What Mets game? It was raining all day yesterday in NYC and that 9-2 drubbing never happened, right? Seriously, Tylor Megill went into the fifth again without allowing a hit, in essence completing a nine inning no hitter, but one reason people don't care much for combined no hitters is that it's easier to get a team out twice than three times, and Megill clearly ran into problems the third time around. He's been a valuable part of the rotation, but he also is a poster child for why fifth starters usually don't go deep into games.
I think that beyond ongoing questions of COVID policy in the US - wouldn't it make sense for everyone to start wearing masks BEFORE a surge leads to hospitalizations? - we have devalued death. I am thinking about how during Bush's Wars, there came a point when it stopped being news when American soldiers died. It was just a statistic. Never mind how many people the US killed. Bit by bit, our leaders and the media and just the general public stopped really seeing death as anything but statistics with the exception of a few mass shootings. The same has happened with COVID. I am not sure Stalin actually said this, but "one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic" has never seemed more true. And even if we can find ways to make the pain felt - things like what I hear on NPR today trying to remember just plain individuals dead of COVID, or the efforts over the decades to turn the Holocaust into stories of people and not of a lump sum - I am not sure our society really wants to feel the pain. We are comfortably numb, and as much as we can blame Trump and his ilk for that, how many of us made a choice to be numb?
It’s just funny to me how everything with Star Wars now is either set between III and IV, or post-Jedi. Massive universe and it’s almost always the same two eras (or the Clone Wars) with the same planets (fucking Tatooine again!!) and often the same characters. I half expect Fennec Shand and Greedo to show up here. Remember Greedo?
Good luck getting The New Adventures of Rey or Finn & Poe or Lando Moves To Florida. Why even bother going back to the sequels when they render the first six movies meaningless and when the sequels themselves really lent nothing new to the franchise? Should just go the “Halloween” route and say they’re non-canon. Or better: It was all a vision Luke had!
Remember visions!?
Also, Marty Foster had the red ass in the Yankees game when he and Aaron Boone got into it. Maybe it’s me living in Florida for too long but in instances like that, I’m always especially impressed when neither man smacks the other. Marty Foster looked like he was ready to shove his boot up Aaron Boone’s ass last night.
The genetic engineering necessary to make pig or other mammal organs suitable for transplant seems like magic. So too are the nascent efforts at 3-D printing of artificial organs. May I live long enough to see the day when gene therapy can treat the cause before the need for transplant. In the meantime, register to be a donor.
...
Glad to see the Rangers efforts at addressing mental health. Despite how we collectively treat it, mental mental illness is as real as my rental disease and yet wrongly carries a stigma.
It is now four decades back but TEX was way ahead of the sabermetric curve, employing Craig Wright in the 1980s when Billy Beane was still playing minor league ball.
Alcides Escobar, who proved at least serviceable last year after Trea Turner was shipped out in the Great Nats Fire Sale of 2021, has been absolute dog shit this year both in the field and at the plate. Meanwhile, Luis Garcia, one-time and perhaps again Nats' shortstop of the future, is raking at AAA but won't be called up anytime soon. Fans suspect service time manipulation, Nats organization claims that he needs to get better at fielding the ball (and to be fair, he didn't show much in the majors during call-ups in 2020 and 2021, though he's still only 21).
Nats are on the verge of accomplishing something that's got to be close to a franchise record. Their pitchers have thrown 17 innings so far in Colorado during this series, and 15 of them have been by the two starters, including all 8 from Patrick Corbin last night. Usually they run through eight or nine pitchers per game there, even in games they win. One more game today, and then they're done in Colorado for the year.
(Guys were in a hurry last night, too. Game only took two hours and ten minutes.)
Sean Doolittle made the news around here. He and his wife, who make no secret of their left-leaning politics, were spotted among the crowd protesting at the Supreme Court the other day after the Alito decision leak. He got moved to the 60 day IL recently after having a plasma-rich platelet injection in his elbow, so he can't throw for six weeks anyway, so it's not like he's opening himself to criticism for not trying to work his way back.
If you have the capacity to have "three people in [your] house doing separate therapy sessions via telehealth simultaneously," you probably have pretty good Internet, at least. So you've got that going for you. Which is nice.
Felt good to fanboy-out yesterday and really enjoy that Obi Wan trailer. I didn't like Boba Fett either, but we Gen-Xers grade modern Star Wars products on too tough a curve. We should all learn to stop worrying and love the Disney versions.
"Meanwhile the Tiger bullpen, which entered the game with a major league-best 1.97 ERA, tossed four and two-thirds scoreless innings to reduce that number even further."
"but Bellino — who later said that Bumgarner was ejected for directing profanity at an umpire — seemed to be the one who escalated this, staring down Bumgarner, presumably because he didn’t like the pitcher jawing at Wills. As if that was his business to police there."
Yeah, that is his job to police. That's exactly what his job is. Umpires get graded on Game Management as well as any calls they make. It's one of the biggest things they get graded on.
Baumgarner was already arguing in the first inning about calls. Which everyone's beloved box on the screen showed were balls. That's an automatic rulebook ejection. It could have been done right then. But wasn't.
Since neither you or I know what was said between innings, I'm going to take a chance and say Bellino told him to knock it off (which is exactly his job to police) and Baumgarner started swearing about the home plate ump. Which correctly lead to his ejection. All right from the rulebook.
As good as Whitlock had been starting he really needs to be back in the bullpen. Put Houck out there as well. Try and ride that out until June and if Paxton and Sale get back and are effective maybe they can salvage the rest of the season.
What Mets game? It was raining all day yesterday in NYC and that 9-2 drubbing never happened, right? Seriously, Tylor Megill went into the fifth again without allowing a hit, in essence completing a nine inning no hitter, but one reason people don't care much for combined no hitters is that it's easier to get a team out twice than three times, and Megill clearly ran into problems the third time around. He's been a valuable part of the rotation, but he also is a poster child for why fifth starters usually don't go deep into games.
I think that beyond ongoing questions of COVID policy in the US - wouldn't it make sense for everyone to start wearing masks BEFORE a surge leads to hospitalizations? - we have devalued death. I am thinking about how during Bush's Wars, there came a point when it stopped being news when American soldiers died. It was just a statistic. Never mind how many people the US killed. Bit by bit, our leaders and the media and just the general public stopped really seeing death as anything but statistics with the exception of a few mass shootings. The same has happened with COVID. I am not sure Stalin actually said this, but "one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic" has never seemed more true. And even if we can find ways to make the pain felt - things like what I hear on NPR today trying to remember just plain individuals dead of COVID, or the efforts over the decades to turn the Holocaust into stories of people and not of a lump sum - I am not sure our society really wants to feel the pain. We are comfortably numb, and as much as we can blame Trump and his ilk for that, how many of us made a choice to be numb?
It’s just funny to me how everything with Star Wars now is either set between III and IV, or post-Jedi. Massive universe and it’s almost always the same two eras (or the Clone Wars) with the same planets (fucking Tatooine again!!) and often the same characters. I half expect Fennec Shand and Greedo to show up here. Remember Greedo?
Good luck getting The New Adventures of Rey or Finn & Poe or Lando Moves To Florida. Why even bother going back to the sequels when they render the first six movies meaningless and when the sequels themselves really lent nothing new to the franchise? Should just go the “Halloween” route and say they’re non-canon. Or better: It was all a vision Luke had!
Remember visions!?
Also, Marty Foster had the red ass in the Yankees game when he and Aaron Boone got into it. Maybe it’s me living in Florida for too long but in instances like that, I’m always especially impressed when neither man smacks the other. Marty Foster looked like he was ready to shove his boot up Aaron Boone’s ass last night.
https://youtu.be/GXkQ85_3W9I
Today’s commentary seems Mostly Harmless.
...
The genetic engineering necessary to make pig or other mammal organs suitable for transplant seems like magic. So too are the nascent efforts at 3-D printing of artificial organs. May I live long enough to see the day when gene therapy can treat the cause before the need for transplant. In the meantime, register to be a donor.
...
Glad to see the Rangers efforts at addressing mental health. Despite how we collectively treat it, mental mental illness is as real as my rental disease and yet wrongly carries a stigma.
It is now four decades back but TEX was way ahead of the sabermetric curve, employing Craig Wright in the 1980s when Billy Beane was still playing minor league ball.
Alcides Escobar, who proved at least serviceable last year after Trea Turner was shipped out in the Great Nats Fire Sale of 2021, has been absolute dog shit this year both in the field and at the plate. Meanwhile, Luis Garcia, one-time and perhaps again Nats' shortstop of the future, is raking at AAA but won't be called up anytime soon. Fans suspect service time manipulation, Nats organization claims that he needs to get better at fielding the ball (and to be fair, he didn't show much in the majors during call-ups in 2020 and 2021, though he's still only 21).
Nats are on the verge of accomplishing something that's got to be close to a franchise record. Their pitchers have thrown 17 innings so far in Colorado during this series, and 15 of them have been by the two starters, including all 8 from Patrick Corbin last night. Usually they run through eight or nine pitchers per game there, even in games they win. One more game today, and then they're done in Colorado for the year.
(Guys were in a hurry last night, too. Game only took two hours and ten minutes.)
Sean Doolittle made the news around here. He and his wife, who make no secret of their left-leaning politics, were spotted among the crowd protesting at the Supreme Court the other day after the Alito decision leak. He got moved to the 60 day IL recently after having a plasma-rich platelet injection in his elbow, so he can't throw for six weeks anyway, so it's not like he's opening himself to criticism for not trying to work his way back.
“Eat at Arby’s.”
If you have the capacity to have "three people in [your] house doing separate therapy sessions via telehealth simultaneously," you probably have pretty good Internet, at least. So you've got that going for you. Which is nice.
Felt good to fanboy-out yesterday and really enjoy that Obi Wan trailer. I didn't like Boba Fett either, but we Gen-Xers grade modern Star Wars products on too tough a curve. We should all learn to stop worrying and love the Disney versions.
"Meanwhile the Tiger bullpen, which entered the game with a major league-best 1.97 ERA, tossed four and two-thirds scoreless innings to reduce that number even further."
NOW they get a bullpen. Jerks.
"but Bellino — who later said that Bumgarner was ejected for directing profanity at an umpire — seemed to be the one who escalated this, staring down Bumgarner, presumably because he didn’t like the pitcher jawing at Wills. As if that was his business to police there."
Yeah, that is his job to police. That's exactly what his job is. Umpires get graded on Game Management as well as any calls they make. It's one of the biggest things they get graded on.
Baumgarner was already arguing in the first inning about calls. Which everyone's beloved box on the screen showed were balls. That's an automatic rulebook ejection. It could have been done right then. But wasn't.
Since neither you or I know what was said between innings, I'm going to take a chance and say Bellino told him to knock it off (which is exactly his job to police) and Baumgarner started swearing about the home plate ump. Which correctly lead to his ejection. All right from the rulebook.
As good as Whitlock had been starting he really needs to be back in the bullpen. Put Houck out there as well. Try and ride that out until June and if Paxton and Sale get back and are effective maybe they can salvage the rest of the season.
A “baseball” blog that mentions Double Nickels on the Dime. That’s why I’m a subscriber.
Check the double LPs in the White House record collection for Chip and Willie’s seeds and stems.
Double Nickels, man….it’s raining here, I guess it’s a flannel shirt to work kind of day.
Regarding mental health supports for pro athletes, please tell me I’m not the only one who immediately thought of Dr. Sharon and Jamie Tartt.