Moose Milligan

Hope that balk doesn't come back to hurt him. Wells needs to buckle down and get out of this inning. Our offense looks flat, again.

Hey @Pickles do that thing you did to SG where you had your little "gotcha" moment a couple days ago in late Sept/early October with this thread. Put it on your Outlook calendar or whatever.

The dumbest thing about the opening post is that it acts as if (as do any arguments against data driven decisions) that the data says there’s a 100% chance that the matchup will work out. No one makes that argument. All the data does is provide additional information for people to make informed decisions. That’s it. If the alternative is to wildly guess at things with no basis, what’s better?

Hilarious.

That was awesome. Great pitch.

No matter what happens here, Jankowski will still look like a dildo.

If I know Bradish, this is the inning it falls apart.

I don’t think so. I mean, I can see why you might say that but if it’s not a game in the division I don’t think it can be.

This team has looked flatter than 3 day Coke left out on the counter.

Yes. And due to being able to repeat his delivery, he's been able to transition from a power pitcher to a finesse guy. He's at the end of his career and his stats aren't what they were, he doesn't throw gas but he's certainly capable of going out any given start and be able to be efficient like he was against us. I will also say, G-Rod is a big dude, long limbs, etc. It's hard for a guy like that to repeat his mechanics. Everything is a trade off, you have a guy like G-Rod with long levers, can throw hard, but it's going to be hard for him to repeat everything. He's listed at 6'5 but I wouldn't be surprised if he were taller than that. He looks absolutely huge.

It's a mechanics issue. He can't repeat his delivery. You see it in the way he finishes his pitches on his follow through...he's almost never in the same position in back to back pitches. That's a glaring indication that he's not repeating everything the same way. Mussina was the gold standard. Dude finished squared up to home plate on both feet ready to field after every pitch, didn't matter what he just threw...knuckle curve, fastball, it all looked the same. Maddux was the same way, too. Those two finished the same way every time because their mechanics the entire way through were identical. Some guys can get away with it, IIRC I don't think Sale repeats his delivery that well but it works for him. It's hard to tell sometimes on TV but when a pitcher isn't consistent with how he finishes his delivery, it's a big red flag. I'm not sure if this was different for him before his lat injury last year or not. But, IMO, it's a big, big red flag that if he's been this way all along, that they promoted him to the majors. If he's been this way all along, he's been blowing away minor leaguers on sheer stuff and not refining the little things that'd make him successful in the majors. He's got a lot of work to do and I don't think it's going to be easy.

Hample is a guy who's made a career off catching baseballs at Major League games. He caught A-Rod's 3000th hit, then held onto it for a few days deciding if he should auction it off for charity or give it to A-Rod. IIRC, he gave it to A-Rod after, like, a week of debating about what to do and creating a minor media ****storm. I believe he also caught Mike Trout's first homer? He's caught some other significant home runs. He'll show up early to batting practice and catch balls hit into the stands during BP, he'll ask players to throw him balls before the game. If it's a player who's Japanese, he'll learn how to say "Can I have that ball?" in Japanese, make a good impression and get that player to toss him a ball. He's collected several thousands of balls and he's been doing this since the late 90s. He rubs people the wrong way because he allegedly has got in the way of kids trying to catch balls and "shoved them out of the way" which is the popular war cry on Twitter. People say he doesn't give kids balls, which I think used to be true but he's softened his stance on that over the years and he's given balls away. You can also pay him to take you to a game and he'll guarantee that he'll snag you a ball. He wrote a book on how to catch baseballs at games, giving strategies on where to be for certain players, how to ask players in their native language for balls, etc. He's appeared on Letterman and some other shows. There's a whole subculture with people like this, going to stadiums to snag as many baseballs as they can and Hample is the OG, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, of the whole thing. This craze probably doesn't exist if it's not for him. A lot of people hate him, a few people really like him and come to his defense. One thing he got a lot of **** for was getting into that Fort Bragg game that was meant for military members only. He got kicked out of Coors Field last year after an usher took umbrage with him and the video he took of it went viral. He's pretty aggressive at doing what he does. Here's why I know so much about him; I went to college with him for a little bit so I've kept up with his exploits. When I was a freshman, he lived on the floor below me and I got to know him a little bit. He's definitely a quirky guy, you have to be in order to be 45 years old and bringing a glove to a ML stadium and trying to catch balls like a teenager. We hung out a few times, he was always cool to me. I had an 8 Bit NES in my room with some games, he wanted to come up and play Super Mario 1 and hit this secret passageway that he'd heard about but never confirmed if it was legit or not. We kept trying at it, eventually he did it and then wanted to do it again to take a picture of the screen as proof. Ran down to his room, got his camera, did it again and took a picture of it. Hample had an Arkanoid arcade game in his room and at one point, IIRC, he held the world record for points in that game. He'd organize Scrabble games and was really good at it, I think at one point he was nationally ranked. He also had this cassette tape of 30 songs where he'd play, like, 10 seconds of each song and quiz you on who the artist was and the name of the song. But it wasn't good enough to say "Jimi Hendrix," it had to be "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" or else you got it wrong. His dorm room was covered wall to wall, I mean, completely covered with magazine covers and images torn from magazines that he thought were interesting. There wasn't a spot uncovered. The best Hample anecdote was late one night when I was sleeping, it had to be, like, 2 or 3 am. Someone woke me up and was like "Dude, you gotta go see what Hample did to the 2nd floor bathroom. Just go." So I rolled down there, groggy, opened up the door and there was bright colors everywhere. Hard to see, hard to make out what it was at first. But in the fashion that he'd decorated his dorm room with wall-to-wall photos of magazine covers and tear outs, he'd completely covered the entire bathroom with porn. So that's Zack Hample. I have a bit of a soft spot for him since he was always cool to me. I saw him at Camden Yards in like 2007, 2008, he remembered me, we had a nice conversation. I get why people hate on him, he brings a lot of it on himself but overall I think he's a good dude who's maybe a little misunderstood, yet doesn't do himself any favors.

Gotta love the “random thread bump to prove SG wrong” move.

Maybe he still is?

This hasn’t been a competitive series.

These wings are clipped.

This sucks. Take 2/3 from the Yankees and just looking like a flat team after.

Just awful so far.

MATEO WTF

Ugh. Awful.

Do we know if it was a send or did McCann run through it?

That actually sounds kinda good, sweet and savory and crunchy.

What in the actual ****

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Good. He’s been awful.