e16bball

It was absolutely tongue in cheek. He laughed in the midst of saying it. He didn’t even know where Kimbrel sat in the all-time rankings. Just busting the kid’s stones. Cowser’s that kind of goofball that folks mess with sometimes.

Another pretty strong outing tonight. 4 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 4 Ks. The two hits were singles, and not a man made it to second base alive against him.

A “bit better”? One run comes in from first base on what could (generously to our fielders) be called a Bermuda Triangle popup. And then a totally missed strike 3 on a full count extends the inning to allow a can of corn Fenway homer to score two other runs. Yeah, there was a little hard luck out there.

I know that I, for one, look forward to some new and novel complaints about the idiocy of the management/lineups of this 101-win team that’s now scored 20 runs through the first 13 innings. EDIT: 23 runs* through the first 13 innings.

Not sure if this was rhetorical or not, but the answer is that we’ve had two games with 12 Ks (John Means x2) and three games with 11 Ks (Kyle Gibson x2 and Kyle Bradish) in the last 5 years. Sort of wild seeing Kyle Gibson on that list twice. Not at the top of many “Corbin Burnes comps” lists…

At the beginning of his outing though, back-to-back Ks of Olson and Ozuna were pretty eye-catching.

I have to say, if we’re still at a point where signing some SP5 has to be contingent in any way on dumping $3.5M of Ryan O’Hearn — that would be so very disheartening. I get why folks want to see Kjerstad over O’Hearn. We all want to see Kjerstad. We all want to see the very exciting all-homegrown-prospect lineups we’ve been pontificating about ad nauseum for years now. But we’re trying to win it all this season, and O’Hearn had a higher wRC+ in the bigs last year than Kjerstad did in AAA. Just dumping a guy who was a critical part of the lineup last year on blind faith seems a bit rash. And unnecessary. Maybe O’Hearn regresses to his pre-2023 form. Maybe Kjerstad absolutely rakes. The nice thing is, we have the luxury of letting it all play out. It’s a very long season. If O’Hearn hits his way off the team — or Kjerstad hits his way onto it — then great. That’s a miscalculation we can easily (and happily) correct. But if you ship O’Hearn out and then Kjerstad can’t hack it (or gets hurt, that’s much tougher to un-do.

Yeah, Siri is a legit big leaguer and Palacios is sort of a fringy AAAA guy (McKenna type maybe). But Caminero is their Holliday, Mead is kind of their Westburg, and Carson Williams is sort of poor man’s 20-year-old Gunnar — so there was a lot of talent in the batter’s box, just not many seasoned pros.

Adley heard people talking about how it's Gunnar's team now...

I guess that explains a lot of the news of the last few days. Once Trevor Bauer is interested in you, injuries are sure to follow.

Have also had one. One of the more minor surgeries I’ve had — the only real long term “arm” effect has been that my actual elbow feels somewhat numb (I assume because one of the primary nerves is no longer there). I don’t feel as though I’ve lost any strength or dexterity in my arm. I do have a bit more feeling in my hand, which was the point of doing the surgery because the nerve was impinged. I don’t think that would be a bad thing for Felix, but I guess any change could be an obstacle for someone who makes his living gripping and manipulating a ball with that hand?

For my money, the problem with the pen is the quality, moreso than the quantity. I have full faith that Elias/Sig will be able to fill out a perfectly workable full-season bullpen with what they’ve got — particularly given that there will likely be a surprisingly effective addition or two to the personnel between now and summertime. But my concern is the top 3-4 guys that will carry most of the weight in October. I’m not sure we have the high-end arms to lean on in those postseason matchups — in much the same way that our 2023 starting rotation seemed to have been built more for the long haul than for the short sprint. Bit of a bummer that our one Burnes year happens to be our one Bautista-less year. Would really love to add one more power arm to the back-end of the pen. Maybe that’s more of a trade deadline move for Elias/Sig, though.

I know that when I look at the Dodgers, I think “gosh, if they could just add a little salary, they might really have something there”…

I think that’s definitely the risk on their end. I suspect they may not care about getting Stanton regular at-bats any longer, so I’m betting they will acquire some sort of CF-capable 4th OF like Michael A. Taylor and sprinkle him into the rotation liberally to allow Judge and Soto frequent opportunities to slide a notch down the defensive strenuousness scale.

Presumably Judge will play CF. He’s been above-average there in 750+ innings over the last two seasons. Obviously, the clock is ticking on how long he’ll be viable there. But for now, he’s probably okay. On the thread topic, I think “awesome, I really love being the underdog” is a fantastic way to spin some degree of positivity into several of the very best players on earth coming to stand in our annual path to the playoffs.