NashLumber

If Ben or Palmer are gone, I often switch over to the radio feed, but yeah, sadly Melanie does not do it for me. I wish she did. I do like Geoff Arnold and Wagner however. In the CLE series, I watch their feed. Their guys were quite good imho. It was kind of odd to see their broadcast digitally brown out the T Rowe Price square ad behind home plate, however. It looked like an amateurish Photoshop smear of the surrounding bricks.

Baby Cheeks is easier to say than his name. Maybe this nickname will stick. That HR took forever to leave the park. Yes, I'm about 15 minutes behind.

Johnson, who had a degree in mathematics and an abiding curiosity in the field, would offer unsolicited advice to Jim Palmer and Dave McNally, the perennial 20-game winners. “You’re in an unfavorable chance deviation,” Johnson would tell them, to puzzled annoyance. “You’re trying to throw for the corners, and you’re missing a foot away or you’re missing right down the middle. So I suggest, when you’re in an unfavorable chance deviation, throw it down the middle and you’ll hit the corners.” After that, Johnson said, the pitchers called him Dumb-Dumb. Johnson, of course, was anything but stupid. When most of the baseball world sniffed at a book called “Percentage Baseball,”written in the 1960s by a Baltimore mathematician named Earnshaw Cook, Johnson called the author, met him for lunch and got an autographed copy. To supplement his income one winter, Johnson made speeches at high schools on behalf of a defense contractor, encouraging students to enter the computer field. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/sports/baseball/davey-johnson-baseballs-oldest-manager-leading-washingtons-youth-movement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.100.c8eH.YaWx09n9u8hS&smid=url-share

Possibly. He was the mathematician.

Palmer likes to say "Gold Glove Caliber" for Mateo, too.

This reminds me of that pitching advice from MacGregor, Flanagan, or one of those guys from that era, which is "when you can't hit your target, try throwing it down the middle on purpose and then you'll hit the corner." That advice also works when you can't throw it over the plate, so you try hitting a corner and it'll end up over the plate. It's like compensating for a faulty gun scope.

My initial thought exactly. Lesser of two evils. Let him bleed out to save the pen.

22 pitches, 18 for strikes by Suarez. Funny how that stat line doesn't reveal the six or seven balls that were squared up like they were using cricket bats.

I thought I'd tuned in on time and was apparently like about eight seconds late and I could not figure out how the O's spotted them 1 run immediately. Now I know. I've seen worse first inning starts, but I'm having trouble remembering when.

"Don't tell me this team ain't got no heart."

I had seriously considering naming a band I was in (full of hard core baseball fans) The Tommy Johns. I was so close to getting them to agree to The Pine Tar Incident. We compromised and called it .406

I totally agree. I have a friend with an 11 year old son and he's grooming him to be a pitcher, getting college coaches to help with instructions, playing two or three leagues a year with hardly any stop. Even the live stats these kids have during the game and immediately after just makes me think nearly everyone involved is micromanaging their kids at a young age and ruining their arms. He's talking about splitters, sinkers, curves, and different kinds of fastball grips this 11 year old had. It's out of control. I've keep my mouth shut, but I full expect that skinny kid's arm to fall off.

He’s our off-brand Corbin.

Get knocked down once, get up twice. Or something like that. Won't get fooled again!

I like the gentle analogy of wetting the bed. I was thinking more of the Spud bed scene in Trainspotting.

Fuuuudge.

Was at a ML game and just watching it live, finally. After seeing Cedric so fired up after that original out call at the plate, I was almost priming for him to come charging the ump like George Brett if it were not overturned.

I'd consult Sig on this.

I’m a firm believer that when a weather forecast says 40 percent rain, I try to look at it as 60 percent chance of sun.

Maybe Walltimore will be his friend and salvation. Or maybe winged monkeys will fly out of my butt.

How big are the TVs there? Can you imagine how the bar staff will react if we all react like we do on the game threads, ie. “This game is over!”, second inning kind of stuff. “WHY can’t we get a runner home from third?!!”

To me, this looked a lot like Peter Buck (L) of R.E.M. sitting in front of Mike Elias at tonight’s game. Did anyone notice this or hear it mentioned in the game thread? I wasn’t on this thread tonight. It would make sense he’d be at a Braves game, as he and MIke MIlls of R.E.M. (and also in the band The Baseball Project with him) are Braves guys.

Mr. Cash.

Indeed they are. Just a coincidence, I’m sure, regarding the ram for their logo.