After a one-game FCL warm-up, Max Wagner played his first full-season game last night at Aberdeen and homered, going 1 for 4. Wagner finished last year at Bowie and presumably will head back there soon.
3 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 2 BB, 5 K’s yesterday, on 64 pitches, 36 strikes. Not an efficient outing. Chace pitched to two batters in the 4th inning, allowing a hit and a walk.
Fabian is on a nice little heater. After hitting .227/.325/.379 in April, in his first 5 games of May he’s hitting .381/.435/.952 with 4 homers. That’s raised his overall line to .264/.350/.517. His K rate hasn’t moved, with 7 K’s in 21 PA in May.
He may be getting a little fatigued. I’m interested to see if he starts on Sunday, and if so, how he does. With the Monday off days, starters get 5 days rest most weeks except when they make a Tuesday start, in which case their next start typically is on Sunday on four days’ rest. Povich did that once already this season and fared well, but now he’s been logging a good number of innings and it will be more challenging. And facing the same team twice in a row isn’t easy.
A Bradfield-esque game today. Scored the winning run by hitting a double, stealing 3B and scoring on an overthrow. Havoc on the bases. Also, made a catch and threw out a runner at 2B trying to advance on the catch.
To my understanding, it is mesh but not tightly woven enough to block out the setting sun, so light gets through and bothers the batters. Most batter’s eyes are a solid wall.
I’d love to see my yearly post count over the last 15 years. I don’t think I slowed down much in the dark years. Of course my retirement in August 2022 was well-timed to coincide with the Orioles’ rise so my count has probably increased since then.
Other than the fact that it’s essentially impossible to do that.
I do believe umpires are graded on accuracy and there is statistical evidence that they’ve improved significantly over the last 15 years or so. But they still miss 12% of true balls and 3% of true strikes, per Ump Scorecard.