It's That Old-School Prestigious Way of Baseball [BASEBALL]

[El_Josharino]

(Standard bitter all-star selection whining)

[El_Josharino]

But seriously, Wade Miley getting in over Greinke and McDonald is a fucking laugh.

[El_Josharino]

Although if it's anything like last year where half of each squad either backed out due to injury or being "tired", or the ridiculous thing where if a pitcher throws on the Sunday right before the all star game then he can't pitch the all star game and we ended up with 93 or whatever players being "all-stars" then everyone will eventually get in. They should just put up a sign up sheet in the locker rooms and players who want to be in just put their name on there. First come-first serve.

[El_Josharino]

Apparently Twins fans don't think Mauer should be in? Even though he's slashing .325/.416/.448? I don't understand you, Twins fans.

[davy]

Uggla?

[El_Josharino]

Eh, why not? Brandon Phillips and Aaron Hill are right there, and having close to/possibly better seasons than Uggla, but they're all pretty close. That's about all there is to choose from in the NL as far as 2B, though.

[El_Josharino]

Sandoval over Wright at 3rd is an abomination, though.

[El_Josharino]

Whoa, just noticed this: Top 5 NL outfielders per WAR:
Ryan Braun 3.9
Michael Bourn 3.9
Martin Prado 3.7
Andrew McCutchen 3.6
Jason Heyward 3.3

Dang, how about that Braves outfield.

Nice to see the top 5 rounded out by 2 of my other favorite dudes also. #6 is dumb Melky Cabrera, though.

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=of&stats=bat&lg=nl&qual=100&type=8&season=2012&month=0&season1=2012&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&players=0

[Thermofusion]

I'm more satisfied than I thought I'd be, but McDonald's absence demonstrates again that very few folks outside of Pittsburgh know how good he is. I thought A.J. Burnett deserved a look, too. He's 9-2 but his ERA is inflated because of one bad game he pitched in St. Louis a few months ago. He was sick with the flu at the time.

If I were a Braves fan I'd be pretty satisfied with having a infielder start for the NL team. Had no idea their outfield was playing that well. The NL East is crazy this year, huh? I should start paying more attention to it.

[davy]

Gahhh, Braves are getting depressing again.

[Thermofusion]

As the Buccos get life-affirming... could Sid Bream's Curse finally be unraveling?

[Thermofusion]

Man all indications are that the Bucs are about to send down Tabata and call up Starling Marte, who's hitting .409/.435/.818 in his last ten AAA starts. Still has young-player plate discipline issues but damn if this isn't an exciting time to be on the Buccos bandboat.

[El_Josharino]

I've heard Marte is crazy athletic and probably should be a center fielder but they have no intention of moving McCutch so he'll have to settle at a corner. With an outfield of Presley, McCutch, and Marte, batters will have to hope they can hit it over the fence if they plan on getting it out of the infield, because not much is going to drop in the outfield.

[Thermofusion]

They're calling up Gorkys Hernandez again instead. According to the Pirates beat writer, the front office likes to find out how a prospect will react if all indications are that he's about to be called up but someone else gets called up instead. The people who run the Pirates are a weird bunch.

Adorable .gif slideshow of Bucs teaching new guy Drew Sutton the Zoltan sign from the dugout

http://whyamiinseminary.tumblr.com/post/26157387669/after-doubling-in-his-first-at-bat-as-a-pirate

[El_Josharino]

The hell? That's so weird. Also weird: wanting Gorkys Hernandez on your big-league squad.

[Thermofusion]

It's kind of like conditioning a child to deal with disappointment. I suppose there's a logic to it when you haven't had a winning season since 1992.

[El_Josharino]

Is Starling Marte really dumb or completely lack any modicum of self-awareness or something? Is he honestly not aware that he's much much better than Gorkys Hernandez and that when the time comes that they want a good player then he's going to get lots and lots of both playing time and money? If he's genuinely not aware of this, then I guess that sort of makes sense...

[Thermofusion]

Read a little more on it, sounds like they're mainly trying to give Marte a few more games' experience playing right field in Indy, then call him up around the A-S break. Personally, I think it would make more sense to call Marte up NOW so the front office can monitor his batting and get a better idea of what they need to acquire at the trade deadline. I dunno. Do the Braves make as many confusing moves as the Bucs? I don't mention most of the weird things the Pirates brass does because they make inscrutable moves as often as I take shits.

[El_Josharino]

Yeah, I'm being a bit silly, but I think there's always some means of strategy behind teams making weird moves, whether it's service time, or preserving player options, or filling a temporary need, or trying to build up a player's value to make them more tradable, or who knows what other reasons. The Braves sent Kris Medlen down to AAA a few weeks ago to start some games and stretch out to become a starter. In the meantime, the bullpen struggled quite a bit, and when he was called back up they put him back in the pen instead of starting, even though Minor was still struggling in the rotation. And now we have Ben Sheets in AA.

[Thermofusion]

Holy shit, that Brewers guy? Or should I say, holy sheets *rimshot. That dude used to be really good, one of the Pirates' countless banes of existence back in those days.

Welp, nights like tonight are why I'm a baseball fan, basically. The Bucs have reached 8 games over .500 for the first time since the end of the 1992 season. McCutchen now has the best batting average in all of baseball, overtaking that funny-looking little roly-poly dude Carlos Ruiz (I mean I like that dude but he plays for the Phillies and gets a lot of cheap hits, so...)

The game tonight was pretty magical, a late comeback followed by a rare blown save capped by a walk-off homer from Drew Sutton, a journeyman minor leaguer who's mostly spent his career getting tossed around various farm squads. Gets his shot at big league glory and he takes advantage of it. It's worth watching if you like seeing guys like that make good, if only for one moment, one night. You have to think he'll remember a moment like that for the rest of his life. Also stick around for bonus clip of Garrett Jones destroying a ball earlier in the evening and quite literally knocking it out of the park.

"It's why we play the game, even guys like me who bounce around from team to team. Every once in a while, you get a little moment. You better enjoy it because you never know. You get up-and-down time in the big leagues, you try to stick with clubs. It makes it much more sweet when you do get here, you have moments like these. Make sure and bookmark them on the computer to look back at."

[Thermofusion]

Also what in the holy shit got into the White Sox tonight

[El_Josharino]

Whoa, Thermo, looks like our old friend Jerry Meals has learned a thing or two from his past misgivings:

http://deadspin.com/5924229/mlb-umpires-reverse-blown-call-world-does-not-collapse-on-itself

Good on him, I say.

[RavingLunatic]

I'll be rooting for your Pirates, Thermo. McCutcheon has got to be the NL MVP right now. Two more bombs today. Crazy.

Also, let's just reflect on this catch for a little while:
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=22644539&c_id=mlb&topic_id=vtp_must_c

Mike Trout is made out of magic.

That was so freaking great. You have to see it in slow motion to really get a sense of how incredible that catch was. And I love how he's not afraid to smile and celebrate after making an awesome play. So many guys act all stone-faced after making incredible plays. Come on. Have a little fun guys.

And Mike Trout has single-handedly saved my fantasy baseball team's season, so I have even more reason to love him.

There was a good article on Fangraphs--actually an article that Fangraphs linked to--about how the reason Trout may have been "overlooked" in the draft, being chosen 26th instead of at the very top like most super-prospects of his ilk are, is that he was very young for a high school senior, and at that age, six or seven months is a very big deal. This is what makes the fact that Bryce Harper--about a year younger than Trout--is hitting MLB pitching so well such an incredible feat. I thought it was dumb when the Nationals promoted him. He wasn't even hitting well in AAA, and he didn't hit very well there last year. I'm at a loss to explain how he is hitting MLB pitching so much better than he ever hit AAA pitching. Even Trout in 2011, at about the same age as Harper this year, couldn't hit for crap in the bigs. I think he was just above .200 in a pretty large sample of at bats. I still think Trout is a lot more fun to watch, but if I had to guess right now which one will have a higher career WAR, I'd have to go with Harper. Regardless, I think it's a very safe bet to say that over the next ten years, these two will easily be the most dominant players in their respective leagues.

[El_Josharino]

Whoa, Looney's all up ins.

One thing I think about Harper performing better in the bigs than at AAA, I think has to do with familiarity with his opponents. I read a story about how shortly after he was called up, his hitting coach was talking about an upcoming matchup against the Phillies and Roy Halladay. Harper said to the coach, "Yeah, don't worry about it, he's going to start me with a get-me-over curveball that starts inside and breaks toward the middle of the plate to get ahead in the count." Coach is like, "Wait, what?" Harper says, "Yeah, I've been watching him play for 10 years, I know what he's going to do." Sure enough, his only game against Halladay, he's 2-3 with a single and a triple that he crushed into the gap on a first pitch curveball. Dude does his homework, and there's so much info to get on active big-league pitchers vs minor league pitchers that he probably just knew a lot more of what he was up against in the bigs vs. the minors.

[Thermofusion]

Man I lasted about 20 minutes into ESPN's ridiculous, self-parodic Home Run Derby coverage before turning on some old Peter Ustinov movie instead

RL good to see you back around here, man! Word up on the Buccos, I am happier than I've been as a baseball fan in a long, long time and I'm just in for the ride. Would love to hear your take on Bobby V/Youkilis/pretty much anything Sox related.