Two pieces of Braves news today. First the good. In a shocking move, the Braves extended young star Ronald Acuna to the tune of a 8 year, 100 Million dollar deal. Extensions are all the rave these days, so much so that I’m starting to wonder if there will be any free agents left in the coming years. Last year’s super dry off-season may be becoming the norm. The deal is especially uprising, because the Braves had the 21 year old NL Rookie of the Year under team control through the 2024 season, so the deal really just eliminates any arbitration process and gives the Braves two additional years.
In very sad Braves news, long time manager Bobby Cox was admitted to the hospital late last night after suffering a reported stroke. The 77 year old former manager was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 after heading the Braves during their years of dominance in the mid 90’s.
Giants 5, Dodgers 6 – Scouts: Yesterday there was some concern that the Dodger’s red-hot bats had cooled. Today they heated them back up. Cody Bellinger launched the first grand slam of the young season, off of the nicest guy in the league, Madison Bumgarner in the 3rd. The Dodgers bullpen was in bend but don’t break mode, giving up 3 in the 9th, leaving the Giants a run shy of a come-back.
Angels 1, Mariners 2 – Scouts: Marco Gonzales held the Angels to 4 hits and one run across 8.1 dominant innings. This one remained tied at 1 until Daniel Vogelback hit a solo in the 8th. The Mariners are now 8-1 to start off the season. Not too bad for a rebuilding year.
Tigers 3, Yankees 1 – Prof: Is it too early to wonder what the heck is wrong with New York? Detroit rocked the City, getting a knock off Aroldis Chapman and eleven hits off of Yankees pitching overall.
Brewers 4, Reds 3 – Prof: Does Cincy miss Scooter Gennett? I don’t know if they do, but I’m sure Gennett would have brought his A-game against his former team, who just keep powering on. A big sixth inning for the Brew Crew, when Orlando Arcia broke his hitting slump with a three run homer. Josh Hader gets yet another save, his fourth of the season.
Phillies 8, Nationals 2 – Prof: It was Bryce Harper’s return to Washington after his exodus. The Nats fans booed their prodigal son upon his first at-bat. He struck out, but that didn’t last long. Buoyed by what I can only assume is revenge, Harper singled in the sixth and homered in the eighth. For the Curly Dubs, Anthony Rendon hit a two run homer in the sixth but it was all Philadelphia, all the time.
Orioles 2, Blue Jays 1 – Prof: The Orioles are now 4-1. This isn’t Orioles Magic, this is devil magic. Andrew Cashner went six shutout innings. Baltimore’s big inning was the sixth when Jonathan Villar and Trey Mancini drove home two runs. Rowdy Tellez for Toronto tried his best with a single solo homer in the ninth, but it was too little, too late.
Scouts: Chris Davis Watch: Davis went 0-3 with a walk and 2 strikeouts, bringing his season total to 0-12 with 7 strikeouts and 3 walks. Maybe tomorrow will be your day!
Red Sox 0, Athletics 1 – Scouts: Very slow start for the defending champions who drop another one to Oakland. This time Chris Sale picks up the loss as the Boston offense just can’t seem to hit themselves out of a wet paper bag. Who even came up with that expression? Who’s out there trying to hit themselves out of wet paper bags?
Diamondbacks 8, Padres 5 – Scouts: Thirty-Five year old Zack Greinke decided to do it all on his own, smashing a pair of homers, whilst racking up 10 strikeouts. San Diego may be on the verge of respectable, but they still have a little ways to go to prove it.
Rockies 0, Rays 4 – Prof: Your reigning AL Cy Young winner, Blake Snell, destroyed Colorado with a masterful performance – seven full innings and thirteen strikeouts.
Mets 6, Marlins 5 – Prof: Whew, good lord. The first inning was a humdinger, at least for the Mets. New York scored five of their six runs right away. The Feesh tried their best to catch up, with two runs scored in the seventh and one more in the eighth, but they just couldn’t get there. Only one homer for the night – Starlin Castro for Miami in the fifth.
Astros 4, Rangers 6 – Scouts: Not Justin Verlander’s best outing. The flying V only lasted 4 innings, giving up 4 runs on 6 hits, bested by Shelby Miller, who’s still working his way back from Tommy John. Houston is now just 2-4 and in need of a jump start.
Twins 5, Royals 4 F/10 – Scouts: Eddie Rosario busted out of his season-opening slump with a game-tying single in the 9th, which set up a Nelson Cruz game-winning single in the 10th, and just like that the Twins are 3-1 to kick off the year.
Fan Interference 
Years ago, there was a Monday Night Football game in Philadelphia, one with Washington as the visiting team, and it will forever be known to fans of both teams as “The Bodybag Game”, because by the end of it, the Washington football team had suffered a number of injuries and were down to playing their emergency quarterback.
Last night’s baseball contest in Washington felt kind of the same, save for the sport and the city. Consider:
The Nats have been grooming wunderkind Carter Kieboom to play second base all spring (and last fall), with the idea that Brian Dozier is just keeping the seat warm for him until he’s ready in 2020. Kieboom’s natural position is shortstop, but I expect it’s too early to panic and call him up to play in place of Turner, so we’ll likely see lots (i.e., too much) of Wilmer Difo playing there.
This was the first game I really sat down to watch this season, and I see a team that’s pressing, and no one on the roster or on the coaching staff seems to be the guy who can take charge and get everyone to snap out of their collective funks and start playing like they’re capable of. It’s still early, but it could get late for this team real soon.
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I’m proud of the way the Feesh clawed back from Urethra’s first-inning sinkhole. I believe that when the K/T nemesis meteor struck the Earth, it fractured the bedrock underneath Macondo, permitting warm water to permeate the karst and weaken the crust even further until, eventually, a few SUVs and the Feesh starter fell through it. Well, that’s as likely an explanation for suck of such magnitude as any other, innit?
Um -at least it’s a more logical explanation than “intelligent design.” Du-uhhhh.
Lewis Brinson, formerly known as “The Bust,” went 3-4 with a hit batter credit and seems to be finding his groove at last. Good for the kid; he works his ass off and last season was about as demoralizing (demobilizing?) a rookie campaign as you could suffer through, all the while watching the guy he was traded for win MVP and open this season in Milwaukee raking like a muta’fika*, but he’s never let his head get down. How can you not like this guy?
Mutts time: manager Mickey Calloway, a pitching coach before becoming field commander for the Mutts, stayed with his reliever Lugo way too long last night while the Feesh kept chipping away at the kid in the seventh and eighth innings, and he kept walking and hitting batters. It made the game more exciting than it needed to be. I wonder if Calloway was just letting his sympathies hang out a bit too much.
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The Jays’ bats are slowly (too slowly) starting to heat up… there are now THREE teams below them in hitting. Baby steps…
Speaking of extensions… almost immediately after trading Kevin Pillar to the Giants for 3 players, the Jays turned around and signed Randal Grichuk to a 5-year $52-million extension, locking him up through his final two years of arbitration and first three years of expected free agency. I like this move, as Grichuk has almost as good a glove as Pillar, a better bat, and is over 2 years younger, and the price is definitely a bonus.
The youth movement in Toronto continues. The average age of the starting lineup for the Jays yesterday was 25.7, which includes the old man, 32-year-old Justin Smoak. When you add in starter Marcus Stroman, the average age climbs all the way to 25.8. Smoak is the only hitter on the roster over the age of 29, and the oldest player on the active roster is 33-year-old pitcher Javy Guerra.
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For a hot second I had wanted Grichuk on the Braves because he, Dansby, and Charlie Culberson look like triplets lolol
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Chris Davis broke a record last season for lowest BA ever. This year he seeks the record for lowest On Base Percentage!
YOU CAN DO IT!
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It must suck to be a Royals fan right now. Your team leads its home opener for most of the game to come within three outs of an opening win and see it tied in the ninth, and of course, lost in the tenth. Then you take the lead in the fifth to see it tied in the eighth and lost in the ninth, as your hopeless bullpen spontaneously combusts yet again.
It must be like being a citizen of a country whose TV President recently proclaimed his belief that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer, as you wonder where poopy little boy might have gleamed that one from.
https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-claims-wind-turbine-noise-causes-cancer-11683102
The Twins game today is now well over and I am watching the cheesy semi old movie National Treasure, It includes a President of the country who is a cognitively capable adult who does not suffer from mental illness disguised by the economically extra ordinary fortunate (unfortunate?) circumstances of his birth.
The Twins don’t play tomorrow, but their game on Friday I believe starts at six so I might be able to be awake for the whole thing. I wanna see Bryce struck out by our thirty year old rookie.
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