MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Cecil Fielder guesting on the Tigers broadcast. He's actually pretty funny.

 

The Tigers had to be sure it was past the Super Two deadline, right? They had to wait this long and he didn’t dominate AAA on his rehab.

Of course, the Pirates are still dicking around with Oneil Cruz.

 

I was just about to post that. I wonder what else I can make happen.

 

I see Dusty Baker is taking notes from high school football coaches.

 

Oh, Manny:

 

Didn't they save some money on something--benefits or a pension or something--by firing Hurdle with one game left instead of just letting him finish out the season? Sure, all the guy did was single-handedly revive your dogass franchise and get you within a better division alignment of maybe winning the whole thing.

 

Did the Brewers have anything to lose by keeping Cain? I don't think they would be on the hook for the pension.

 

X-Rays on his ankle came back negative. The Padres are calling it a sprain, though no word on how severe it is yet. That looked ugly, but he might have avoided serious injury.

 

It's sort of amusing watching the older-school managers like Baker and Showalter try and fail (thankfully) to act like their younger brethren beholden to the analytics nerds really running the team (hi JC!). They'll try to offer a no comment and then end up muttering about what is really ailing the guy three seconds later. The rest of these robots don't remember a time when managers casually mentioned Joe Blow's sore knee because they understood it was just a sore knee and not a matter of national security.

 

Oneil Cruz is a bit of a physical freak, but yeah, he had to waste the first month and a half of the season in AAA.

 

A bit? Shaq is a bit big, too, I guess.

He’s an athletic freak. Now, can that be consistent baseball? Dunno.

And he breathes different air than Suwinski. Hayes, Cruz, Gonzalez are the future in Pittsburgh. Hopefully the Polish kid sticks, but he’s sort of a flash in the pan right now.