MLB 2018 regular season thread

How do you score this?
Deven Marrero's 1st D-Backs HR Ruled Single After He Passes Alex Avila on Bases

 

Simple -- it's a two-run single. You find somewhere in the scorebook to make a special notation though.

 

It's a single, but how do you record the out?

 

4 unassisted? Assuming 2B was nearest defensive player?

 

Pirates off to an 11-4 start and look incredible. Andrew McCutchen is hitting .203 with a .627 OPS. Pretty safe to say that critics of the Pittsburgh front office’s off-season have been proven spectacularly wrong.

 

And, with 6 guys whose wOBAs would be considered "great" (.370 and higher) ...

RBI leaders: Polanco 15, Dickerson 12, Cervelli 12, Bell 10.

 

Wow. That’s impressive. Maybe people so certain about their demise this offseason should have waited until some games were actually played.

 

They were definitely ready for the start of the season.

 

Goddamn right, Cinquantes all around!

 

Few behaviors are more gutless than going after another poster while claiming to hide behind the button.

The only thing spectacularly wrong here is Dickie's take on the situation. The talk about Ohtani was if he was ready to play in the majors at the start of the season. He has clearly shown that he was ready. He has clearly shown that the scouts were wrong in thinking he couldn't make adjustments quickly enough.

Now on to the Pirates. Their start actually makes what the team did in the offseason look worse, not better. The only justification for those moves were that the team should sell off expensive players because they weren't good enough to win this year. If you believe in the fast start, that takes away the justification for dumping McCutchen and Cole.

And that's the other fun bit that Dickie conveniently forgot. The Pirates didn't just unload McCutchen for pennies on the dollar. They traded away their ace, Gerrit Cole. Cole has been dominant in three starts for the Astros striking out 36 in 21 innings with a 1.29 ERA and 0.67 WHIP.

 

And yet they're 11-4 without Cutch and Cole. With them, they might not be 11-4.

 

I think it's pretty safe to say they would be worse than 11-4 with McCutchen, in particular. He is on the downside of his career and has been for some time now - at least since the start of the 2016 season - aside from an occasional hot day or even a hot week. Looking at how they've started, winning 11 of their first 15, it would be difficult not to say that the Pirates had perhaps the best offseason in baseball.