Lots o' afternoon games today.

Cardinals call up young slugger Juan Yepez and he doubles in each of his first two MLB at-bats. Alas, he was bound to make an out eventually, which he did in his third at-bat, a 6-3 ground out.

Mariners' rookie starter Matt Brash is killing my fantasy team. Down 4-0 with just one out in the second inning, he's already allowed 8 baserunners, this coming on the heels of allowing nine baserunners and six runs in just two innings his last start.

Oh well, thought I'd catch a breakout phenom for $1. It was worth a gamble.

EDIT: With just his last four innings, Brash's performance has raised my team ERA from 3.12 to 3.48, and my team WHIP from 1.163 to 1.215.

glad I was actually doing work and missed the Mets-Braves 6th inning.

scoreless game but Megill loads 'em up in the 6th with out one out and yields to Ottavino.
walk
double
wild pitch
single, and it's 5-0 and here comes Trevor Williams
walk
single
RBI groundout, and it's 7-0 and that's all she wrote

Weird early season factoid: the Cubs' Keegan Thompson is 5th in NL WAR with 1.5. What's weird about that is he's a reliever. Well, a reliever of sorts, he's the messiah you've all been waiting for. At the end of last year, we assumed he'd be in the rotation. Instead he has 20 innings in 6 appearances. His first few appearance were as a piggy-backer on a Cubs starter, the last couple he's been the (non-starting) mainstay of Cubs' bullpen days. He's gotten 3-5 days off between appearances so he's kind of a floating 3-4 inning "starter" in today's wacky arrangments.

Now he's got all that WAR because he's also got an ERA under 1 -- spoiler alert: it won't last, especially given his FIP over 3. And can any pitcher withstand this sort of usage -- hard to say, I'm not sure anybody's ever quite fit this profile before but very few relievers have withstood 100+ innings for very long. Still, he's on pace for about 140 IP and 10.5 WAR as a reliever so that's kinda cool (or at least "cool").

But if he and others can survive, this sort of usage makes more sense to me than a 5-game rotation of guys giving you 5 innings. If you're gonna limit starters so severely, maybe try a 4-man rotation of 4-inning starters -- they'd get about 150-160 innngs each, same as now. Keep a couple other longish guys around (i.e. your old 5th starter and the AAA shuttle) for low-leverage use; still leaves you with 7 real relievers. Beats paying David Price $31 M a year.

Yepez doubles twice in his first two MLB at bats, then makes an out and gets pulled for pinch hitter. Arenado had a huge day and can make it a massive day comes up with bases loaded and.....oops, no they pull him too for a pinch hitter.

Paul Dejong who is 0-500 for his last 500 at bats plays the whole game.

Lesson - don't hit and you get to Stay in the game, hit and you get pulled for PH

have just been informed that Curtis Sliwa did not throw out the first pitch before any of the four Guardians-Angels games last week.

up there on a tee and... the Angels whiffed !

Yankees Joey Gallo hits one over a 4-outfielder defense to tie Toronto 1-1.

Nico Hoerner looks more and more like a solid MLB regular. Nothing radical just a decent-hitting, good-defending, flexible IF. Closing in on 500 career PAs, he's at 2.9 WAR, 1.4 WAA. He's been better at SS this year than I was expecting. Almost looks 18 now too.

And while he only hits it about half the time, Wisdom sure hits it hard. A poor man's Kingman.

After cruising through 4, Whitlock gets tagged for a double and long homer by Stassi, 2-2 Sox and Angels

Sox plate one in the 5th, now up 3-2. Whitlock done after 5, 2 hits, 1 homer, 9Ks. Pretty good outing.

I literally sit down to watch a game, first time/long time, because it's 0-0 in the 8th (and free) Rangers/Phillies, and I'm into that 1968 thing. Not thirty seconds go by before Girardi pulls Zach Wheeler on 77 pitches with two outs in the 8th, nobody on base.

#### baseball 2022. Just #### it.

Rendon with a homer in the 7th ties it 3-3.

12, if it's any consolation, the Mets last night had Carrasco surrender a one-out double in the 8th with a 3-0 lead, and they let him finish the inning at just under 100 pitches.

Howie: As a fellow Mets fan, I was already pissed Wheeler was pitching well, but getting yanked (so to speak) was the ultimate.

Xander crushes one out of Fenway in the 8th, Sox up 4-3

I duck into a meeting and the Sox blow the lead in the 9th....again. 4-4 heading to the 10th.

Walsh ties it up with 2 out in the 9th. Then the Angels send in Suzuki, last guy on the bench, to bat for outfielder Rojas. In the bottom of the inning Suzuki plays his first MLB inning at first base. Walsh goes to the outfield.

I was wondering if they’d try something else: Michael Lorenzen to the outfield. But the answer was no.

I wondered if it maybe was a hitter that has hit Wheeler well ... but it was Nate Lowe and, per ESPN, they've never faced each other. Just standard "not allowed to let a RHP face a LHB with the game on the line in case I look stupid."

And the predictable happens. 2 run homer, top of 10th, Angels ahead 6-4. .

The saving grace of a Yankees-Blue Jays game with about 25 blown ball and strike calls was Vlad's incredible play that ended the one run game with the bases loaded, followed by his stopping to sign autographs for a bunch of kids on his way to the dugout. I don't think I've ever seen a player do that before, not at that point.

Red Sox looking to go 0-5 in extras this year. No other team has played more then 2 extra inning games.

What got into Taylor Ward?

When he was drafted he looked like a defense-first catcher. Another Jeff Mathis maybe. Then they shift him to 3B/OF and he starts to hit, big numbers in the PCL, but once you take the air out more of a 4th outfielder than an impact player. Now he’s looking like the latest redesigned swing superstar.

I always get him mixed up with Tyler Wade.

Cubs trailing 4-3. A couple of singles puts them on 1st and 3rd with nobody out in b8. Lineout to SS (pretty well hit), a foul pop by probably our best hitter (Suzuki) and a K.

Now headed to b9.

Angels just putting the hurt on the Sox pen now, Angels up 10-4.

Say it 10 times:

Taylor Ward drives in Tyler Wade

Angels making this a party now, 6 runs with 2 out

Lead should be safe, unless Iglesias has as much trouble as he had with the last color of Sox he faced.

Taylor Ward's basically locked up that RF job. A great 10th inning for the Angels after getting shut out three times in the last four games.

Liam Hendriks on for the 3rd straight game (22 pitches total in those games). Pop-out by Contreras. Schwindel with a GB to SS. Hoerner K. Oh well.

It's official, Red Sox stink. One doesn't like to throw in the towel too early in a season, but gee they have a lot of work to do for the remaining 137 games.

Let's hope the Red Sox stink for at least one more game. After it looked like the Angels' magic pixie dust that their hitters were using had run out, good to see some life from the offense. I'd love a rubber match victory tomorrow.