So this is bizarre. Pirate pitcher twitches, nothing happens, Yadi starts trotting to third, pitcher turns and Yadi gives a "what's going on?" look and heads back towards second where he's picked off, inning over. Seems like the end of the inning but Yadi starts yelling that it was a balk. Yadi's probably the only player that can really get away with this. The umps don't ignore him much less eject him, they get together in a conference, decide that it was a balk (that none of them called) and let the runners advance.

My Gameday just backed up from the top of the 5th inning to the bottom of the 4th, as the inning-ending caught stealing of Yadier Molina at 3rd was apparently overturned to a balk, putting runners at 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs, and Nolan Gorman's at-bat---which had been ended with the count at 3-2 count--resumed, with him drawing a walk to load the bases for Paul Goldschmidt, who has already homered this game.

The two earlier runners had both been put on by throwing errors by Pirates SS Diego Castillo on consecutive grounders.

EDIT: And Goldschmidt reaches on .... a ground ball to SS Diego Castillo, scorer's ruling pending.

EDIT: per Gameday "Paul Goldschmidt reachers on a fielder's choice out, SS Diego Castillo to 2B Yu Chang to 3B Ke'Bryan Hayes to 2B Yu Chang to catcher Jason Delay. Yadier Molina scores. Edmundo Sosa out at home. Nolan Gorman to second."

It was weird, but the umpires did make the right call.

Can anyone, without looking, guess who leads the major league in position player bWar?

Bottom of 4, cards have two runners on. Yadi is lead runner. He starts walking towards third while pointing to pitcher. Pitcher turns and tosses it back to second and they tag Yadi out for final out. Yadi jumps up and down yelling about a balk. Umpires gather. Yadi explains. Meanwhile on replay you can see pitcher go from windup and In the middle of his windup stops and goes to a set position. Obvious balk. No umpire called it.

Umps listen to Yadi. Chat. Agree it's a balk ! Pirates manager goes ballistic having just watch Molina call a balk on his own pitcher

Edman is leading by quite a bit

Yadier passes Irod with most putouts in history (for catchers).

Matthew Liberatore has now made four MLB starts, alternating starts in which he fails to last five while allowing four runs with starts in which he pitches five scoreless innings.

Yikes---a third throwing error by Pirates' SS Diego Castillo.

I can't imagine Oneil Cruz can be worse, and he can at least hit.

Edman has a 124 OPS+, which puts him 22nd in the league... so how is he third in oWAR? Fifteen steals in 16 tries is very nice, but really?

Yikes---a third throwing error by Pirates' SS Diego Castillo.

First baseman should have had two of them though.

Yikes---a third throwing error by Pirates' SS Diego Castillo.

OK, he'd only made two errors in 204 innings at SS before today, so apparently he's actually a decent fielder.

Edman has a 124 OPS+, which puts him 22nd in the league... so how is he third in oWAR? Fifteen steals in 16 tries is very nice, but really?

Ops+ is a rate stat, oWar is a combo rate/cumulative stat. Edman has missed one game so far, and bats leadoff most of the time, and oWar does include positional adjustment.

so how is he third in oWAR?

Over at Fangraphs, where he has 3.1 WAR, they have him as 16th in MLB in Offensive (runs?) with 14.0, and leading all MLB (by a decent margin) in Baserunning (runs?) with 6.4. Those two components (which don't include defense) have him 8th among MLB batters, behind Goldschmidt, Judge, Ramirez, Alvarez, Devers, Trout, and Machado.

Ops+ is a rate stat, oWar is a combo rate/cumulative stat. Edman has missed one game so far, and bats leadoff
most of the time,

But it's not like he's leading the league in PAs, or anything close to it. He's ninth in that category. He has one fewer plate appearance than Mookie Betts, who is also out-OPS+ing Edman by 145 to 124 - yet Edman leads him in oWAR, 2.6 to 2.3.

and oWar does include positional adjustment.

That's gotta be a huge factor, along with the baserunning.

Yep, in this particular case Betts is l5 runs batting, 1 baserunning, -2 for position 0 for avoiding double plays. Edman is 8 batting, 6 baserunning, 3 for position, 1 for avoiding double plays. (and he gains another run for replacement player adjustment (he's played a few more (26) innings in the field)(8 for replacement for Betts, 9 for Edman))

Betts = 22 runs this way vs Edman's 27 runs

The call went our way, but I don't agree with the call that says Vogelbach went around. It's as if the umps are deferring to Yadier in these decisions.

Sosa has reached 3 times on error today and just advanced on a wild pitch also.

Have we forgotten Ben "8.6 WAR in 2009" Zobrist already? Or Ichiro "MVP in 2001" Suzuki? (We do seem to have forgotten Ichiro "9.2 WAR in 2004" Suzuki.) Or Mookie for that matter. It's pretty much the only reason to use WAR. :-)

Back to Yadi ... I agree that it was a balk and I suppose I've seen a manager come out and talk the umps into something being a balk** but I'm sure I've never seen a player do it and, like I said, I doubt they'd have let the player do it if it wasn't Yadi. There was the double hilarity where the Cards manager tried to get involved in explaining the rule and the umps told him to shush cuz they were listening to Yadi.

The Goldschmidt fielder's choice was also a very interesting play. Bases loaded, two outs, GB in the hole to SS, goes to 2nd for the force. But Gorman runs through the base rather than slides. Ump rules he beat the throw (I'm not sure but there was no challenge), then goes flying past the base. Run scores, he gets caught in the rundown. Announcers note this was intentional and is something the Cards have worked on -- i.e. if there's two outs and you're gonna be out sliding, then run through the base and maybe the run will score. I'm curious whether it violates the "ya kinda gotta slide at 2B" rule in a way nobody had considered. I mean if the throw had been a bit off, the collision would have been brutal. Pirates then did their best to mess up the rundown but couldn't quite make enough mistakes.

** I have seen managers come out and explain various rules to umps and get a call that wasn't made, just not sure I've seen it for a balk.

Canaan Smith-Njigba with his first career hit. Ball saved, teammates happy for him, always a nice moment.

But brings to mind a question that I clearly should know the answer to after all these years but don't ... do they do something similar for rookie pitchers? First out? First strikeout?

EDIT: any pitchers whose first pitch in the majors was hit for a HR? :-)

EDIT: per Gameday "Paul Goldschmidt reachers on a fielder's choice out, SS Diego Castillo to 2B Yu Chang to 3B Ke'Bryan Hayes to 2B Yu Chang to catcher Jason Delay. Yadier Molina scores. Edmundo Sosa out at home. Nolan Gorman to second."

That was actually an amazing bit of baserunning by Gorman and the Cardinals. Bases loaded, two out, grounder to SS. Gorman knew he'd be out at second for an inning ending force if he slid, SO HE RAN THROUGH THE BAG and beat the throw. He was then caught in a rundown and Sosa ended up being out at home, but since the 3rd out wasn't a force, Molina's run counted and the Cards stole one.

Cards' announcer said while the play was going on that it was intentional and the Cardinals had worked on it in spring training. So cool!

Edit: Whoops, sorry, Coke to #19.

Back to the Yadi thing ... I wonder if the manager knew it was a balk. Maybe one reason it seems so strange to see a player do this is because usually the manager and coaches are already screaming balk and the manager comes running out of the dugout. Yadi likely wasn't the only one who knew what was going on but it sure seemed like it. I mean the original play took several seconds, plenty of time for the Cards staff to react.

So this is bizarre. Pirate pitcher twitches, nothing happens, Yadi starts trotting to third, pitcher turns and Yadi gives a "what's going on?" look and heads back towards second where he's picked off, inning over. Seems like the end of the inning but Yadi starts yelling that it was a balk. Yadi's probably the only player that can really get away with this. The umps don't ignore him much less eject him, they get together in a conference, decide that it was a balk (that none of them called) and let the runners advance.

Yadi didn't start trotting to third in response to the balk; he noticed the pitcher had screwed up and was in the windup position, so the instant P started his delivery (moved his free foot back) he took off to steal third. Then the pitcher said "oops" and stopped his delivery, thereby balking.

It was the balkiest balk that ever balked, and I have no idea how all 4 umps missed it. But Yadi's move toward third was a cause, not a result.

Edman is 9th in oWAR for MLB position players. So he's no slouch there either. Edman will slow down now they they have him at SS. He's perfectly fine there but he is an elite 2B.

In prior years they had been playing him all over the field which held down his defensive value. I expect the same will happen now that they have shoved him over to SS

Tonight the Yankees start a stretch of 20 games without an off day, with the Rays for 3, 3 @ Toronto, and then 3 @ Rays, before 4 back home with the Astros. Opposition gets a bit easier after that, but those games may go a long way towards establishing whether anyone will challenge the Yanks in the AL East or for the best overall record in the AL.

Some really big streaks here in June. Angels and Brewers losing a lot (strange for good teams ) and the Braves and Phillies winning a bunch. Yanks and Red Sox winning a bunch too. SD went from bad to good at the flip of a switch and dodgers have had a really bad stretch

Standings have taken some bizarre turns

2 Rays errors in the 4th, along with some good baserunning, help the Yankees to a 2-0 lead. Waiting for the HRs.

Goldschmidt within spitting distance of tying Stan Musial's 5 HR doubleheader. Not sure if that's just a Cardinal record or an MLB record

Unusual inning ... Manaea needed just 9 pitches for 4 batters, 2 Ks, 1 HR.

Stan Musial's 5 HR doubleheader. Not sure if that's just a Cardinal record or an MLB record

Perhaps it's been tied or broken since, but it's the record, shared by Nate Colbert of the Padres, who did it in, I think, 1973. Coincidentally, young Nate Colbert was in the stands in Sportsman's Park in St. Louis when Musial did it, 15 or 20 years before he did.

In prior years they had been playing him all over the field which held down his defensive value.

Not necessarily from a bWAR/DRS perspective. If you want to assess a guy who plays multiple positions or compare across positions, you need to use dWAR. In his first year, he had 1.1 dWAR in just 342 PA (too much trouble to add up innings), call it half a season or a bit more defenisvely. That's outstanding, on a par with Javy Baez's career dWAR/650. He was a little better than that in 2020 but under 1 dWAR in a very full 2021 season which is also when he settled in as primarily a 2B. This year it's certainly true that DRS loves his 2B defense (9 runs in just 368 innings) and thinks his SS defense is just good (1 run in 152 innings) but, with the positional adjustment, those would even out some (he already has a career high in Rpos). For his career he's at 1.7 dWAR/650 and, true, this year is his best so far driven by his 2B play.

Current Rpos values seem to be 8 for SS (Story 2019), 4 for 2B (Altuve 2021) and 3 for 3B (Machado 2021).** Machado 2021 was rated as 6 runs better than the average 3B, so 9 runs better than the "average defender." Tim Anderson 2021 (in just 551 PA) was rated as 3 runs better than the average SS, received just 6 Rpos due to limited PT, so 9 runs better than the "average defender" in the same playing time. Jorge Polanco 2021, playing mostly 2B plus some SS, was rated as 2 runs better than the average 2B with some SS, credited for 5 Rpos so 7 runs better than the "average defender." Edman 2021 was rated as 7 runs better than the (weighted) average player at his mix of positions, given a Rpos of 2 so 9 runs better than the "average defender."

As far as bWAR is concerned, those 4 guys were of roughly equal defensive value in 2021. Note, that was Edman's worst season (and I think Polanco's best) and Edman might be the best defensive player among those 4 these days (Machado seems to have fallen off pretty substantially). It's of course possible that Edman would be even better if allowed to just settle into 2B but he's already somewhere in the range between Machado/Chapman (who's also fallen off a lot) to Baez/Story. DRS/bWAR seem to agree with that idea -- he's produced at about a 2 dWAR per full season pace at 2B but also a 2.5 dWAR per full season pace at SS. Third base hasn't been too kind to him at just about a 1 dWAR pace; he's been a bit better than 0 dWAR in the OF.

(Reminder, dWAR might more accurately be labelled dWAA.)

** I have no idea if they've developed some adjustment for shifting.

By statcast, this year Edman is tied for 4th among all IF (they don't adjust for position at statcast as far as I know) ... tied with Machado (and others) conveniently enough. Most of that value is at 2B. For his career, statcast thinks he's a pretty amazing 3B (+10 outs in very limited play) and an outstanding 2B and a very good SS. Statcast does put him roughly equal to Baez.

after sucking bigly in 4 of his last 5 starts, Bassitt with 8 scoreless for the Mets tonight - 3 H, 1 BB, 7 K against the hapless Brewers.

Is David Ross a madman or a mad genius? The Cubs' pitching staff is a mess right now and we're only in day 5 of 17 straight games. As the only healthy veteran SP, you'd think he'd lean a bit on Hendricks to pick up, say, at least 20 innings in his 3 starts in this stretch. So, Hendricks cruising along fine wiath 5 IP, 78 pitches, 6 Ks, 3 H, 0 BB and a 5-0 lead ... he pulls him after a double?? Did I miss an injury?

Now if that increases the chance he can go 7 each in his next 2 starts then maybe a 5-0 lead is safe enough (HR off his reliever makes it 5-2) and Ross is making a smart move in not wasting two innings on low-leverage (single). Or maybe it's part of the drive for 65?

EDIT: Still, I'm a bit relieved -- the Cubs were playing so well this game I was worried the apocalypse was nigh.
EDIT2: Wild pitch, down to second with 2 outs.
EDIT3: 5-3, man on second, 2 outs.

Mikolas through 7 at 98 pitches with a no-no. He did 115 last game. But it's super hot in STL - don't see him making it

Pivetta goes 8, 3H, 1ER, Sox win 6-1. They are going to gain ground on someone in the East today, but man is it a slog. Everyone above them is really good.

So Mr Coldplay out of the game for a new reliever. Ironically the ump checks him for stickum ... just in case he was getting illegal levels of rotation in that crap 2/3 of an inning.

EDIT: 5-4
EDIT2: Balk (no Molinas present), man on second, 2 outs.
EDIT3: Mercifully the inning ends.

unhittable Holmes of NYY gets the "charity strike" on a ball low and outside on TBR's Arozarena, turning a 3-1 count to the leadoff man to 2-2 in a 2-0 game in the 9th - and Arozarena whiffs on the next pitch.

do the umps send out memos on which closers have achieved that sort of rarefied air?

:)

not that anyone would score on Holmes anyway, although Rays did add a single and a long fly hauled in by the 8-foot-tall Judge on the run.

Braves have now won 13 straight. Braves announcer notes club has won "19 of their last 25."
so, 6-6 before that - yeah, stick with "13 straight"

Brewers on a 1-9 tear and have been shut out 4 times in that tailspin

Ahh, Mikolas so far with the ol' 1 run on 0 hits special. Mikolas through 8.

Sheesh, the bottom of this Pirates order -- last 4 batters: 197, 167, 139, 102. The #3 and 4 hitters are at 212 and 220.

Yankees win 2-0 behind the shutout stuff of Cole, Peralta, King & Holmes. Nice catch by Judge in deep left-center to end the game.

Cubs dismissed in b6 in about the time it takes me to piss (TMI?) -- I know for some of you that's a 9-run rally.

Bases loaded double, Padres 7-5.

EDIT: so that went single, single, new reliever, walk, double ... man on second, nobody out.
EDIT2: pickoff attempt at second, throws it into CF, fortunately Voit can't advance.
EDIT3: Cubs pen so far -- 1 IP, 6 ER ... not even a team blown save since they had a 5-run lead.
EDIT4: Walk, 1st & 2nd, none out -- mound conference.

Mikolas at 120 pitches 1 out in the ninth

Mikolas 1 out away

Mikolas 1 strike away

Mikolas loses it

With two outs and two strikes, Bader playing very shallow to take away the single has the catchable fly ball sail over his head for a double.

If Bader was playing his normal depth, Mikolas has his no-hitter.

Now ... I am used to long-haired hippies on the mound and in the OF ... but behind the plate? Any others besides Jorge Alfaro?

In Bader's defense, it is the Pirates ... might be the longest ball they've hit in a week.

Man does the bottom of the NLC suck.

EDIT: Cards now 10 over 500; 10 over in the division. Brewers 5 over 500, 8 over in the division. NLC 21-30 vs NLE; 35-44 vs NLW; 14-25 interleague.

EDIT2: There was another walk in there, bases loaded, nobody out, pitching change.

Single 9-5, 1st & 3rd nobody out

Would somebody please overpay for Willson Contreras soon so we can just run the rest of this season on simulation and get it over with in a couple of days?

Good old-fashioned sac fly and it's 10-5.

Buehler has a bone spur removed so the dreaded flexor strain may not have been the issue. I do seem to recall that none sour removal can expedite TJS issues - ie the bone spur is acting as support and when removed it accelerates TJ issues. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I seem to remember reading that somewhere

I missed something ... a walk? Now a hit batter. Loaded with two outs.

EDIT: Strike 3 on Machado to keep the dream alive. Now members of the 2022 Chicago Sky sing the anthem. I'm pretty sure members of the 2022 Chicago Sky sang the anthem last homestand too ... or maybe those were 2021 Sky who won the title. Now ... one of the people singing is a short dude who I am pretty sure is not a member of the 2022 Chicago Sky but I don't want to be genderist. (Could be the coach I suppose ... I really need to turn the sound on occasionally.)

EDIT2: Willson in a pretty clear bid for his third HR of the day achieves an 85-degree launch angle on a flyball to short right. Wisdom dispatched and we're on to the 8th.

Phils and marlins in a wild one tonight

It does seem to me that scoring and HRs are making a comeback lately

Phils blow an 8-4 lead, trail 11-9 in 9th after Knebel kspits the kbit again.

MLB TV guy says something to the effect of, "Joe Girardi sitting at home and thinking, 'yeah, this looks familiar.'


:)

I'm not Frank Jobe, James Andrews or even Neal ElAttrache but a bone spur acting as UCL support sounds odd to me. A quick search turned up a primer at bleachernation that claimed (a) bone spurs are usually a product of a loosening of the UCL to begin with; so (b) sometimes pitchers get lucky, get the spurs out of there and the ligament is still strong enough; bone spurs may well recur; but (c) it's no surprise if the already-loosening UCL continues to get looser or snaps. So I think it's more likely that bone spurs are an early indication of UCL issues, cleaning up the spurs isn't a solution to a loosened UCL but it gets you back on the mound until ... it goes or it doesn't ... or you change your motion to put less stress on the area which might have been a good idea 3 years before the bone spurs.

So sure, bone spurs often precede TJS, it's not a good sign.

Link

EDIT: So the Padres added another HR in an otherwise uneventful half-inning. Cubs get a baserunner and a popup.
EDIT2: A DP naturally. On to the 9th.

MLB TV guy says something to the effect of, "Joe Girardi sitting at home and thinking, 'yeah, this looks familiar.'

The Phils are welcome to borrow the Cubs' pen for a couple of weeks.

Cubs' pen summary for today (barring a miraculous 9th inning):

4 IP, 11 H, 11 ER, 5 BB, 5 K, 2 HR, 1 HBP, 1 WP

Since their outstanding effort in Friday's 13-inning 2-1 loss to the Yanks it's 15.1 IP, 28 R. That is not a typo. It does not include our most effective reliever, 1B Frank Schwindel (1 IP, 1 R).

Rarely does one get a clearer test of managerial aptitude. I mean it's just one experiment, can't make any conclusions. But don't be surprised if either pitching coach Tommy Hottovy or Ross gets the axe soon or at least that Cubs fans join Sox fans in chanting for their manager's head.

Must be a nice night in Chicago, looks like most of the crowd is still there but maybe they've just all moved down to the TV rows.

This was, relatively speaking, the cream of the Cubs' reliever crop:

Martin 116 ERA+
Givens 138
Effross 159
Hughes 156
(also rookie Stout)

To cleanse my eyeballs, I have fired up a game in which I get to watch all of the best 10 players in baseball -- Trout, Ohtani and the LA Dodgers.

I've been settling for just watching the best team in baseball, the one with 8 more wins and a +129 run differential to the Dodgers' +106.

Just because they might have been mentioned in this thread earlier. Goldschmidt started the day leading the NL in ops 1.017, after a 6 for 8 day with 3 homeruns and a walk, he moved the needle up to 1.073. Not a bad job.

Edman Only played in the second game and just went 3 for 5 with a homerun probably raising his ops+ to just around 130 (since that was the discussion earlier) and at least one great defensive play today.

Meanwhile Mikolas was told going into the game that the three best relievers on the Cardinals are probably not going to be available for his game, decided to take a no hitter into the 9th.

Mets and Padres fans - hell, even Braves fans - are confused about the adulation for the Dodgers.

Dodgers just got legendary Kershaw back but lost Buehler for months. Mets have legendary Scherzer AND deGrom very much on the mend - and they already are 2 1/2 games ahead of the Dodgers.

Mets, Padres and even Braves fans might want to familiarize themselves with a discipline known as "history." The Dodgers have won 100+ in 3 of the last 4 full seasons and are (give or take) on that pace again this season.

EDIT: fair enough, this would be covered in "current affairs" not history class.

Unusual umpire injury in LAA-LAD game. Batter hit a fly ball, bat splits, looked like the pointy end snuck through the eye hole in the ump's mask and caught him in the nose. He went down but seems OK, might have a broken nose, out of the game.

Good lord, the Dodgers are still using Kimbrel for save situations. Erase all that nonsense I wrote about the Dodgers being a decent team.

Mets and Padres fans - hell, even Braves fans - are confused about the adulation for the Dodgers.

Because they've been consistently good for 10 years AND their FO has shown they can continue to put a competitive team on the diamond year in, year out? And the Mets....well they're the Mets, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

And before you can say "tear in the space-time continuum", tying runs in scoring position.

Kimbrel sucks so much.

Well, after a meatball ended up just foul instead of being a grand slam, Kimbrel somehow got it done. Still sucks, though.

When I was a kid, tying runs in scoring position and the cleanup hitter coming up was a scary thing to hear no matter what team you were playing. Now it's "and here's Matt Duffy."

Kimbrel walks him anyway, bases loaded, one out and Jared Walsh (who seems like a cleanup hitter) is up. Rips the first pitch foul (OK, maybe not rips, solid line drive though.) Kimbrel gets a gift low inside. Swinging strike three on a breaking ball.

And Kimbrel throws an actual strike to Max Stassi. Fails to get him to chase on the next one. And another strike on a fastball and ... just a bit outside (in the non-Ueckerian sense). And there's strike 3 on pitch #27 (12 balls).

Meanwhile, just a few days after the Yanks and Cubs set the ghost runner era record with 13 innings, Reds and DBacks are in the 12th. Reds have two across though so the record might be safe.

Looks like the game was scoreless through 9. 1-1 after 10, 3-3 after 11. This extra-inning scoring has gotten beyond ridiculous.

And the DBacks can't even get the ghost runner across.

What do you mean by set the record? The Dodgers and Padres played a 16 inning game last year. And if you mean the most innings of neither team scoring the ghost runner, that would be the same game since neither team scored the ghost runner until the 15th.

Mets and Padres fans - hell, even Braves fans - are confused about the adulation for the Dodgers.

Because they've been consistently good for 10 years AND their FO has shown they can continue to put a competitive team on the diamond year in, year out? And the Mets....well they're the Mets, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

LOL

The Mets 4-game swept the Cubs in 2015 in one of the most lopsided playoff series in baseball history (after taking down your vaunted Dodgers in the previous series).
they lost an epic 2016 wild-card game, 1-0.
they went 86-76 in 2019.

and they now have an ownership transfer from Little Orphan Annie to Daddy Warbucks.

plus they just split a 4-game series in LA - after a home game in NY on Wednesday and then facing a Thu/Fri/Sat/Sun series there. odd that the Dodgers, enjoying missing out on both CYA winners, didn't take down the Mets in 2015 NLCS fashion.

not exactly the Bad News Bears.

not your best effort there.