The Little Girl – who you may recall had a fractured elbow earlier this year – has taken to wanting me to flip her constantly (like, the kind where the kiddo walks up your legs while you hold her hands, and then flips backwards like a very careful ninja). I can’t not indulge, because it makes her so happy, but man am I as careful as possible when I’m doing it. I can just see it now: Father of the Year Re-Fractures Daughter’s Elbow Being an Idiot.
(Be advised, she was cleared for all activities, so I’m not *actually* putting her at risk. I, of course, would never. I’m just a paranoid dad.)
This is a fascinating take from Eduardo Perez on what may have happened to Yu Darvish in the World Series. Perez thinks Darvish was tipping his pitches:
I have so many thoughts. First, I certainly believe Perez that this could have been an issue, especially when you consider how easily able the Astros were fouling pitches off – their timing against Darvish in both starts was perfect. That said, could a long-time professional pitcher really make THAT OBVIOUS of a tipping mistake in two starts in the World Series? He moved his hand in his glove when it was a breaking pitch, and he didn’t when it was a fastball? That’s just so obvious that you’d expect it to be caught almost immediately by the Dodgers. The other thing is that Darvish’s slider also plainly looked like crap. It didn’t have its normal ridiculous bite, and he couldn’t locate it down.
So, in the end, maybe it was a whole lot of things going against Darvish – and maybe that’s how an otherwise very good pitcher gets utterly blown up twice in a row. Like I said yesterday, I don’t think Darvish’s free agent stock will be destroyed by those two outings, but it’s going to be on every team’s mind during the pursuit, and could have an impact at the margins. If you missed it, MLBTR predicted Darvish to the Cubs this offseason on a six-year, $160 million deal. I don’t see them going to that level at this time for Darvish, but, as we’ve said for a while, I do think they’ll be involved in his free agency.
The Cubs are taking deposits on their ticket packs (kind of like mini season ticket selections), which seems to be designed as a new way to prevent the agony that often accompanies the virtual waiting room of trying to get the games you want. There are at least some details here:
And speaking of Cubs tickets/passes, your reminder about CubsCon:
Cubs + Disney = things:
Tony La Russa did not go without a big league job for long. The deposed top man in the Diamondbacks organization has moved on to a new special assistant gig with the Red Sox, where he’ll reunite with Dave Dombrowski for the first time in 30 years.
This is very random, but I saw mentions of it last night, and that sent me down a wormhole. Evan Gattis, now a world champion with the Astros, had an extremely unique route to the big leagues. I knew that, in general, but I had no idea just how unique and challenging – and how he quit baseball for so many years in his 20s, working a variety of jobs, and then picking the sport back up four years later … and roaring through the minors to the big leagues in just two minor league seasons. That’s freaking crazy.
Then again, Gattis once his a home run with just one hand, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he is so extremely unique.
Over at Baseball is Fun, Michael notes the positivity that the World Series helped engender in a city so badly damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
Miguel Sano is set to become a cyborg after the stress reaction in his shin never really got better last year. He’ll get a titanium rod surgically implanted in his leg, after which I can only assume other body parts will eventually be swapped out for mechanical improvements, yielding a new era of juiced results, and debates about whether it’s in the spirit of the game for a 53-year-old Alex Rodriguez to return to baseball with a literal robot torso.
This factoid is indeed absurd, and I immediately want to know how it would look for baseball:
Here’s a very similar baseball fact:
That’s a lot of pressure on Dave Martinez to keep it up!
As Michael went on to note, the Cubs *WOULD* have been way on top of that list for a while, but for the fact that they lost their season opener to the Cardinals this year, ending their streak. (Remember that game? The Randal Grichuk walk-off, the Javy Baez losing the ball in the advertisement behind home plate?)
So many Deals of the Day at Amazon today, including a bluetooth scale, chainsaws, and fancy teeth whitening kits. The refurbished Echo Dot for $35 catches my eye, though. We were shuffling piano music on ours yesterday, and it turns out it is fun to try to quickly identify modern hits when they are played only on piano. The Family never had a chance when ‘Karma Police’ came on. Also, that made me look up a video for the piano version of that song, and my goodness, this looks extremely impressive to play, because you’ve gotta do all the music, while also “playing” the vocals, too.
NEWSLETTER
