jung

And before the MFY's start chilling the champagne they have too young disease like the blue jays have too broken down disease.

Did I not say this has been an issue that has been brewing to the surface for about 5 years now? ERA mean average: 2018 YTD: 4.10 2017: 4.33 2016: 4.12 2015: 3.99 2014: 3.93 2013: 3.98 Hasn't reached steriod/heavy PED era levels yet but that should not be a surprise. Again both the hitting and the pitching are not ML level across the league. As such, I would not expect a huge year over year increase in mean average ERA because it depressed by the lack of all around hitters. The numbers support my contention, most notably the spectrum of ERA from top to bottom. Your eyes should support it as well or do we want to accept as "logical" that these kids are just all Mookies and Trouts which is what the various team PR depts and the league PR dept want us to believe. Frankly unless they are Mookies and Trouts there is no logical baseball reason for them to be here yet...just a PR reason and a lack of talent in MLB generally that forces this issue. Then it should also be clear that we have an inordinate number of players that are hampered by their multiple injuries absorbed over time that should just be out of baseball but that can continue to play because nobody is good enough to take their spots (the Blue Jays are the poster child for that one). Another laughable absurdity is the number of older pitchers than can survive on junk because these guys can't hit!!!!! Show them a FB and they are all over it. Anything else...NOT SO MUCH. Well guess what. Every decent high school ballplayer that ever lived could hit a FB.

They don't count how far. They just count how many in this game. The juiced ball is a draw to the power crowd and that is about it. I have been saying all along that hitters as a group (everyday players) are not that what they should be, but that the pitching asset in MLB is actually worse. MLB is concentrating on power hitting to the exclusion of every other everyday player asset including bat control, hitting to all fields and bunting. If you want to discuss this with me, find a fact you like to make your point and bring it up. Don't try to pick apart my argument. Because the only way to use the middle point as a point of contention is to have not read my posts. That is horse bleep!

Oh Houston is not in the league? I didn't know that. You can make numbers make any argument you want to. But there is no such thing as calling a MLB franchise in a given Championship season an outlier. The numbers are the numbers. If they are not in a pickle why is Manfred talking about curtailing the shift? Why is scoring down in the face of all this power baseball nonsense. It sure as heck is not quality pitching! And lets not even get started on this rocket ship baseball they play the game with now.

You have seen my posts on this topic. The spectrum of MLB team ERA particularly in the AL has never been wider in the 21st century. That is a comment not just on the spectrum of the quality of the pitching in the league but one wide gap top to bottom in the quality of the hitting. You don't end up with about a 0.5 run larger span top to bottom in team ERA just on the difference in the quality of the pitching top to bottom. We have too many guys that are past it playing in this league combined with too many kids that should not even be here yet, Devers being one while Beni should be in his first ML season this year. The guys that are too old or broken down after so many injuries are combined with kids too young to be here are then combined with players that never had much of a career at any age and that is your current MLB. The stars are as good as they have ever been. But you need 25 on your everyday ML roster, another 15 at AAA to support them and the league has 15 teams and then there is the other league in the same circumstance. So add 15 more teams. All of that is mucked up by MLB insistence on trying to turn this into a one dimensional power game while continuing its drive to parity. What do you really want MLB? It is not working.....thankfully Manfred appears to recognize it. But other than doing things like curtailing the shift, I just do not know how effective Manfred can be because this has been coming for at least 5 years now. This they did while pushing players up that could hit for power and not do much of anything else. Its embedded in the minor league system now. MLB sat back and watched the total shift numbers and advanced shift numbers go up and up and up every year to the point were they cannot physically shift more than they are shifting right now! That was about as brain dead as it gets when easy solutions were at their disposal. But Oh no....MLB decided they liked all this shifting as brain dead as that was.

Post season...not sure about post season. Our greatest strength is our rotation and rotations get cut down to just what you need in the post season. If I had to offer something worth considering to this point, while we have truly beaten the living crap out of the preponderance of just awful teams in this league. the Astros and Yankees have played better than we have against the probable post season opponents. That would seem to suggest that they are better suited to the post season than we. In fact has that not been our problem these past two seasons. I am to this point hopeful that it will be different this post season. But I am suffering under no illusions in that regard and no matter how many of these awful teams we beat night after night, it is not going to mean much once we are playing a team of our caliber every single game. But the teams that exist outside of the top 4 or at most 5 teams in this league are so bad that it is frankly an issue that Manfred is going to have to address. Fortunately he appears to realize that all of the "parity" planning has blown up in their faces and he is visibly concerned. This has been brewing for a few years now and now its here. It is most notable in the pitching. It used to be that when you said about a team that "they can't pitch", you meant that pitching was not a strength. Now if say a team can't pitch, they literally CAN....NOT.....PITCH.

The four teams that actually matter in this league (including us) are so far above the quality level of the rest of this league of players too old, players too young and players that were never worth a darn at any age their entire careers that unless we are playing one of those other three teams, we could sleep walk to a victory. The difference is that great...really it is as great as it was when the entire league was a farm system for the Yankees.

Well that is interesting because Vaz caught most of the games to his injury, not Sandy. We have two capable ML. pennant contending team catchers and one unknown who would likely be a back up on these chump teams we play NIGHT AFTER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT.

Hard to embarrass yourself in this league anymore. Too many players in it that should be embarrassed.

We will need vaz to be back in time for the stretch run so his timing is back for the post season. I did not see this as an expression of confidence in Swi from Cora. In fact it was the opposite of an expression of confidence as he had him catch in a bull pen game! While happy to take the hits, the Ranger's CAN"T PITCH. Isn't that obvious? His LH swing has grown too much top hand probably out of lack of use and his RH swing was never a thing of beauty. We will need vaz. Honestly I am as sick of the Swi for President stuff as I am of the JBJ to 300 for a season stuff. Not happening! The Sox have contributed mightily to Swi's demise but a demise it is.

Trust me...we will need Vaz for the post season. We can get away with Swi against these awful MLB teams we play in regular season as long as the pitching staff does not revolt. Keep in mind he did not catch any actual rotation pitcher tonight and we would be dreaming to think that was happenstance.

Assuming games when Cora's best defensive players are not already in the game, I do not believe Cora will make changes for defensive purposes unless he is up 4 at least. He has not done it much if at all this season preferring to keep his hitters in the game figuring they will just pick apart these awful bull pens we face constantly scoring more runs and he is virtually right every time! He is just not disposed to the chance that a better defender will get him very much when his good hitters get to face these awful bull pens night after night. It will be interesting to see if he follows the same thinking against teams like us that actually have a bull pen...... all three of them. Many of the games with the better teams have been slug fest blowouts for us or for them to the point where I cannot to this point in the season get a read on Cora against a team that actually has a pen.

I really don't care what anybody thinks about his doubles and his this or his that..he needs to completely rebuild his swing to a much quieter swing..much less motion and BS and crap that he does not even know hes doing until its pointed out to him and even then he appears not to acknowledge it. But mid-season that is just not going to happen. So his only chance to keep the bat in the hitting zone longer, try to control some of this garbage in his swing and try not to go into these prolonged slumps is go oppo all the time. That is honestly all he can do. He WILL run into pitchers that will use going oppo against him. But my God the pitching is so terrible in MLB these days that at least if he is always going oppo, most of the time it will give hm a chance for the remainder of this year.

How many times has JBJ had a game where he has gone oppo this year likely on instructions in an effort to dig out of his usual slump and abandoned it two nights later?

This is a broken record from me. But even with all the wacky changes JBJ goes through with his swing if he would just be adamant about going the other way, depending on the quality of the pitching he could at least have nights like this. But even that is a pipe dream. He will have a two hit night, think things are wonderful and go back to trying to pull the ball. As I have said a million times, the only chance he has especially mid-season is to just go oppo all the time and he just won't even do that.

Would have loved to have given Betts a chance to hit there even with two outs. Runner on third, I would take my chances with Mookie with just about anybody the Rangers could throw out there to pitch.

His first outing was actually better than this one. He looked totally lost out there tonight....like they plucked him this afternoon and said "you're pitching in Boston tonight".

Not sure we are really designed for these "bull pen" games. But the Rangers pen has just been abysmal. I will be surprised if we don't score more runs.

I know who beeks reminds me of splinter....a little kitten lost in the jungle.

Nah...Nobody but Owens had that thing where he would throw a CurveBall and try to English it over the plate like he was a bowler trying to will the thing into the pocket. Every time I saw him I wanted to kick him one right in the nuts. Talk about lack of confidence....."Oh dear oh my...will it break for me...Oh dear oh my".....IDIOT!

XB again...The guy has been amazing for about the last 10 days.

I thought beni's had a chance to go. It was just a little out of his wheelhouse or it would have likely been out.

Middle of that plate won't work. Beltre should have pounded strike 3 out onto the Pike

You would think they would try to give themselves a chance against a relief pitcher starting and they just don't care.

Man there is a fine line between aggressive hitting and just don't give a damn. The Rangers are way across the line into just don't give a damn.