MLB thread

[SLAG-91 1,483]

That is quite a turnaround, and the second time this season that Javier has pitched most of a combined no-hitter.

Tonight would be an excellent night for Verlander to get his first WS win.

Weird confluence of events tonight...Eagles/Texans, Astros-Phillies. Got to be the first time that a World Series game and an NFL game played on the same night have teams from the same cities playing. If the Texans were smart, they'd just broadcast the baseball game on the big screens.

[AUBwins 10,064]

Astros win!!!

[SLAG-91 1,483]

Happy for Dusty Baker more than anyone...he seems to be a genuinely good dude and the team would run through a brick wall for him.

Lance McCullers put it pretty well: "America's Most Hated, Houston's Most Loved" 

Pitching was filthy in the last three games. Phillies got 9 hits total in Games 4,5,6. 

Hell of a run since 2017.

[banditmwp 711]

It wasn’t the Red Sox, but since I’m in Houston and my business is wildly dependent on the general population’s mood, I’ll take it. 🍻

[AUBwins 10,064]

Wow!

[AUBwins 10,064]

Basically replaced Yuli with Abreu. Sick lineup. 

Edited November 29, 2022 by AUBwins

[SLAG-91 1,483]

Verlander to the Mets...2 years, $86 million. Appreciate what he did in Houston, but glad another club is paying him that much.

Mets payroll...goodness. Paying a whole lot of scratch for Scherzer and JV, and then there's that $1.19 million to Bobby Bonilla. 😏

[AUBwins 10,064]

1 hour ago, SLAG-91 said:

Verlander to the Mets...2 years, $86 million. Appreciate what he did in Houston, but glad another club is paying him that much.

Mets payroll...goodness. Paying a whole lot of scratch for Scherzer and JV, and then there's that $1.19 million to Bobby Bonilla. 😏

Kate mentioned Yanks offered more but didn't want to get booed at home 😆 

[AUBwins 10,064]

Yordan took care of the balloon.  😆 

 

[abw0004 10,104]

[AUBwins 10,064]

I will just mention it here, but what a moment to close the WBC and excellent tournament overall. Best player in Japan pitcher vs the Best player in US the past several years hitter, Ohtani vs Trout, actual teammates for Angels, 9th inning 3-2 count 2 outs in a 1 run game.  Ohtani strikes him out swinging on his best slider that trails out of strikezone.  Filthy pitch and he wins it for Japan for first time since 2009.  Cannot script a bigger moment there.   Love that it falls during spring training so everyone is essentially available etc.  Will be back in 2026, but wish it was sooner.  Fans around the world packed the stadiums.  Reminds us of the artistry of baseball.  Anyways.  Got me pumped for the season. Astros try to repeat, Braves try to get back to WS (can they finally keep everyone healthy), and the Reds surprisingly make the playoffs  Gonna be a good one.

[AUloggerhead 2,225]

On 3/22/2023 at 6:53 AM, AUBwins said:

I will just mention it here, but what a moment to close the WBC and excellent tournament overall. Best player in Japan pitcher vs the Best player in US the past several years hitter, Ohtani vs Trout, actual teammates for Angels, 9th inning 3-2 count 2 outs in a 1 run game.  Ohtani strikes him out swinging on his best slider that trails out of strikezone.  Filthy pitch and he wins it for Japan for first time since 2009.  Cannot script a bigger moment there.   Love that it falls during spring training so everyone is essentially available etc.  Will be back in 2026, but wish it was sooner.  Fans around the world packed the stadiums.  Reminds us of the artistry of baseball.  Anyways.  Got me pumped for the season. Astros try to repeat, Braves try to get back to WS (can they finally keep everyone healthy), and the Reds surprisingly make the playoffs  Gonna be a good one.

Ohtani gets the MVP award of the tournament after hitting .438 and pitching in 3 games -- 2 wins & 1 save(!) That was an awesome finish to the championship game, too.  Loved the format of the tournament as well.    

[SLAG-91 1,483]

5 walks, 4 hit batters, an error and a wild pitch. That's a rough inning...woof.

[AUBwins 10,064]

Interesting history nugget for my town in Versailles.  Didn't know this before.  

 

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

Ouch:

 

 

[AUBwins 10,064]

44 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Ouch:

 

 

Was coming here to post the same thing LOL.  Just tough luck there!

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

17 minutes ago, AUBwins said:

Was coming here to post the same thing LOL.  Just tough luck there!

What are the odds?  

[AUBwins 10,064]

2 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

What are the odds?  

Depends.  Maybe the catcher aimed on purpose, knowing he would not throw him out with the shorter basepaths.  You run on me, I'll throw an 80mph fastball to the jewels LOL.

[Paladin 3,305]

Hopefully Fitts will get called up when the roster expands. 

[augolf1716 21,094]

5 hours ago, Paladin said:

Hopefully Fitts will get called up when the roster expands. 

Yankees are desperate for starting pitching

[Paladin 3,305]

The Angels' Shohei Ohtani Era might have just come to an abrupt end in franchise's worst-case scenario

The Angels had a promising start and went all in at the trade deadline... then August happened

By Matt Snyder

2 hrs ago • 3 min read

In all likelihood, the 2023 Angels season was ending badly anyway. Call the news late Wednesday night (or early Thursday morning, depending on your time zone) the cherry on top of the crap sundae, because everything came to a screeching, emphatic halt. 

A day after Mike Trout came off the injured list, he was put back on it. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani (ever heard of him?) has a torn UCL in his elbow. That's the ligament that typically needs Tommy John surgery to be reconstructed. Ohtani has already had Tommy John surgery, so this would be his second since coming to MLB, though he and the Angels and Ohtani have not yet decided on a course of action. 

There's so much to discuss here, but the easiest thing is what a complete and utter disaster these last two months have been for the Angels. 

Let's go back to June 27. The Angels won a game that night, moving them to 44-37 at exactly the halfway point of the season. They were sitting in the second AL wild-card spot, in second place in the AL West and they were only five games out in that race. Ohtani was far and away the leader for the AL MVP and Trout was having a good -- albeit not up to his lofty standards -- season. 

They were halfway through the season and on pace to win 88 games, a total that could earn a playoff spot. 

The Angels would then lose nine of their next 10 games, a stretch during which they'd lose Trout to a broken hamate bone in his wrist. 

This is all about the time the "trade Ohtani" talk started to intensify. With a few weeks to the trade deadline, if the Angels fell out of the playoff race, it made sense to dangle Ohtani in front of his free agency this coming offseason. Knowing what we know about the Trout-Ohtani Era Angels, however, the worst possible thing had to happen and it sure did: The Angels temporarily started winning again. They won 10 of their last 13 games in July. 

This means on trade deadline day, the Angels were three games out of a playoff spot. A serious baseball franchise cannot trade the best player in baseball when only three games back of a playoff spot. The added layer here was that Ohtani clearly wants to play for a winner and if the Angels could somehow make the playoffs and possibly even a deep playoff run, there was a chance to convince him to stay on a long-term deal in the ensuing offseason. At the time, it made all the sense in the world to hold Ohtani. 

And if you're gonna do that, you might as well grab as much talent as possible in front of the trade deadline to surround Ohtani, right? So the Angels further depleted an already-weak farm system to grab the likes of Lucas Giolito, C.J. Cron and Randal Grichuk ahead of the deadline. 

Immediately, the Angels started losing again. They started August with a seven-game losing streak. Just think about this chronology again: 

Win 10 of 13

Trade deadline

Lose seven in a row

That's just about the most atrociously timed scenario possible, under the circumstances of it being Ohtani's walk year. 

The Angels are now 5-16 in August. They are 10.5 games out of a playoff spot. Trout is back on the injured list and it seems unlikely he'd rush back to play this season in pain. And then there's Ohtani. He's seeking a second opinion, as well he should, but it appears a second Tommy John surgery could be in the cards. He might be able to hit again in a few days, but the Angels have lost their best pitcher. 

They were buried anyway, but the events of Wednesday night stomped on the grave of the 2023 team in addition to throwing the future into major peril. 

The organization as currently constructed without two-way Ohtani carrying them looks bleak. They might lose Ohtani altogether, but losing him just on the pitching end for the near future is happening at the bare minimum. Trout will be heading to his age-32 season with 36 games played in 2021, 119 last season and 82 and counting this season. His .263/.367/.490 slash line was the worst since he was 19. Anthony Rendon and his gigantic salary can't be counted on for anything. It's hard to find anything else to be very excited about. 

It's difficult to tell where things head from here, but it seems like it'll be a long time before there are positive vibes around the Angels again. The last two months of 2023 were catastrophic for the Angels' present and everything that happened Wednesday night made the future equally as dark. 

[arein0 946]

30-60

[LPTiger 5,150]

On 8/24/2023 at 11:07 AM, Paladin said:

The Angels' Shohei Ohtani Era might have just come to an abrupt end in franchise's worst-case scenario

The Angels had a promising start and went all in at the trade deadline... then August happened

By Matt Snyder

2 hrs ago • 3 min read

In all likelihood, the 2023 Angels season was ending badly anyway. Call the news late Wednesday night (or early Thursday morning, depending on your time zone) the cherry on top of the crap sundae, because everything came to a screeching, emphatic halt. 

A day after Mike Trout came off the injured list, he was put back on it. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani (ever heard of him?) has a torn UCL in his elbow. That's the ligament that typically needs Tommy John surgery to be reconstructed. Ohtani has already had Tommy John surgery, so this would be his second since coming to MLB, though he and the Angels and Ohtani have not yet decided on a course of action. 

There's so much to discuss here, but the easiest thing is what a complete and utter disaster these last two months have been for the Angels. 

Let's go back to June 27. The Angels won a game that night, moving them to 44-37 at exactly the halfway point of the season. They were sitting in the second AL wild-card spot, in second place in the AL West and they were only five games out in that race. Ohtani was far and away the leader for the AL MVP and Trout was having a good -- albeit not up to his lofty standards -- season. 

They were halfway through the season and on pace to win 88 games, a total that could earn a playoff spot. 

The Angels would then lose nine of their next 10 games, a stretch during which they'd lose Trout to a broken hamate bone in his wrist. 

This is all about the time the "trade Ohtani" talk started to intensify. With a few weeks to the trade deadline, if the Angels fell out of the playoff race, it made sense to dangle Ohtani in front of his free agency this coming offseason. Knowing what we know about the Trout-Ohtani Era Angels, however, the worst possible thing had to happen and it sure did: The Angels temporarily started winning again. They won 10 of their last 13 games in July. 

This means on trade deadline day, the Angels were three games out of a playoff spot. A serious baseball franchise cannot trade the best player in baseball when only three games back of a playoff spot. The added layer here was that Ohtani clearly wants to play for a winner and if the Angels could somehow make the playoffs and possibly even a deep playoff run, there was a chance to convince him to stay on a long-term deal in the ensuing offseason. At the time, it made all the sense in the world to hold Ohtani. 

And if you're gonna do that, you might as well grab as much talent as possible in front of the trade deadline to surround Ohtani, right? So the Angels further depleted an already-weak farm system to grab the likes of Lucas Giolito, C.J. Cron and Randal Grichuk ahead of the deadline. 

Immediately, the Angels started losing again. They started August with a seven-game losing streak. Just think about this chronology again: 

Win 10 of 13

Trade deadline

Lose seven in a row

That's just about the most atrociously timed scenario possible, under the circumstances of it being Ohtani's walk year. 

The Angels are now 5-16 in August. They are 10.5 games out of a playoff spot. Trout is back on the injured list and it seems unlikely he'd rush back to play this season in pain. And then there's Ohtani. He's seeking a second opinion, as well he should, but it appears a second Tommy John surgery could be in the cards. He might be able to hit again in a few days, but the Angels have lost their best pitcher. 

They were buried anyway, but the events of Wednesday night stomped on the grave of the 2023 team in addition to throwing the future into major peril. 

The organization as currently constructed without two-way Ohtani carrying them looks bleak. They might lose Ohtani altogether, but losing him just on the pitching end for the near future is happening at the bare minimum. Trout will be heading to his age-32 season with 36 games played in 2021, 119 last season and 82 and counting this season. His .263/.367/.490 slash line was the worst since he was 19. Anthony Rendon and his gigantic salary can't be counted on for anything. It's hard to find anything else to be very excited about. 

It's difficult to tell where things head from here, but it seems like it'll be a long time before there are positive vibes around the Angels again. The last two months of 2023 were catastrophic for the Angels' present and everything that happened Wednesday night made the future equally as dark. 

Any chance Ohtani decides to just be a DH?

[Paladin 3,305]

1 hour ago, LPTiger said:

Any chance Ohtani decides to just be a DH?

I saw an article that said he was still hitting until he makes a decision on Tommy John surgery. 

[LPTiger 5,150]

14 hours ago, arein0 said:

30-60

What a day,   Get married, check.  Be the first player in MLB history to hit 30 dingers and steal 60 bases, check.  That team is so good in every facet of the game.