Chavez Ravine

On a random note,I was looking at the official photos of the O’s broadcast team https://www.mlb.com/orioles/team/broadcasters Arnold: looks like half the guys I went to school with at Wheaton High who are now heads of various IT departments. Brown: looks like a cross between Eddie Haskell and the Alien autopsy. Garceau, Hollander, Long, McDonald: have a sweaty glow like they got pulled off the 9th green to take their picture. Johnson: looks like the My Pillow guy Newman and Palmer: are beautiful people.

When Aaron Hicks got the Bronx cheer on his first at bat today, Geoff Arnold said that Yankee fans are angry and never forget. Melanie said: “like a mean elephant”, which I thought was much more descriptive.

I still have mental scars from game 6 of the ALCS. It didn’t help that I watched the entire game slowly getting drunk by myself in the Vallejo, CA Marriott bar. People turned and stared when I let out a soul shriveling cry in the 11th inning. I would much rather re-live the ‘97 ALDS.

That’s also the approximate weight of the volume of hot air expelled by Steve Cohen.

You should have just gone home to bed. The party wasn’t all that and it just left a lot of folks with regrets.

You could say that about almost every “change of scenery” dude in the analytics/bio-performance era. Maybe it’s not all about being smarter than the other guy.

Get the team in the hot tub time machine and set it to 1943.

Agreed. It’s easy to overthink. Sometimes you just have to stop worrying and learn to love Hicks and O’Hearn.

Imagine the liquidity possibilities for MLB. Screw London and Mexico City, how about some games in Doha? You could play them in a dome kept perpetually mid-October.

I know that face well.

The Blue Jays radio color guy (don’t know who it is) is a fast talker. He sounds like Vince Vaughn after a few Monsters.

And each out came on a ball.

I dislike PitchCom. How much do they pay for those things?

Athletics win! The Rays have run into Mt. Davis.

27,759 in attendance for the reverse boycott. It’s a raucous crowd. I’m listening on the radio and it sounds like a Premier League game.

Domed and HEPA filtered stadiums officiated by robots seems to be our future.

Realistic goal for the team that I have followed since I was a wee one? World Champions! If I ran O’s baseball operations, then I would probably think that goals such as making the playoffs or getting to the Championship Series on a specific schedule would be the wrong way of framing things. Instead, I would try to build an infrastructure of player acquisition and development that sustainably made the team competitive most years. Life is too crazy to predict the details—-and I don’t have the nards of an Enron bro to imagine that I can. There are other models though: see the Mets and Padres.

Bullpens are always the wildcard. Individually and collectively they are inscrutable. Trying to buy a good one with cash or players often ends in sorrow. Right now the Dodgers bullpen is Evan Phillips….and Dodgers fans are wondering why Roberts pulled him after 11 pitches in favor of Caleb Ferguson.

Because you are playing with house money at that point. You don’t deserve to win but you start off the 10th with a guy on second. The only way you get there is if Voth doesn’t walk you off in the 9th.

Mateo needs to learn how to bunt.

This game is one of those that you endure instead of enjoy, even if we end up winning.

It seems to me that the number of completely non competitive pitches being thrown across MLB has increased this year. Am I just nutty?—or are pitchers getting a less consistent grip on things—maybe in pursuit of a few more nasty pitches per at bat?

I give Gibson a sincere golf clap on that outing. It wasn’t pretty or completely satisfactory, but it could have been far worse.

Pittsburgh is underrated. I have always wanted to go to Cincinnati and Milwaukee so that I could pay homage to lay ‘70s sitcoms.

Aaron Hicks: “haters going to hate”