The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

Just saw a replay. Think that was more of a safety squeeze.

 

Nothing happening in San Diego.

 

Snell can’t finish this.

 

We're going to be living in a world where Blake Snell is a two-time Cy Young winner.

A guy who outside of those two seasons, will have six other seasons in his career where four have losing records, one has seven wins and the other is a COVID-shortened 4-2 campaign.

 

Not this season. Spencer Strider says hello.

 

The Baltimore Sun, I think, had a feature on him earlier in the season, and the hitting coaches said they noticed a very simple mechanical flaw in his swing with the Royals. They had it fixed relatively quickly.
Which raises the question of what the Royals hitting coaches were seeing, and why they couldn't fix anything over four abysmal seasons.

 

It's been 43 years since Baltimore won 100 games. Orioles have 95 wins after last night, and after today's matinee in Houston, they finish with three below-.500 teams -- Cleveland, Washington, Boston. Getting to 100 almost feels inevitable. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a turnaround of this magnitude this quickly could happen. They were 52-110 just two years ago!

 

Strider's ERA is 3.73. Snell's ERA is 2.33. That is a huge gap in Snell's favor. I know the peripherals favor Strider. He has the insane strikeout rate and he doesn't walk nearly as many batters, but the job is to prevent the other team is scoring and Snell has done that better this season.

By the way, Strider only has two more innings pitched, though Snell has one more start after last night's seven-inning gem. (I'm aware it was against the Rockies away from Coors, which certainly helps any pitcher, but it still counts.)

 

The Cy Young Award is replete with one-hit wonders, now we'll get a two-hit wonder.

Pat Hentgen, LaMarr Hoyt, Bob Turley, Pete Vukuvich, Steve Stone, Vern Law, RA Dickey, Mark Daviss, John Denny, Randy Jones, Rick Porcello all won Cy Youngs. Decent MLB pitchers but their Cy Young year was the outlier.

 

Guardians sweep the Rangers, then start playing out the string in KC. Sheeeeeeesh.