Just Regular

Big night tonight - a homer and a triple among 3 hits so far.

Its nice having Verducci by coincidence calling Grayson's return. "Grayson's mini-vacation looks to have served him well..."

I see Toronto has lost the first two to Tampa for a 3-game losing streak after John Schneider's emotional proclamation of a "big win for May 14th" Monday night. They were up 4-0 with Gausman heading into the 6th today, but....nope.

Austin Voth!

Two hours of Dontrelle Willis, 2003 World Series reliever, on the pregame makes me wonder who other than Cole Irvin goes into the bullpen by the end.

Just saw Hyde's pregame and he referred to Irvin being in the pen "right now", and "at some point" as the time frame the club may experiment with a 6-man rotation. He was also precise not having pitched in 2 weeks Grayson won't be pushed tonight, esp. if early traffic on the bases.

If Cal could have done like Kaline and got the ~1900 minor league PA he took in the Show, he'd be a strong 2nd to Pete Rose on the plate appearances list. Kiko Garcia did go Rick Dempsey nuts in the 1979 World Series, except his team lost. Ripken v. Kiko in the '79 postseason would be kind of like Holliday v. Mateo for the '24 postseason. Any 7 games, I am confident Jorge Mateo can do anything Kiko Garcia or Rick Dempsey could.

Natural reaction to Jung Hoo Lee's unfortunate season ending injury. I've been keen for Jorge Mateo to have a shot to grow his career as the Giants SS, and this is a similar kind of opportunity for McKenna. That'll make McKenna-Yaz two near starters. You know, Mike Elias controls LF depth superior to probably the Giants have starting...

Some good AL East and Orioles Hangout famous flavor to the young enough bats looking like the Eastern League's best prospects. Zac Veen, NYY Agustin Ramirez, Beavers and the Red Sox Marcelo Mayer and Kyle Teel are the Top 5 age-22 and under bats by wRC+ Beavers did HR last night as we watch how much his power can grow this year.

Litmus test - do you wish Baumann on the Mariners for their Yankees series next week? In Brash and Santos they have a couple power RH RP they hoped to have that they don't have going into the middle of the season. PitchingBot's ERA estimator pegs 2024 Baumann a 4.25 guy - the Mariners present active roster has Kirby Snead and Gabe Speier worse than that. Austin Voth is better. I believe at any instant in the DFA period a club can offer some little something and Elias can say okay at a moment's notice. Last 14 Days - the worst team ERA's as RP are TEX-MIN-KCR-OAK-PIT To @Warehouse's point about flimsy peripherals, Fangraphs Last 14 Days RP split also has the fun fact that BAL has the 3rd worst fWAR. BAL's 2.09 ERA is Top 5 MLB-wide in that same span.

Fingers crossed. Normal rules about blasting a bullpen are exempt with Seattle having four at Yankee Stadium Monday-Thursday.

fWAR has both him and Westburg on the Mount Rushmore of 2024 3B. Maybe they'll oppose each other in the All-Star game.

A recent Szymborski chat had something on the relative BBWAA chapter sizes that was new to me. He mentioned how Jay Jaffe's never had an awards vote because the New York chapter has about 113 members, and added at the other end of the spectrum Milwaukee is around 8. Szymborski in the Cincinnati chapter was one of about 10 or so. I believe these would be the hundreds of Cooperstown voters where Billy Wagner's trying to get that 75% percent but wouldn't have guessed the electorate might be almost ~20% New York chapter.

Order is returning to the division as they've zipped past the Red Sox recently, and welcomed Jonny DeLuca, Josh Lowe, Peter Fairbanks and Jonathan Aranda back to the roster. Randy Arozarena's BABIP won't stay near Cedric Mullins' in the gutter forever, and Jeffrey Springs throws a rehab game in a couple days. If I had to specify a third best team in the 2024 AL, I think I'd say them.

It will be interesting to watch Burnes' pattern in this stretch. One of the tradeoffs from taking the rest is you start to evaporate the opening day starter's turn 33 opportunity. Corbin Burnes is a lot better than the Orioles SP5-SP6, and the Orioles and Yankees seem tracking towards another one of the 1980 102-100 kind of races. I don't know if it is a feature or a bug, but the pressure on both the Orioles and Yankees every day is some of the design of the current playoff structure. It is an interesting contrast if two top teams do or don't share a division. If the Orioles were in the AL /=East, the Orioles and Yankees beating the other 13 AL teams by ~10 games, both Clubs could go to the spa all September. Together in the East, Luis Castillo and George Kirby, or Pablo Lopez and Joe Ryan, or Jeffrey Springs and Zach Eflin could end it all in barely over 24 hours. I hope we won't see how Sigbot configures a 3-game ALWC series roster for a long time. Some of managing the 162 is maximizing your Corbin Burnes asset the year you have him. Are teams reseeded after the Wild Card Series? No. The No. 1 seed will face the winner of the Wild Card Series between the Nos. 4/5 seeds, while the No. 2 seed will face the winner of the Nos. 3/6 series. This ensures that the No. 1 seed won't face another division winner in the Division Series round while still preserving the bracket system.