2019 MLB Regular Season running thread

Rays decided to have a bullpen day yesterday at the Giants. I wonder why they'd do that on the road vs. an NL team? Sounds like a heck of a way to use up your bench, if you employ a pinch hitter every time the pitcher's spot comes up.

But, hell, I don't understand bullpenning anyway, except someone thought it looked great on the spreadsheet.

 

Save a spot in the rotation and keep from having to call up a starter?

 

Trout....damn he's so good. I'll analogize to LeBron, how he was anointed "The King" at 18 and somehow exceeded expectations (I give him so much credit for that.

Trout, even after his first MVP, somehow has gotten even better and exceeded expectations from that level. Amazing.

I wish he was in Oakland or SF so I could watch him even more.

 

The Giants are the dregs. And it's Bochys last hurrah so he's not going anywhere. Baer is out for a few more months so they'll be out of it before any big player moves can happen.

 

Honestly, all I see them doing this season is treading water until Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos are ready for the show.

 

MLB umpires missed 34,294 ball-strike calls in 2018, study shows

The Top 5 Umpires
Rank Umpire Age Exp. Calls Bad calls BCR
1. Mark Wegner 47 19 4,700 342 7.28%
2. John Libka 32 1.5 2,046 150 7.33%
3. Will Little 35 4.5 4,322 331 7.66%
4. Tom Woodring 37 5 2,965 228 7.69%
5. Janssen Visconti 31 1 4,363 340 7.79%
The Bottom 5 Umpires
Rank Umpire Age Exp. Calls Bad calls BCR
1. Ted Barrett 54 20 4,291 495 11.54%
2. Joe West 67 40 4,480 512 11.43%
3. Rob Drake 50 10 2,496 285 11.42%
4. Dan Iassogna 50 16 1,068 116 10.86%
5. Gary Cederstrom 64 24 4,696 506 10.78%

 

That's a pretty narrow range between best and worst, 3 and a half percent. How many pitches were thrown in 2018? Figure about an average somewhere between 250-275 a game. So according to this survey, Cederstrom missed like 26-28 calls a game. That has to be mostly close pitches with a missed defined by a machine strike zone definition, because I didn't read about any riots at games he umped, and there would've been some if he blew that many pitches badly.

 

How are Angel Hernandez and C.B. Bucknor not on that list.

 

Chris Davis now 0-47 going back to last season.

 

I hate when baseball people track streaks between seasons. It's asinine.

 

Meh, it's still a fascinating stat to say a guy went 0-24 to end last season and is 0-23 to begin this one.

 

To each their own. I'm not trying to bag on you specifically at all. The way I've been hearing about Davis, I was under the impression it all happened this year and I had to look it up because I didn't think he could have gotten that many ABs so early this season.

If he had a hit in 27 straight games to end last season and started this season with a hit in 30 straight games, nobody would say he broke DiMaggio's hit streak. Yet today, I heard them talking about Eugenio Velez "popping champagne" as Davis passed him.