Category: MLB

The Latest News on Dustin Pedroia is the Darkest Yet

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ESPN – His name was written in pen on a sign over his locker. His Boston jerseys neatly dangled inside on hangers. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia was back with the Red Sox — if only for a quick visit. He hobbled through the clubhouse Tuesday on crutches, his surgically repaired left knee on the mend.

Pedroia really doesn’t think about hitting so much these days as simply not hurting. He’s hoping the latest surgery on his troublesome knee allows him to throw batting practice with his kids pain-free one day. That’s really the extent of the plans for the 36-year-old Pedroia, who has been limited to nine games over the past two seasons.

Still, he wanted to drop by just to chat with his teammates as they opened a two-game interleague series at Coors Field against the Colorado Rockies. Earlier this month, doctors removed bone spurs and performed a knee joint preservation procedure in Vail, Colorado.

Taking the field again? For now, that’s down the priority list.

“It would be nice to not hurt first,” said Pedroia, who has fond memories of Coors Field given that’s where the Red Sox clinched the 2007 World Series. “One step at a time. Hopefully, it works out.”

Before we get into the blog its my responsibility to remind everyone that Manny Machado is a dirtbag whenever discussing Dustin Pedroia. Moving on.

I don’t think many of us necessarily *expected* Dustin Pedroia to play baseball again, but this is probably the nail in the coffin. It sounds like he’s accepted the fact that he’s done and its probably time, but it doesn’t make it any less sad. I’ve held out hope that Pedroia would be able to return to at least a part-time role with the team. That is until I heard Jerry Remy (11 knee surgeries) talking earlier this year about a conversation he had with Pedroia and their shared knee issues.

He asked me, ‘Are there certain surfaces you have problems walking on?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, some hard surfaces.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a floor in my house that I have to have changed because it bothers me.’

Remy added, “At the end of my career, I couldn’t move any more. I knew going to spring training I was done.

‘’I haven’t seen that much of Pedroia in the field this year. I saw him dive for a ball the other day and he wasn’t even close to it. But he turned some double plays. So you can’t make that judgement yet.

“But this is discouraging. Mentally, it’s very difficult to go through. It’s all you think about.’’

Dave Dombrowski basically told us Pedroia was done way back in 2017 when he said this knee injury was something Pedroia would have to monitor “for the rest of his career.” Pedroia then got a knee surgery he was pretty hesitant to get and the Red Sox publicly said the second baseman would be back in 7 months. Pedey returned in May 2018 before going back on the DL in June after just 3 games. Then in July 2018 Pedroia started dropping some pretty startling quotes about how he simply cannot risk coming back too early. Here’s what I wrote at the time.

That is scary. That sounds like a guy who is seriously concerned about his ability to recover from an injury. Forget returning to previous form, that is a guy who sounds like he might be done entirely…the days of Dustin Pedroia as your starting second baseman may be gone. Because when healthy, Pedroia can still absolutely mash and is one of the toughest outs in baseball, but therein lies the problem; Pedroia is rarely healthy anymore.

Pedroia was back for Spring Training and we were all pretty excited here at The 300s as No. 15 was ready to go for Opening Day…but only played 6 games before going back on the IL. He publicly stated that his knee “will never heal” back in May and shut down his rehab in an emotional press conference. I was convinced he was going to announce his retirement, but it seems like he wanted to take some time off and give it one more go.

Things sound a lot more myopic now though as this pretty dark update on Pedey dropped the other day. Despite playing in just 9 games in his last 2 seasons, he’s due to make $13M in 2020 and $12M in 2021 before becoming a free agent at 37-years-old. Here’s to hoping Pedroia can at the very least get healthy enough to enjoy his life and then maybe think about playing some ball again, but it seems like that goal is a distant second at this point.

Red Sox Ticket Prices Are Now Comically Low

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Catch the fever! Tickets to September Red Sox games are going for $6 bucks online right now. That is mental. You can get in tonight for $6, tomorrow for $7 and you can even get into Red Sox Yankees Sunday Night Baseball for $18.

I remember being a kid in the early 2000s and you couldn’t get into a Sox Yanks game for less than a bill. The first thing I did every April was sign up for the Red Sox/Yankees ticket lottery just to get a shot at those tickets for a decent price. Granted the Red Sox are 15 games out of first place in the AL East and 5.5 back of the second Wild Card spot. So as I said to a couple New Yorkers busting my balls over the weekend, we’re getting to the point in the Red Sox season where its almost Patriots season.

What a difference a year makes. Last September the Sox were just crushing teams en route to the World Series and I had no problem staying up til 3 am watching a 7 hour 18-inning game. Hell, I was in freaking Buffalo for work during the ALDS so I had to watch the Sox-Yankees in some Buffalo dive bar and I was more than happy to do it. Now? I’m not exactly racing home to watch David Price give up 5 runs in 5 innings and then opine about how his stuff felt good.

But, if I’m being a glass half full guy, which I know so many of you look to me for my optimism, I could at least expand my bobblehead collection two-fold for less than $20 in the next week.

Just shut everyone down, punt on 2019, make some moves in the winter, and come back with your heads screwed on in 2020. We’re done here.

Joe Torre is Looking to Take Some Fun Out of Major League Baseball

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NY Post – There never has been more information available when it comes to arguments with umpires, players and managers — and Joe Torre isn’t thrilled with that fact in his role as MLB disciplinarian.

“That’s a little concerning,’’ said Torre, the former Yankees manager and now the league’s chief baseball officer, a job which includes overseeing on-field discipline and umpiring. “You take what you can get, but it wasn’t supposed to be that clear. It shouldn’t happen.”

The preponderance of that information has become more common lately, as microphones have picked up what’s said on the field, leaving little to the imagination. Torre will take the information, but he’d rather it wasn’t available to anyone with a Twitter account.

“That’s not the way I want to hear it, for everybody else to hear it,’’ Torre said Tuesday at Yankee Stadium. “I wish I could hear it, only. It makes it easy to make my decision.”

Typical, typical baseball. God forbid we let the managers and players have any type of personality. Between the Aaron Boone “savages” rant this year and the epic confrontation between Terry Collins and umpire Tom Hallion that resurfaced last year, we’ve got two viral clips that had everyone on social media actually talking about baseball in a positive way.

What’s the harm in letting these clips go public? The umpires’ reputation? Do a better job and you won’t get berated. They already are shielded enough, as only a select pool reporter from the media can even talk to an umpire after the game.

I’d even argue that in the Hallion/Collins confrontation, I gained a better respect for why Hallion and the umpires did what they did (we also of course got the famous “ass in the jackpot line.) Hallion seemed composed and calmly explained that they were directed 

So while ratings are down and games routinely go past the four-hour mark, perhaps Joe Torre and the rest of Major League Baseball should lighten up and just embrace little moments like these. 

P.S. I’m sure Joe is glad the mics weren’t hot for this confrontation.

Dread It, Run From It, Pirates’ Joe Musgrove’s Infinity Gauntlet Glove Arrives All the Same

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Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same.

Despite having all 6 Infinity Stones at their disposal, Joe Musgrove and the Pirates are still in last place and 13 games out of the playoffs.

This is an A+ glove design though and just goes to show how much more exposure MLB could gain amongst younger viewers if they just lightened up a little bit. Obviously this glove would never fly in a real game, but Musgrove was allowed to break it out for Players Weekend. Normally Players Weekend is basically just an excuse for the MLB to act like a couple wild and crazy guys…

…by putting nicknames on the back of team jerseys.

That is of course unless you are a humorless stiff who hates fun like the Yankees’ Brett Gardner, who simply put “Gardner” on the back of his Players Weekend jersey.

He’s probably a fun guy to talk to at parties.

Anyways, if MLB would relax some of its stuffier rules, let players express themselves, and oh maybe chill out with the Gestapo social media policy that takes down every video that makes its way onto the internet, then they would be on to something. I will say, as bad as MLB is at social media, no one is worse than FIFA. I’ve only gotten two C&D’s in my Twitter career and they both came from FIFA after tweeting out videos of players scoring and celebrating. The horror.

 

RIP 2019 Boston Red Sox

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Well, that was the worst stretch of baseball since the ol’ Bobby Valentine days. After 8 straight losses to the Yankees and Rays, the Sox season is effectively over. We’re now 14.5 games back of the Yankees and 6.5 games back of the Rays. Our only hope of making the playoffs would be to catch the Rays, but considering they just swept us for only the second time in their history and in doing so became the first team to win 8 games at Fenway in a single season since before the Apollo moon landing, that’s it. We’re finished.

A lot of people were surprised when the Sox didn’t make any moves at the deadline, and will hence blame Dave Dombrowski for this missed opportunity. For anyone with even the slightest interest in this team, it’s clear this pitching staff needs help. While everyone around us improved, Dombrowski stood pat. Although he is far from the genius he seems to fancy himself, I honestly don’t have much of a problem with it, and I’ll tell you why.

If your employees do something really well, you pay them for it. If, after you start paying them well, they suddenly stop doing the job well, do you just bail them out and bring in someone else? Do you continue to drive up your personal costs just because the people you know to be good at what they do suddenly stop being effective? No. You either fire them or make them clean up their own damn mess. And since I don’t expect anyone to be fired during the season, there’s only one option. This dumpster fire of a week only solidifies that mindset for me.

I like to imagine I’m Porcello and the Sox pitching staff is the TVs.


Before getting all riled up about how bad our pitching is, let’s first talk about something positive. I’ve seen many people, including some here at The 300s, talking about how this season has been awful. It really hasn’t been ALL bad. Our offense is fantastic. We currently rank first in all of baseball in Runs, Hits, Doubles, Batting Average and RBI’s, second in Total Bases and On-Base Percentage, fourth in Slugging and OPS, and eighth in Home Runs. That’s pretty damn impressive. Just ask Rick Porcello, who’s been getting record run support over the last month or so.

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Chris Sale wasn’t happy with the umps against the Yankees yesterday, but he has bigger problems to worry about.

Now for the bad….I don’t buy the notion submitted by Boston sports radio that our bullpen is the biggest problem. The bullpen sucks, don’t get me wrong. But our current rotation of Sale (4.68 ERA), Price (4.36), Porcello (5.74), Rodriguez (4.19) and Cashner (6.94 with Boston) is making $80 million this year, Eovaldi (6.66) is making $17 million, and…oh yeah, Sale signed a $145 million contract extension to start the season. The salaries of those six pitchers is more than the entire payroll of the Athletics, Orioles, Pirates, White Sox, Marlins, and Rays. Two of those teams are ahead of us in the Wild Card race right now.

For further proof that our starters are the issue, look no further than this week. Starting with the Rays series, the starters allowed 4, 6, 7, 4, 8, 3 and 7 runs. They didn’t make it out of the fifth during five of those starts, and the dude who gave up that lowly 3 number only pitched 3 innings. That means during this 8-game stretch, our starters have a combined ERA of over 10!!! That’s beyond atrocious. It’s hard to win games when you’re constantly coming from behind, and it’s even harder when the people getting paid to be the best are the ones digging you those holes. No offense in the history of the league could keep up with that level of terrible.

Sounding optimistic, Dombrowski still believes…or so he says.

So when it all comes down to it, I’m with Dombrowski, if not necessarily with the reasoning he gave in his post-deadline press conferences. Either pitch better or miss the playoffs, but we’re not sacrificing future talent for only a minor piece to the puzzle. After all, Andrew Cashner was pitching quite well before coming here and look what he’s done. We don’t need to win every year, and since I know this team is capable of playing championship ball they can figure it out themselves. If that doesn’t happen, I’d expect Dana LeVangie to be looking for a job come winter time and a major shakeup of the pitching staff. If we do miss the playoffs, fine. It’ll be Patriots season by then anyway…..ugh. I need a drink.

Oakland A’s Sign a Fan After Seeing Him Throwing HEAT in Stadium Speed Pitch Challenge

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USA Today – Baseball fan Nathan Patterson lit up the speed-pitch radar booth at Coors Field a few weeks ago while attending a game with his brother. Now, he has signed a contract with a Major League Baseball team.

Patterson casually threw a 96-mph fastball at a Colorado Rockies game July 15, and on Thursday, the Oakland A’s made his dream come true as the 23-year-old signed a contract with the club.

The backstory makes Patterson’s journey even more epic. He played high school baseball but never pursued it in college, but he started taking baseball seriously again last August. He originally caught the A’s attention at a Nashville Sounds game (the team’s Triple-A affiliate at the time) when he threw 96 mph there as well…He was injured in a car accident in December and needed surgery. But Patterson was resilient, kept training and stayed sharp in a rec league.

This is literally a movie plot except if you tried to get this made they’d laugh you out the fucking door saying we already made this movie.

As much as the hater in me wants to knock a guy for falling ass backwards into a major league contract (and he’s clearly over the line)…

Despite all that, you can’t lie this is impressive AF. You ever try one of those speed pitch radar booths at a game? Incredibly humbling. Everyone likes to think they’re just a tick below a professional athlete (“yea well I played varsity my senior year in high school but wanted to focus on my studies in college”) until you get in front of the radar gun and can barely top 60 mph. Thats not even fast enough to be considered a knuckleballer in the pros so for you to be crow hopping and blowing out a shoulder just to hit 62 mph ain’t gonna cut it.

So props to this guy for coming out of the clouds to earn a contract with the A’s and, at least for a little while, getting out of the rate race that is cube life.

Rick Porcello Hulk Smashed a Couple TVs Last Night

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So I was minding my business, half heartedly watching the Red Sox game last night. I stepped away for a few minutes and I come back to see the Sox down 5-0 as Eck and Dave O’Brien are discussing how Rick Porcello just Hulk Smashed two TVs in the dugout.

If thats not a microcosm for this entire letdown of a season then I don’t know what is.

I also had a similar reaction to Porcello when I heard that Dave Dombrowski didn’t do a goddamn thing at the trade deadline AND had the balls to say teams were calling HIM about Red Sox relievers.

I said the same exact thing after last year’s incredible run to the World Series, while this is all great, I worry it will embolden Dombrowksi to make zero improvements to the bullpen again in 2019. And thats exactly what he did. Let Kimbrel walk, let Joe Kelly walk, basically hoped Matt Barnes (6 blown saves and 4+ ERA), Steven Wright (injured again), Tyler Thornburg (released), or Ryan Braser (demoted to Pawtucket) would somehow morph into a major league closer. With the backup plan currently being to take the guy you just gave an $67.5M contract to be a starter and throwing him in to join the Closer by Committee gang. Hey, it may work like it did last year or it may flame out spectacularly with the defending World Series champs outright missing the playoffs.

Smash away, Rick. Smash away.

Reds Pitcher Amir Garrett Started a BRAWL and Yasiel Puig (Who Had Just Been Traded) Was Ready to Throw Hands

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Yasiel Puig can drink from my canteen anytime. The dude just got traded so he technically wasn’t even on the Reds anymore yet he was still ready to throw hands.

Since we’re in the trust tree I’ll admit that the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve soured on baseball fights. It’s usually a bunch of dudes who’ve never thrown a punch in their lives just throwing their gloves at each other and flailing away. Last season’s Joe Kelly brawl was the exception.

But, THIS was different. So when an actual fight breaks out with haymakers being thrown, all started by a pitcher literally turning into Leroy Jenkins, I am all the way in.

Hell even the managers got into the mix and ended up getting tackled to the ground.

Reds manager David Bell (who was previously ejected) had been wrestled to the ground by Pirates hitting coach Rick Eckstein after charging Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle, and nobody seemed convinced that this drama was actually over at all.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it sparks up again. We don’t take lightly to what happened tonight and the way that they acted,” Bucs starter Joe Musgrove said. “The guy that’s running their team over there is the ringleader. You saw him come out and go right after our manager after being ejected. Who knows what’s going to happen down the line, but we definitely expect something to happen at some point. We’ll be ready for it.”

Also, shoutout to this cop who said fuck this I do not get paid enough to break up fights between millionaires, let them sort it out.

If baseball is going to thrive despite its pacing problem, length of games, umpire debates etc. etc. then some legitimate brewhahas couldn’t hurt to drum up excitement. Hell it was the 15 year anniversary the other day of my favorite baseball fight: A-Rod vs Tek

 

The Indians’ Trevor Bauer Had a GLORIOUS Meltdown on the Mound

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Just an A+ flip out by Trevor Bauer who lost his shit and decided to just launch the ball OVER the center field wall before getting yanked. Part of me loves how much he cares about losing and another part of me wants to rip him for being a gigantic baby. I remember one time in my softball league we were playing this team of jacked, roided out 5’8″ dudes and we were really taking them to the shed. Well after a long night of getting their doors blown off this one guy strikes out and proceeds to scream at the top of his lungs and literally fires his bat into the woods. It was like watching a train wreck, it was superb.

The only thing funnier than Bauer’s meltdown was Terry Francona’s reaction.

“What the FUCK is wrong with you?”

For a guy like Francona, who has been around baseball his entire life and has seen it all, over to have a genuine reaction like that was laugh out loud funny. This is a guy who publicly defended Mark Bellhorn for 6 months straight so needless to say you don’t normally get this honest of a response from a major league manager.

Good Humor Has Unofficially Put Me in Charge of Bringing Back Bubble Play

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There are few things I love more than America, Baseball, and Ice Cream. My family sure, but to be honest it’s kind of close. There’s nothing better than sitting at a game in the midst of summer, watching your favorite team take down a rival while you soak up the sun and snack on a delicious frozen treat. Years back, there existed something that encompassed all three of the key components I named above. I’m talking about Good Humor’s Bubble Play. 

I’ll pause to let you reflect as your taste buds take you back to a time of euphoric delights, a staple of the youth of every millennial child from sea to shining sea.

Bubble Play was the perfect summer treat, straight from the ice cream truck circling your neighborhood after you just got done running through the sprinkler. Unfortunately, it’s been years since it’s been available and the world was never the same. Some say the current political climate is due to the lack of Bubble Play, but that’s neither here nor there. 

But what if I told you, we had a chance to restore our summers to former greatness?

Good Humor has proposed to me that I come up with a plan to revive Bubble Play.

The only thing that millennials are better at than making great social media campaigns is reviving products of yesteryear. So I ask you, please use the hashtag #BringBackBubblePlay and show Good Humor just how much you love and miss Bubble Play, and maybe, just maybe, we can save the summers yet to come.

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