The Cubs are already up 4-0, thanks to an Ian Stewart 3-run homer off of Wainright.
I forgot to include this piece of history in my minifacepalm this morning. Yesterday marked the 100 year anniversary of the last game that Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance played together. In memoriam:
Baseball's Sad Lexicon
These are the saddest of possible words
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
A trio of Bearcubs and fleeter than birds
Tinker and Evers and Chance.Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble
Turning a Giant hit into a double
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.
h/t to slog and Mrs. Berselius
Lineups
RF David DeJesus
2B Darwin Barney
SS Starlin Castro
LF Alfonso Soriano
3B Ian Stewart
1B Bryan LaHair
C Geovany Soto
CF Marlon Byrd
P Jeff Samardzija
SS Rafael Furcal
CF Jon Jay
LF Matt Holliday
RF Carlos Beltran
3B David Freese
C Yadier Molina
1B Matt Carpenter
2B Daniel Descalso (keep wanting to write his name as Daniel Desario…)
P Adam Wainwright
There’s a Mrs. Berselius?
shudder
The radio has had a couple of bouts of feedback. That’s the worst.
Samardzija’s stuff still looks pretty good today
At this rate, today’s game will destroy a small forest with the number of broken/thrown bats
Sori with another single. Oh yeah. This is a year.
I like Ian Stewart.
That is all…
I’m pretty happy with Ian Stewart so far too. Looks like a great pickup by Thoyer.
LAHAIR !!!
@ srbutch5:
He just became my new favorite Cub with that one.
LaHair bitches!
LaHair!!!!!!
Oh that was LaHair that hit that. My bad.
Cubs are currently walking at the 10th best rate in the majors.
This umpire is hilarious.
Len just mentioned the Cubs are leading MLB in rotation strikeouts…the hope monster tells me this is a good thing.
Watch this get rained out. (dying laughing)
@ GBTS:
(dying laughing)
This umpire sucks.
@ GBTS:
Come on five full innings!
@ Mobile Rice:
Checking the radar, looks like no significant rain coming anytime soon. If there’s a delay it wouldn’t be for more than 10 mins or so
damaso marte has really let himself go
That gold on the uniform looks stupid
Cubs are going to score 20 today.
WaLi22 wrote:
(dying laughing)
Is this how Smardzija looked Sunday?
Can’t tell if I think this slider shark is throwing is actually a good pitch
Seems like the book on lahair will eventually tell people as long as you throw it away he can’t hit it.
F7 has thrown a ton of pitches.
Cain is shredding the Pirates.
Don’t think shark has been that good. But not bad either. Fair bit unlucky
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120413&content_id=28559968¬ebook_id=28572590
Wait, why didn’t they make the dad show up in person and have him struggle to stand for five minutes?
/Loria’d
Actually it is a fair amount of line drives all over the place. His stuff isn’t as fast today. Get him out of the inning and out.
Bad inning. Experiment has n=2 or n=13.2 innings so curious to see if bounceback occurs.
Shit, I stepped out for 10 minutes, did Samardzija transform AGAIN?
@ GBTS:
He needs more energon cubes.
great catch by dejesus
Average speed of Castro on display there.
I think we are going to like ian stewart.
just a guess
I didn’t know the Cubs game had been delayed and had been intentionally avoiding it because of F7. I’m too biased after this amount of time. Anyway, I turned the tv on 5:20 or so and I see Samardzija had thrown a shutout through 4. I sit down to watch and the 5th inning happened. (dying laughing)
What the fuck? No pfx data until the game is over?
@ mb21:
MLB presumes to tell you how to be a fan
Dunn got a golden sombrero.
Bubbs kinda likes dejesus too. Seems to get on base. Kinda important
@ mb21:
It kind of logs it in the Gameday live, but I think the archive has been disabled. You could technically copy down each pitch as it happens, I guess. But who wants to do that?
those budweiser commercials have totally changed my stance on prohibition. i’m for it now.
@ Ghostofbubbles:
DeSkill is better than DeWitt, at least.
I’ve come around on these new Marlins unis. Pretty cool.
@ GW:
The Six Duchies agree
mb21 wrote:
Wow Farseer jokes. We just keep going further down the rabbit hole. (dying laughing)
Cubs…..win?
@ Berselius:
Correct.
@ Rice Cube:
It worked as of a couple days ago so they must have changed it since the season started.
F7′s first start velocity:
He didn’t have nearly the velocity today and lost quite a bit after the 1st.
That’s one thing I noticed about him when I looked through his pfx charts for the few games he had started prior to this year. One game he’d have great velocity and the next he’d be nowhere close to it. He had 16+ pitches over 96 in his first start and 1 or 2 today.
Will be interesting to see his velocity next time out.
Pat mentioned this yesterday but pissed me off by saying Tinkers, Evers and Chance were average. This was based on number of DPs turned or something.
Wasn’t Chance a really good player, and at least one of Evers or Tinker was really good for a couple seasons?
Tinker had 49.2 career rWAR: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/tinkejo01.shtml
Evers had 48.4: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/eversjo01.shtml
Chance had 49.5: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/eversjo01.shtml
Damn. Those 3 were equal to one another. I’d never have guessed that.
This is awesome: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/13/sports/baseball/mariano-rivera-3d.html
@ mb21:
The part with the 1000 baseballs coming at the strike zone was like throwing a slushy snowball. That was sweet.
@ mb21:
Well, that’s assuming you trust century-year-old fielding data.
But, yes, all three were excellent players who, by all accounts, fielded their positions well.
One thing I find funny is that Chance (a first baseman) once stole 67 bases. The dead ball era was weird.
@ mb21:
the three of you have 3-d glasses?
@ GW:
Yeah. I had them from when I saw the Deathly Hallows in 3d.
@ mb21:
Seriously, it works so well, it makes you wonder why all teams aren’t teaching fastball/cutter to their closers. Maybe players don’t want to be pigeonholed as a closer or something?
I was disappointed that Garza didn’t FacePalm after his 9th inning air mail to 1B. The gif we had here the other day cut out a little early. Look at this gif from the Business Insider link that was posted by (Mish?) earlier today (that is, if you want, I’m not really telling you what to do, just a suggestion, move along). Garza almost does the full FacePalm. If Berselius would have paid Garza’s agent the extra $20 in marketing fees, I bet we’d have had the full FacePalm.
@ SkipVB:
After looking at this a few more times, I wonder, whatever happened to Matt Clement anyway?
@ SkipVB:
I was thinking he just retired a couple years ago. I guess he had nothing but injuries after his stint with the Cubs and finally called it quits in 2009 after not making major league teams of a couple different clubs.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/04/13/jacoby-ellsbury-sent-for-mri-on-right-shoulder/
Somehow this is Theo’s fault.
I’m not a Cardinals fan at all, but as a history buff it’s hard for me to not root for Jon Jay.
@ SkipVB:
It’s like he was going to facepalm and realized he was on camera.
@ uncle dave:
Why is that?
@ josh:
Uncle Dave is a big fan of the Federalist Papers and early Supreme Ct history.
The Reds are trying really hard not to bring in Marshall in a non-save op.
@ SkipVB:
Though I think the patriot was John Jay, but I’d have to look at Wikipedia to be sure.
@ ACT:
Apparently didn’t need him. Dusty is vindicated!
In other news, Cespedes has struck out in more than half of his at-bats.
@ josh:
Hey Uncle Dave, did I steal your thunder, or earn a my history gold star?
@ SkipVB:
Yes sir, you are correct. But what’s a measly ‘h’ between friends?
Fun fact: John Jay’s predecessor as governor of New York was George Clinton. Which also makes me happy, you know, as a fan of Parliament/Funkadelic.
SkipVB wrote:
I don’t think I have any thunder to steal, so we’ll go with the gold star…
There’s Marshall.
Marshall is in.
@ uncle dave:
Good news: George Clinton just joined my list of “people I thought were surely dead by now.”
@ Rice Cube:
@ ACT:
@ SkipVB:
Shows you how much I know about history.
Gameday says Marsh is getting squeezed badly. Looks like the ump wants to end the damn thing already.
Ellsbury out at least 6 weeks with a dislocated shoulder
Sean Marshall might have gotten hosed on a couple of those pitches.
Marshall —-> lefty Marmol moment
Rough outing for Marsh. I blame the umpire, personally.
@ ACT:
It’s Dusty’s fault.
hey md- tomorrows minor post is saved. Just post it whenever tomorrow I have a softball tourney and wont be around.
@ josh:
Could be because I might be older than you, but I definitely don’t know John Jay first hand! I didn’t know John Jay was gov of NY or that he was preceded by George Clinton though.
Harang has 10 (!) strikeouts through 4 IP.
He probably won’t get to 20 K because he’s already thrown almost 80 pitches. But damn.
@ Rice Cube:
TRANSFORMED
So Matt Kemp is pretty good at baseball.
@ Rice Cube:
11 K through 5 IP.
@ Rice Cube:
13 K through 6 IP.
Yikes.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/04/13/aaron-harang-falls-just-short-of-history-with-nine-consecutive-strikeouts/
Cashner loaded the bases with two outs and was taken out of the game. Winning run is at third base.
@ Rice Cube:
Gets the loss because his replacement couldn’t throw a strike either.
Cabin in the woods is pretty fucking awesome.
@ Berselius:
Cool. I want to check that out.
I was just thinking today about the story of Wayne Mesmer getting shot in the throat. That’s so fucked up.
dj’s minor league thread up: http://www.obstructedview.net/minor-leagues/the-children-are-the-future-minor-league-watch-sponsored-by-laughing-clown-malt-liquor.html