The M's picked up a serious bat from the Cubs yesterday in exchange for reliever Mike Montgomery. Dan Vogelbach was hitting .318 with 16 HR's in AAA, but it's his .972 OPS that is impressive. The guy knows the strike zone and has pop. The problem is he's pretty much DH/1B only material at 6' and 250lbs. I kind of thought when Dipoto came in as GM there was going to be a move away from that type. Here's Vogelbach's minor league record: http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=vogelb000dan
God, it's awful. Good news, though! I won't be going as much after next year! The new stadium will be another 30 minutes on a good traffic day (good traffic day? ahahahhahhahahhhhahaa #ATLMidtownConnector), and my season ticket group has decided to just do one year in the new place. Plus, next year, my seats will cost TWICE as much as they did last year, and it just won't be worth it to me. I was actually headed up last Saturday, but I'd had a tough week and it was hotter than a mofo, so I sold my tickets on StubHub instead.
Bryce Harper is batting .248 for the season. Perhaps last season was an anomaly? I saw a stat the other day that since around May 1st, he's ranked 138 or so out of about 150 players with qualifying AB's in batting average. That's a pretty damn long prolonged slump.
He's not looking like Mr. $500 Million this year, but shit happens. He's just not combing his hair enough. You must have LOVED today, Toytoy. Nelson Cruz lit up the Jays like a mofo. That was one offensive ass-whooping, that was.
The saddest thing is that when it was 11-2, I was trying to figure out how the bullpen was going to blow the game. I have that much faith in them, it's like 1997 all over again....minus Griffey, Edgar, Buhner, ARod, Sorrento, and Russ Davis hitting a shit ton of HR's, but the bullpen fucking everything up night after night. It looks like Chris Sale may have just become trade bait. He was scratched from his start tonight and sent home after a confrontation with a member of the Sox front office. Want to bet their GM's phone is lighting up right now? http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/17131938/chicago-white-sox-scratch-pitcher-chris-sale
Supposedly (as in I saw this on Twitter) Sale had a fit about throwback jerseys and cut them all up so no one could wear them.
Hahahahahaha. I can't blame him for that, especially if they were 1976 or so throwbacks when the Sox players wore shorts.
Bill Veeck owned the White Sox back then and was big on publicity, thus the ridiculous uniforms. When he owned the St Louis Browns he sent Eddie Gaedel up to the plate during a 1951 game as a pinch hitter. Gaedel wasn't a child, he was a midget.
He was walked on four straight pitches. Legally. Wasn't his number something like 1/6? Jesus baseball was FUN back then. Questionable but fun. Players and teams were like rock stars, they fucked around so much. Ruth kept a bottle of JD stuffed in the seam of right field at Yankee stadium and would take a congratulatory swig after successfully snagging a fly ball. Rick Bosetti played for the Jays in the 70's and made it his mission to take a leak on every AL outfield. The league caught wind so he started doing it DURING games, using his glove as a peepee teepee. The original Whiz Kid.
Pistol Pete Reiser has my favourite backstory of all baseball players. Toughest man in baseball. In an era when the outfield walls were made of concrete he ran full-clip into them eleven times. No player to this very day has been carried off the field more on a stretcher, 12 times for Reiser. He ploughed the wall so hard once during a Pennant playoff game they called a priest to give him Last Rites, he returned later to hit the game-winning homerun. He fractured his skull hitting the wall and still made the throw to the infield. He temporarily PARALYZED himself hitting the wall while trying making a catch in St. Louis. He injured himself voluntarily serving in WWII and returned to MLB-quality play after teaching himself to throw left handed. .295 lifetime hitter, NL batting champion, World Series ring, 3x all-star. He was right handed but often batted left and hit one-armed because of chronic pain. Batted .350 with Brooklyn one year. Jesus fuck. Absolute, 100% animal.
Source: Yankees agree to trade Aroldis Chapman to Cubs http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/17140296/new-york-yankees-agree-trade-aroldis-chapman-chicago-cubs
So the Yanks get a player at a position where they already have DiDi Gregorious and minor league prospect Mateo, yet another pitcher with an ERA over 5.00, and a Billy-who? Can any of you tell me what the point of this is? Unless they are going to turn some of that around for someone else?
The Yanks late inning bullpen was bullet proof without Chapman, so it's not really a great loss, besides that he is a FA at the end of the year...may as well get something for him. Torres is highly rated at an up the middle position, so I don't really see a downside for either team. Also Warren was good for the Yanks the past few seasons, this whole sucking thing happened with the Cubs. Everyone else involved is pretty much just filler.
Interesting trade: Report: Blue Jays agree to acquire Melvin Upton Jr. from Padres http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/1...gree-acquire-melvin-upton-jr-san-diego-padres I'm not quite sure what they plan to do with him though.
Why? Source: Padres trade Matt Kemp to Braves for 3B Hector Olivera http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/1...o-padres-traded-atlanta-braves-hector-olivera
John Hart was interviewed during the game with that question. Basically, he said this (besides the money parts that were in their favor): why wait until this winter to look for a free agent right handed bat when they can get a jump on everybody else?