Cubs offense much better tonight than the past couple of days. They got contributions from the whole lineup tonight against Braves pitching. I thought it would be the other way around based on how Atlanta and Chicago have been playing the last couple of days.
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As it was said in Major League, “they still suck!”Comment -
Padres vs Giants series starts tonight...need 2 out of 3 at worstComment -
Yankees are -300 plus vs TigersComment -
Your fancy KC Royals have the best record in all of baseball.
The LA Dodgers team payroll is $190.676,002
The KC Royals team payroll is 86,513526
The difference is $104,162,482
The Dodgers spend more than double (55 %) more on payroll than the Royals do.
Not for nothing, SF the best record in the National League.
They 'only' have a team payroll of 124 million dollars.Comment -
Nothing at all reflects the won/loss record.
I make a living analyzing data.
Everything doesn't add up except for the most important thing.
That is the bottom line, and the bottom line is the most important stat.
The win.
Flash back to 2015, same team.
That was a head scratcher too.
Yes, they won it all on the backs of one of the greatest bullpens of our generation.
The starters were OK until they obtained Johnny Cueto for one reason, the post season.
The offense was one of the funkiest in modern times.
Pretty much dead last in homeruns but top ten in RBI
Proving HR's are overrated if you get on base an drive them in.
Top five team in the majors in team speed too.
Here's the most important stat.
The team rarely struck out.
Near record breaking low strike out ratio
Only team that struck out under 1000 times for the season.
Put that in perspective the team that struck out the second least (Braves) whiffed over 1100 times.
Billy Beane "money ball" the way he dreamt it.
2015 was Money Ball played to perfection, which was get on base, put the ball in play, play pressure base running and force the opposing defense into errors get close to a leas or a lead after five innings and you are pretty much golden.
Who knew that a team can win everything by not hitting homers and not striking out.
Still most GM's are insanely fixated on power hitters that strike out entirely too much.
How's that been working out for them lately?Comment -
The Indians optioned lefty Logan Allen to Triple-A following a trio of rough starts, including this week’s six-run drubbing at the hands of the Twins. Three of that game’s first four batters homered off Allen to put Cleveland in an early hole. Manager Terry Francona told reporters, including Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes, that Allen’s fastball command has been off. The pitcher himself agreed, calling his location “spotty” and acknowledging that he’s regularly put himself behind in the count and tipped the advantage in the hitters’ favor. Allen was brilliant in Spring Training, allowing just one run in 14 innings with an 18-to-3 K/BB ratio, but the early results this year just haven’t been there. He’s allowed 18 runs (16 earned) on 20 hits (seven homers) and seven walks with 12 strikeouts in 15 2/3 frames.
With Allen out of the rotation for now, it’s not clear who will step into the fifth spot. Righty Cal Quantrill and lefty Sam Hentges are possible options, and Hoynes notes that Hentges was stretched out to 85 pitches at the alternate site before being recalled and plugged into the team’s bullpen. Cleveland had an off-day yesterday, but the Indians are embarking on a stretch of 10 straight days with games, so they’ll need a fifth starter this coming Tuesday.
A few more notes out of Cleveland…
- The Indians received poor news on a pair of their top pitching prospects, Zack Meisel of The Athletic reports (via Twitter). Right-hander Carlos Vargas will miss the 2021 season after recently undergoing Tommy John surgery, while fellow righty and 2018 No. 35 overall pick Ethan Hankins has been sidelined by an elbow injury of his own that is currently being evaluated by team doctors. Vargas ranks 15th among Indians prospects at FanGraphs, 17th at MLB.com and 18th at Baseball America. Hankins respectively lands 12th, 10th, and ninth on those same rankings. Neither pitcher was likely to emerge in the Majors this season, as Vargas hadn’t pitched above short-season Class-A and Hankins hadn’t progressed beyond A-ball himself. Still, it’s a noted setback for a pair of promising arms who’ll now see their timeline to the big leagues pushed back — by at least a full season in the case of Vargas.
- Top organizational prospect Nolan Jones will see the bulk of his time at his natural position, third base, in Triple-A to begin the season, but VP of player development James Harris tells Mandy Bell of MLB.com that Jones will also see work at first base and in the outfield in order to improve his versatility. “…[W]e just don’t know where the opportunity will be,” Harris says of working Jones at multiple positions. Both first base and the outfield have been much weaker spots in the Cleveland lineup than third base in recent seasons — in part due to Jose Ramirez’s emergence as an MVP-caliber talent but also due to a generally lackluster collection of hitters in a cobbled-together mix in the outfield and at first base. Jake Bauers has been among the game’s least-productive hitters at first base this season, and the Indians’ piecemeal approach to the outfield has again resulted in sub-par production. Indians outfielders have combined for a lowly 83 wRC+ in 2021, which ranks 23rd in MLB. Their first basemen are 29th of 30 by that same measure, checking in at just 58. Jones entered the season widely regarded as one of MLB’s top 50 overall prospects.
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That is great for the Royals and all, but ownership needs to spend some money. That is pathetic to have a payroll that low. Ownership is getting rich, and crying poor. Hopefully they don’t go to the Cleveland Indians route and get rid of a generational talent.Comment -
You don't know the whole story.
There's a new ownership group led by businessman John Sherman (of which Pat Mahomes is a part of)
Sherman, the principal owner was formerly the VP of the Indians and minority owner.
He sold his Cleveland share to buy out Mr. Glass, the former KC owner who bough the Royals when Mr. Kaufman died.
Glass, inherited the Walmart money when Mr. Martin died.
KC was running on Walmart money .
Glass was the cheapskate here, he ran the Royals like the Walmart box store retail chain, you know pay the cashiers 10 bucks an hour cheap.
Sherman and the new group has the money to spend and is spending it, wisely I might add.
They paid Sal Perez nice, they just paid Dozier nice.
Whit's going to get his and looks like they want to lock up Barlow and Staumont too.
Don't forget, one of the first moves they made was to get Carlos Santana, a great clubhouse vet, like Hosmer is now.
Before Glass sold, he started dumping all the salary from 2017 to 2019.
That's why the team salary is so low.
New ownership so has been tremendous and I am pumped.Comment -
Giants in first place in the West. WowComment -
Joey Votto hits his fifth dinger of the year making him just the third Red ever to hit 300 homers.
Good on Joey, good guy, class guy, funny guy.
One on very few that is a member of the exclusive .300/.400/.500 club.
Should be a Hall of Fame member soon after retirement.
Had an uneasy feeling about this Twins/Royals series.
One team was bound to come up some, the other team down.
When is a loss a win for your pal Nasher?
Had the over 7.5 of that game.
7.5 total runs was confusing me to me, I really thought that total should have been 8.5 or even 9.
But I stuck to my philosophy that being don't let the line mind fuk you,
Man, that Judge character hit an oppo field granny that landed somewhere near Saturn.
He's a big boy that Judge is.
Here's something you don't see everyday.
Miami and Washington scoreless in the tenth inning.Comment -
Glad to hear Royals have some new ownership. Could be start of something big!Comment -
Beware of the third best team in the National League, the BrewersComment -
3:08 pm: Narváez is expected to miss about two weeks, manager Craig Counsell told reporters (including Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
2:02 pm: The Brewers announced they’ve placed catcher Omar Narváez on the 10-day injured list with a left hamstring strain. Fellow backstop Mario Feliciano is up from the alternate training site to take his place on the roster.
Narváez left last night’s game in the seventh inning with hamstring tightness, and testing this morning revealed the strain. His loss will be another blow to a Milwaukee offense that has already been one of the league’s worst. Brewers’ hitters have managed just a .215/.297/.368 cumulative slash, which ranks twenty-eighth in park-adjusted offense (ahead of only the Rockies and Tigers).
While the team hasn’t hit much, Narváez has been on a tear. The 29-year-old is raking at a .368/.443/.529 clip through 79 plate appearances. Obviously, that level of production wasn’t sustainable, but Narváez has rather incredibly slashed his strikeout rate from 31% during a dreadful 2020 campaign to 12.7% over this season’s first month. That suggests he might’ve again found the form that made him a quality offensive player with the White Sox and Mariners from 2018-19.
Narváez has rated as an above-average pitch framer since moving to Milwaukee and has cut down six of thirteen attempted base stealers in the early going. He’s also guided a pitching staff that has more than offset the club’s offensive issues, with the Brewers sporting an NL Central-leading 16-10 record. With Narváez joining Manny Piña on the IL, Milwaukee is set to lean primarily on the light-hitting Luke Maile behind the dish.
Maile will be backed up by Feliciano, who’s in line to make his MLB debut. The 22-year-old is one of the sport’s more promising catching prospects but will be forced to make quite a leap to the game’s highest level. Feliciano spent most of the 2019 minor-league season at High-A, where he hit a strong .273/.324/.477. Other than three Double-A games to close out that year, Feliciano has no high minors experience. He and Maile are the only healthy catchers remaining on Milwaukee’s 40-man roster.Comment -
Padres offense coming alive against the GiantsComment -
They'll be competitive but for them to really compete for the division they're going to have to do a better job of coming through with that big hit in key situations. They couldn't do that again tonight and it cost them the game against the Padres who got another quality start out of their starter and some huge hits to go along with it. I'm just glad that the Giants are going to be in the race but it's going to be tough to beat both the Dodgers and the Padres. Hell even the Diamondbacks are going to be in the race most of the year imo so that makes the NL West arguably the toughest division in baseball.Comment -
That Brewers Dodgers game was crazy. Dodgers had no pitchers left.Comment -
The Mets’ 5-4 victory over the Phillies may have been a costly one, as New York saw two lineup regulars leave tonight’s game with injuries. The Mets announced that Brandon Nimmo suffered a left index finger contusion that forced the outfielder to leave partway through a seventh inning at-bat, while third baseman J.D. Davis was replaced before the bottom of the seventh due to a left hand sprain.
X-rays were negative on Nimmo, which is a positive sign considering that Nimmo looked to be in pain after fouling off a pitch during his at-bat. It isn’t clear how Davis hurt his hand — he struck out during a sixth-inning plate appearance and then played his position in the bottom of the sixth, seemingly with no issue. It’s possible this latest problem could be related to Davis’ previous left hand injury, as he was hit by a Chase Anderson pitch on April 7 and ended up spending a 10-day minimum stint on the injured list.
Since returning from that injury, however, Davis has been among the game’s hottest hitters. Entering tonight’s play, Davis had an outstanding .395/.489/.632 slash line and two homers over 45 plate appearances, with a 208 wRC+ that ranked seventh amongst all players in baseball with at least 40 PA.
Nimmo hasn’t been far behind in terms of productivity, hitting .339/.453/.468 in 76 PA heading into tonight’s game. Nimmo’s .453 OBP was leading the National League, and ranked fourth overall in baseball (behind only Mike Trout, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Yermin Mercedes) among qualified players.
Davis and Nimmo have represented a major chunk of the Mets’ offense thus far in the season, as apart from Pete Alonso, virtually the entire New York lineup has struggled to begin the season. The Mets finished April ranked last in the majors in both runs and home runs, as well as 29th in team slugging percentage, 22nd in OPS+, and 20th in wRC+.Comment -
Crazy. Percentage wise Royals are the best team in MLBComment -
Not that crazy, I expected we'd compete all season but not this.
Major pitching mismatch today.
Brad Keller would have to pitch out of his spikes today in order to beat Berrios and the Twins, at Target yet.
KC wins this one then I'll go from cautiously excited to officially geeked.Comment -
While I agree the division is a bit of a pipedream I do think the Giants will make a run at the wild card. I'm not really a fan of Kapler but he seems to be able to get the most out of this team and they have a healthy Buster Posey this year which makes a big difference.Comment -
Fun to see a few games with some offense as pitchers are mostly just too good nowadays.Comment