Frobby

I’d like to see Miller pitch a full season before declaring him the best closer in baseball. I get the “right now” part, but performance can vary a lot once arms aren’t so fresh. So, we’ll see.

This is getting pretty far off topic. I’ll just say that every city is different and experiences differ even within a city depending on where you live and work.

I would have preferred it. My wife is immunocompromised and reluctant to take public transportation for that reason.

Funny, I recently saw a show at Ford’s Theater and it was on the eve of the anniversary of when Lincoln was shot. It’s a pretty small theater and you can easily picture someone leaping from the balcony onto the stage as John Wilkes Booth did after shooting Lincoln.

I do have one cool way of hearing my dad’s voice. He argued a case in the Supreme Court in 1988 or 1989, and as I found out while preparing his eulogy, the Court’s website has archived very high quality audio recordings of every argument from the last 40 years or so. When I found out, I went and listened to my dad’s argument. He was 60 or 61 at the time, a little younger than I am now. It was very neat to be able to remember what he sounded like at the peak of his career. I’d rather have a recording of my 93-year old dad just calling to say hi in the weeks before he died, but at least this is one recording I can’t lose.

To be clear, he sucked for three weeks. It was hard to watch, but some people have just way overreacted. He’ll be fine.

As usual, I’m not worried about our competitors at this stage of the season. Just win a lot of games and put yourself in a good position, and then see where things stand as the trade deadline approaches. The Yankees will have their ups and downs, and so will we. In my mind, the first goal is to get to 18 games over .500. That puts a team in position to win 90 games just by playing .500 ball the rest of the season, and 90 wins is a virtual lock to make the playoffs. Then get greedy from there.

The easiest way to keep a closer from getting overworked is to not use him every time there’s a three run save situation. But I think the CBA must require it now.

I feel like last year there was a really challenging period in the late spring/early summer that we essentially aced. Hopefully the O’s will pass those tests this year too.

It's kind of unusual to throw 105 pitches in 5 innings while only allowing 5 hits and one walk, and throwing 68% strikes. There must have been a ton of foul balls.

By the way, Mayo is in a pretty bad slump right now, 1 for his last 25 and 0 for his last 12.

It may have been the first time it was mentioned in this thread, so I can understand how you missed it.

April 17 (three days before Hays hurt his leg): "Austin Hays doesn’t want to say the first two weeks of the regular season were like spring training to him. "He knows those games mattered. But he entered the season cold at the plate after dealing with a stomach virus that saw him lose 10 pounds. He was absent from spring training for four days, then spent the next few days trying to rehydrate and feed himself. It took him nearly a week to return to just hitting again and, after getting hit in the shoulder during his first spring training game back, a full two weeks just to start to feel like himself again. "Hays got sick again in Pittsburgh during the first weekend of April. He’s just now back to the weight and strength he had before the illnesses, he said, and finally feeling healthy enough to contribute." Orioles’ Austin Hays, after losing 10 pounds due to sickness, finally feels back on track - The Baltimore Banner It's also been mentioned in Roch's blog several times.

I did want to mention that I did a little PBP during college for my campus radio station. I did couple of basketball games, a couple of football games, and one baseball game. It's way tougher than it seems from the audience standpoint.

He had some serious bouts of illness this spring, lost ten pounds as a result, etc. So long as he’s now regained his strength, I think he’ll be fine. Of course, he’s streaky even when healthy, so we’ll see what version we get when he returns.