Horacio Ramirez gave up 7 ER in 4.2 IP so its good to see that working out well. Miguel Socolovich struck out 2 in 1.1 IP of work. He is now our best relief pitcher.
Logan Watkins ended the Smokies home season with a walk off HR, his 7th of the year. Baby Brenly went 3-4 and also hit a HR his 6th. Austin Kirk gave up 2 ER in 7 IP and struck out 1 batter.
Daytona
More Rain.
Jorge Soler drew a pair of walks in an 0-2 night and now has 5 BB to 6 K's in 56 AB's in Peoria. If anything I've been supervised at how patient he is although I did expect a bit more power. My man crush Ben Wells pitched 2 innings of scoreless baseball walking 1 and giving up a pair of hits.
Gioskar Amaya hit his 8th HR of the year and is still going strong on what has been an incredible season. Jeimer Candelario was 1-4 with a BB and his 6th HR of the season his first donger in the month of August. Candelario had a huge start but has just been average since the month of June. Pierce Johnson worked 2 IP and gave up 1 unearned run while striking out 3.
Garrett Schlecht had a night going 4-4 and only lacking the HR to make the cycle. He also stole his 8th base of the year for shits and giggles. Dillon Maples continues to struggle with his command this year only lasting 1 inning. In 10.1 IP Maples has 10 walks and 12 K's.
josh wrote:
If the not pitching in the playoffs is accurate, I agree. No way should you be able to keep your job if that’s the plan. Get to the postseason and bench your best player. That’s going to go well with the fans and they’d have every right to be pissed off.
It’s not like the difference between 180 innings is eternal health while 200 innings is career ending injury. That’s if the Nats go deep in the playoffs.
i think I mentioned the walks thing in the emails you and I had awhile back. I’m definitely impressed by that.
They told you what to do?
re: Strasburg, I’m surprised you guys only got so annoyed/frustrated/angry now, it’s been all over the news for what seems like weeks. There’s no official innings limit that I could find, just speculation of the 180-ish mark. I agree they should have tried to ramp him up slowly and skip days/starts etc. but I don’t see how Rizzo can go back on what he’s said now. The moment Strasburg feels his elbow pop in the opening game of the NLDS is when all the fans and media who blasted Rizzo for trying to shut him down will switch to blasting Rizzo for going back on his word and exposing Strasburg to injury. At least that’s the way I see it playing out.
@ Rice Cube:
He’s in a no-win situation either way. If he shuts him down and the team loses an important game in the playoffs he’ll get blasted. If he gets injured they will to, but the reality is that 20 damn innings isn’t going to change a thing with regards to his health. This is just crazy all around. If there ever was a strict innings limit then Rizzo should be fired for not figuring out a way to allow him to pitch in the playoffs. If Rizzo really thinks that 10 to 20 more innings in the playoffs is a career changer he should be fired because he’s incompetent.
I refuse to believe that an MLB team is going to bench their best player come playoffs. Even if it happens I won’t believe it. (dying laughing)
Rice Cube wrote:
Why is Anthony talking about Strasburg? Shouldn’t he be worried about hitting home runs for the Cubbies?
Huh. Strasburg has actually pitched 7 fewer innings so far than Chris Sale and the Sox aren’t talking about shutting him down for the playoffs. This keeps getting weirder.
If 180 is some sort of magical number, he has about 5 starts left in him. If you push to a max of 200 assuming the playoffs are included that’s about 8 more starts which, if he’s skipped or pushed to pitching once a week in the regular season should get him through a deep playoff run, assuming he pitches once per playoff series.
@ Aisle424:
Who’s the doctor who’s giving them oddly specific numbers? What is his research based on? Does the human body even work like that?
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120829/BLOGS04/120829780/white-sox-dropping-ticket-prices-for-next-three-series
The White Sox version of Alvin’s head just exploded.
@ josh:
i don’t know if they’ve given specific numbers, but supposedly the doctors have strongly recommended that a pitcher his age coming off of TJ surgery or whatever surgery he had shouldn’t just go right out and throw 200+ innings like he’s a 27 year old veteran who pitched 200 innings the year before.
I didn’t care enough when I was listening to remember details because it isn’t my team, but the way Boras was framing it made sense. They trust doctors’ opinions all through the whole surgery/rehab process, but as soon as he can go back on the field, the doctor’s opinion is so worthless that a GM or a manager knows better about hoe to build the arm strength and durability from there?
It’s a unique situation and I just can’t believe they allowed Strasburg to pile up this many innings early on if they new in June that this team was good enough to make a real run. They had a good padding on their lead, their whole rotation was doing well and they had the opportunity to add a veteran arm at the deadline to help out with the workload. They even have John Lannan sitting around in the minors who could give a spot start or two without it being a total disaster. Lannan would be the Cubs’ ace right now.
They could easily have kept Strasburg to about 130 innings at this point and then we’re not even discussing the situation.
@ Aisle424:
Yeah, agreed. Although maybe the race is tighter with him pitching less. I don’t even know if teams usually limit a pitcher’s innings after TJS or what the recurrence rate is or whatever. I do think it’d be pretty bizzarre to shut him down in the post season if he was only at 180.
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
@ Aisle424:
If another OV CON was set up and the participants started a wave, would Yellon’s head explode?
This is sweet: http://www.flavorwire.com/323107/10-of-the-greatest-simpsons-movie-references
@ josh:
He only pitched 24 innings last year. Going from 24 to even 180 is a pretty big jump on a 23 year old arm. I get the caution, but they have not gone about doing it well at all.
@ Aisle424:
I guess they just assumed they’d suck/suffer a late season collapse. To be fair, so did everyone else.
Huh, given all the chatter about Strasburg over the past few weeks I thought his shutdown was imminent, not just before the end of the season. Fuck that shit, let him pitch if he’s feeling okay.
@ berselius22:
Yeah I thought they shut him down a few weeks ago until today (dying laughing)
@ Aisle424:
To be fair, it’s highly likely that a baseball expert knows more about what a pitcher can handle than a doctor. You’d find multiple viewpoints if you asked a few doctors. One might say not to go out and throw 200. Another might say it’s no more risky throwing 200. Another may even say to not pitch at all because pitching isn’t a natural thing to do.
Being injured before is the best way to predict future injuries, but 180 innings vs 200 innings isn’t much of a difference. I don’t know. I don’t really care because like you, they’re not my favorite team, but if they were, I’d be super pissed off at the idea of my favorite team shutting down its best player come playoffs. I can’t think of many things a team would realistically do that would piss me off more. Playing for the future is great when the present sucks, but playing for the future when the present looks pretty damn good is just plain silly in my opinion. We saw with the Cubs and we’ve seen with other teams how quickly things can go south. You get a chance to be where the Nats are, you go for it. You don’t leave Strasburg out there for 300 pitches, but you don’t hold back hoping that next year or the year after you’re back in the same situation.
Strasburg has ridiculous potential, but the reality is that he alone isn’t going to make the Nats a great team. He’s replaceable. What isn’t replaceable is handcuffing yourself in the playoffs. The Nats have enough money to sign a great pitcher if something bad happens to Strasburg. Obviously you don’t want that to happen, but they can make up for his loss.
If I ever see the Cubs make a decision like this I can guarantee I’ll no longer be a Cubs fan. This team has struggled enough just to be decent in my life, but if they intentionally put themselves in a worse spot when they’re actually good, I’m done.
@ berselius22:
Exactly. If he’s feeling fine, let him pitch. Based on the evidence there’s just rational reason to shut him down. None. Skip a start. They’re in a great position to do that. Skip a start twice. Whatever. Just don’t shut him down for good.
@ mb21:
Yeah, this. When I was splitting hairs this morning I thought that the Nats were planning on shutting him down tomorrow or something, not in another month.
@ mb21:
I agree that just shutting him down when he hits some limit and basically purposefully handicapping yourself for the playoffs is asinine. But I also think that physicians who are trained on the physiological affects of repeated stress on a limb are probably better judges than some dipshit manager whose entire life is about rubbing dirt on it and gutting shit out if it ain’t bleeding. Would we really want to trust the long-term health of a Mark Prior to Dale Sveum or Mike Quade or even Lou Piniella? or James Andrews or Frank Jobe or any of the other guys who know this shit backwards and forwards as much as a human being can know at this point?
Bottom line is that the Nationals have handled this poorly. Fucking Ross Detwiler is sitting there with 127 innings right now. You swap his inning load with Strasburg’s and the Nationals lose what? Maybe 2 games in the standings? They’d still be 2 games ahead of the Braves (who just lost Ben Sheets, and Chipper Jones is being held together with duct tape) AND they’s be able to have Strasburg for at least 8 more starts to close it out. They knew they had something before the All-Star break and they’ve still basically been sending him out there every 5th day with a few minor exceptions. Of course they are running out of innings. Everybody knew they would at that rate. It’s just dumb. If I was a Nationals fan I’d be pissed that the choice has now come down to shutting your ace down or exposing your ace to unnecessary injury risk when everybody in the world saw this coming. I bet even Alvin saw this coming.
@ mb21:
can you even think of a single worse move that a team could (intentionally) make when they make the playoffs? it is beyond comprehension that strasburg wouldn’t pitch if they make the playoffs. there’s just no way. the only possible explanation is that rizzo made that statement at the beginning of the season, not thinking that the team would make the playoffs, and now they’re in that position and he doesn’t know how to gracefully backpedal. in which case he will find a way to backpedal even if it means that he makes himself look like a liar/jackass. because the alternative is just not feasible.
@ berselius22:
When I first saw the discussion I figured it was soon AND that he’d be back before the end of the season. It never occurred to me that a team trying to win a World Series would bench their best player before the playoffs. I still find it very hard to believe that will happen. If it does, I expect Rizzo to be fired. If it’s come to not even allowing him to pitch another inning and the Nats had all season to figure this shit out, Rizzo is gone. Hopefully Rizzo is smarter than that and realizes he can skip a couple starts and that using him in the postseason is necessary.
Aisle424 wrote:
if you are talking about injuries in general, then yeah, of course the doctors know more. but if you’re talking about a specific player and a specific injury, then i would say that either side is throwing darts at a board. i really don’t think that a doctor could predict the effect of 180 innings vs 200 innings in a specific instance. i think any doctor could tell you that 180 vs 200 is better 100% of the time, injury or no injury, just as the same doctor would say that 0 innings is better than 180 innings. but is 180 vs 200 gonna make a difference? if it was he wouldn’t be pitching at all.
@ Rice Cube:
At the August OV CON people were doing the wave in the bleachers and I made a point of watching it go all the way from the right field corner to left. Although I couldn’t quite make out Al, I know where he sits (and the stands were empty enough to spot individuals) so I could see how it petered out there — the few people in that area all kept their arms defiantly at their sides. (dying laughing)
I thought he passrd 160 yesterday, but I guess it was only 150. I only expected about two more weeks of him.
@ Aisle424:
I think you hit the nail on the head.
@ mb21:
(dying laughing) The “benched throughout the playoffs” part was a key component of my outrage.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
We sit here and blast baseball guys making moves based on “gut” and “instinct” when they are laying down bunts or drafting Hayden Simpson or whatever. So why would wouldn’t we trust the process of a trained physician who knows where the risk factors are at a far more efficient rate and instead back the opinions of some guy chewing tobacco in the dugout who is still batting Luis Valbuena 2nd in the batting order. It’s all about making the smartest bets and I think I’d believe the doctors would make the smartest bets over the long run on the health of a pitcher’s arm at various usage levels.
Going by individual circumstance is like hitting on 12 when the dealer is showing a 6 because you “just know” the dealer will make his hand if you don’t.
@ Aisle424:
I would trust the doctors when it comes to an injury and how best to get healthy, but when it comes to a pitcher staying healthy I’m not trusting the doctor or the manager. I’d put my trust in the research that baseball experts have done and there’s just no evidence to suggest that what the doctor supposedly said is true.
If baseball experts who have researched this issue over and over have found nothing but anecdotal evidence it leads me to believe that the doctor is talking out his ass. Not to mention that 180 innings for one pitcher may not be the same as 180 innings for another pitcher. One pitcher could find himself in high stress situations regularly and the other could breeze through them.
To be honest though, I think what the doctor knows and doesn’t know is irrelevant because, as you said, the Nationals fucked this up. They’ve had opportunities to skip him and they didn’t.
@ Aisle424:
Ben Sheets is injured again?
A doctor would come up with an innings limit while a baseball expert would factor in many other things: number of pitches (most important), pitches per start and per inning, long outings, stressful pitches and more. When Rizzo says there is no magic number I believe him. I believe he’s not listening to the doctor and I think that’s good because I just don’t believe this is something a doctor could comprehend. With enough time to spend studying the subject I’m sure he would, but it’s unlikely he’ll spend that much time thinking about baseball. It may be that 180 innings for one pitcher is equal to 140 for another. When Maddux was regularly throwing well over 200 innings early on with the Braves I’m positive it was about equal to 175 innings that pitchers throw today. He just breezed through it. It was effortless.
@ Aisle424:
I already mentioned it, but to be clear, I’m not backing the players or the managers or even the GMs. I’m backing only the research that has been done about pitcher injuries.
If the Nationals were 60-69 they’d shut him down without question. It’s not like his arm will fall off when he pitches inning 181, it’s just a little riskier. But the Nationals actually have a reward here (playoffs). Though if someone want to argue that the playoffs are an utter crapshoot so the reward isn’t worth much I’d probably agree with you (dying laughing).
@ GBTS:
If the 180 innings stuff is real, he would have about 5 to 6 starts left in him based on his average innings per start (under 6).
@ Berselius:
I’d say that no matter what the Nats are in a better position to win with Strasburg than they are without him. Having him potentially going twice in a series is huge compared to 0 times.
Shutting Strasburg down and not playing him in the playoffs wouldn’t be too much different than the 2013 Cubs somehow contending and at the end of the year the Cubs shut Matt Garza down.
mb21 wrote:
Maybe, but I think we’d be more focused on the cleanup from the meteors that hit St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.
@ Berselius:
He went down a couple days ago.
@ Mish:
Wow, I never noticed that North by Northwest parody.
Brandon Hyde ———————-> Cubs’ Director of Player Development
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@ Mish:
The fact that the list completely disregarded the genius Raiders of the Lost Ark parody invalidates it in my eyes.
Download | Convert YouTube to MP3
Best I could find that was embeddable.
@ Jed Jam Band:
Is this good?
@ Rice Cube:
Eh, my favorite parodies are the ones that they integrate into the story, rather than saying, “Look we’re doing a movie parody!”
@ Rizzo the Rat:
It was integrated. Bart needed the money for something.
@ Rice Cube:
Yeah, integrated.
@ Suburban kid:
Integrated.
Mish wrote:
This is the Reverse Simpsons Did It
@ Rice Cube:
Honestly, I’m still trying to dig up any good info I can find on the guy. Apparently, he was already working high up in the Cubs minor league operations.
Muskat’s blog:
http://muskat.mlblogs.com/2012/08/29/829-cubs-name-hyde-new-farm-director/
@ Rice Cube:
That’s math for fuck you, isn’t it?
@ Berselius:
(dying laughing)
Ok, so he was a former catcher for the White Sox, went on to manage in the minor leagues (including an Arizona Fall League stint in which he coached Castro), became the bench coach for the Marlins in 2010 and lasted in that position through 2011…all before finally settling in as the minor league field coordinator for the Cubs this season. Interesting background, but certainly sounds like a player development guy.
@ Rice Cube:
Shit, beat me to it.
@ Suburban kid:
No, it’s just an integral.
@ Jed Jam Band:
S’okay, I think we have the same basic lack of information even with Muskat’s blurb (dying laughing)
Something else from ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/13158/cubs-promote-hyde-to-farm-director
Q: did you guys have a mobile site or is it still being tweaked? I default to the desktop site on the iPhone.
New stuff: http://www.obstructedview.net/chicago-cubs/what-would-make-you-give-up-on-the-cubs.html