Scouts: Game of Thrones is back and everyone’s talking about it. I just finished season 3. It’s actually the third time I’ve tried to complete the series, but have been unable to hold my interest. I know it’s a good show, but man all the murder and backstabbing gets very tiresome after awhile. Someday I feel like I’m the only one int he world who isn’t batty over that show. How about you, are you super excited for the final season? Are you one of the 37% of viewers likely to cancel HBO after GoT ends?
Diamondbacks 3, Braves 2 F/10 – Prof: Please allow me to rant. I apologize in advance. This bullpen is an effin’ nightmare. This bullpen is fifteen layers of horse manure baked in the sun and then topped with a frothy frappe of whale vomit. First it was Max Fried who pitched a gem and had it thrown away by the merry band of noodle arms pretending to be major league relievers, and now it’s Kevin Gausman. Gausman went seven innings, allowed only two runs, and struck out ten. The Braves still had a chance to gut it out, but baseball’s equivalent of F Troop showed up again. I’m so sick of it. The front office sat on their mountains of cash and said they were set, everything was fine, let’s just develop our young arms and see what happens. On the front line, yes, let’s do that. I’d say the young starters coming up are just fine and have all the potential in the world. It’s the reliever corps that sucks. I mean, it’s just bad. Starters are going to have to pitch complete games to make sure they get a win, because as the other day shows, you can leave a game 5 to nothing and the relievers will just come in and shit the bed. (Sorry, but poo just won’t work.) God, I can’t even watch this mess right now, I’ve got enough going on in my life without having to watch disaster after disaster every other day.
Pirates 3, Tigers 2 F/10 – Scouts: Tough loss for the Tigers, who held onto a 2-1 lead through 7 innings. Josh Bell tied it up in the 8th on a sac fly, and Colin Moran picked up the winning RBI with a single in the 10th. Austen Williams now is sporting a 162 ERA in 2 games and .1 IP.
Giants 6, Nationals 9 – Scouts: Somebody ate their Weeties todday! Juan Soto, Howie Kendrick, Matt Adams, and Kurt Suzuki all homered as the Nats slugged their way to victory. The bullpen continues to be a worry however as the Giants were able to pick up 4 garbage time runs in the 9th.
Orioles 1, Rays 8 – Prof: The Rays started with their “opener”, Ryne Stanek, the usual one and done, before moving to their actual starting pitcher, who was Yonny Chirinos. Then they went on a plan of attack against Baltimore’s David Hess. Hess only lasted two innings, but in those two innings he gave up eight hits and six of those converted into runs, and no strikeouts. Ouch. Meanwhile Tampa combined for three home runs against the beleaguered Birds.
Blue Jays 1, Twins 4 – Scouts: Jake Ordorizzi is starting to feel good again. After being forced to wait around for nearly an hour on a rain soaked afternoon, Ordorizzi finally was able to get to work, holding to Blue Jays to 6 hits over 5.2 innings, allowing just a single run.
Angels 4, Rangers 5 – Scouts: Poor Matt Harvey just can’t buy a win. Matty gave up 4 runs on 5 hits in 4.1 innings, and the wheels really came off the cart the second trip through the lineup. LA was never able to recover and Texas completed the three game sweep.
Mets 2, Phillies 3 – Prof: Not the bloodbath it was yesterday, mostly because Zack Wheeler pitched a pretty good game. It was just that Jake Arrieta pitched a better one. Someone has to lose, and unfortunately that was Wheeler. Scott Kingery and Cesar Hernandez for Philly and Michael Conforto for New York all went yard.
Cardinals 6, Brewers 3 – Prof: In shocking news, Christian Yelich did not hit a homer against St. Louis! But there were plenty of balls that went beyond the wall at Miller Park yesterday. Michael Wacha went six innings and struck out seven, and held the hot-hitting Yelich to only one single. Cardinals Ozuna and Carpenter both hit solo bombs.
Royals 4, White Sox 3 F/10 – Prof: A brawl, because some dude got his feelings hurt after Chicago’s Tim Anderson flipped his bat. The dude (KC’s Brad Keller) drilled him with his fastball. Benches cleared. Stupidity reigns. Anyway, after all of that insanity, these two teams went into extra innings. Hunter Dozier hit a solo dinger in the tenth inning to give the Royals the win.
Reds 2, Dodgers 3 – Prof: Walker Buehler is 2-0 on the year. He struck out eight. AJ Pollock hit a three run bomb in the sixth inning, which tied the MLB record for homers in consecutive home games. (By the way, it’s 32 straight home games with a Dodger dinger.) Kenley Jansen gets the save.
Red Sox 3, Yankees 5 – Scouts: When it rains is pours, as the Red Sox drop another disappointing loss, and now sit at 6-13 on the season as frustrations and anger mount. To make matters worse, they had to watch Brett Gardner crack his 100th home run, a Grand Slam in the 7th that evaporated a 3-1 lead in a hurry.
Spiders 1, Mariners 0 – Prof: Cookie Carrasco, have yourself a day! Twelve Ks in seven innings and kept the lava-hot Mariners at day. Jake Bauers went 2-3 with the game winning run, a solo shot in the fifth inning.
Cubs 6, Marlins 0 – Prof: Cole Hamels is a beautiful, beautiful man, and pitched a beautiful game. Hamels went seven innings and struck out eight. Javy Baez continues to be one of the best players in the National League and was the Cubs’ offense leader.
Astros 1, Athletics 2 – Scouts: The day was all about Frankie Montas who struck out 6 over 6.1, allowing just a single run on 3 hits. Montas shut down a red hot Astros squad who snapped a 10 game winning streak.
Fan Interference 
Not gonna argue strong bullpens are better than weak nor will I argue the Braves front office was correct in standing pat. However, not every organization which sets out to build a solid bull pen can make it work, even when spending obscene amounts (see the Rockhead off season of 2017-2018). It’s an uncommon reliever who performs at a dependably high level over consecutive seasons. This year’s boffo performance is often followed by multi-level, sun baked horse manure, to coin a phrase. The pre-Tony LaRussa regime at Arizona had a run of success signing relief pitchers on the cheap who’d stunk it up the pervious season and rewarded the D Backs with bounce back performances. Maybe in spite of advanced analytics the “bounce back” phenomenon for relief pitchers has been overlooked?
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I agree, and I’m not looking for O’Ventbrel v.2.0, but one move to get a proven relief pitcher would have been better than nothing. Example – Greg Holland was available during the off-season and I think only cost $3 mil? Last year’s ‘pen was also an issue in Atlanta, and to have done nothing to address and just kind of hope and pray it gets better puts the team at a disadvantage.
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You are correcto on every point. Greg Holland, speaking of former layered, baked in the sun manure relievers, who’ve turned into ice zombies…
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I’ve never watched a single second of GoT. I’ve also never watched a single second of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Walking Dead or Mad Men.
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I watched a lot of Sopranos mainly to enjoy James Gandolfini’s performance as Tony, but that’s about it and I wasn’t really obsessed with it as so many others were.
I think the last TV series I watched faithfully was Sea Hunt. Once I breached adolescence, I realized there was too much world out there to spend my one shot at it glued to the idiot box.
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If I watched every show a friend told me I needed to see, I’d spend my entire life watching TV.
That being said, my favorite TV show has always been and will continue to be Mystery Science Theater 3000. I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore but I always make time for Mike, Joel, Jonah and the Bots.
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Breaking Bad is another one I’ve started a few times and never could get much past season 1 before losing interest. Also gave up on Walking Dead around season 3 or 4. I did enjoy The Sporanos, but mostly because Gandolfini absolutely knocked it out of the park. Mad Men also bored me after a few seasons.
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I’ve seen lots of ads about Game and Mad but never actually watched an episode. I did enjoy Breaking Bad. I saw someone me of the Sopranos and thought he was a selfish idiot.
Walking dead, man, I found that to be the worst excuse for a TV show I’ve ever seen. Why is there so much machete killing? It seems a simple concept to DONT GO TO CLOSE TO THE ZOMBIES. And how do 65 zombies get within a few feet while protagonists kill another? 10 seconds ago there was one zombie per square mile, suddenly 16 are reaching out from a yard away!
Walking dead was just dead to me.
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Or maybe I just identify “walking dead” with “LAA”
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Unlike Sparty, I’ve watched every episode of GoT, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Mad Men. Watched every episode of The Wire, and Deadwood, too, but gave up on Walking Dead a few seasons back.
I’ll be keeping HBO (and Showtime) after GoT ends, because they still produce TV that I want to see, and TV is a primary form of decompression for me, so…
In other news, yeah, the Nats’ bullpen made things too interesting last night; part of the problem is poor performance, and part of it is poor handling of the pen, and both were on display last night.
Things were fine through eight innings. Jeremy Hellickson pitched a workmanlike 5 2/3, Matt Grace finished the 6th (on one pitch), Wander Suero pitched 1 2/3, and Spring Training Sensation Austen Williams finished the 8th, and it’s here that things started to go sideways.
Because it was 4-2 Nats in the top of the 8th, Sean Doolittle started to prepare to enter the game, both mentally and physically. In the bottom of the 8th, the Nats broke it open with a three run homer from Matt Adams and a two run shot from Kurt Suzuki, leaving the score 9-2 headed to the top of the 9th.
Now, it’s no longer a save situation, so as a manager, you’re faced with several choices:
.
Davey Martinez chose poorly; he left Williams in, and the Giants promptly scored four on two two-run homers.
At this point, the bullpen becomes a hive of frantic activity, with righty Kyle Barraclough and lefty Sean Doolittle warming, and it’s 9-6, and the Giants have a lefty, a righty, and two lefties due up. Barraclough’s warmer, so he’s brought in to face the lefty, and he gets him out, but then Davey goes and gets him to bring in Doolittle, because reasons. Doolittle said afterward that he was physically fine, but perhaps not mentally prepared, and so he gave up a hit and a walk on the way to getting the last two outs, and everyone exhaled.
I’m not sure who’s gonna get fired first here – Martinez for poor bullpen management, or Rizzo for poor bullpen construction, but my goodness the ineptitude in DC extends far beyond our elected officials.
8-8, Patrick Corbin pitching today as the Nats try to win the series and finish their homestand at 3-3. After this, they head to Miami, where they can compare Strange Attractors for the weekend.
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Everything you need to know about the Nats’ bullpen, in one tweet:
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The Feesh offense has lately been the kind of comatose from which stricken parents keep insisting they’ve had signs of recognition. It is possible that with advanced treatments like hyperbaric chambers and electroshock Jar Jar, Beep Beep and the Carpetbagger might be able to get this team drooling on its own again. Shut out for the fifth time and swept for the third time in this less than three week old season, the Feesh now lay in the gelatinous puddle of themselves in the crawlspace of the NL East at 4-15. Sole owners of the worst record in Beisbol, they have five sub-Mendoza position players.
This team is so boring that if you watch an entire game, you stay bored until the middle of the next day.
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Well, I didn’t think the Astros would go 142-0 the rest of the way. Time to settle in for the long haul.
As to Game of Thrones, I have inadvertently seen some episodes for being around when people were watching. I think Peter Dinklage is a very compelling talent as an actor. Otherwise I don’t have much to say.
I really haven’t liked George RR Martin since I regularly read science fiction back in the 1970’s. He either steals all his ideas or comes off as unbearably mawkish.
Once upon a time, though, I did enjoy Mad Men.
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Never watched GoT, although I did read the first few books before getting bored. Never watched Mad Men, nor The Sopranos, nor Walking Dead, nor Breaking Bad, nor much of any series in recent years (decades). When I’m in front of the TV, I am either watching a movie, some sporting event, a documentary or something on Discovery or History Channel. I never was a big TV watcher, and I think the last ongoing show that I watched on a semi-regular basis was MAS*H or maybe Star Trek: TNG. I don’t ever recall having to rush home because “my show is coming on”. (Also never watched Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld, Friends, Survivor, and the list goes on and on…)
Also never watched the Jays lose last night to Happy’s boys, but they are beating them right now. And I did see the highlight of Vlad Jr. belting a ball right out of the whole friggin’ park in Pawtucket. Damn!
And by the way Prof, you need to get off the fence, stop being so wishy-washy and tell us how you REALLY feel about the Barves’ bullpen. 🙂
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Barving out of control out here, Jays!!! :p
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I never watched The Apprentice.
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That’s why the basement filled up with water.
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