Ohfan67

Omg!

BTW, Jeff Reboulet. Best homer of his career.

I attended Calvin's first game after he was called up. I don't think he actually played in the game. I stood a few feet away from him as he was interviewed by HTS (I think that was the former sports networks name) on the concourse during the game. Big dude, for sure. I agree that it was a shame that the Orioles didn't give him a real chance, although it seems most major league teams felt the same way. Calvin kicked around the minors for ten seasons while bouncing to foreign leagues and the like some years. He got at bats in 5 MLB seasons. I was always pretty fascinated by him and would have loved to see him get a full year or two of at bats. Heck, his OPS in the 95 at bats he did get wasn't terrible.

Did Melewski help write these? I think he’s done some of that in the past.

Congratulations to the Nationals. I thought they were toast after the first inning of last night's game.

Same

I personally spend less time watching sports now than at almost any time in my life. Busy life, lots of things to do for entertainment, and although I occasionally watch a college football game on Saturday in general I have better things to do with my time. I know more and more of my friends, even die hard baseball fans, actually watch less sports in general now and baseball specifically. They still follow their teams and watch some, but watch way less than they did.

That was one of the games that ended a yearly game watching streak for me. For many years I would have to stop watching every game the Orioles played for the sake of my family dynamics and my mental health. The exact date varied, but during those years I rarely made it to June and sometimes barely made it into May. That game was one of the worst games emotionally for me that I've ever watched...and I watched almost the full massacre by the Rangers in 2007.

That game still ticks me off!

Ahh, I do remember that one.

Holy crap. That went right past funny to depressing and scary.

This year sucked. Did I do it right?

I think a decent team will sign Kevin to pitch in the bullpen. His Cinci numbers out of the pen were good. He may be able to prolong his career and make more money in the bullpen. I'm not really interested in seeing Kevin with the Orioles again. Been there, done that.

I'm not a fan of high strikeouts, for sure, but I do see it as "natural". MLB may need to tweak the game to alter SO's if they make the game less enjoyable. They lowered the mound, for example, to provide an institutional tweak. It does seem unlikely that an evolutionary response to strikeouts will lower them unless there's some selection for increased contact hitting, etc. If offense selects hard for home runs, then it seems that SO's are only going to decrease if MLB changes something. It's frustrating, but definitely very interesting to see play out.

I think the first "they" is at least a fairly organic evolution of baseball strategy. The second "they" is an MLB manipulation and that usually doesn't help things.