HumpLinks: Rescued By Rendon

PLAYOFFS

We saw this one coming, didn’t we? Stephen Strasburg vs. Justin Verlander. And Strasburg has been tracking towards a World Series Game 6 for more than a decade now.

Let’s begin with the good stuff. Anthony Rendon went bat shit crazy and exploded on Houston pitching of all sorts, fueling a 7-2 Nationals victory and delivering to us a Game 7 tonight. We’re talkin’ 3 for 4 with 5 RBI and 1 run scored. Adam Eaton and Juan Soto also homered. Justin Verlander nabbed yet another World Series “L”, making him the first dude in MLB history to start 7 WS games without a single W. Stephen Strasburg went 8 ¹⁄₃ innings and threw 104 pitches in his final outing of the season, giving up only 2 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks while striking out 7. Both those runs were given up in his first inning, and afterward he shut Houston down. This kind of thing leads to pitch tipping conspiracies because this is 2019 and these are the Astros.

Whatever, All told that was a total Washington Nationals thumping. And, yeah, Strasburg has been a post-season god.

Now for the even more interesting stuff. We had Alex Bregman violating one of them Unwritten Rules by carrying his bat to first base on his first inning home run. Pimping is not something done in inning #1. Lots of folks were pretty pissed about this. Some of them are former MLB players, such as Mike Napoli, and they let it be known. And some of them are current MLB players, such as Juan Soto, and they let it be known, too. While I may not be a fan of Unwritten Rules, I am totally a fan of a 20-year old kid owning a potential AL MVP that way. So things got chippy, and the Nationals came out on top.

Then we had a pretty funky call of interference in Nats’ shortstop Trea Turner. Technically, Turner was running in fair territory, not outside the line, and he did take out Yuli Gurriel’s glove on Brad Peacocks shitty throw. So although he was running a direct path he was not making use of the outside lane to avoid interference, which is why that lane exists. I can see why the call was made, even though I would not have allowed that call to stand if I were the plate ump. But holy hell if Nats Manager Dave Martinez was gonna take that sitting down. He got himself ejected. From a WS Game 6! Martinez probably watched this infamous WS play as a kid.....And the world chimed in here, too. It’s cool if Jose Altuve dos this but not Trea Turner?.....Josh Donaldson is going to get a call from Roger Goodell, just because it’s what the NFL does.....Joe Torre (looking unusually thin?) was right there afterwards to wallpaper over the whole thing.....Steve Phillips, a one-time MLB GM who knows the rules as well as Torre, knows better how the rules should be applied.

So we had a lot of fun last night. Too bad few have been watching....Because many feel it has been boring.

Tonight, though, we get a Mad Max on the mound for Washington, because Max Scherzer was ready to go as of last night. And over from the Astros dugout we get another Zack Greinke appearance. Win or lose the Astros are getting their money’s worth out of that Greinke trade with the Diamondbacks.

ANGELS - THE HAPPY STUFF (mostly)

One way to look at this Baseball America opinion of our franchise would be that we don’t do anything half-assed. We take it to the extreme!....Full article here if you have a sub..........

Trout Porn: This is simply mind blowing. Ok, so Trout is one of the Top 4 Position Player WAR machines over their first 3 seasons in MLB history. Cool enough, and not surprising at all. Just 3.5 WAR below the leader, Ted Williams....Now, scroll down to the question is asked what if you ignore Mike’s 4-game call-up in 2011? Holy shit...........Because, you know, THIS..........

Anaheim is looking into various options of publicly funding a stadium development/redevelopment............

BASEBALL

Time to start calculating the the deadlines. Options, qualifying offers, and Free Agency. The big names to look to be opting out are Stephen Strasburg, J.D. Martinez and Aroldis Chapman. Which would be shocking to me. Martinez already has more than $63 million coming his way over just the next 3 years, and as I mentioned earlier this week Strasburg is already lined up for $100 million over the next 4. Do you know how many FA’s got a new deal worth at least $20 million last offseason? Four: Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Patrick Corbin and Josh Donaldson. And Donaldson was a one-year deal. Gerrit Cole is gonna get such a contract, taking one team out of that market. Strasburg will be measured as a not-quite-Cole but should still get over $20MM, but he’s getting that anyway. Martinez? Still very good but not top-paid-player-on-your-roster good. Not unless you are a tanker, who won’t be doing that kind of contract anyway..........

Gerrit Cole is gonna get paid.............

Josh Donaldson might be getting paid, too, but paid to stay in Atlanta...........

The Brewers are probably going to go with a new logo. It’s the old logo. It’s always been a cute visual play on “M”. “B” and a mitt, but there is something about it that always rubbed me wrong. Something about trying too hard. But that’s just me.............The Padres are messin’ with their logo, too. It sells merch all over again..........

(h/t reddit) Here we scream RoboUmps. We are jaded. Fans of other sports think we got it best when it comes to officiating a game..........Fans of other sports are not watching Lance Barksdale..........

Not CC Sabathia, though. He wants RoboUmps now that he is a spectator and no longer to be victimized by them!...........

I’m gonna put this out there about RoboUmps, because I am now seeing other fans with doubts. You young’ins mark these words. Long after I am gone there will be people measuring the park factors of the strike zone technology much like has been going on with the baseballs. It will not be uniform and that will open doors to conspiracy theories, especially during playoffs. MLB will say the very same things then about the tech in use and smart people will be saying the very same things about the official lying going on. And players will have the very same complaints............

(h/t UniWatch) Baseball keeping track of historical artifacts is taken very, very seriously..........

Things are changing in Boston. New GM Chaim Bloom brings the TB Rays baggage with him. Possibly seeing the Red Sox lean into the use of an Opener is one is one of the items in that baggage..........Gutting the payroll and calling that “sustainable” is another. In htis latter link, Calcaterra is correct. That’s MLB-speak for “we don’t want to be paying a lot for players anymore”. As Calcaterra points out, the Red Sox have had a sustained run of success while paying a lot anyway. Perhaps the more proper POV is that previous GM Dave Dombrowski went all in one last time and burned the farm system while he did it. Burning the farm system is the part that is not sustainable. But I find Bloom’s comments to be interesting in consideration of Boston, but of Tampa Bay. Perhaps Bloom just tipped his hand a bit and gave us some insight. Payroll restrictions might not have been a function of their market after all. Maybe it truly was intentional design...............

I should have taken a screen cap. I meander past Deadspin looking for baseball stuff every day. I do it so that you don’’t have to. They have been in a huge internal politics versus editorial battle all year, with the pro-politics employees losing to their ownership in leaps and bounds. So I went there yesterday and the landing page was a giant mess. Many old stories featured, and every one of them about politics. I kept surfing. And then I found out why. This is why we don’t take advantage of the gathering power of the Angels to allow us to go after one another over politics. There are thousands of other places to go for that, places where the community is well-educated and prepared for such debate. Management has since regained control over their site and put everything back to what would normally be expected.

STUFF

I worked hard not to be beer snob and make a snarky comment about Bud Light about this guy. Good thing, because the joke would have been on me. That event was worth $7.2 million in advertising. So, yeah, send the guy to the game...............This ain’t MLB, but there may be a college baseball player or two who might be impacted, someday. California has forced the NCAA to get busy on allowing players to make money off their own likenesses. So a tax-battling US Senator wants to tax any college kids who even try..............