2019 MLB Season (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

The Rays lineup just can’t compete with the Astros pitchers- that’s going to be a short series.

Looks like they both could be short. The Twins keep getting blown out by the Yankees.

 

[Osato]

Looks like they both could be short. The Twins keep getting blown out by the Yankees.

the twins can never beat the Yankees.

 

[Jeffrey D]

the twins can never beat the Yankees.

Struggling against a team is one thing- being overmatched by a team is another. Unacceptable that the Twins look too often
like a minor league team vs. the Yanks.

 

[Osato]

Struggling against a team is one thing- being overmatched by a team is another. Unacceptable that the Twins look too often
like a minor league team vs. the Yanks.

right. It’s like that every time they play it seems...

 

[Randy Korstick]

Well Acuna has matured a lot already. He's hitting .500 and hustling on every hit now. Had a triple yesterday. He's one of only 3 Braves hitting in the post season and the other two weren't expected to. Benching him would have been wrong, his team mates calling him out let him learn a valuable lesson. We must remember he's only 21.
I initially thought he was another Andruw Jones but I agree he is a much better hitter. Jones was more of a pure slugger and usually hit around .260 which was worse back then than now. I think Acuna will always hit over .280 if not .300. And will steal a lot more bases than Jones ever did. He now reminds me more of a young Ken Griffey Jr.

 

[MartinP.]

My Dodgers have bullpen issues. All season long. Not news. We traded last year for a bullpen guy for the play-offs and World Series. Ryan Madson. In the WS Madson appeared in every game of the series. He inherited seven runners. All seven scored. Joe Kelly for Boston was lights out.

We purposely traded for Joe Kelly this year. This year he seems to be lights out for our opponents.

Washington's pitchers might be able to go lights out against us in 5 game series using their starting pitchers, but they can't sustain that in a 7 game series. But we aren't in a 7 game series with them. We're in this 5 game series. We shall see. I'm still hoping for a WIN tomorrow!

...sigh...

 

[David Norman]

Acuna is better hitter in most ways than at least what Andruw turned into and I think he is faster than even a young Andruw Jones who was actually very fast until he ate his way out of 30/30 candidate every year.

Andruw seemed he was actually a much better hitter from 21-23 than as he got older. Acuna at 21 seems to be where Andruw peaked as a 23yo in his 4th full year.
As 23yo he hit 303. Somewhere after that season it appeared he decided to gain "40lbs of Muscle," showed up spring training out of shape (and rumors) and changed his hitting style so he was going to be a power hitter. He lost significant speed, and both his average and SB plummeted though he hit a few more HRs for at least a couple years.

Acuna is a hard hitter to pin down b/c he strikes out a ton (far more than Andruw ever did), but seems to have a better than average eye taking 80 walks. He has an excellent average and was pushing 300 until hte September swoon got him. He rarely ever seems to hit the ball softly.and definitely hits the ball to RF far better than Andruiw ever did.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Both game 5s tomorrow should be great- I don’t see an easy win for any team.

Short rest didn’t work out for Justin and the Astros tonight.

 

[David Norman]

Both game 5s tomorrow should be great- I don’t see an easy win for any team. .

Unfortunately I did, though nothing of this epic proportions in the 2nd inning. I did half kiddingly tell several friends I was expecting a 15-2 game to bookend for 1996 payback when the Braves rebounded from a 3-1 deficit winning 14-0, 3-1, 15-0.

With fans like me, who needs enemies. At least I admit I'm a broken and beaten fan so it's comes as little surprise other than the epic-ness

Holy Mother -- at least the Braves now own all or part of several more new postseason records.

Postseason Folty show up finally. The veterans totally collapse.
Should have just benched everyone under the age of 25 and called up the AAA players for the roster, so as not to contaminate them with Postseason Experience. I think the stadium might empty if the fans would be thinking about being even more pissed off about having to a 2 hr 5 mile drive home in Atlanta Rush Hour traffic.

Flaherty has given up 10 runs since the All Star Break so it's looking bleak in Mudville.

Silver Lining -- at least Keuchel got to see about 50-100M flushed down the toilet of his upcoming FA from his last month's "effort"
with 5 straight team losses. Less than 5ip/game, 41 baserunners in 29 innings including 7 HR by the groundball specialist


EDIT: Too late, it appears the younguns have already been infected. 4 Errors in a 150 gmaes, now 2 in 3 games for Albies.

Edit 2: Just thinking about the Braves oddities and luck in the Postseason. 1982 NLCS Game 1 against (of course) the Cardinals. This is after the first of the Braves years and years of awfulness. 13 game wiining streak to start the season, early Murphy, Horner at his peak, Phil Niekro still in his Prime. Niekro pitching G1 in St Louis and is nearly unhittable, Braves with a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 5th inning with threatening skies. After he gets the 1st out of the innings, God reaches down and lets loose a massive rainstorm which washes out the game 2 outs and less than 3 minutes from being official. In those days, the game wasn't suspended/resumed unless it was tied -- and quite literally was washes out and erased from everything but a tortured fans memory. Game 1/Part 2 starts over and St Louis wins 7-0 and end up sweeping the Braves 3-0.

Origin of the phrase -- God may not be a Yankees fan, but she sure hates the Braves

 

[Jeffrey D]

Unfortunately I did though nothing of this epic proportions in the 2nd inning. I did half kiddingly tell several friends I was expecting a 15-2 game to bookend for 1996 payback when the Braves rebounded from a 3-1 deficit winning 14-0, 3-1, 15-0.

With fans like me, who needs enemies. At least I admit I'm a broken and beaten fan so it's comes as little surprise other than the epic-ness

Holy Mother -- at least the Braves now own all or part of several more new postseason records.

Postseason Folty show up finally. The veterans totally collapse.
Should have just benched everyone under the age of 25 and called up the AAA players for the roster, so as not to contaminate them with Postseason Experience. I think the stadium might empty if the fans would be thinking about being even more pissed off about having to a 2 hr 5 mile drive home in Atlanta Rush Hour traffic.

Flaherty has given up 10 runs since the All Star Break so it's looking bleak in Mudville.

Silver Lining -- at least Keuchel got to see about 50-100M flushed down the toilet of his upcoming FA from his last month's "effort"
with 5 straight team losses. Less than 5ip/game, 41 baserunners in 29 innings including 7 HR by the groundball specialist


EDIT: Too late, it appears the younguns have already been infected. 4 Errors in a 150 gmaes, now 2 in 3 games

Very sorry this happened to Braves fans. Foltynewicz has to feel devastated and heartbroken, and the team just followed him down the drain.

 

[TonyD]

I enjoyed every second of watching the Braves get clobbered.

 

[David Norman]

I enjoyed every second of watching the Braves get clobbered.

I would respond with a friendly baseball fan F-U, but I used all my F's earlier in the month

 

[TonyD]

I would respond with a friendly baseball fan F-U, but I used all my F's earlier in the month

All I can say to that is this is a good part of my dislike for the Braves.
It might even be more because of their fans then anything else.

 

[David Norman]

All I can say to that is this is a good part of my dislike for the Braves.
It might even be more because of their fans then anything else.

I can agree with that if I thought I was close to serious. Only thing is I promise I don't mean it -- except for the part directed at the Braves.

Probably an explanation -- a friend dubbed it the Sports F-U which was usually defined as a Friendly High Five among fans from different team usually saved for congratulating the other guy after their team kicked your team's butt -- seemed appropriate at the time

Grew up with way too many Auburn - Alabama fans and the odd thing I found in college were the non alums were far more serious (to the point of dangerous) about it than we were -- stuff like the Poisoned Trees on the Auburn campus. I had more Auburn friends (and most of my family) and we had a great time saying just awful things to each other all year and esp during the games. Same thing with a bunch of my best friends in Grad School who were mostly Dodger, Cards, Yankee and Red Sox fans -- anybody not inside the group listening to us watch a game would have thought we hated each other, but we knew better. The Winner always picked up the check at the end of the night.

The only thing we all agreed on was to hate the fans of any sport whose team never/ever lost a game on their own -- the other team cheated, theri team never committed a foul or deserved a penalty, the umps (every single one ) were always conspiring against them, no other player in the entire league was as good as the worst on their own team. Later on we added a subset of fans like the Yankee guy at the Bar in "For Love of the Game"

Stuff like hte Holbrook Infield Fly or Eric Gregg strike zone didn't cost the Braves either of those series. Neither of those came close to the awfulness level of Richie Garcia/Jeffrey Mayer 'Homerun" or Cardinals Denkinger Call at 1st Base

 

[David Norman]

My Dodgers have bullpen issues. All season long. Not news. We traded last year for a bullpen guy for the play-offs and World Series. Ryan Madson. In the WS Madson appeared in every game of the series. He inherited seven runners. All seven scored. Joe Kelly for Boston was lights out.

We purposely traded for Joe Kelly this year. This year he seems to be lights out for our opponents.

Washington's pitchers might be able to go lights out against us in 5 game series using their starting pitchers, but they can't sustain that in a 7 game series. But we aren't in a 7 game series with them. We're in this 5 game series. We shall see. I'm still hoping for a WIN tomorrow!

...sigh...

Now this is a Win or Go Home Game.

I thought Strasburg was dead and buried early, but somehow he found it just in time.

I don't know what to say about Kershaw in relief, but these finesse LHP starters trying to be relievers in the post season never seem to work out well (Charlie Leibrandt and Steve Avery memories keep bubbling to the surface), but Maeda and Kelly were amazing (edit: spoke too soon in a big way). I hate for Kershaw's legacy to see him do this again -- or have it done to him

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Suzuki -- ball hit his hand, ricocheted into the bill of his helmet, and knocked it upward and looked like the cheek flap gouged in/near his eye. Not sure the ball hit the bill hard enough to rattle his head, jerked his head back suddenly, or I just couldn't see the ball hit any part of his head directly

 

[MartinP.]

Kershaw
Kelly_____
Kendrick

3 K's and we're out.

...hurts...

 

[Jeffrey D]

Kershaw
Kelly_____
Kendrick

3 K's and we're out.

...hurts...

What did you think of Roberts leaving Kelly in the game after giving up the walk and the double? I know Dodgers fans don’t love Roberts due to his strategy decisions. A shame that Kershaw has his worst moments in the playoffs- he comes across as a good guy.

What did the Dodgers REALLY expect to get out of Kelly anyway? The brass needs to get crushed for not doing enough to help the bullpen at the trade deadline.

 

[bmasters9]

The only thing we all agreed on was to hate the fans of any sport whose team never/ever lost a game on their own -- the other team cheated, theri team never committed a foul or deserved a penalty, the umps (every single one ) were always conspiring against them, no other player in the entire league was as good as the worst on their own team. Later on we added a subset of fans like the Yankee guy at the Bar in "For Love of the Game"

So are you saying then that the only way a team can lose a game is as a team-- umps are never responsible?

 

[Robert Crawford]

Phillies fired Kapler today.

 

[TonyD]

Yeah.
He might be a good manager someday but this wasn’t then.

Pitching coach, hitting coach out.
Head trainer and his assistant are out.
Everyone else is back.

I have no interest in Madden or Scosia.
They both won one series but that’s it and Scoscia was 15 years ago.

I just hope they don’t hire another guy who has never managed a team before.