2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

From what they were saying on the radio, the Harper pitches from Arrieta were actually close calls.

 

Yeah I saw the highlights. But it seemed pretty clear he was going the "OK, go out of your zone and hit my pitch, or take your base" route.

 

Ah, annoying mistake by Fangraphs that adds to the notion that sabermetrics people are just nerds who want to see robots play baseball on computers and don't watch actual games.

On Thursday, the Cubs arrived in the nation’s capital to begin a four game series that was billed as a potential NLCS preview.

The Cubs Look Like a Perfect Baseball Team | FanGraphs Baseball

 

The second and third walks were semi-intentional. The first one, Pitch F/X confirms it should have been 2-2 and not 4-0.

 

He's 30 years old and pitched at a superhuman level for close to 12 months. There's nowhere to go but down.

 

Of course that's true. And no sane person expects him to repeat last year. But it's still fair to wonder what they are going to get out of him this year, especially with some control and efficiencies issues creeping in - the same kind of stuff that hurt him in Baltimore. You know who else is wondering this right now? Theo Epstein. Joe Maddon. Jake Arrieta.

 

So Dick's debate is over one walk on which Arrieta was perhaps nibbling and didn't get the call in the Cy-vs-MVP matchup. Given the rest of the game and the entire series, safe to say the Cubs weren't heartbroken about that plate appearance.

 

The knucklehead that got run out of Baltimore for Scott Feldman is still in there somewhere.

 

What debate is that? After walking two people in his first three starts, he's had three four-walk starts in his last four outings. In two of his last three starts, he went five innings. He's keeping the ball in the ballpark, which is helpful. But he won't survive these walks like this forever. But, indeed, if he was unintentionally intentionally walking Harper, that changes things somewhat.

 

You did fail to note that in one of those four-walk outings, he went nine innings and allowed ZERO hits.

You might be getting a bit obsessed with the soothsaying here.

But if the grand equation here is that he is going to go from allowing one run a game to 1 1/2 or even two, that certainly is alarming!

 

I'm sure that Epstein, Maddon, and Bosio aren't noticing the walks at all.