Masterbather

The only chance I really see for Vladdy is if he goes ballistic in the three-game series against the Yankees because the eyes of the baseball world will be on that series. Not that they're not paying attention now but everyone will actually be watching those games. Ohtani also has to remain relatively cool until the end.

I think that's what necessitated the gamble on Berrios. We might lose a Cy Young and MVP caliber player in a division that's not going to get any easier. This could very well be the best team we will have for years. When you have a chance to win, you have to take it and not just assume you'll keep coming back to this point. The young players are going to start to get expensive real fast also. Winning windows can be fleeting.

Houston is in the mix. White Sox still tough with that rotation. Hopefully Baz doesn't become a late season Bat Out Of Hell secret weapon for them because I think we might be better than Tampa right now. Red Sox are still potentially terrifying when healthy.

7 games left against Seattle and 6 games left against Houston. They probably have to go at least 9-4 or maybe even 10-3 if 92 wins is the golden number. That's going to be real tough.

Melvin's insistence on him at a time when your margin for error is nearly gone is shameful. His team escaped...this time.

Yep. Horrible.

Montas was cruising at 87 pitches and Bob Melvin went all Kevin Cash and pulled him. At least Cash had a good bullpen. A's don't.

September 11...we will never forget.

Holy crap I can't believe the last 7 days actually happened.

The white flag has been waved.

Montoyo is lousy, but this middle relief is unmanageable, choke artists up and down, even the guys that are pretty good find a way to choke when the screws get too tight. No balls whatsoever among them. We can't bridge to the closer; the bridge is a blazing inferno.

On first blush it looks like a broken leg, but there's no way he walks off the field even with a limp, so maybe it isn't as bad as it looks, maybe that's just wishful thinking. I was initially concerned about the achilles, all things considered I would take a break over the achilles.

Just saw a still photo of Springer's landing, nauseating, I don't think ankles are supposed to bend like that.

West coast road trips. Can't figure out if I hate them more than visits to the Trop.

LA series concerns me. I've seen it a lot of times after an emotionally draining series at home, a team goes out on the road, especially going out west, and comes out flat to start. That would not be good considering we have two games in that first day, with our fifth and sixth starters. Considering that Ohtani is pitching the 4th game of that series, they really can't afford to come out flat. Walsh also expected back just in time for that series. Serious trap series vibes on this.

Mike Wilner tweets should be a bannabe offense, even if it is just to mock. He doesn't deserve the honor of being taken seriously enough to mock.

Leave him in Cleveland, give him a few hundred bucks for hotel and bus fare back to whereever the f*** he came from.

Going to his best arms in game 1 when Stripling was cruising was the first mistake, whatever I just watched in game 2 was simply incredible. Whether he did it out of sheer incompetence or to prove a point doesn't matter. I've always felt that people vastly overweigh the importance of managers, but this guy's really bad, he's really bad. The amount of dumb in his decision-making over the past couple of years is actually remarkable especially for somebody who gets paid to do it at the highest level. I generally do not call for the manager's head, but he needs to be gone. This team should not be barely above .500. Kicking away these winnable games in this division is killer.

I'd like to know the details of what he did before saying much. I think there is a difference between punishable behaviour and cancellable behaviour. This is the Blue Jays essentially cancelling Alomar. There are levels to bad behaviour and I'm curious to see where this goes. This is an incident that happened several years ago, I don't know what "several" means yet, but the bar on what is cancellable and what is punishable has changed mostly in the last couple. I'm not saying it's wrong to fire him, it's probably the right call, looks like he obviously did SOMETHING, but to try to erase him, I need to really know more. I will say that I don't pretend to love the people the athletes are, because I have no clue who the f*** these people are, I celebrate their accomplishments. I've never told myself that Alomar or anybody else was a saint. If we were to abandon every player that has ever portrayed objectionable behaviour towards women, or ever made a racist, sexist or homophobic comment, or more likely thousands of them, we should just burn the HOF to the ground and any mention or monuments those players have around baseball. It's tough to retroactively apply todays standards, even to just a few years ago because so much has changed and is changing regarding attitudes, norms and severity & breadth of punishments even if the rules and laws themselves have not really changed. I hope more details come out about this.

Might have relief potential if he ever gets some command. Given that consistent command is generally the toughest part of pitching, I'm not too optimistic. Dude is DOA pitching like this in the American League East. Jansen is intriguing though.

Yeah, I get the Martin connection, but I'm not prepared to sell out to that notion. I consider Liriano a big unknown in these playoffs. Quite frankly, he wasn't looking too hot in that game before he got plunked.

Given that the extra pitcher was insurance against Osuna's status, and Osuna does seem okay, I assume we put a position player (Pompey?) back on.

I'm starting to think Travis is made of glass. Hopefully Liriano's results come back clean. Still don't trust him as much as most people seem to. It's like everybody wants to forget his struggles for the vast majority of the season in favour of a few nice outings lately. Nonetheless, between him and Loup, I'll take my chances with him any day.

We don't know which David Price will show up either, so that's something of an unknown. I'm rooting hard for Cleveland, but that Sox lineup...damn.

They still might. They need two Wins out of Kluber (which is still unlikely) and a miracle somewhere else. Who knows, maybe the miracle is tonight?