Play ball!

That's exactly what it was like!

SportsCenter just had this mind-boggling stat while talking about the ongoing extinction of complete games. The all-time leader in complete games is Cy Young with 749. The active pitcher with the most complete games is Justin Verlander with 26. That means that for every complete game Verlander has thrown Cy Young threw 29; 29:1 ratio. Talk about a record that will NEVER be broken; 749 complete games.

I just got back from Nevada yesterday. There are some really interesting places and beautiful scenery.

Complete games are a thing of the past. I don't know why that happened. Does a team really need 13 pitchers on the roster? Let the starter go a little longer and have an extra guy on the bench.

I didn't realize the season actually started yesterday. This morning during the local sports report they said Ohtani made his Dodger's debut yesterday and I thought they just made a mistake. I thought those two games against San Diego in Korea were exhibition games not actual games that count. Never heard of two teams starting the season a week earlier than everybody else before.

Yeah, that is weird. They go play two games half way around the world and then come back and continue supporting training. It's a bizarre idea. I'm glad the Jays didn't have something like that.

I see there is already drama this season with Ohtani's interpreter.

Yeah I heard something about that. Something about him stealing money from Ohtani to pay his gambling debts or something like that.

Yeah, something like that.

I thought you might like this. Hopefully you can see it.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1bTmeYKdJTf2PpnT/?mibextid=o8wo0F

I'm not on Facebook so I can't see it.

Here's something amazing. Ernie Clement, a guy the Jays picked up last year on a minor league contract to be a utility guy, has swung 60 times this spring. He has 26 in-play outs, 17 fouls, 15 hits, and only 2(!) swings and misses. You never see that anymore. Guys strike out so much now.

The Jays are playing the Red Sox today. The Red Sox have a Scrabble named Kwiatkowski.

onebigfish wrote:

Here's something amazing. Ernie Clement, a guy the Jays picked up last year on a minor league contract to be a utility guy, has swung 60 times this spring. He has 26 in-play outs, 17 fouls, 15 hits, and only 2(!) swings and misses. You never see that anymore. Guys strike out so much now.

That IS amazing. The guy must have some batting eye. How can he only have missed the ball twice????

Tomorrow's the day.

Yeah and the Cardinals entire outfield is on the IL. Dylan Carlson got hurt again on Monday. That guy gets hurt every year. I have a feeling it's going to be another long season in Redbird Land.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The Jays are into depth relievers and starters already.

The Jays gave up a home run to the first batter of the game. That's not a good way to start the season.

And the Cardinals were bombed 7-1.

And guess what? They're starting the "Apple TV" BS early this year. Tonight's Cardinal game is only on that piece of crap. Not that I really care because they're going to lose again anyway.

I hate that apple crap. At least the Facebook and YouTube ones can be watched by anybody, but you need some Apple subscription thing to watch those.
I was looking at the box score yesterday and it looked more like it was Dodgers 7 and Goldschmidt 1. It's like the rest of the team didn't show up.


The Jays went 9-up, 9 down through the first 3 innings before the offense woke up. Guerrero hit a 450 ft home run to center field, 1 of 3 home runs they hit yesterday. They ended up winning 8 - 2.

"Second verse, same as the first."

The Jays and Tampa flipped the script. Same score, different winner.

Before I switched to the Elite Eight basketball game I was watching MLB Network who was doing "whiparound" coverage of MLB games.  Last I saw the Jays were losing 3-0.  Must not have been anything super exciting because they didn't cut into the telecast which is what they do when something interesting is happening. They did show the Orioles scoring 9 runs in one inning.

Yeah, the Jays offence was anemic again today. Same old story as last year; can't get timely hits, can't drive in RISP.

The Cardinals won their first game of the year last night but they sure tried to blow it. They took a 5-2 lead in the 6th but then gave up a run in the 7th and 2 more in the bottom of the 9th before winning 6-5 in 10 innings. Lance Lynn actually looked good pitching 4 scoreless innings and fanning 5 before a long rain delay ended his night.

ESPN has the Cardinals/Dodgers game tonight and with Freddie Freeman at the plate they just gave this stat: last year Freeman reached base safely in 144 of the 161 games in which he played.  I hadn't heard that before but that's pretty amazing to me.  First of all somebody of his stature actually playing in 161 games to begin with but then to reach base in all but 17 of them???

EDIT: Well we successfully blew the last game of the series. Cards led 4-0 after 6 innings; ended up losing 5-4. New bullpen pieces; same bullpen result.

How frustrating is that?! I had looked earlier and saw the lead and figured a split in the series was a pretty good outcome.

Freeman is a heck of a player. I'd take him over Guerrero. Guerrero has had only one great season and the others "good".

The Jays picked up the bats again yesterday and beat the Rays 9-2 to split the series. Seeing as the Rays are always the Jays' nemesis, I'll take it. None of the games were particularly close in the series: 8-2, 8-2, 5-1, and 9-2.

That was a bomb of a game. The Jays were absolutely terrible. I stopped watching around the 3rd inning. Besides being all sorts of incompetent at the plate, the pitching was awful. They gave up 5 home runs to a team that was 0-4 so far and had only hit 2 total in those games. Ugh.

At this point in the season I think those kinds of games are easier to take than ones where the bullpen blows it and your team loses by 1 run. I'd rather be blown out than lose by one run.

Kyle Gibson pitched well in his Cardinal debut last night allowing 2 runs on 4 hits in 7 innings. So both he and Lynn - the two "big" off-season pitching acquisitions besides Gray - pitched well in their season debuts. Now we need to get Sonny Gray off the IL.

Wow!  I see the Jays were no-hit last night. Never heard of this guy. He must be the very definition of late-bloomer because MLB Central is saying it was his 8th start and he's 30 years old.

Yup. They got no-hit last July as well.
It was our guy's first major league start and he got lit up like a Roman candle. At least our three best pictures are going the next three games.