Strange But True Baseball, the Tulo Miss, Machado, and Other Bullets

The Littlest Girl decided to feed me some Cheerios this morning, which was hilarious and awesome and sweet. The only catch? One of the Cheerios she fed me had been stashed away in her mouth for an undetermined length of time before she retrieved its squishy remains and thrust it into my mouth. VIVA PARENTHOOD!

  • If you missed it overnight, Troy Tulowitzki did not choose the Cubs, and instead is headed to the Yankees. It’s hard to be TOO upset about missing out on a total flyer with very low odds of a meaningful contribution, but the fit was just right for the Cubs, and it also would have provided additional cover for the team to deal Addison Russell. Alas.
  • One of the best articles of the year every year, as Jayson Stark looks at the strange but true feats of the 2018 season:
  • The literal first thing mentioned in the entire column? “So​ what was​ so Strange But​ True about baseball​ in​ the​ year​​ 2018? Well, a guy got hurt taking off his pants!” Yeah, that’d be Cubs closer Brandon Morrow.
  • The other Cubs mention in the piece was this … balk?
  • The Cubs didn’t really have a ton of can-you-believe-that-happened weirdness this year, but I think David Bote’s two-out, two-strike, pinch-hit, down-three, walk-off grand slam coulda been in there. As near as I can find, that is the first time that particular group of bits has happened in the last 40 years (there were six pinch-hit, down-three, walk-off grand slams before Bote, but the ones before 1979, I can’t determine if they were with two outs AND two strikes). So it was extremely historic, and possibly the first ever.
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  • Among my favorites in the Stark piece full of dozens of ’em: Adrian Beltre stole one base – and exactly one base – for the eight straight season.
  • And how about this absurdity:
  • “Ready for the fascinating box-score lines of Astros rookie Framber Valdez in his first two big-league starts? They’ll look slightly familiar.

    Aug. 26: 5 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K.
    Aug. 31: 5 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K.

    We kid you not. He had exactly the same line in the first two starts of his career! Did you know there have been approximately 92,000 games started in the 2000s – by almost 1,600 different pitchers? And everyone not named Framber Valdez compiled as many 5-2-1-1-3-3 lines (two) as our man Framber unfurled just in the first two big-league starts he ever made.”

  • This is art:
  • I still think the Yankees are going to sign Manny Machado, regardless of Miguel Andujar’s presence and the Troy Tulowitzki signing. Machado himself sent people into a tizzy by briefly following the YES Network on Instagram and then quickly unfollowing. (Even that, though, I wouldn’t take as a sign – he could simply want to follow them for mentions of himself, regardless of where he expects to sign.)
  • (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

  • Most people are expecting Machado to make a decision soon-ish, as his market wound up being somewhat limited – in the final stages – to only the Yankees, White Sox, and Phillies.
  • Purdue superfan, Cubs fan, and – most importantly – the embodiment of a perfect message, Tyler Trent has passed away. Thank you to him and to his family that he shared so much with all of us in his time here:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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