Play ball!

The Cardinals are back to their old trick of not scoring with runners at third and less than 2 outs. It happened multiple times last night and they lost 4-2 and it was happeing multiple times again today and Arizona scored 5 in the 5th so I switched over to the Cubs/Mariners game on MLB Network.

That Cubs/Mariners game just ended on (get this) a walk-off challenge overturned. Have you ever heard of that before? With two out the Cubs pitcher attempted to pickoff a Mariner at first base and the runner was called safe. Chicago challenged and after a lengthy review the safe call was overturned and the game was over on a walk-off challenge. That's a new one on me.

Did you see this:

Cortes is a funny guy. He does some strange stuff during his delivery, but that is BY FAR the strangest I've seen.

I feel your pain with the Cardinals not scoring in those situations. The Jays have been up to that almost every game this season. Today is no different; the Yankees have walked 7 Jays, made a wild pitch, and an error that was generously called a hit. The Jays have scored 3 runs: one walked in, one on a wild pitch, and one on a double. They are 1 for 11 with runners on base.

RE: the walkoff -- that is even less exciting than winning on a walk. It all counts though, I suppose.

Cards and Jays both won by the same 3-1 score yesterday. Sonny Gray threw 6 more shutout innings allowing just 4 hits and fanning 6. So far he's thrown 11 innings allowing no runs on 9 hits with 11 K and most importantly, ZERO walks.

Our starters and bullpens did a good job. Cheers to the Cardinals and Jays pitching staff yesterday.


The batters are another story…

I saw Whitey Herzog passed away.
https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/hall-of-fame-manager-whitey-herzog-dead-at-92/

Yup. Another icon from my past gone. I loved "Whiteyball"; slap the ball on the artificial turf and run like hell. It was an exciting brand of baseball. 92 years sure is a long life though.

Indeed, it is.

There are no "slap hitters" anymore. You don't see hitters like Rod Carew, Ichiro Suzuki, Tony Gwynn, etc.

The Jays' bullpen imploded yesterday and blew a 4-1 lead against the Yankees and lost 6-4. If they could have held the lead, they would have swept them. It wouldn't have been because of their hitting prowess, that's for sure. Until the implosion, the Jays' pitchers dominated. They won the series 2-1, so I guess I'll take it.

This umpire scorecard is bad. Only 77% called strike accuracy seems pretty brutal to me. Both teams were really chirping at him. John Schneider got tossed.

Can you explain those statistics?  How can the called ball accuracy be so much higher than the called strike accuracy? With only 77% of actual strikes being called balls wouldn't that mean that he called some pitches balls that should have been strikes and therefore lower the called ball accuracy?  Or do they simply calculate the percentage of actual balls vs called balls and actual strikes vs called strikes?  In other words if the ump calls an actual strike a ball that doesn't count against his total called ball percentage.  I guess that's it but it seems misleading to me.

And I never heard of Ryan Wills before; he must be new. Let's hope he didn't go to the Angel Hernandez school of umpiring.

Those red balls (pitches) around the outside of the zone were called strikes. There were 15 pitches out of 64 called strikes that should have been called balls. The (64-15)/100 is the 77%. He had a VERY wide strike zone. There were 3 pitches called balls that should have been called strikes. He was much more accurate on calling balls. It seems like a really high number of balls to strikes. The pitchers weren't very accurate.

Overall accuracy is the number of pitches called correctly. I'm not sure exactly how the overall consistency works. I guess that it defines a zone that he has been calling pitches within and then takes the outliers as the "not-consistent" part. I guess those are the ones that are way off. Relative accuracy, I am not sure. The overall favor must consider how the incorrect calls affected each team and then show which team got the better calls. I'm not sure how they factor in the runs.

EDIT: You can find cards for all games here: https://umpscorecards.com/home/

Personally I'd rather have an ump "miss" by calling more pitches strikes that should have been balls than the other way around.  For one thing, calling more strikes makes the game move faster.  Plus missing the other way (calling actual strikes balls) tends to have a bigger influence on the score IMO.  How many times have you seen a batter take what should have been strike 3 but instead it's called a ball and then homer on his "extra" strike?  Happens all the time.  Compared to a batter who is called out on what was really ball 4.  Worst case scenario a ball called a strike kills a rally.  A strike called a ball leads to crooked number innings all the time.

If an ump is going to miss pitches I guess I'd rather see him miss in a way that keeps the score lower instead of the way that engenders a slugfest.

I think it depends as well on how a pitcher can take advantage of the umpire's particular zone during a game. One pitcher might be able to use it more effectively as a tool than another. It seems to me that batters tend to get more annoyed when pitches are called strikes that should be balls than pitchers do. Maybe that is because they are closer to the umpire so it is easier to say something to him.

In the game the scorecard references, sure the umpire called a lot of balls as strikes, but he was consistent and even for both sides. To me, that's what matters most.

What is with those ugly Padres uniforms? White, pink, green, and yellow; It looks like cotton candy exploded.

Isn't that their "city connect" uniform?

Cardinals just tied the Brewers with a bases loaded walk in the bottom of the 9th with two out.  It's 1-1 going to extras.  Coming into this game the Cards were hitting .217 with RISP and that sure didn't get any better with this game.  Geez the offense is anemic.

EDIT:  I looked it up; those hideous uniforms ARE the "city connect" version for the Pads. "The colors, design and font are a nod to the coastal community–going from Oceanside to Imperial Beach to south of the border. The pink and yellow are also meant to accentuate the region's sunsets, as well as San Diego's surf and skate culture. “We're two cities, two countries."

That's still nasty. It's definitely not a "safe", genetic look. It's very bold. It looks like an Easter jersey.
The Jays ended up winning 5-1. All the scoring was in the 1st and 2nd innings.

Hitting .217 with RISP is pretty brutal. I'm not sure what the Jays are at but it's pretty similar. I'm not sure why trans struggle in those situations. You would think that pitchers would be doing their best to throw strikes during those so they don't walk guys or throw wild pitches. I've never understood it.

I sssume you saw Yankees announcer John Sterling is retiring. He can be pretty annoying but he's also been one of the "characters of the game". I can't believe he's 85. He's having some kind of undisclosed health issue so he's retiring immediately. MLB Network is showing the pregame farewell ceremony.

And the rest of the Nestor Cortes story:

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/yankees-p-nestor-cortes-told-by-mlb-his-pump-fake-pitch-is-illegal-154705645.html

Yeah, that really doesn't surprise me. I thought "how the heck is that legal?" when I first saw it. With a move as crazy as that, nobody would fall for it again, I would think.

I hadn't heard about the Yankees' announcer. It's definitely sounds like a serious health issue to step away so quickly.

As much as I hate the Yankees, they do have a good TV crew and announcer.

BTW, did I ever mention that Dan Shulman's son, Ben, does the Jays radio broadcasts? Here's really good, just like his dad.

I don't remember you ever mentioning Shulman's son. It's amazing how many father/son announcers have been in baseball. Off the top of my head I can think of: Jack/Joe Buck, Marty/Tom Brenneman, Harry/Skip/Chip Caray and now Dan/Ben Shulman. I'm sure there are others.

Today I watched the Cardinals go 0-9 with RISP while Sonny Gray was throwing a gem; through 6 innings he'd given up 0 runs on 4 hits and fanned 12. But the Brewers got 2 runs off him in the 7th and the Cards ended up losing 2-0. Geez, 0-9 with RISP. They'd have to improve a lot get reach "pathetic".

The local sportscaster had the following observation about the Cardinals this morning.

"The 2024 version of the Cardinals looks 'familiar'. The offense has been inconsistent for several years now it's just that last year the pitching was so bad we didn't notice." So true. I'd also add that we're starting a bunch of guys who are under 25 so you're going to have inconsistency when you play kids. It doesn't help that Goldschmidt is in the worst slump of his career either. But this IS all too familiar.

It sounds like they did nothing to fix it over the winter so it's the same as last year. Did they expect everyone just to hit better? That might be the case if there were injuries or other circumstances.

The Jays did nothing to address their hitting issues either. They said, "We expect to have internal improvement and should have a much better offence." Surprise, their offence is just as poor as last season!

Cardinals finally pulled one out last night. They were no-hit thru 5 innings and trailing 3-0. In the 6th the finally broke a 14 inning scoreless streak to draw to within 3-2. Then in the 8th Goldschmidt homered for the first time since opening day and in the 9th Nolan Gorman hit a walkoff two-run shot after being a whiff king most of the season. That's the first one I remember them coming from behind to win this season.

I was looking up stats for teams last night and the Cards do not rank far from the bottom in offence: second last in home runs, 25th in runs, 26th in AVG, and 28th in SLG. They rank no higher than 24th in any major offensive category. That's definitely not a way to win games. It puts a lot of pressure on the pitching staff.

Yup. They've been beyond pathetic. Wasted several outstanding starting pitching performances.

You probably heard about this, but the video is a great breakdown of Aaron Boone's ejection the other day.

Yeah they talked about that quite a bit on MLB Central this morning. They seemed to think that part of it is Boone's own fault for getting the reputation of riding umpires. But how can the ump say "I don't care who said it" or "You're probably right Aaron"?