakily, Gimenez got to a 1-2 count on fellow catcher Tucker Barnhart. Then – ta-daaaa! – he pulled an 85-mph smokeball out of his bag of tricks, for a (gasp) swinging strikeout.

“He didn’t just reach back for an extra one mile per hour or two,” Deshaies said, admiringly. “He said, ‘I need to get 20.’ It was like one of those Popeye cartoons, where Popeye is getting beat up by Bluto and then he finally gets the can of spinach open. It was almost like Gimenez didn’t have his spinach. Then he gave up a couple of rockets and said, ‘OK, it’s time for some spinach.’”

WATCH OUT, OHTANI! – So with Ohtani out of the pitching circuit for at least another couple of weeks, does this make Chris Gimenez the closest thing to Ohtani we’ve got in the game? Hey, why the heck not?

“They’re calling Ohtani ‘The Japanese Babe Ruth,’ right?” Deshaies said. “So now we can call Gimenez ‘The American Ohtani.’”

Well, that has a cool little ring to it, but it does leave one question: If Gimenez is the American Ohtani, then what, we asked, does that make Babe Ruth?

“What does that make Babe Ruth?” Deshaies pondered. “Dead.”

USELESS INFO OF THE WEEK

WHO’S ON FIRST – So how long had it been since anyone had seen a box-score entry like the one attached to Rays reliever José Alvarado’s name Tuesday?

Alvarado P-1B-P

Almost 30 years. That’s how long.

According to baseball-reference.com’s awesome Play Index, it was only the third time in the 50-season division-play era that any pitcher had a game in which he both pitched and wore a first-base mitt in a nine-inning game. Here are the other two:

June 6, 1989 – The Brewers shuttle Chuck Crim to first for one hitter, then bring him back for a save (and double-switch Terry Francona into the game to play first!)

Sept. 2, 1970 – The Indians move Sam McDowell to first – in the sixth inning – so Dean Chance can get two outs. Whereupon McDowell returns and finishes the game.

Amazingly, none of those three (Alvarado, Crim or McDowell) recorded a putout at first base while they were over there. Believe it or not, just one pitcher in the last 90 years has done that in this scenario: Billy Pierce, for the White Sox, on June 25, 1953 (on a 5-3 from Gil McDougall). Hard to believe!

WHO NEEDS THE DH – On Saturday in Cincinnati, sweet-swinging Reds pitcher Anthony DeSclafani whacked a grand slam – the first by a Reds pitcher in nearly six decades, since Bob Purkey went slamming on Aug. 1, 1959.

Then on Sunday in Cincinnati, yet another hot-hitting Reds hurler, Michael Lorenzen, stalked to the plate to pinch-hit – and did something that no Reds pinch-hitter had done all season. He hit a pinch homer, which made him A) the only active pitcher with two career pinch bombs and B) just the second pitcher in the DH era (along with Micah Owings) to hit two.

But that isn’t even the highlight of this note!

How many teams have ever had one pitcher hit a slam and a second hit a pinch-homer in back-to-back games? Right you are. That would be none, according to Elias. And no team had even done that in the same season since the 1995 Phillies (slam by Jeff Juden, pinch homer by Omar Olivares).

COUNTDOWN – Hits allowed by impressive Cardinals rookie Jack Flaherty in three consecutive starts this month:

3…2…1

(On June 11-17-23).

That seemed like a trend … until he gave up six hits in four innings Wednesday. But he’s still just the third pitcher in this millennium to run off a 3-2-1 streak in successive starts of five innings or more. The other two to do that, according to Elias: Johan Santana (2004) and Josh Beckett (2009). Both of those guys eventually threw no-hitters by the way – just not in their next start!

EXTRA! EXTRA! – Until this season, a mere three active players (Christian Yelich, Paul Goldschmidt and Robinson Cano) had ever had a four-extra-base-hit game and a three-extra-base-hit game in back-to-back games.

So now all of a sudden, naturally, three hitters have done it just in the last 49 days (Willson Contreras, Goldschmidt and, most recently, Alex Bregman on Tuesday and Wednesday).

It’s the first time three players have done this in the same season since 1969 (Reggie Jackson, Tony Oliva and, of course, Ed Kirkpatrick). But even cooler, Goldschmidt is the first player to have two streaks like that in the entire live-ball era.

NAME DROPPERS – Here’s the latest from our hard-working Name Game Department:

Last Friday, the White Sox had two Garcias (Avisail and Leury) come off the disabled list on the same day. Where the heck is Willy Garcia when you need him anyway?

And Monday in Atlanta, Ozzie Albies thumped a walkoff homer to beat the Reds. But not just his first walkoff homer. As NBC Sports Chicago’s ever-observant Christopher Kamka reports, it was the first walkoff homer by any Ozzie since Ozzie Smith’s epic “Go crazy folks, go crazy” walkoff versus Tom Niedenfuer in Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS.

And Sunday in Kansas City, we had the latest chapter in this ongoing series:

June 7 – Cole (Gerritt) beats Hamels (Cole).
June 19 – Cole (Hamels) beats Hammel (Jason).
Sunday – Cole (Gerrit) beats Hammel (Jason).

Paging A.J. Cole!

STRANGEST BUT TRUEST FEATS OF THE WEEK

HARD O’DAY’S NIGHT – We always did consider Orioles reliever Darren O’Day to be one of the most creative men in baseball. But he outdid himself Monday – by walking just his fourth hitter of the season (Nelson Cruz) while sitting in the clubhouse!

So how’d that happen? It took some crazy stuff going down, all right. O’Day got called for a balk on a 3-2 pitch, then got ejected for the first time in his 11-year, 576-appearance career, then had long since headed up the tunnel by the time Zach Britton marched in and finished off the walk – which was charged to a man who wasn’t even on the field.

Baseball!

MADBUM ABOUT YOU – Raise your hand if you saw this coming:

That 367 pitchers would win a game this year before Madison Bumgarner … that the Giants would go 48 games (and nearly two full months) without winning a game started by either Bumgarner or Johnny Cueto … and that they would still have a winning record halfway through their season.

DODGEBALL – OK, raise your hand if you saw this coming:

That the Dodgers would go 10 weeks without winning a game started by Clayton Kershaw … and would still go from four games under .500 to five games over .500 in the meantime.

ON WALDING POND – The good news for Phillies rookie Mitch Walding – after he’d started his career by going 0 for 7, with 7 strikeouts – was: He finally had an at-bat Sunday in which he put a ball in play.

The bad news: He hit into a double play. Making him 0 for 8, with more outs (9) than at-bats (8).

Here’s hoping he returns and gets a hit, because he’d be just the sixth position player in history to get to the plate that many times, emerge with zero hits and join the More Outs than AB Club!

WELCOME TO OHIO – Does anyone put the O back in Ohio like the Tigers?

Halfway through the season, they’re still 0 for Ohio. As in 0-7 in Cleveland and 0-3 in Cincinnati.

Just so they know this before those three games they have left in Cleveland in September: No NL Central or AL Central team, according to Elias, has ever gone winless in Ohio since interleague play made that a thing 21 years ago.

HAPPY HOLADAYS – Thanks to dulcet Marlins broadcaster Glenn Geffner for alerting us to this Strange But True series of events:

 April 5 – The Phillies steal four bases against Marlins catcher Bryan Holaday, who finally ends that track meet by throwing out César Hernández trying to pilfer third.

— Holaday then goes 2 ½ months without having anyone steal a base on him. (He nails 9 for 9, starting with that CS of Hernández.)

— Thursday in Miami – Holaday’s streak finally ends, on a steal by … um, Zack Greinke! Who steals second with two outs and Paul Goldschmidt hitting. And then scores on a Goldschmidt single.

 Oh, and one more thing: That makes Greinke 7-for-7 in his base-swiping career. And how many other pitchers since World War 2 have stolen that many bases in their career without being caught? Yup. None.

JERRY-MANDERING – Finally, what were the odds of this:

After 12 peaceful seasons spent hanging out blissfully in bullpens across our land as the ultimate situational left-hander, the Mets decided to drag Jerry Blevins out of hiding last Sunday for the first “start” of his career.

And how’d that go? The first hitter homered (Enrique Hernández). The second hitter homered (Max Muncy). And Blevins had just joined Don Hendrickson (1945 Braves) as the only two pitchers since 1900 to serve up home runs to the first two hitters of their first major league start.

But guess how many times – in 532 relief appearances – Blevins had ever allowed home runs to the first two hitters he faced (or any two hitters he faced) in the same relief outing? Yessiree. That would be none. In a career in which he faced 1,846 hitters out of the pen.

Baseball!

 

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I absolutely loved MLBN & Quick Pitch (and Heidi), but this season I haven’t had access to it. Getting all my baseball news from MLB’s instagram & whenever I get a chance to peruse the MLB site. Probably not the best way to go. I am tempted to get Vue or something just for that channel. 

Follow pitchersnation on IG.
You would have seen plenty of Hader.
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17 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Anyone else remember this?  I was 9 years old.  I had heard about him, read about him, but this was the first time he pitched on national TV...  and he fucking delivered, big time.  Crowd was going nuts, and he was talking to the ball before every pitch, getting down on his knees and playing with the dirt on the mound.  I vividly remember him coming out of the dugout to give the post-game interview.

I wanted to be Mark Fidrych after seeing that..  

Went to Detroit with one my grandparents and we went to a game he pitched at Tiger Stadium..

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23 hours ago, miguelito said:

Shoot, I hope so.  Isn't there another blond that hosts sometimes?  Google isn't very helpful right now.

Jamie Hersch.  Apparently more of a hockey gal, but whatever.

 

20265087_1606946932650319_63251959980816

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Kind of reminds me of Juliet from Psych (Maggie Lawson).

Edited by miguelito
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7 hours ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

Normally I would keep this on the Mariners thread, but this one is for Goo, who I know likes to see crushed HR's...

Zunino goes to the top deck of Safeco:

 

https://streamable.com/z5sj8

 

 

jesus. schwarber crushed another one  yesterday (probably 440-450 to dead center) but it wasn't like that.

Edited by Goo Punch
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The Yankees have won 5 titles in my lifetime so far. 

Side note: What goddamn baseball team does a valley kid root for? Sure the Astros are big down there, but they’re the closest team and still over 6 hours away. As a hispanic I wasn’t keen on rooting for a team named after the “Texas Rangers” either. It’d be like a black guy rooting for a team called the “LAPD Enforcers” or something. More importantly they’re over 8 hours away. You clowns act like I was born & raised on the other side of Crawford St and still chose to be a Yankees fan. 

Are you at Yankee stadium tonight booing your team with all the other “fans”

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Because I had to know, Pudge was consistently around a 1.7 POP with pinpoint accuracy too.

 

I love the different aspects of defensive catching.  I do believe it's the toughest position from the depth of skill/ strategy required after football's quarterback.

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