Prof: Only a precious few teams make it to the playoffs. My team is still battling it out for that number one spot, but I’m feeling confident. More than half of our readership won’t have a team get to the next level this season, so for y’all, today’s musical theme is all about despair.
Note – Scout is a late scratch for today’s post so a few games only have scores.
Mets 0, Phillies 4 – Prof: This was kind of the meh game before the real meat and potatoes, a matchup between my Braves and the other young upstart group in the NL East, the Philadelphia Phillies. Those upstarts made some noise in this game, most of all Rhys Hoskins, who in only a year and a month of major league service, has mashed fifty home runs. He’s the seventh faster player in league history to do so, and he’s only 25. Oh, tender youth.
Red Sox 1, Yankees 10
Blue Jays 1, Orioles 2
Royals 1, Pirates 2 – Prof: Wednesday was “Talk Like a Pirate Day” and I’m going to tell you a Pirate joke before we recap this game. How much does a pirate pay for a bushel of corn? A buccaneer! Whomp whomp! OK, now that bad jokes are over, let’s talk about good plays, and one of those good plays was off the bat of Adam Frazier, the Pittsburgh second baseman. Another was from Royals’ second baseman Adalberto Mondesi. Both gentlemen mashed solo homers to right center. Kind of a creepy coincidence, I think, but arrrrrrgh, creepy things shiver me timbers arrrrrrrrrgh.
White Sox 1, Spiders 4
Reds 0, Brewers 7 – Prof: It was the Jesus Show in Milwaukee, as it has been most of the year. Jesus Aguilar hit a three run homer, as did Manny Pina.
Mariners 9, Astros 0
Cubs 0, Diamondbacks 9
Rockies 2, Dodgers 5
Rays 9, Rangers 3 – Prof: Tommy Pham is living his best life in Tampa. Actually, he was in Arlington, but you know what I mean. He homered twice and the Tampa Bay Sea Creatures continue to play quality baseball without being able to reap the rewards of a playoff berth. It’s kind of sad, really. Usually a record of 85 wins gets you at least a Wild Card slot, but not this year.
Cardinals 3, Braves 7 – Prof: I’m probably never having children (and yes, I know, Gator, children are horrible), but if I did I would have to rethink my old idea of name a kid after Steve Avery. If I did have a little Prof, I might have to name that child after Freddie Freeman, because he is the way, the truth. Freddie is our forever MVP and he proved it again yesterday with three RBI and a home run to elevate Atlanta to a win against St. Louis. Also, the Ryan Gosling clone that no one talks about, Ender Inciarte, stole home! What a world. The magic number is now six and I am so happy about it. I mean… I don’t remember the last time I actively counted down the magic number.
Giants 4, Padres 8
Twins 8, Tigers 2 – Prof: AYYYYYYYYYYYYY! Williams Astu-stu-studillo was a machine! 2-4 and 3 RBI and he’s so much fun. Tyler Austin, Ehire Adrianza, and Robbie Grossman were pretty darn good, too. It’s such a shame that they couldn’t battle against the Spiders of Cleve to dominate the AL Central, but you can’t win them all. Unless you’re Boston, in which case you’ve won most of them, I guess.
Angels 0, Athletics 10
Fan Interference 
Tonight begins a seven-game homestand for the Nats, their last homestand of the year, as they finish up next weekend in Colorado. This means that we Nats fans could be looking at Bryce Harper in a Nats uniform at home for the last seven times.
There are cases to be made for the Nats to try to sign him, and there are cases (mostly involving financial flexibility) for letting him walk. I’d say that there’s a non-zero chance he re-signs here, but the money it’ll take to sign him is a lot of money that could be spent to fill in other holes on this team.
Tragic number dropped to four for the division, and still at four for the wildcard. Scherzer could possibly get three starts in these last ten games, meaning he might still win twenty, but I think the Cy Young will go elsewhere, as will the Rookie of the Year, no matter what young Mr. Soto does the rest of the way.
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Next week’s games may be the end of the road for Super Joe as his contract is up and he is openly talking about retirement. Wow was 2004 that long ago?
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Sad days. I’m still upset about Justin Morneau tbh. I have a Twins shirt of his.
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I recall sportswriters saying that MVP voters didn’t even pick the correct person on the team (Mauer).
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In which Mrs. Bryce Harper causes Nats fans to believe Bryce is gone – https://twitter.com/kayyharper8/status/1042838434623250433
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Just outta curiosity, guy, was there much adoodoo about Harper’s relationship with the Lerners or Rizzo this season? Any juicy stories about friction, fraction, surfaction, stupefaction or overreaction?
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Harper said at the beginning of training camp that he wasn’t gonna talk publicly about his contract, and he hasn’t, but you couldn’t read much about the Nats this year that doesn’t mention his impending free agency.
By all accounts, the Lerners love him, and I’ve even seen reports that they consider him a son/grandson, and Rizzo’s never said anything negative about him that I can recall. Harper’s agent is Scott Boras, and Boras makes sure the Lerners get involved on negotiations for his clients, rather than just talking to Rizzo.
I personally noticed after the loss in the NLDS last year that Harper was pretty non-committal on his feelings for Dusty (perhaps angry at Dusty for playing him on that rainy night when he damn near wrecked his knee and lost six weeks to the DL), but he’s spoken highly of Davey Martinez, for what that’s worth.
All in all, there’s been nothing but speculation and conjecture for fans to chew on this year when it comes to Harper, which has meant a lot of parsing of things to assign meaning that may or may not be there. A couple examples of that (in addition to the tweet from today) were:
Mike Rizzo himself saying on the radio just last week regarding a possible Harper contract: “We won’t discuss it until there’s something to announce.”
As I’ve said before, my biggest hope is that the issue comes to closure quickly, so that the Nats can get on with the rest of their winter in time to pursue their other needs – Catcher, Pitching, a Matt Adams type, maybe 2B.
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Why were we scoring in the 9th? You’re not coming back, so sit down. We can’t even lose well. Sheesh.
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Looks like the Rox got swept at the worst possible moment (so far), while trying to decide whether Trevor Story can or can’t throw or bat or play at all. And the Doggers are finally looking pennant-contentious. Meanwhile, the Red Sox (aka the other R-ox) got swept just to hook the Yankees into thinking that they have any chance to get to the WS. I only wish that the A’s had a good pitcher left for that wild card game. Which brings me to one more barely-connected point today: I will be very surprised if we don’t see a team “bullpenning” for the wild card game within the next two years. In that scenario, it would almost make some sense to do so.
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The Borg needs pitching. Watch them go after anyone and everyone who can throw a baseball through a plate glass window this weenter.
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I’ll bet the Iron Giant can do that. And Judge? Well, he can probly throw a tennis ball through one. So they ought to be good.
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We all know the Freesh are gonna shop at a flea market, not the free agent market.
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Oh, snap. But true. And they are rather like a flea on the backs of the rest of the NL East at this point.
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Something I didn’t know about the 1899 Cleveland Spiders until fairly recently: their owners also owned a different team in the same league (something that would obviously never come close to flying today), and publicly announced that they would be treating the Spiders like a sideshow. They deliberately took the Spiders’ remaining talent and fueled their other team with it. The Spiders actually had to forfeit some games.
So I’m thinking that their 20-134 record shouldn’t be used as a benchmark of futility for today’s teams. That season was also nearly 120 years ago. (That last reason is why I don’t think much of comparing teams/players across eras. Heck, even 2014’s home run numbers league wide shouldn’t be compared to now because they used a different baseball and as a result everyone and their mother set major league highs in HR this year. Tzu-Wein Lin hit his first MLB HR tonight, and he’d had a total of 18 professional HRs dating back to 2012. It wasn’t a short-porch cheapie either.)
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