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5:40 p.m.
LHP Steven Matz (0-5, 5.05) vs. RHP Ben Lively (1-2, 2.45)
BSM // KMOX
(and Bally Sports Southeast/Southwest)If you recall Matz was pitching pretty well at Riverfront when he had his injury last year. Hopefully he can do that again in this one.
On Wednesday I am making a trip to the Indiana Military Museum in Vincennes. My dear old dad has some of his WWII stuff in there. And I usually make a small donation when I am there. Then I am stopping at Memering’s Motorplex to check out the new Nissan Z car they finally received. Not interested in buying at this point since I just bought that new 2023 Ford Mustang last year around Christmas time.
Then on the way home I am stopping at the Gasthof, the Amish restaurant, for din din. Fried chicken, fish, roast beef, mashed potatoes/gravy, green beans, noodles, dressing, sweet tea, some cherry cobbler, and some vanilla soft serve ice cream.
Then home to take it easy for awhile and then tune into the game. Me and Whitey Herdog will be on the couch for this one. Along with a couple of cigars.
r/Esteemed Rat
Regarding the table setters displaying the ability to satisfy the appetites of the big bats, The Nootz, as is seemingly always, is flashing a nice OBP of .390 and Eddie now up to .337 and has now crossed HP 27 times with the vast majority of those runs scored while being placed down at the bottom of the order. Donovan has quietly climbed his way to an OBP of .333 and his glove’s been outstanding at any outpost in which he’s been ordered to report. Back to The Nootz…After scuffling for a few games, both of his base hits last night were of the clutch RBI variety. The first coming with 2 outs in the 4th to push Edman across from 3B and pick up Burleson who failed to get the RBI with a runner at 3B and 1 out. Nootz’ second RBI base hit again pushed Edman across, this time from 2B with 1 out in the 9th to stretch the lead to 3, which loomed more than large as witnessed by the drama we saw in the home half of the 9th. At any rate, the table setters are now affording the Redbird manager with numerous options at the top of the order, so possibly after witnessing Goldy’s 2 solo taters (8 of his 9 HR’s have come with the bases empty) he’ll at last understand that it’s past high time to place him in the 3 slot where he obviously belongs.
I’d also be way out of order and entirely unfair if I didn’t acknowledge the resurging presence of Paul DeJong whom I’ve placed a very substantial amount of criticism in the past. Whether or not there’s been an occurence of a genuine resurrection still remains to be seen, but the facts are that he’s now appeared in 25 games in which he’s collected 96 PA’s, and not only is he generating some really nice production, but he’s doing it in a manner that features more consistency than I’ve seen him display for possibly his entire career. In those 25 games and 96 PA’s he’s featuring a .291 BA, 8 HR’s, 18 RBI’s and 21 runs scored to go along with an outstanding .371 OBP and .987 OPS. I’ll reserve the right to hold off from signing him up to that multi year extension for another 25 games or so, but those numbers are no joke…Haha!
Hard to believe another 4 games and a third of the season will be placed in the books. At any rate, it’s looking a whole lot better than it was just a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t having anything that looked like too much fun…Haha!
Man, I like to eat good, but I’m not sure I belong in the same league as our honorable, voracious, and highly esteemed, Rats. However, I once knew a guy who claimed that every day for breakfast he’d have 3 eggs over easy along with 2 cups of strong black coffee and a chicken…I thought that was pretty impressive…Haha!
I’m not at all attempting to minimize this season’s SP’ing woes, but insofar as hot and cold bats, I’m sure everyone’s seen the same concept as it would apply to pitching arms. Bling’s comment made me think of a season during the Vern Rapp era in which 3 or maybe even 4 members of the rotation (Pretty sure it was a 5-man at the time) flashed W/L records that were really lusterous looking at right around the 50 game juncture. I seem to recall that Forsch, Denny, Rasmussen and maybe even Falcone all featured W/L records that were in the area of 5-0, 6-2, 4-1, or thereabouts and I think Forsch may have collected around 7 W’s at that point in the season to lead both leagues in that pitching W’s category. I looked it up and Forsch collected 20 W’s in ’77, so that may have been the season and he was probably the pitcher who led the league in W’s at that time. At any rate, I recall thinking we were really going places that season, but the baseball laws of average, as they almost always will, caught up with the SP’ers and the team and they all imploded. They finished 3rd in the old NL East in that ’77 season with a respectable 83-79 record, but in the following ’78 season, really suffered a tailspin. Vern told Al to get a shave and a haircut, Al didn’t like it, Jack reported it to the public, and old Vern was sent packing…Haha! So, maybe the current rotation can benefit from a sort of inverse law of baseball average effect, but I’m not going to bet my portable radio on it…
It seems like OliMo and the wonks are learning to live with what we’ve got. We’re winning with same crummy rotation we were losing with before. I see it panning out similar to last season. Mo will scrape up reinforcements when the time comes and we will roll on into post season. Then hope to be hot enough and lucky enough to compete with better rosters.
Yeah, maybe the baseball laws of average will intercede on our behalf and we won’t get bounced in the first round this time. And although things are looking up, still a long way from even knowing if Johnny will have a practical reason or cause to search out a conscript or two to hold off the Huns, much less roll on in there to the post-season.
Well, we’ve got a classic Matz/Lively pitching match-up for tonight’s game at GAB. They should have saved that one for right around dusk on the 4th of July…I hope little Eddie continues stepping in from the right side if he faces Lively, but seeing how he’s 14 for his last 30, he’s probably “scheduled for a day off anyway” and won’t even be in the line-up…I can live with that as long as Goldy’s in the 3 slot, but he won’t be.
1. Lars Nootbaar (L) CF
2. Paul Goldschmidt (R) DH
3. Nolan Gorman (L) 2B
4. Nolan Arenado (R) 3B
5. Willson Contreras (R) C
6. Brendan Donovan (L) 1B
7. Tommy Edman (S) SS
8. Alec Burleson (L) LF
9. Oscar Mercado (R) RFOne thing I don’t get about this configuration and we’ve seen this before. Why not have Donovan in LF and Burleson at 1B? Burly played a lot of 1B in college. I assume he’s adequate there. And Donovan is a major step up to Burleson in LF.
I have this feeling Burleson is going to have a big night at the plate. I just hope the Reds don’t hit the ball very hard at him in left.
I had been thinking about the fact that we have an actual center fielder on the roster in Mercado, yet Noot is still there. It would be natural enough to have Mercado in CF and Noot back in RF. That may tell us all we need to know about Carlson’s future.
Why not have Donovan in LF and Burleson at 1B? Burly played a lot of 1B in college.
This is a good question I think. Wonder if they have considered it?
Of course, it wasn’t too many years ago when Jose Martinez showed everybody that playing 1B is really hard to do, just like the OF.
Gotta ride the Big O for as long as is possible. He hasn’t even drawn a BB yet. The BA and OBP are both set in stone at .500…Just for old times sake, I keyed in “The Big O” expecting to get the latest low-down on who I think was the all time greatest point guard in the history of not only the NBA, but also in the history of the game, and I was channeled into something termed a “Japanese Mecha-Anime” television series…Haha! Times sure do change. At any rate, Oscar Robertson, at the age of 84, is still with us and the former CIN Royal/MIL Buck known as “The Big O” could do it all on the hardwood.
PDJ ends his consecutive starts at 15. Try typing “we will miss his bat”, it ain’t easy 🙄
PDJ last 7 days:
7 GS
27 PA’s
7 hits (2 singles, 1 dbl, 4 HR’s)
11 rbi
.304 / .407 / .870 / 1.277 / 243 ops+
.250 BAbipHey, Euro, thanks for heads up on the available MLB.TV packages. I checked them out, but decided to hold off on squeezing the proverbial trigger. I may well change my mind again if the Redbirds revert back to the pattern we saw prior to about 2 weeks ago and have no chance somewhere around the deadline. I’ll then probably feel the need to mollify and pacify myself with some O’s baseball action…Haha!
Yeah, he’s been no joke, jj. I felt obliged to offer up an acknowledgement/admission earlier in this thread.
As others have pointed out the OF defensive alignment is mystifying. That is probably the politest way I can put it.
I’ve been wondering that too. But who would they bring up instead? He’s probably as good as anything until Carlson or O’Neill is ready.
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