The Official 2023 MLB Season Thread

[m0nkey]

Rays got him for a then 23 year old pitcher who didn't even last half a season with the Cleveland system and has a 5.00 ERA in AA with Milwaukee this year.

 

Hopefully he doesn't end up like the last top infield prospect.

 

[m0nkey]

Ronald Acuna hit his 40th homer, becomes a member of the 40/40 (and 50, and 60, maybe 70) club

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

Mets are eliminated.  Suck it, Eppler!

 

[khouse]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/09/marlins-claim-matt-moore-from-guardians.html

 

1:35pm: The Marlins have claimed left-hander Matt Moore off waivers from the Guardians, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. It’s the second waiver claim in recent weeks for Moore, who just went from the Angels to the Guardians at the end of August. He won’t be eligible to play in the postseason for the Marlins but will give their bullpen a boost for the final weeks of the regular season.

Moore, 34, has had an up-and-down career as a starting pitching but recently underwent a bullpen renaissance. He posted a 1.95 earned run average with the Rangers last year and parlayed that into a one-year, $7.55MM contract with the Angels. His ERA has ticked up a bit this year, but is still quite good at 2.77. He’s striking out 28.5% of opponents and walking just 7%.

He’s now set to join his third club of the year, which says more about his teams than anything he is doing. The Angels hovered around contention through the summer and decided to go for it at the deadline, holding onto Shohei Ohtani as well as giving up prospects for players like Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López and others. But they then suffered a miserable August, losing both games and players. They fell back in the standings as Mike Trout was unable to get healthy in the wake of his hamate surgery, while Ohtani suffered a tear of his ulnar collateral ligament that kept him from pitching.

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

Yankees, Cobain, Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Winehouse, Jones

I never get tired of this song.

[jsnpritchett]

Anyone else do the Immaculate Grid today?  Thought I'd post it here, since the Angels are one of the categories.  This is mine, with no help from searching B-Ref:

[m0nkey]

3 hours ago, jsnpritchett said:

Anyone else do the Immaculate Grid today?  Thought I'd post it here, since the Angels are one of the categories.  This is mine, with no help from searching B-Ref:

I love when the Angels are on there

[jsnpritchett]

8 minutes ago, m0nkey said:

I love when the Angels are on there

Nice!  You need to bone up on your White Sox history!  Ha ha.

[Taylor]

What is the Immaculate Grid?

[jsnpritchett]

3 minutes ago, Taylor said:

What is the Immaculate Grid?

https://www.immaculategrid.com/

There's one for baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and hockey.  3X3 grid and the goal is to pick a player in each of the 9 squares that meets the requirements--so in today's grid, you'd try to guess someone who played for both the Angels and Blue Jays, someone who won a Gold Glove with the Angels, someone who stole 30+ bases in a season while playing with the Dodgers, etc.

You get 9 tries, so if you get all of them correct, it's an "immaculate grid."  The % next to each player is a measure of the percentage of people who used that player in that square today.  You're given a "rarity score" after you're done, which is just all the % added up.  The lower, the better, obviously.  After you're done or give up, you can click a button that says "Show summary" and it'll give you a link to all possible options for each square, plus the most popular guesses, and the distribution of how many people got how many squares correct.

[jsnpritchett]

 

 

[Angels 1961]

Sign Snell plus Padres cutting payroll trade for Juan Soto. Add few pieces to BP healthy Trout and Rendon, bring back Scioscia. 

[Chico]

On 9/13/2023 at 9:00 PM, Chico said:

I was looking at team hitting stats in MLB this year at the 145 game mark and was wondering where the Angels stood on homers and striking out.

Angels are fourth in MLB in homers with 209 in 146g. (Braves are #1 with 288, far ahead of the rest and will certainly be the only team to top 300HR over a full season)

With strikeouts, the Angels are fifth highest in MLB at 1,346. (Twins at the top with 1,488). There is not one team with under 1,000 strikeouts in 146 games.

I looked further to compare the game with MLB in 1980 and found that the top HR team was the Brewers with 203 (the least was the Mets with 61 homers all year) and the top team that struck out the most was the Cubs with 912. The team with the least amount of strikeouts was Texas with 589. All in 162 games. 

Not one team got over 203 HRs and not one team had over 1,000 strikeouts. 

I guess they really do swing for the fences more, and they strike out a ton more. It's tiring to watch the HR/SO parade.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/team

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1980.shtml

Just a bit of a follow-up on my above post concerning the all or nothing HR or strikeout trend in MLB. I was watching clips of Barry Bonds before and after steroids. Before, he had a wiry, sinewy build. He looked like a normal athlete, no odd, jacked-up proprtions. After, his shoulders looked twice the width, not to mention the rest of his physique filling out to almost weightlifter size. Not to mention the change of appearance of his head.

When I see guys slug the ball for a HR now, I do notice a majority have the Bonds-like physique, the larger-than-life look with the big, wide shoulders and the sculpted torso. Like Ohtani...

Could there be a new Steroid Era happening right in front of our eyes without us knowing it that is being enabled by the corrupt Manfred? HRs do get the asses in the seats and the Steroid Era was the most financially successful era of baseball when it happened during the McGwire-Sosa era... 

[jsnpritchett]

I had my best Immaculate Grid today, with 6 of the 9 under a 1% rarity rate, including my all-time low of 0.008% for Dave Sisler. 

[m0nkey]

Don’t know what set Neris off but I love it. Good old fashioned “rivalry” feel

 

 

[Ender]

2 hours ago, m0nkey said:

Don’t know what set Neris off but I love it. Good old fashioned “rivalry” feel

 

 

Nothing. Literally nothing set Neris off. He got a K. 

If someone did that to Trout or Ohtani I doubt you'd say the same. Neris is a bitch on a team full of cheats. 

I'm glad I reached the 5th stage of grief a few weeks ago with the Mariners though, today hurts a lot less than I thought it would. Hope someone destroys the Astros in the post. 

A true WINNER.

 

[jsnpritchett]

Acuna got his 70th stolen base tonight.  Crazy. 

[jsnpritchett]

This one was tailor-made for me, with the Angels and Braves both on here.

[Angels 1961]

Nice to see Yankees avoid a losing season. Last losing for them 1992. 

[happybat4]

Curt Schilling is a POS.

[Tank]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:54 PM, m0nkey said:

Don’t know what set Neris off but I love it. Good old fashioned “rivalry” feel

 

 

Neris looked like a complete tool doing this. 

[Duren, Duren]

Mariners come back to win in the bottom of the ninth, trailing 2 - 1. . Two outs and two strikes and Crawford gets a fat pitch with the bases loaded. Thanks to Chapmen doing an Estevez imitation and loading the bases and not getting an out. 

Still more drama. 

And interesting that Mariners broadcasters being affected by recency bias. Noting that Ohtani's been gone for nearly a month and MVP voters may be looking elsewhere. 

[Angels 1961]

Soon to be Ohtani's new team with walk off

[BTH]

Choke job by Chapman.

Hernandez almost bailed him out before piping one to Crawford

[m0nkey]

Don’t know how many people realize the Marlins are in the third wild card spot in the NL by 0.5 games (their game today got suspended in the ninth with them winning 2-1, so could be a full game) and they hold the tie breakers against the teams behind them. 
 

Would be cool to see them in the playoffs, that would be twice in 4 years they would have made it.

Meanwhile the Angels,