The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

The Twins and Guardians have traded in their pool noodles for bendable straws in their duel.

The Twins get swept by the Royals, of all teams.

 

Angels pretending to be committed.

Angels acquire C.J. Cron and Randal Grichuk (mlb.com)

 

A direct result of Taylor Ward's damaging HBP, no doubt. The guys the Angels were hoping to pick up some of the slack when Trout went on the IL -- Ward, Jo Adell and Brandon Drury -- are all on the IL, so they need reinforcements. It was already kind of a Hail Mary when they got Giolito and Lopez, and now it's like 4th and goal from the 50-yard line.

This deal is like the Angels planning a reunion: Cron and Grichuck are former first-round picks of LAA, and Grichuk was the guy taken along with Trout when the Angels had back-to-back picks in 2009.

 

Jordan Westburg was pulled mid-game, and tongues are wagging.

And it became clear when Tyler Wells was demoted to Bowie that Elias is looking for a starter. But I sure hope they aren't moving one of the young risers for short-term gain.

 

The Yankees absolutely stink. My goodness.

 

Also holy fuck I know he is by all accounts a really good guy but this Adley Rutschman SportsCenter interview is worse than getting teeth pulled.

 

Yeah, the lad is a little dry. But it could have been worse. I heard Adam Frazier being interviewed postgame the other night.

 

The Angels have given Trey Cabbage a shot, but he has been awful. He struck out 4 times today and 3 times yesterday

 

The O's will be TV's post-season nightmare: A good team with no superstar and young guys with nothing much to say.

 

Too bad he's not on the O's.

 

The problem with the 2017-??? rebuild is that they tried to do it around pitching. There's a reason there's an acronym around some of the brainier baseball circles: TINSTAAPP. There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. Very few pitchers develop into what you think they will, and both through the draft and some of the assets they got back from the disassembly were focused on pitching. My guess is that the problem was that the most famous Tigers pitcher possibly of all time by now was drafted by them and turned into exactly what they thought he would be. Well, short of marrying a supermodel, no one expected that out of Verlander.

But mortal pitchers get hurt, lose their mechanics, never develop that third pitch or whatever. Between 2013 and 2018, the Tigers drafted a right-handed pitcher in the first round six times. Jonathon Crawford never made the majors. Corey Knebel did make a MLB debut for Detroit and was traded to Texas two months later in the Joakim Soria deal before becoming a fairly good MLB closer. Beau Burrows barely made it to the Show and didn't materialize. Matt Manning and Alex Faedo are both on the MLB roster (though neither has done terribly well) and Casey Mize is about two-thirds of the way through rehabbing a Tommy John.

I think Riley Greene's the best of the bunch. Torkelson looks like he's gonna top out at "J.T. Snow," which is fine but folks expect a mega-star with 1/1, I get it. The Baez thing is an example of the pitfalls or making a move to make a move. It's possible that Good Baez will show up in town for a couple months at least during the next couple years. They're gonna need to get a couple more bats, but they're probably going to be out in the wilderness until at least 2025. I've reached something of a level of peace with it at present. The 2023 outfit's not great but it's better than last year's injury-riddled disaster. Mostly with the help of their terrible division, they're still vaguely relevant in late July. If they can get within a sniff of .500, I'll consider it a success.

 

It's remarkable how everything that could go wrong for the Tigers has gone wrong. They got the better pitcher to agree to a long-term deal at a team-friendly rate (Scherzer is terrific, but Verlander is the pitcher of his generation) and stunk so much almost immediately thereafter that they had little choice but to trade him. None of the guys they got for Verlander worked out (I mean, Jake Rogers is OK, but when he's your best return on a HOFer...). They whiffed/got terribly unlucky in the draft even after dumping Dombrowski, who is better known as the go-for-it guy. The signing of Baez--a terribly flawed player whom everyone on the planet knew would age poorly with that all-or-nothing skill set--was a particularly bad idea. They hitched their wagon in the dugout to smarmy A.J. Hinch, who has never come close to winning a thing without the benefit of a bunch of cheaters in the front office and on the field. Even Miggy's swan song has been sort of sad...it's easy to forget how great he was b/c he's been lumbering and beat up for the back half of the contract with a bad team. As you noted, at least the division is terrible. But that's all they've got.