Tony-OH

Pretty sure Perez has a 1.000 OBP against the Orioles.

We're down 4-1, and Kevin Brown over here asking Grant Hill to stick around to use his monotone voice to now talk basketball! Oh joy!

Literally posted at the same time. LOL

I swear if you have any kind of insomnia, play a recording of Grant Hill talking.

Nobody should. He is slow, has a noodle for an arm, and struggles on anything that isn't hit right at him. Not sure why the a contending team like the Orioles should be playing him the outfield. 1B or DH. That's it. You wanna give Santander a break, keep Hays in the lineup and put Cowser at there. It's just dumb, but apparently the SIGBOT computer doesn't take outfield defense into consideration.

Baseball, gotta love it. Everybody hitting Irvin but Witt! lol

Oy, play a terrible outfielder in the outfield and the ball will find him. Any decent outfield has that has the last out.

Loftin giveth last night, he taketh away tonight.

Good Holliday stories?

BTW, the Norfolk game is the free game of the day if you don't have MiLBTV.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky then good! Not a lot of effort by the 3B though.

Norby just went back to back with home runs with Holliday to start off the Norfolk game tonight.

Looks like rain is going to be here by 8, and may be here for awhile after that. They may want to slow things down because if they get in 5, that might be all they get in.

Who had Cole Irvin giving up three runs in the 1st two innings, with his only Ks being Bobby Witt Jr.?

Would you want to be out there tonight? 49 degrees and misting? God bless those who went tonight. No way I'm going out there and sitting in that weather to watch a April baseball game.

I really would like to know in what universe a 0-2 cutter from left-handed pitcher to a right-handed batter after a curveball is the right pitch call?

I think they get the game in. Looks fry from now until 7:30, 8ish and that might just be a passing shower. Probably closes by 1000 though.

No idea. We didn't change anything.

A Plus Membership is $24.99/yr still. You can become or continue being a Plus Member by going to our Store and select plus membership. You can use Paypal or credit card to sign up. We thank you for your support!

They are two very, very special players for sure. It's really hard to say overall. I'd rather compare them from their first full seasons on rather than on a year by year stats since that's unfair to Gunnar. Gunnar outperformed Witt in their first full seasons with Gunnar winning the rookie of the year. Gunnar was a little older than Witt in that debut season though and had more minor league PAs. Witt is off to a white hot start this year and looks pretty amazing right now, but Gunnar is no slouch. If I was building a team from scratch and I could only take one of them, just going off of skills, not contracts or anything else, I'd probably take Gunnar. But it would be very close. Two reasons I'd take Gunnar. He bats left-handed and is going to draw more walks than Witt. Witt is going to steal more bases and while he has probably better range than Gunnar, his throwing accuracy is not as good as Gunnar's. You can't go wrong with either player. They are both among the brightest young stars in the game.

This is not an overreaction to his tough blown save last night (Hays absolutely should have called Gunnar off on that pop up), but I did not see closer stuff from Kimbrel last night. His fastball is down 2.7 MPH from last year when it was the lowest average velocity of his career up until then. He got zero whiffs on his 92.2 to 93.8 MPH fastball and batters were able to foul it off even when he was able to hit his spots. The lack of command of his knucklecurve could have been the rust of not pitching since Mar 20th in a game, but he only threw one for a strike and got one whiff on a chase by Bobby Witt on the K. Now the only good news is that I looked over his career and he traditionally throws slower in Mar/Apr and then ramps up by May, but the bad news is as far as I can see, that's the slowest average velocity that he's ever thrown in a big league game. Now let's add in the fact that he couldn't hold a runner to save his life last night allowing that bloop single to turn into a triple. As was noted in the game thread, neither could 6-foot-8 Bautista, but Bautista of course have an otherworldly strike out rate and he actually got better at holding runners through the year last year. Now maybe Kimbrel will improve, but let's be honest here, there is no way anyone is going to feel secure with him coming in and pitching in one run games for the save right now.

BTW, Loftin had 70 professional innings at 1B and that cost the Royals tonight.

The Orioles did seem to pick up Bautista which helped him see so invincible, but I think some of those blown saves was coming into the 8th in a tough jam.

Well, he is the Vulture!

Ok Westburg, you can keep your stache for now.