runschallenge2k15-blog

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James and the Giant ERA

James Shields has never been an “ACE” in the traditional sense. He’s been to the All-Star game once, finished 3rd in the Cy Young Award once, and holds a career 3.78 ERA. Additionally, he’s only finished two seasons with more than 15 wins. Those are decent numbers. There are a number of pitchers that would be happy about that career. 

That career looks even better when you add the fact that Shields has brought in $49 million in the 10 years he’s been a Major League pitcher (not to mention the $58 million left on his contract).

What is alarming is that the White Sox, who on May 14th were five games up in the AL Central and are now sitting three games back and 4th of the division, thought James Shields could fix those woes. Woes may be a fairly optimistic reading of the last month for the White Sox as they’ve gone 4-18 and have dropped their last five in a row (including a three game sweep by divisional foes, the Tigers). 

The trade, which sent San Diego 17-year old minor leaguer Fernando Tatis Jr. and White Sox defunct pitcher, Erik Johnson, was a fairly good deal for the White Sox as the Padres ended up paying nearly half of his reaming salary to send Shields on his way. Shields made 44 starts for the Padres who will end up paying $48 million for just under one and a half years of service.

The White Sox, in hopes of stopping this quarter season slide were hoping Shields could boost the back side of their rotation behind Chris Sale (who has had a rough go the last couple starts, but started the season sterling) and Jose Quintana (who has certainly not been lights out). While the Padres were certainly shopping Shields around (see: above paragraph) his 2016 campaign (2-7 in 11 games) doesn’t offer much hope that he’d be able to turn it around on the South side. 

Enter Shields in his debut against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night and his abysmal line of 7 ER on 8 hits with 3 homeruns and 2 walks in 2.0 innings pitched. While his 31.50 ERA as a White Sox will assuredly go down he’s not off to a good start.

The White Sox hot start was fueled by good pitching and a steady stream of runs from a revamped offense. No one was doubting that they’d cool off come the heat of mid-summer, but I do the moves they are making to stay competitive very interesting. While Jame Shields is certainly not an ACE and may not be able to turn around this season, the White Sox got a pitcher who has proven to pitch over 200 innings a season and play competitive baseball. Unfortunately, for fans on the South Side, that may be as good as it gets this year.

James Shields raining sunflower seeds over David Price, his fellow Rays pitcher, who has also made an extraordinary amount of money since leaving Tampa (although boasts an All-Star appearance and a runner up in the AL Cy Young Award last year). What he really should have been doing is making it rain money because these dudes are getting paid.

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Stealing home and the in the park homerun are tied for my favorite things in baseball. Great quick read on why we don’t see it much anymore. 

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Week One A.B.A.F.C.W.

Well, it’s official. The money has been wired. I know last week I said that Blake F. (the F surprisingly doesn’t stand for fuccboi) didn’t want the money, but Blake loves craft beer and the only way to buy craft beer (legally) is to buy it with money. I hope those bills go to a whole bunch of Danerkino IPAs or some heady shit from Short’s and shit. Also, Blake works for the Feds.

To make all of this even more depressing the Orioles (yeah, you remember them? That was my team) were the only other team to finish TRC16 thus far. They finished in 52 games while it took the Cardinals 50 so there was no wiggle room to snake Blake out of his money. 

In that spirit, let’s start with this:

If you are still here I just want to let you know that I will be writing less emails and more tumblr posts. If you like baseball and jokes about Dettman driving Cadillacs you can keep up with the action by tuning in to: http://runschallenge2k15.tumblr.com/  Most of the emails will be copy and paste snippets of post throughout the week – think of them as the greatest hits of the week (or perhaps weeks). We will see how it all shakes out. If I ever want someone to give me money to write about baseball (and not expect it back like you people) I have to do it more frequently and with better jokes. Nonetheless, this has been me practicing once a week. If Bryce Harper practices once a week his Instagram feed would just be all photos of dank food that he eats...

If you compare that to mine, you’ll see that I’ll pretty much be an All-Star in time for the game in San Diego next month.

Okay, baseball...

The Orioles and Red Sox are going blow for blow atop the AL East as they split their series in Baltimore last week. Surprisingly, the Yankees are no longer the worse team in the division, but with the Rays just a half of game behind and Evan Longoria still hitting homeruns I wouldn’t expect it to last.

Another two weeks have gone by and the White Sox are again 2-8. After being swept by the Tigers they decided to go get James Shields, which is interesting because, you know, he gave up 12 earned runs over 8.2 innings in his last two starts and has won twice this year. Is it a reach? No, because the White Sox will do anything to stop this horrendous slide into oblivion that is the bottom of the AL Central. Not surprisingly, the Twins are still bad and have only the slightest edge (.005 of a percentage) over the worst team in baseball, the Braves.

The Rangers have established themselves in the AL West going four games up on the middling, again, Mariners. While the wily ‘Stros did climb their way from obscurity back to relative life they are still eight games back from the top of the division. According to Ken Giles, one of Houston’s closers, which is being done by a committee (read: mayhem and blown saves), said the ‘Stros are more talented than the Rangers. He also vowed to put them ‘into the ground’ in the final game of the three game stand. The ‘Stros have yet to beat the Rangers this year...so...there’s...that.

The Cubs are continuing their dominance over the league. Every Cub starter has an ERA under 3.00, which should need no explanation. While they aren’t on pace to break the 1906 season (yet) my preseason bet of them breaking said record and losing in the playoffs is still 100% in the picture. 

Here’s a comparison of the best and worst teams in baseball:

1. The Cubs have scored 303 runs and The Braves have scored 176 (1.7 times)

2. The Cubs have won 40 games and The Braves have won (2.5 times)

3. The Braves have losing streaks of nine, eight, five, four, and are currently on a five game streak. Meanwhile the Cubs’ longest streak was three, once, with two more instances of losing back to back. 

Since we are still talking about the Cubs, how about the fact that their run differential is +143 and the closest team is the Red Sox at +69. This run is exhausting and boring and amazing all at the same time. 

I don’t have anything to say about the Brewers besides the obvious and what I’ve been saying all season: kiss Ryan Braun and Jonathon Lucroy goodbye. Here’s every Brewers fan I know: 

“La la la la la la la la la Laaaa! I can’t hear you! Look at how happy I am!”

The Giants are putting space between them and the Clayton Kershaws for dominance of the NL West. It also looks like my darkhorse pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks is looking just plain silly. Sorry Kristen!

Holy! Runs!

There were some serious runs scored this week. The Rockies put of 17 runs (including 7 homeruns) against the Reds. They also scored 11 runs in two other games of the series at Coors field.  

The Mariners poured it on the Padres beating them 16-13 in a game where 36 hits were recorded and the Padres were up 12-2 at one point only to let up 14 runs in two innings. In the four-game stand in San Diego the Mariners put up 47 runs while giving up 26 and winning three of four.

Holy! Hits!

Mookie Betts had a three homerun game against the Orioles for the red hot Red Sox while Xander Bogaerts hit streak came to an end at 26. NL Rookie front runner, Corey Seager, also netted three homeruns while it seems like no else on the Dodgers is capable of hitting anything. 

HOME!RUNS!

Mark Trumbo: 19 / Nolan Arenado: 18 / Todd Frazier: 18

PITCHING!FACTS!

Giants’ Madison Bumgarner wants to take part in the All-Star Game Homerun Derby and I say, let it happen! This is the coolest pitching fact in weeks!

Jake Arrieta finally was served his first lost in 25 attempts by the lowly Diamondbacks.

Jose Fernandez is in the zone and has won his last eight starts with double digit strike outs in four of them.

CHEATERS!

Indians’ outfielder Marlon Byrd was suspended for 162 games for violating the MLB’s PED policy for the second time. As Byrd is 38, his career is essentially over. Hey! At least it ended with a bang!

A Phillies’s fan threw a bottle at Phillies one-time-first-baseman-current-PED-strungout-corpse Ryan Howard after he grounded out to end the game. Howard is batting .150, but that’s just not right! Now, why is this under cheating? Because no fan should ever treat a player like that. That’s not right. You don’t turn on a player on your team like that. If anything, you should throw your Bud Light Lime bottle at whatever the fuck this is:

Here’s a fun fact to keep you company this next week: in the 585 La Liga games that Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have played they’ve scored a combined 572 goals. So, if you ever thing you’ve accomplished something in life you can try again.

In case you were wondering, it’s After Blake And Fucking Cardinals Won

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Fuccboi Tears and Dreams Deferred

As we all know by now the St. Louis Cardinals are the winners of The Runs Challenge 2016, which we detailed is wrong for 75,832,419 reasons.

In addition, Glinski used his idiot savant tactics to clean my clock in fantasy.

Plus, I had no Budweiser on Memorial Day.

And I’m on my third outfit of the day.

You may think the world is coming to an end, but that’s just the Game of Thrones realm crashing with reality. Wasn’t it crazy how the aliens killed the dragons last week? #spoileralert As I was telling Eren at our Game of Thrones watch party I’m a little depressed by it all. First the Tigers, then the Runs, and now the dragoons. 

Just so I’m not the only one living in despair, here’s a list of teams that were damn close to taking Blake’s money:

San Francisco Golden Seals (Sean G.) – Needed 11

Cleveland Rockers (Samuel D.) – Needed 12

Seattle Supersonics (Lauren G.) - Needed 12

Boston Braves (Kristen M.) – Needed 12

Arizona Roadrunners (Chris P.) – Needed 13

Like all those teams, the dream picked up, moved away, and left you alone, sad, and miserable.

The Minnesota Twinkies (Eren K.) are officially worst team of TRC16. What a way to welcome the Turkish fans!

In OTHER NEWS Around the League–

George Springer hit a homerun into a funnel cake deep fryer. if I was waiting for my elephant ear and a ball fell into the deep fryer I would 100% reach in and take it out. No questions asked. No second thoughts. Skin grows back. Taking a homerun ball home with you (especially one with a deliciously repeatable tale) is legendary--a lifetime in the making.

What’s the difference between a funnel cake and an elephant ear? I HAD no idea, but in writing this I knew Dettman would fact check my shit (#nofactchecks Rapaport style!) and tell me that a funnel cake is fried batter while an elephant ear is fried dough. So there’s that. Don’t tell me I never did anything nice for you!

Chris Sale lost twice this week, which was good news because the White Sox losing a game is never a bad thing (how about losing 15 of the last 19 including 7 in a row!?!), but Sale would have become the first pitcher to win all 10 of his first 10 starts. As always, White Sox hate trumps history.  

Speaking of White Sox losing -- they were swept by the Royals over the weekend even though the Royals were trailing in the 7th inning in all three games. People were sleeping on the Royals before the season started and didn’t think they could run it back. Even though they got off to a mediocre start, they’ve slowly been building momentum and in true Royals fashion they’ve taken then AL Central Crown back, going 8-2 over the last two weeks.

Jackie Bradley Jr.’s hit streak came to an end at 29, which was exactly just over half of Joe DiMaggios, which we are currently in the midst of the 75th anniversary. JBJ’s teammate Xander Bogaerts currently has a 23-game streak going so we’ll probably forget JBJ because Xander Bogaerts is a waaayyyyy cooler name to say.

Matt Harvey won his first game ever last night (in reality he’s 4-7 on the year), which prompted a slew of “Dark Knight” headlines from the baseball media, which didn’t make any sense on so many levels. It’s hard to liken Matt Harvey to a super hero when he’s not even the most super hero-ish pitcher on his team:

Pirates pitchers, Arquimedes Caminero, hit two different Diamondback players in the head when his team was up 9-1. I’m all about staying aggressive, but you’d think you’d ease up on the inside stuff after the first head shot.

In typical Sunday fashion we had six extra innings of baseball over two games.

The Atlanta Braves, who are moving to a Northern Atlanta suburb to ensure the gentrification of their team, are sending their team from Turner Field in loads of awfulness as they’ve won five home games this entire season. 

The Yankees were able to beat the Rays 2-1 even though they only recorded one hit. 

Home!Runs! –  

Yoenis Céspedes: 15 / Robinson Cano: 15 / Mark Trumbo: 15 / Todd Frazier: 15

Pitching! Facts! –

No use talking about anyone else but Clayton Kershaw who now has 100 more strikeouts than he does walks. The next closest pitchers only have 90 strikeouts.

CHEATERS!-

The Mets/Dodgers rivalry is giving the Blue Jays/Rangers a run for their money after the Mets accused the Dodgers of cheating on defensive shifts including digging up parts of the outfield with their cleats. Dodgers left fielder, Howie Kendrick, was caught looking at a notecard kept in his back pocket that detailed each batter and how to shift. 

You know I also like to reserve some space in the cheaters section for wife beaters...Braves Hector Olivera was suspended for 82 games (half a season) for violating the domestic violence policy. Looks like he got his.

You know how the super club is always playing bangers at night when I write this? Well they just played my favorite Miley Cyrus song, Wrecking Ball, which reminded me of the greatest sports moment of the last five years:

I could watch that on repeat for eternity. To all a good day and a good night. Rollllllllllll Tiiiiiiiigggggersss!

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God is Dead. God Remains Dead. And The Cardinals Killed Him.

Sorry to hit you with all of this nihilistic dread so early in the morning of the Sabbath like this, but it seems that the Cardinals beat the Nationals last night to the tune of 9-4, which makes them the winners of The Runs Challenge -- 2016. Not going to lie, this is wrong on 75,832,419 reasons, which I will now outline for you:

1. - 75,832,418. The Cardinals fucking suck.

75,832,419. All of the joy I ever felt in this world is gone.

There are a couple things, I'd like to mention at the moment...

Blake F. is the owner of the Cardinals and a true believer in how bad the Cardinals suck. He told me that he can't, in his right mind, take the winnings for such a horrendous team so he is giving the money to the NEXT team who closes all of their runs...WHAT AN ÜBERMENSCH!

There were so many teams knocking on the door this last week...Seattle, Cleveland, and Boston all needed 12 while the Giants needed 11.

Once again the first team to T-Single Run Needed (Boston) lost for the third year in a row. 

And to rub salt bombs into my wounds it seems every time my fantasy team hits a homerun Glinski's team hits two. He's the Cronaldo to my Nando Torres. 

There is no justice in this world.

Thus Spoke The Baseball Gods, laughing as two boys laugh. I'll talk at you on Tuesday. Happy Memorial Day. Sorry Blake had to ruin it.

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Welcome Week 8!

We are officially past the quarter mark for the 2016 season and we are still playing the game! After this many games we can finally start coming down on some of those horrendous predictions we made. You’re right, it’s a long season, but some things aren’t shaping up as I imagined (see: Astros, Twins, and Blue Jays). And there have been some true winners of the first quarter of the season (see: WhiteSox, Orioles, and Phillies). Next week we will go into the full 30 (inshallah the Red Sox don’t win this week).

Before we jump in, let’s buy into that Giants even year World Series hype while there is still room on the bandwagon. They’ve gone 9-1 over the last 10 games in series sweeps over NL West foes The Diamondbacks and The Padres and winning two of three against the Cubs (how the mighty have fallen!). The Giants won the World Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014 – so they are due. A win in 2016, albeit early AF, would bring up talks of all time runs and dynasties and all of the other nasty bits of things we say about teams we don’t like.

There is one man/animal/thing standing in their way and that is Clayton Kershaw who, if regularly not human in the past, has turned full cyborg this year as he has posted a 1.48 ERA through ten starts including 95 Ks in addition to throwing three shutouts in the month of May. Chris Sale has been perfect when it comes to winning games (Kershaw has lost one with two no-decisions), but has pitched far fewer innings and has about 2/3 of the strikeouts. In my research I found that Clayton Kershaw was the last pitcher to win the NL Triple Crown (most wins, lowest ERA, and most strikeouts in a season) when he won in 2011. More insane was that Justin Verlander also won the AL triple crown the same year. It’s the only time that a triple crown was achieved in both leagues in the same year.

Luckily, The Giants have an A$E of their own in Johnny Cueto, who I wrote off after last year’s playoff run. You know the one where he won the World Series!

Alas, here are the Power Six with bias only rearing its head in GIF form. Enjoy!

1. The Boston Red Sox (Kristen M.) – Needs 12 – Again, this is just based off of recent activity, which saw the BoSox clip off quite a few games in a row. I talked to Kristen yesterday and her man asked her what team she had. At first she said The Yankees and quickly corrected herself. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which evil you are supposed to be cheering for. I feel your pain, it’s like the Runs Challenge is the 2016 Presidential election:

2. The St. Louis Cardinals (Blake F.) – Needs 9 – The Cards have a tough go at it this week with a stand against the Cubs and then head to the District of Columbia to play the Nationals. If all goes as plan they can shrink the Cubbies lead in the NL Central by half with a sweep. If all goes to reality they won’t win again until the next time you get an email. This guy is probably a Cardinals fan:

3. The Pittsburgh Pirates (Garrison F.) – Needs 0 and 13 – The Pirates have now gone 43 games without being shutout. Last year, the Blue Jays went 53 and then they ended up winning the damn thing so things are looking up for Garrison. Unfortunately for Garrison and the Pirates I can’t find the record for most consecutive games with at least one run scored by a team anywhere on the internets. Keep in mind, even if I did, it would have zero to no ramifications for The Runs Challenge. Alas, baseball gods! cure my curiosity! And this cat’s!:

4. The Arizona Diamondbacks (Chris P.) – Needs 8 and 13 – Not going to lie...didn’t have much to say about the Diamondbacks last week and not a whole lot to say this week. As I’m sure none of you remember (with maybe the exception of Matt K who had them last year) I ran out of things to say about the D-backs last year and I started posting videos of them winning the World Series in 2001. Since there are no Yankee fans here that doesn’t quite elicit the same response this year. Kristen, you are a Diamondbacks fan and currently on top of the Power Six, what in God’s name could I possibly say about the Diamondbacks? Greinke only gave up 10 earned runs in the month of May (he will pitch again), which is a lot less than the 22 he gave up in April. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Huuuuuuuuuugggggggg! Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!:

5. The San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) – Needs 10 and 11 – Glinski is on a tear right now. I’m talking about life and fantasy baseball. The Giants are the hottest team in baseball and while they haven’t closed any new RUNS categories in the month of May they are still here. In addition to that, Sean also crept his way into 2nd place in our league and has the joy of being vanquished by Ya Boy this week. Lastly, on the life front Juan successfully stopped smoking cigarettes for four day last week. Folks, some people curse the weekend. Here’s to your new life Sean...I see you!

6. The Cleveland Indians (Samuel D.) – Needs 11 and 12 – This was a tough choice for sixth because The Rangers are in the exact same position, but it came down to runs scored. I know, that’s how tech i’m getting with it kids––the triple tie breakers is Runs SCORED! It’s only by five so it’s not that much, plus the Indians were hot last week. I’m talkin’ real hot. Red hair, perfect amount of freckles, and hourglass shaped bae hot! KNOW WHAT I MEAN SAMMYBOY!!

Other teams in the hunt:

The Texsass Rangers (Brewer S.) – Needs 11 and 12

The Lost Angels Dodgers (Dettman) – Needs 11 and 13

The Bodymore Orioles (Cameron L.) – Needs 12 and 13

The Coolerado Rockies (Brandon L.) – Needs 12 and 13

The Skittle Mariners (Lauren G.) – Needs 12 and 13

You know what they say about FAMILY! SQUAD UP FAM! WE COMIN’ FOR YOU:

Teams hunting bucks with AKs in bow wolf season:

The Oakland A’s (Matty K.) and The Minnesota Twins (Eren K.) – Needs 9 through 13

The Philadelphia Phillies (Keyana G.) and Miami Marlins (Mary D.) – Need 8, 9 and 11 through 13

Never give up kids!

In OTHER NEWS around the League:

The biggest story in the league is Jackie Bradley Jr. (seriously, STILL a great baseball name even after hearing it incessantly) and his 27-game hitting streak. If you want to talk hitting streaks you have to talk about Joe DiMaggio’s 56 consecutive games, which happened 75 years ago. It’s on Wikipedia’s “Baseball Records Considered Unbreakable” page, so there’s that. If you think about it, JBJ isn’t even half way yet and it’s all anyone can talk about.

CC Sabathia has now won 100 games with two different teams (Indians and Yankees), putting him in league of dudes with really cool names (Grover Cleveland Alexander and Lefty Grove), modern legends (Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, and Greg Maddux), and two dudes who never won a Cy Young (Dennis Martinez and Mike Mussina).

The Texas Rangers want to build a new stadium that has a retractable roof because it turns out it’s hot in Texas during the summertime. The real outrage is that the current stadium is only 22 years old and the tax payers are expected to pay nearly $500 million for the new stadium, which is crazy because Texans are still paying for the Cowboys stadium down the street. Plus, I thought making tax payers pay for stadiums for teams owned by billionaires was unanimously decided to be culturally faux pas? Sports > Education & Healthcare. 

Took me so long to find this image. Back to baseball!

We had another Sunday with extra innings. There was only one game that went into extras, but boy was it worth it as the Dodgers beat the Padres in the 17th inning. In three games the Dodgers and Padres played 37 innings of baseball. That’s OVER four games for the price of three!

The Cubs have gone 5-7 and The WhiteSox have gone 4-8 in the last two weeks, which means that everything is right with the world again.

The Reds have gone 1-9, which means that it’s about time to call up the boss:

I also want to apologize to Mrs. Britta L. (Brewers) not for the fact that the Brewers didn’t close out a run last week, nor the fact that they are playing .400 baseball, nor the fact they are going to trade away their only producing assets before the deadline, but for the fact that I ruined the only good gag this blog had going for it and that was the funny otter GIFs. I don’t know if you like otters or find them to be large amphibious rodents, but if I had to root for the Brewers they might be the only thing that made me smile (besides the sausage race – I love that part of the game too!). Soooooo...forgive me...

And keep it 100!

Remember Giancarlo Stanton? He was the guy who hit four homeruns in one week and jumped into the top three homerun hitters a couple weeks ago. No? What about the guy who gets paid $27-million per year for the next 11 years? Still no? Well, what about the guy who had 13 hits in 75 plate appearances (.173 BA) in the month of May? That’s the Giancarlo Stanton you were thinking of!

HOME!RUNS!

Yoenis Céspedes: 15 / Nolan Arenado: 14 / Todd Frazier: 14

Céspedes has 32 homeruns in 97 games since he was traded to the Mets from the Tigers last year.

PITCHING!FACTS!

I’m not happy about this, but: 1. Clayton Kershaw 2. Chris Sale 3. Jake Arrieta 4. Noah Syndergaard 5. Johnny Cueto 

CHEATERS

As of Tuesday May 24th at 11:30pm Eastern European Time no one named David Ortiz has been accused of taking PEDs.

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This is really stupid but it’s great!

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Week 6.5

Holy shit Friends! Sorry I didn’t email you sooner, but I was getting my rocks off on vacation. Vacation you may say!? Isn’t your whole life a vacation? Well in a way yes absolutely (’cause I got the right attitude about it!) and now (I still do work, just not as much as you or what I used to). Needless to say, Reba wouldn’t let me take my computer with me because she was like all “Do you really want to walk around all day in Paris with a computer in your back pack as it rains and soaks your socks?” And I was like, “You are the best wife of all time, but I hate you for pragmatism.”

Needless to say I didn’t bring it and it made following baseball, let alone writing 18,000 words (whoa! just kidding!) about baseball really difficult. PLUS I missed out on Chance The Rapper’s new Mixtape Coloring Book, which was exactly as fire as I imagined it would be (”Same Drugs” may be my favorite rap song since “Family Business”). Fear not! I got the mixtape and i’m back at my writing desk in Istanbul and someone is blasting and i’m not exaggerating the term blasting Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car down the street.

1) Do they know that’s not a song you blast? No.

2) Are they Turkish? Odds are at 99.9%.

3) Does it kill? Absolutely 100%

Dettman I would love to see how shocked your face is now that you realized that your third favorite song is sung by a black lesbian woman that looks like she could be in Milli Vanilli. Sorry bro!

You may ask if I’m ever going to get to baseball? That is a valid question. I plan on it. In fact there was so much that happened I have to literally buckle in just to write this damn thing.

Two things of note:

#1. This shit could end at any moment. The Red Sox (Kristen M.) went on a tear the last 10 games (more on this later) and only have to close out 12, while the world’s worst team ever, The Cardinals (Blake F.), sucked their way to only needing to close out 9.

#2. I will never let you down and miss another self-imposed Tuesday deadline again.

#2a. The Oakland A’s (Matt K.) are still in last place.

#2EVERYTHING. Since my sister and my aunt brought me Tiger’s t-shirts (yes! two Tigers shirts) the Tiggers have not lost. I’m not saying, but I’m just saying. I know it was the Twins, but I guess I’m not saying!

The Power Six (with no bias even though all I want out of this life is to meet Michelle Obama, a puppy, and the Red Sux, White Sox, or Cardinals never to win this)

1. The Boston Red Sux (Kristen M.) – Needs 12 – The Ortiz boys were the first team to get to the exciting “I only need one more category and I win” stage. Unfortunately for Kristen, the last three years this hasn’t turned into a winning formula. Luckily for you, the Red Sox have lit shit up in the last 10 games (unfortunately The Orioles are keeping pace and the AL East is in a dead lock). There were four games last week where they scored double digits AND had 13 straight games with at least one home run AND a 24 hit-streak from Jackie Bradley Jr. (great baseball name!). This would be unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as...

2. The St. Louis Cardinals (Blake F.) – Needs 9 – When Blake sent me his money he attached a note that “Cardinals suck”. In a world of principle I would probably rank the Cardinals higher because 9 seems to be an easier total to hit than 12, but this isn’t a world of principle. It’s a world where Donald Trump is going to be president. Fuck the principles!

3. The Pittsburg Pirates (Garrison F.) – Needs 0 and 13 – The Pirates are now the only team that has not been shutout on offense this year. That’s 40 straight games with at least one run. That’s pretty incredible and luckily for Garrison that means that it’s only due time until the Pirates put up a goose egg and edge that much closer to winning this whole thang.

4. The San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) – Needs 10 and 11 – The Giants are the only team with a better record than the Red Sux and Orioles over the last 10 games by winning eight straight. While they’ve made some moves and distanced themselves in the NL West they haven’t made any progress on TRC. They’ve been winning primarily on the strength of their pitching and have only let in one run in five of their last six games. Hot Damn!

5. The Cleveland Indians (Samuel D.) – Needs 11 and 12 – Seriously where the Hell did the Indians come from? Probably the lowest level of hell for having a racist mascot and being from Cleveland. I had to look up who had the Indians because I literally haven’t thought about them in weeks, although I did rag on them pretty good and felt bad because SWD is literally a saint of a man. Ask Dettman! Ask Bennett Lang! Ask Reba! Ask Ricky! Ask Anyone! SWD is literally an angel of a man. Unfortunately, all that religious studies bullshit that you got a degree in as an undergrad ain’t gonna answer your Runs Challenge prayers Sam. You may have cracked the Power Six, but Hell or suicidal water that the Red Faces pull this off.

6. Arizona Diaondbacks (Chris P.) – Needs 8 and 13 – I could have chosen any of the Loftus children to put in this spot, but as my mother knows it’s too hard to choose between the three of us so it always defaults to me and I thought that might seem A BIT bias so I’m giving the sixth spot to Chris. He’s currently doing the same job I used to do, which means he’s a highly functioning alcoholic, overflowing with rage 20% of his time, and wishing he could disappear into a long fat joint 100% of the time. In reality, he’s a father of three who may have creaky bones, but probably a much better man than me (I’ll spot him the extra years of experience). The Diamondbacks are cold. I mean ICE COLD. I mean haven’t closed shit in three weeks cold. Enjoy it while it lasts old man!

Sidenote: Whatever club is throwing out all these bangers out down the street is a must stop after I pen this masterpiece. Rhianna song count at three in the last hour + Wiz “Young & Wild & Free” + “Fast Car” = WTF Istanbul WTF! This is better than Spotify Summer Jams At Da Club. So good an algorithm couldn’t even come up with this shit.

In OTHER NEWS Around the League:

Bryce Harper was ejected from a game for arguing the strike zone with the home plate umpire. Do note that the argued calls weren’t even during his at bat. After his ejection and the eventual winning walk-off from his teammate Harper stormed the field to celebrate, but not after he turned to the umpire and gave out a BIIIIIIGGG FAA---HAAA---CCCCCKK YAAAA-WHHOOOOOOOU! He was suspended for a game, which TOTALLY seems worth it to me.

The Marlins are proving they are the dumbest team in baseball. They hit a HR with a man on base, but only scored one run because of a base running mishap, which I’m pretty sure is the only rule in t-ball. Don’t lap the dude on base in front of you AND eat as many orange slices as you can before your dad comes to pick you up.

I don’t like to celebrate White Sox accomplishments, but Todd Frazier did hit a Grand Slammy in the 12th inning, which is always great for a baseball fan who doesn’t like to leave a game early even if it’s twice as long as it is supposed to be. Being loyal pays off. Remember that!

Lorenzo Cain had a BIG night at the plate hitting 3 HRs against the Yankees and they still lost. Obviously LoCain didn’t watch A New Hope enough times. You just gotta keep hitting the evil empire. Don’t let up!

Blue Jays lost to the Giants on a walk-off walk in the bottom of the 13th, which is super embarrassing.

Okay, we haven’t talked about it, but WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT! Did you see that Rangers/Blue Jays fight? That was gold. That was everything I’ve ever wanted out of baseball. That was entertainment so good that you’ll forgot about anyone who ever told you that baseball was boring. Not only was it a heat of the moment reaction, but it had long standing beef simmering below. It was retribution, retaliation, redemption, and despair all in the matter of two minutes. What in the world can do that these days besides a Trump gay-hispanic-sex scandal? Look at this punch (25 second mark):

So many things to mention:

1. No one ever lands a punch like this in baseball. Baseball is a sport where dudes pop up and beat their chests and posture like they are going to scuffle, but shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit don’t go down because it’s a gentlemen’s game

2. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW! You know it’s good if that’s all the dude on SportsCenter can muster.

3. How is José Bautista alive? Anyone who doesn’t take steroids would be dead after that punch and this dude is just standing looking like “WTF?”

4. Odor hit him so hard his necklace literally went all the way around his neck. Get some!

5. Odor was given FREE BBQ for life from a local Texan BBQ joint. WOOOOORRRTTHHHH ITTTTTTTTT!

This is the aftermath of still my favorite moment of the craziest playoff game from last season. The bat flip! (24 second mark):

For credibility sake I know how to embed vines, but isn’t the drama so much more if you see the lead up, the aftermath, the history. God what is there not to love about baseball! Okay we will stop talking about my favorite moment of baseball yet this season.

Khris Davis hit THREE HRs including his game ending GRAND SLAMMY in the bottom of the 9th against the Rangers. He then hit another homerun the next game making it four HRs in 24 hours.

The Rockies turned their second triple play of the season, which is extremely rare except that the White Sox did the same thing on the same night.

Fun Fact: The Braves have won 10 out of 40 games this season and each one of those wins was by a different pitcher. Did I say fun fact? I meant “Super-Depressing-For-Any-Braves-Fan” fact

HOME!RUNS! –

Nolan Arenado: 13 / Yoenis Céspedes: 13 / Six Different dudes: 12

PITCHING!FACTS! –

Max Scherzer struck out 20 Detroit Tigers batters, which is cool because you know I love Max Scherzer and I love the Detroit Tigers for re-signing him for $210 million!

Noah Syndergaard hit two home runs in one game, which is cool because you know he’s a pitcher and shit. Not only did he hit two HRs, but he also gave up two homeruns en route to a win.

Clayton Kershaw doing Clayton Kershaw things.

Tigers bullpen doing Tigers bullpen things

Chris Sale is the first pitcher to six wins, seven sins, eight wins, and nine wins.

Steven Strasburg got PAID this week (to the tune of $175 million) and he continues to be unbeaten. Sometimes it’s worth paying pitchers a lot of money...

Justin Verlander threw his 2,000 strikeout of his career against the Twins. Just another highlight of the Twins season!

CHEATERS! –

Royals top prospect Raul Mondesi suspended for 50 games for PED use. You know what they say, the only way to the top is to cheat your way to the top!

I guess you can’t call it cheating but Aroldis Chapman, closing pitcher for the Yankees, made his debut last week. He was suspended the first 30 games for beating the hell out of his wife, which is way worse than taking steroids or betting on baseball, but hey! I don’t make the rules.

[runschallenge2k15-blog]

Wake Me UP When the Tigers Win Next

Not going to lie. Real rough week. In fact so rough I didn’t even want to post this. Not only did I lose for the first time in fantasy (to add insult to injury I lost to Michael Dettman, which is the biggest slap in the face ever because Dettman is the world’s worst Twins fan and is terrible at fantasy), but the Tigers were swept by The Indians and The Rangers dropping six games and eradicating whatever momentum they had going for them last week (make it seven straight losses by the time of posting).

Luckily for everyone not concerned with my fantasy prowess or the Tigers collapse it was a good week in the Runs Challenge, primarily because no one won. The Pirates (Garrison F.) did inch a little closer and the lowly Cardinals (Blake F.) were the only team to close multiple RUNS totals (but still not good enough to crack the top six).

Unfortunately, that good news isn’t enough to counteract the other issues in baseball this week: primarily the White Sox owning the second best record in the MLB for the second straight week. 

I’m fucking eat my feelings in Paris tomorrow

This is the second week in a row that no runs total was closed on a Monday so these are good through May 9th and there is no clear and present bias.

1. The Pittsburgh Pirates (Garrison F.) – needs 0 and 13 – Not much has changed in the Power Six. The Pirates look as poised as ever to win this damn thing. The only shame is that they got swept by the streaking Cubbies last week. Amazingly the Pirates are two games above .500, but are still eight games behind the Cubs IRL. The best they can hope for is a wild card play-in game, which they’ve lost the last three years

2. The San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) – needs 10 and 11 – On any given week anyone can be on top of the NL West. It’s a tight race of essentially .500 ball. Additionally, if you had told me that three NL West teams would be in the Power Six for two weeks straight about five weeks ago I’d call you crazy. What’s really strange is that of the five teams only the Dodgers have a positive run differential (that means they’ve scored more runs than they’ve let up).

3. The Arizona Diamondbacks (Chris P.) – needs 8 and 13 – The D-backs went on a bit of a streak this weekend, which was good because they had lost six straight games prior to sweeping the league’s worst team in the Atlanta Braves (The Light of My Life–The Fire of My Loins). I think the rattlers will keep up the pace because they’ve gotten really shoddy production from both the pitching (Greinke and Miller) and the Jewish Saint Paul Goldschmidt.

4. The Baltimore Orioles (Cameron L.) – needs 12 and 13 – The O’s are surprisingly still on the top of the AL East. They have been getting really good offensive production as of late. On Sunday they scored 11 runs on six home runs, which is the complete opposite game that The Royals won the World Series with last year.

5. The Seattle Mariners (Lauren G.) – needs 12 and 13 – I’m not going to lie...I thought the Mariners were going to be decent, but no this good. The rotation help that they gave King Felix (who as of Monday is the most winning Mariners pitcher of all time) has really paid dividends. They have been beating up on fairly mediocre talent so I’m not willing to count out the Rangers or even the last place in the division Astros quite yet. 

6. The Colorado Rockies (Brandon L.) – needs 0, 12, and 13 – There are currently only three teams that have yet to be shut out this year. The Rockies, the aforementioned Pirates, and the lowly A’s (who I might add are in last place in The Runs Challenge). There are other teams that have yet to close three RUNS totals, but the Mile High Men seem capable as they do have the Super Smash Brothers (Trevor Story and Nolan Arenado). Man it’s good to see all of those Lofti still holding it down. Look Mama! We made it! #WhataTimeToBeAlive

In Other News Around the League–

Daniel Murphy of the Nationals (you may remember him from last year’s playoffs when he became the first player to hit a homerun in six straight post season games for the Mets) is the hottest hitter in the league last week. If Dusty Baker wasn’t using half his brain he’d move Murphy behind Harper in the battling order, but alas, Dusty really wanted to get swept by the Cubs.

The Astros (Dayna L.) scored 16 runs against the Twins on Wednesday. If only they could have dispersed all those extra runs around in different games they’d be a lot better in TRC and IRL.

The Blue Jays (Karissa H.) finally put up a double digit runs total for the year. A lot of people had the Blue Jays going to the World Series (read: Me) but they seem to be struggling. In fact, the Northmen are off to the exact start they had last year when they took a trip to the ALCS. 

The Rockies put up a whopping 17 RUNS against the Giants on Thursday. 13 of those runs came in the 5th inning in which EVERY Rockies player in the batting order recorded a hit. DAYUMMM!

On Friday, Big Papi was ejected from the Red Sux/Yankees game for arguing over a called strike three with the bases loaded in the 9th inning. That’s the Papi we want to see! So long to this nostalgia farewell tour bullshit!

The Brew Crew!! Knocked off the 13 RUN mark this week. Good job by you Mrs. Lang! Here’s ANOTHER sea otter, but this time doing his best Zach LaVine impersonation.

Seriously the talk of the week was Bartolo Colon hitting his first homerun of his career. At 42, he is the oldest player to ever hit their first career homerun. You know I like to have a little fun with Bartolo – I mean, who doesn’t? But dude getting SWOLL. Look at these exercises!

On Sunday, I had the joy of watching Tiger’s baseball, which is a real treat in Istanbul. JV was throwing fire for seven strong innings. Then I threw up all over my bed as the bullpen imploded and allowed Bobby Wilson, a player the Tigers traded to the Rangers last week, hit a fucking grand slam. Spent all day yesterday washing the bedroom and being on my wife’s permanent shitlist.

For three Sundays in a row there have been multiple games that have gone extra innings, which is a steal for baseball lovers. This week we had a total of a whole six extra innings of fun!

PITCHING!FACTS!

The Twins (Eren K.) of all teams snapped Astro’s pitcher, Dallas Keuchel’s, 17-game home winning streak.

Greinke snapped his six game losing streak by besting the league worst Braves. How many times do I have to talk about teams beating the Braves?

Do we have to talk about how bad David Price is every week?

Chris Sale is the first pitcher to seven wins this season, which would be fine by me IF he were on my fantasy team OR IF he didn’t pitch for the White Sox.

HOME!RUNS!

Nolan Arenado: 12 / Robinson Cano: 12 / Trevor Story: 11 / Yoenis Cespedes: 11 

Can we talk about my boy Ye-O making it a four homerun kindaweek! Looks like a CUBAN MISSLE CRISIS!

CHEATERS!

As of 11:00pm Eastern European Time on May 10th no White Sox players has tested positive for PEDs.

[runschallenge2k15-blog]

The Exciting Slothfulness of Week Four

Hello Guys and Dolls!

Hope you had aa good of a week as me and the Detroit Tigers did! There are a lot of people inching closer to the finish line, but the closer we get to the end harder it is to win.

There is a lot to cover this week from middle fingers, to PED doping, to a whole week of domination by one of the lowliest team in the league. Let’s start with some highlights from The Challenge. All of this is updated through Monday May 2nd, which was the first day that no RUN totals were closed.

Here Is A List of Teams That Didn’t Close Any RUNS Totals Last Week & A GIF:

Twins (Ehren K.) – I’ll admit, it’s much more fun to hate the Twins when their fans aren’t self-deprecating assholes who ALL chose the under of my 10.5 total wins for the season bet two weeks ago. Keep in mind that the Twins have currently won 8 games. So to all of the Twins fans who aren’t Twins fans anymore, you need to get over yourself because the Twins will finish with a better record than the 2003 Tigers:

Indians (Samuel D.) – I don’t think that anyone thought the Indians would get off to this slow of a start. Just last week their season looked twice as bright as it currently does. But it was an NFL draft week so the Sports Gods were shitting on Cleveland anyways so I guess they thought they might as well send the tribe on a skid as well. Looks like Cleveland sucks dude!

Rays (Tommy A.) – Tommy’s got a baby on the way and mad bills to pay that’s why his sips Tanqueray and watches the Rays and acts devilish and wishes he had the Cubs. Sorry Dude. Maybe you can try again next year for Baby Cameron’s college fund. And just to round this all out:

Athletics (Matt K.) – Now here’s a team that I never think about and that’s no offense to Matt, but 100% to the Athletics who’ve been so average and slightly below that I forgot they even played baseball. I hope this ends better than it started for you.

Pirates (Garrison F.) – Now the Pirates are here because they started the week with only three RUNS left to close. So, I can’t really make fun of them at all. In fact, I’m scared of the Pirates. Their pitching is about as suspect as I imagined it would be, but that outfield is top notch.

Cardinals (Blake F.) – Cardinals suck even Blake knows that.

Reds (Alex F.) – Fabiszewski has about a good of a chance of winning this challenge as Leicester had of winning the Premiere League.

Marlins (Mary D.) – The only headline the Marlins got this week had to do with cheating, which sucks because they actually put a nice run together last week by sweeping the Giants. Unfortunately for Mary and her Marlins, only weird shit ever comes out of Florida like bath salts and zombie cats:

The Power Six (brought to you unbiased this week from Views)

1. The Diamondbacks (Chris P.) needs 8 and 13 – They have not been winning many games lately, but they have closed two RUNS categories every week since we started, which means this may all be over by next week.

2. The Giants (Sean G.) needs 10 and 11 – I should have talked all that shit about the Giants last year. They are currently sitting atop the NL West, which is kind of in shambles with the top three teams playing .500 ball and within a game of each other.

3. The Orioles (Cameron L) needs 12 and 13 – Mama I made it! Big week for The Os who closed three – count ‘em three – RUNS totals. They did lose their lead in the AL East to the Red Sux who seem to have righted the ship, but still have questionable pitching.

4. The Pirates (Garrison F.) needs 0, 10, and 13 – The Pirates are holding it down in the NL Central behind the Cubbies. They have to close 0 still so it kind of looks like they will never win this thing.

5. The Rockies (Brandon L.) needs 0, 12, and 13 – Now you want to talk about scoring 0 how have the Rockies not been shut out this year? Because they’ve hit 39 HRs in 25 games. That’s a neat trick.

6. The Mariners (Lauren G.) needs 8, 12, and 13 – Yea the third and final Loftus child makes the top six. Deal with it suckers! We run this shit like Beyoncé runs the world. Tell Becky with the Good Hair to get in line and bow to the crown. TRC2k16 Run this.

In Other News Around the League:

Tyler Collins, Tigers outfielder, gave the Detroit fans the finger after they booed him for losing a fly ball in the lights. There have been a number of player and fan interactions like this over the years, but none better than Ted Williams who after giving the bird to the Boston fans told them that “they can fuck themselves, and you can quote me in all the papers.” What’s a California boy to do in Boston?

Hold on to your shit Keyana because the Phillies are the hottest team in baseball sweeping the Nationals and the Indians. Don’t worry they won’t win the RUNS challenge though!

Pirates’ Andrew McCluthersons hit three home runs on Tuesday night. 

The Cubs are off to the best start since 1907, which was the year after they lost the World Series after winning 116 games (still the best record in MLB history). The White Sox are off to the best start since they won the World Series in 2005. Nevermind.

The Mets scored 12 runs in the 3rd inning against the Giants on Friday.

On Sunday, The Braves (the worst team) beat The Cubs (the best team).

A-Rod is coming back to life and is hitting homeruns again and is giving us more classic shit like this:

PITCHING!FACTS!

FUCKING CHRIS SALE IS DOMINATING. I MISS THE OLD CHRIS SALE. THE GIVE UP HELLA RUNS CHRIS SALE. THE CAN’T GET OUT OF THE SIXTH INNING CHRIS SALE. THE GET MAD ALL THE TIME AND STORM OFF LIKE A BITCH CHRIS SALE. WHAT IF THE OLD CHRIS SALE SLAPPED THE NEW CHRIS SALE? 

Jake Arrieta’s quality start (6 innings with less than 3 runs) streak ended at 24 starts along with his 52.2 shutout innings at Writgly. He did win his 5th of the year though so I think he’ll be find.

David Price has won four of his starts, but is tied for the most earned runs allowed yet is second in the most strikeouts. Strange, but do you pay $217 million for strange? 

HOME!RUNS! – Nolan Arenado: 11 / Trevor Story: 10 / Neil Walker -  Bryce Harper -  Josh Donaldson: 9

(Two things of note: 1. The Rockies two young stars combined for 21 HRs in April, which is more than the team totals of The Reds, The Dodgers, The Padres, The Rangers, AND The Braves (who’ve hit five). 2. Giancarlo Stanton hit four homeruns last week, doubling his total for the year––watch out!)

CHEATERS!

Miami Marlins 2B, Dee Gordon, the reigning NL batting champion, was suspended for 80 games after he tested positive for PEDs. Last year, in addition to winning the batting title, he led the NL in runs and stolen bases and won a gold glove. Gordon is the second STAR in as many weeks to be suspended 80 games for PED (joining Blue Jay’s Chris Colabello).

People questioned Jake Arrieta about using steroids which he literally just laughed off... 

Joe Giardi, manager of the Yankees, wants to ban fielding shifts in baseball because he knows he’s going to turn in the worst Yankees record of all time (50 wins), which is totally possible. Hey Joe, 

[runschallenge2k15-blog]

A Week Numbered Trizz

What a week to be alive: NHL & NBA playoffs, Beyonce drops Lemonade, and Game of Thrones premiere. Almost so much to watch see and love you may have forgotten about baseball!

Luckily, I’ve been keeping my ear to the backstop and what a week it was. While it’s only April there are some teams that have some real shit to figure out (read: The Astros) and some teams that seem to be in the zone (read: The Dusty Bakers). 

There were a slew of teams to close three RUNS totals this week, but it will mostly likely be the last week that happens. Every team has closed at least half of their RUNS totals, except The Phillies (sorry Keyana!) the challenge slows down a little, but the drama never dies. Keyana as it seems like you’ve already lost this, here’s a video of the Rays ground crew dancing to Single Ladies:

The Astros (Dayna) and The Red Sux (Kristen M.) are the only two teams to not close a RUNS total this week, which is really sad because it’s only Week 3. Not even the Tigers are that bad.

Every team has closed the 3 RUNS category...except The Cardinals because they are worst thing that’s ever happened to sports.

Before we get in too deep. If you’ve been following the blog you know that I love a good bat flip. You know what I like more than a good bat flip? A bat flip that comes from a toddler or a woman like this:

A video posted by Barstool Sports (@barstool_sports) on Apr 22, 2016 at 9:20am PDT

The following are the top six teams based on what they’ve closed, what they need to close, and my total unbiased opinion of if/when/how/when they can win The Runs Challenge.

1. The Pittsburgh Pirates (Garrison F.) – needs 0, 10, 13 – As expected the NL Central is an arms race (the only division to have three teams with double digit wins) and while the Pirates are currently third, they throw some weight around when it comes to scoring RUNS. In addition to having a big week where they closed 8, 11, and 12 they still have to close 0, which may be more difficult than bargained for with this offense. 

2. The Arizona Diamondbacks (Chris P.) – needs 0, 8, 12, 13 – As I previewed, the NL West is anyone’s game (besides the Padres obviously) and the D-backs have made good on my foolish NL pennant bet by keeping it interesting. They did close 9 & 10 this week, but have a long way to go if they want to keep it the pressure on the coastal teams in their division.

3. The Chicago Cubs (Ricky G.) – needs 10, 11, 12, 13 – Normally, I wouldn’t put a team that needs to close the four most difficult RUNS totals (arguably), but the Cubs have proven they can score at will. They did win a game by 16 runs this week. That’s not a typo. Their runs differential is +68 and the second place team is the Nationals at +34. For those of you who can’t do math, that’s exactly half. Where did they learn to swing them bats?

4. The New York Metropolitans (Joe D.) – needs 9, 10, 12, 13 – The Mets were the hottest team in baseball winning 8 of the last 10 games after losing four straight. What started slowly has picked up dramatically in the last week as they closed three categories. It must be noted that during that period of time they’ve play the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves all teams that will be lucky to finish the season at the .500 mark. 

5. The Cincinnati Reds (Alex F.) – needs 7, 8, 11, 12 – Now the Reds seemingly have a pretty good shot at this as they are the only team to close the 13 RUN category, but I don’t believe in this Reds team. They play in a division with tough pitching and they have the worse run differential in the league (even worse than the lowly Brewers). Do I see them closing those four RUNS totals? Sure, but not before another team gets to it. 

6. The San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) – needs 5, 10, 11, 13 – I never imagined that there would be six NL teams in the power rankings (IRL baseball, but also in TRC power rankings). It doesn’t make sense that teams that throw away three to four at bats a game with pitchers hitting would be outscoring the AL so dramatically. The Giants are currently fourth in the NL West, but it’s a tight race and we can expect it to be a long duel to the bitter end for the left coast teams. 

IN OTHER NEWS! AROUND THE LEAGUE:

Sunday was a marathon of a baseball day including three games that went to extra innings giving us a whopping 14 extra innings of baseball!

BRYCE HARPER continues to own the Major League and make baseball fun again every time he is up to bat. On Monday he hit a GRAND SLAMMY, which was only his fifth straight game with a homerun. On Sunday Harper, who was supposed to have the day off, pinched-hit in the bottom of the 9th with the Nationals down one and put a 3-2 pitch into the bull pen. Sending the game into extras, which the Nats won in 16.

During a rain delay between the Cubs and Cardinals the radio broadcast took a strange turn as @markgrodysports started taking questions from fans via phone, text, or tweet which goes to show that baseball is, without a doubt, meant to be enjoyed over radio waves. 

JAKE ARRIETA threw a no-hitter against the Reds in a game that the Cubs won 16-0. Arrieta is on a pitching streak that is otherworldly. Since August 1st of 2015 (including three playoff games) he is 16-1 and has been charged with SEVEN earned runs in 139 innings. Unbelievable. That’s an ERA of 0.45.

New York Yankee’s Jacoby Ellsbury must have seen my Jackie Robinson tribute last week because he stole home: LOOK. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only good thing that happened to the Yankees this week as they sit at the bottom of the AL East with this guy.

As mentioned above, The Astros are looking a lot more like the 2013 Astros than the 2015 team that many experts picked to make a run at the World Series this year. They have the second worst record in all of the Majors with no major injuries or calamities inflicting their squad. The problem is simple, they just can’t win baseball games. 

Then there is this guy from Arizona who caught two home runs by Paul Goldschmidt: LOOK at that dude’s Backpfeifengesicht

PITCHING! FACTS! – Besides Jake Arrieta being a beast? 

No starting pitcher has thrown a pitch over 100mph...except for Met’s Noah Syndergaard who has thrown 23 pitches in triple digits.

Rays’ Chris Archer has 39 strikeouts in 26.1 innings and only one win to show for all his hard work. 

Dodgers’ Kenta Maeda has one earned run through four starts. He’s worth all the money that the Dodgers didn’t spend on Zach Greinke who left in the offseason and has tallied up the most earned runs of any pitcher so far this year.

HOME!RUNS! – Bryce Harper: 9 / Trevor Story: 8 / Anthony Rizzo: 8

CHEATERS – Tiger’s manager Brad Ausmus, afraid of getting swept by Cleveland, made Indians’ reliever Bryan Shaw take off his wedding ring. As Ausmus told the umpire it’s against the rules, which is what I’ve been telling my wife since she wifed and rocked me up last year. I see you Brad! Too bad you got swept by The Indians though. 

[runschallenge2k15-blog]

Slogging Through Week 2

Hey All,

I hope the second week in baseball treated you all well. While week two always seems like a certain lull after the high drama and excitement of the opening days/week this week was slightly more exciting than previous seasons. But not by much—even the gag/highlight/vine/gif game was a little weak, which never bodes well for my mood or livelihood.

The good news is that we finally got Internet in our apartment (seriously stone age livin’ in Istanbul) just in time for all the weekend action. This is good news for you (because I’m more in tune with the wonders of the diamond--although the tardiness of this post speaks otherwise), good news for me (because I can fall asleep to baseball on the radio), and bad news for the my fantasy baseball foes (because the People’s Champ is back)

For those of you who don’t make it to the bottom ever. You can check out the blog at http://runschallenge2k15.tumblr.com/ for funny videos of kids doing bat flips and such. PLUS! stay tuned because next week we have a VERY special guest commentator that YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS!

All of this information is valid through Sunday April 17th. True, it’s out to date, but think of it as getting a dispatch on sport a few days late. That’s European livin’.

The Cleveland Indians (Samuel D.) are the only team to close five runs this week, which should tell you how bad they were last week.

The Marlins (Mary D.), The Nationals (J.Arnold), The Cubs (Ricky G.), Pirates (Garrison F.), and The Red Sux (Kristen M.) all closed four runs categories this week. 

Off to the Power Six (Remember these rankings are super complicated and have little-to-no bias attached to them. Also, my wife thinks they are pointless and stupid, so that tells you how much she knows!)

1. Chicago Cubs (Ricky G.) Once again, the Cubs are WHAT WE THOUGH THEY WERE. After two weeks the offense is scary scary and the pitching is scary. They are the only team to close nine different runs categories thus far, which means they are 65% of the way there in two weeks. This does not bode well for our long ball dreams. No signs of stopping this RUNS train anytime soon. The bad news is they need 10-13 which takes a lot longer than 2-6.

2. San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) The Giants have been putting some runs on the board, which after two weeks is good news for those believers in a World Series Run. This ranking is based equally on potential and production thus far. If their bats continue it could be a solid run over the next few weeks and a lot of balls in McCovey Cove.

3. Seattle Mariners (Lauren G.) The Mariners aren’t a good baseball team, but they’ve kept up their Runs Challenge production which means that Lo’s going to make it rain seafood when we get to Lisbon in three weeks.

The top three teams are owned by people with the last name starting in G…weird! While Lo would have made the list she did receive a boost because of the continuity of it all. 

4. St. Louis Cardinals (Blake F.) Awesome. So glad the Cardinals are here. Somehow, someway the fucking Cardinals are here AND they are actually winning games with, as you expected, nobody. They’ve proven they can score runs even if their pitching has been off, which is surprising because you’d expect it the other way around. They did score 14 runs which is awesome and totally the right number...

5. Pittsburg Pirates (Garrison F.) I like the Pirates’ chances here. They are sitting back playing cool , but with AJ McClutchererson heating and Starling Marte wishing he was on my fantasy team they are making moves and closed four RUNS last week. 

So much letter continuity going on here. Will somebody please call Sesame Street?

6. Baltimore Orioles (Cameron L.) Yea Yea Yea. The Orioles started the season hot. I mean real hot. The got a big boost from closing 9 and 11 this week. I don’t foresee them in the top six again this season because I don’t think they are good. The start was hotter than anyone ever expected, but if you remember they started last season hot and how did that end up for them? Cold. Ice COLD.

In Other New Around the League:

This guy caught five foul balls at the Tiger’s game:

That face is asking for a punch. He gave all of the balls to little kids sitting around him! Why! WHYYYYYY was I not sitting by him!

April 15th was Jackie Robinson day and all the players wore #42 in honor of the man who broke the color barrier and overall baseball boss:

That’s a video of Jackie Robinson stealing home in game one of the World Series against the Yankees. That’s Whitey Ford pitching to Yogi Berra. Everyone knew what Jackie was up to, but he did it anyway. He’s Benny the Jet before Benny the Jet. It does look like Robinson is out, but dear God, what a gutsy move! UNREAL!.

The phucking Phillie Phanatic celebrated it’s 38 year anniversary, which is so stupid for so many reasons. I hate that mascot so much. Will someone please tell Kanye he can redesign this before he takes on the Clipper. Here’s a video of the Phanatic getting beat up by Tommy Lasorda:

The Twins (Eren K.) and The Braves (Rebecca P. lightofmylifefireofmyloins) both started the season 0-9 and then both swept the weekend lifting them to 3-9. Before the sudden up turn there was this: Twins Shocked to Learn You Can Score 2 Runs in Same Play.

We talked about how The Red Sux have fat and young people on their squad. Well that took on the majority of the headlines this week as panda was put on the DL for being fat (supposedly):  

Former World Series manager, Jim Leyland, was named the manager for the USA in the World Baseball Classic in 2017. During a rain delay in the 2006 playoffs Jim Leyland smoked an entire carton of Marlboro Red cigarettes. Soooo how about that Japan?

The Brewers (Britta L.) are actually off to a worse start statistically than last season, which is insane because last season was ROUGH. Sorry Mrs. Lang, here’s a cute otter giving a fist bump to cure your aching baseball soul:

David Ortiz stole a base. This is David Ortiz: 

Pitching Facts!

Dallas Keuchel of the Houston Astros beat the Tigers for his 17th straight regular season win at home. He hasn’t lost there since August of 2014.

Jordan Zimmerman and phenom Vince Velasquez are the only starting pitchers to not allow a run this year (in at least two starts).

Chris Sale, Jake Arrieta, and Johnny Cueto (who you’ll remember I pretty much disgraced in the season preview) and the only pitchers to have three wins. 

CHEATERS! Ian Kinsler playing “hard ball” by intentionally dropping an in field pop up. The Astros were angry because they thought it should be an infield pop-up, which would make it an automatic out, but that shit don’t play if there is a man on first. It’s not cheating, it’s just knowing the rules of baseball better than the entire Astros youthful team. Sandlot tactics, but it worked.

HOME!RUNS! Trevor Story 7 (hasn’t hit a HR this week) / Nolan Arenado 6 / Bryce Harper 6 (hit one in each of last four games)

Go watch THE TIGERS ROYALS!

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Greatest bat flip of all time. Swag on 100

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I can’t believe this guy. An absolute madman to watch. Got out balled by the tall lanky white dude.

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And We Are Off - Week One

It was an exciting first week of baseball. There was a little history made, a little history lost, and there were a lot of runs put on the board (in some cases too many runs!). While it is too early to crown a winner in The Runs Challenge and in the season there is plenty to catch up on.

I first want to apologize to Dayna who didn’t make the initial mailing list because of an error by the commissioner. Dayna throws it up for the Dirty Glove so the insult to injurywas even worse than if I tried to scam one of you Twins fans. Needless to say, she is on the list and the 30 have all paid (pending one last transaction) and the squads are set. Dayna, I only have one thing to say:

Opening Day, at your home ballpark, is always a fun experience. I remember when Rebecca and I joined our friend Ben and his family for the 2014 Opening Day at Miller Park. It was a blast. Here’s a video of Reba getting down to Rich Homie Quan and feeling SOME TYPE OF WAY (pay no mind to how creepy Ben is):

A video posted by cameron loftus (@camloftus) on Mar 31, 2014 at 10:59am PDT

There were some big names that threw out opening pitches this year. THA KID Ken Griffey Jr. opened up play at Safeco Field. Kirk Gibson threw it out at Comerica (which the Tigers won–making that eight straight home opener victories). And everyone’s favorite rapper, Chance the Rapper, suited up in Australia.

Here’s a really terrible video collection that someone made of the top ten worst first pitches.

The good news is that every team is on the board, the bad news is some of your teams only closed three categories and the lowly Nationals (J.Arnold) only closed two (there was some inclement weather that pushed a few games. The Marlins (Mary D.), The Tigers (Sarah L.), The Indians (Samuel D.), and The Nationals have only played 4 games

The Padres looked doomed to never score a run as they put up 0 in the first three games only to respond to the drumming with 13 and 16 the next two games.

Speaking of teams that scored TOO MANY RUNS the Dodgers were the first team to outscore the challenge by putting up 15 Runs against those lousy Padres in their season opener (in which Clayton Kershaw pitched 7 stunning innings of one hit ball with one walk ball).

The Yankees (BDD) put up 16 against the Astros the following day. The Cubs (Ricky G.) scored 14 against the Diamondbacks (Chris P.). When will these teams learn to stop at 13?

In week one 20 teams closed the 3 RUNS category including the entire NL West.

The Power Six (these are calculated by super scientific data that I can’t even begin to explain to you—but you know! they are totally not biased).

1. The Texas Rangers (Brewer S) are the only team to close six runs categories this week. The only downside of this start is they didn’t score more than seven runs in any of those games. It’s going to be an uphill climb to stay on top with this start.

2. The Cincinnati Reds (Alex F.) closed five runs categories and even notched a double digit runs total with their shoddy offense.

3. The Chicago Cubs (Ricky G.) closed five runs categories including a nine. We expected The Cubbies to be here so this is no big surprise.

4. The Atlanta Braves (Rebecca P.) closed five runs categories, but like The Rangers none over the seven run mark. The light of my life and fire of my loins was upset with my pre-season diagnosis of her team. There are a lot of teams on this list I wrote off, but remember sweetheart it’s only week one!

5. The Arizona Diamondbacks (Chris P.) closed five runs categories including the elusive 11-run mark that proved to be the winner in last years challenge.

6. The Seattle Mariners (Lauren G.) and San Francisco Giants (Sean G.) both closed four runs categories but both closed the 9 runs category and the 10 and 12(respectively).

In OTHER NEWS AROUND THE LEAGUE:

There was an insanely bizarre story from Kansas City (Mitch B.) about Brian Hosmer saving a girl’s life at a Bieber concert. When the rabid Royals fans realized Hosmer was at the concert they rushed him, knocking down and trampling a little girl in their way. Hosmer jumped in and saved her “from being squished by girls”. The Royals fans are so fucking annoying.

​The Baltimore Orioles (Cameron L.) are the only team to remain unbeaten.

The big news from New York City was John Oliver giving away two tickets to the first three Yankee home games to fans who dressed up crazy. This was in response to the Yankees being a bunch of elitist assholes who don’t want poor people sitting near rich people seats. The fans dressed up as ninja turtles, sharks, and dinosaurs.

The Rays don’t understand the rules and scored 3 RUNS in each of their first three games.

Since we are actively avoiding the A-Rod farewell tour here let’s talk about David BIG PAPI Ortiz jacking a Home Run in his last opening day and then again in the following game. After this season Big Papi plans to settle into post-baseball life by running the chain of Jamba Juices he has scattered throughout Massachusetts malls.

You know how I told you that you shouldn’t trust the Red Sux because they are young and fat? Well do you need any more evidence?:

Unbelievably the Rangers beat the Mariners. Just kidding, that’s totally believable, but what is unbelievable is that they won 3-2 with only one hit.

A fan in Oakland was SUPER serious about National Beer Day and bare handed this foul ball without spilling a drop of beer.

Sad news from Chicago as Kyle Schwarber, their HR swinging second year outfielder, will miss the whole season from a torn ACL LCL. What’s an LCL you say? Who knows, but I do know it’s not good for my bet that the Cubs will win 117 games this year!

Bryce Harper unveiled the “Make Baseball Fun Again” hats, which now makes three hats that I’d love to store in a box at my sister’s house for the next 20 years:

​The Giants, who got the brunt of a lot of my scorn last week (still bitter from last year? nah) scored 12 runs this week…twice. Sorry Sean! Although in the first game they did hit back-to-back-to-back HRs which is always a miracle for fans.

As you know I try to keep politics out of baseball (which makes no sense because baseball is pretty much the most political sport there is), but there was a great NYTMag piece written by Jay Caspian Kang about how fucking white baseball is (CLICK ON THE LINK). If you don’t think that baseball has a bit of a diversity problem look at The Giants. My man, Denard Span, was the first African American to start in The Giants line-up on opening day in SEVEN years. That’s insanity. Denard Span besides being a friend of mine is essentially the Jackie Robinson of the Bay Area.

The Dodgers STAYED in the news this week. Starting pitcher Kenta Maeda won the old “GET OUTTA HERE AWARD” (I made that up, but what a great fucking award name/idea) for being the first pitcher to hit a Home Run this year. Kenta set a trend this week of pitchers going yard as Madison Bumgarner when yard off of Clayton Kershaw (only player to have multiple HRs against Kershaw since Opening Day 2015) and the 442 ft. bomb that Jake Arrieta hit Sunday night. Give it up to Kenta for going the distance.

While Dodgers’ pitchers were hitting Home Runs you know what they weren’t doing? Letting in RUNS against the Padres and beyond. They threw 31 straight shutout innings falling one short of the record mark of 32 innings set by the 1963 Cardinals.

You want to know what else Dodgers’ pitchers weren’t doing this week? Throwing no-hitters! Ross Stripling had a no-hitter going into the 8th inning of his MLB DEBUT and was pulled only to have his reliever give up a two run shot and later lose the game in extra innings.

Did someone say bad pitching? We should look to Arizona for that! The $206.5 million dollar man, Zack Greinke, got hosed this week. On opening day he gave up 3 home runs (first time since 2009). In his two starts at home, Greinke has given up 10 runs. Last year he gave up 19 runs in 17 home starts. It’s been a rough start for my NL sleeper team as they gave up 10 and 14 runs in two of their early losses. Sorry Chris! Sorry Kristen for jinxing your team!

The biggest story of the year thus far is Trevor Story who was the first Major Leaguer to hit two Home Runs in his MLB Debut. He followed it up by hitting another in his second game. Then in his third game he hit 

In his fourth game he hit

and later in the game

​In his 6th game he hit ANOTHER ONE (another record). Making seven in six games! How many times has he seen this DJ Khaled video??

HOMERUNS: Trevor Story: 7 / Robinson Cano: 4 / Eugenio Suarez: 4 / Josh Donaldson: 4

CHEATERS: None that I can prove besides the obvious David Ortiz adding a vitamin shot to his daily Jamba Juice order.

Good luck next week kiddos!

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Baseball Betting: AL & NL Pennat

Some of the good picks for the AL and NL Pennat as of 4.2.16

The National League

The Diamondbacks (12/1) not as good as their World Series odds, but I think they could make a run.

The Nationals (7/1) are as decent as a pick as any of the teams in the 7/1 or 8/1 range. They have a horse of an ace they can ride in Scherzer and some good offense to beat up the Mets and Cubs pitching.

The American League

The Blue Jays (6/1) are the best in the pack of teams currently at 6/1 to run away with it. 

The Astros (6/1) for the EXACT reasons as above. There seems to four front runners in the AL this year and they are all fairly similar.

Off the Wall Pick

Marlins (25/1) maybe the offense of Dee Gordon and a full year of Giancarlo Stanton make some moves. Add Jose Fernandez on the mound and why not? Crazier things have happened (no they haven’t)!

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Baseball Betting: World Series Odds

World Series Odds as of 4.2.16

Chicago Cubs                         9/2 San Francisco Giants              9/1 New York Mets                        10/1 Boston Red Sox                      12/1 Kansas City Royals               14/1 Houston Astros                       15/1 Los Angeles Dodgers              15/1 Pittsburgh Pirates                   15/1 St Louis Cardinals                   16/1 Toronto Blue Jays                 18/1 Washington Nationals            18/1 New York Yankees                  20/1 Texas Rangers                        20/1 Arizona Diamondbacks        25/1 Cleveland Indians                   30/1 Detroit Tigers                          30/1 Los Angeles Angels                30/1 Seattle Mariners                     32/1 Chicago White Sox                40/1 Baltimore Orioles                   45/1 Miami Marlins                        50/1 Minnesota Twins                    60/1 Tampa Bay Rays                    60/1 Oakland Athletics                   80/1 San Diego Padres                  100/1 Milwaukee Brewers                120/1 Atlanta Braves                       140/1 Cincinnati Reds                     150/1 Colorado Rockies                  200/1 Philadelphia Phillies               250/1

It’s hard when you haven’t seen a full game to say who is going to win a World Series, but there are some decent payout for pretty good odds here.

What I Like:

The Royals! (14/1) Their rotation is suspect, but they proved last year that you can win a world series with the almost the same suspect rotation. Get it while it is hot!

The Blue Jays. (18/1) I picked them to make the World Series so I have to throw down on 18/1.

Diamondbacks. (25/1) This team seems like it could make the jump from average to “Where did the Diamondbacks come from?” Just look at their offseason moves and you’ll know where they came from.

What Blows My Mind:

The Giants! (9/1) People are totally buying into the every two years garbage. The Giants did get MUCH better this offseason, but World Series good? I dunno about that.

The Rockies (200/1) The Rockies don’t really have a chance to win the World Series, but 200/1 that’s Vegas giving ZERO FUCKS about The Rockies. Ouch!

The Red Sox (12/1) They are lucky if they make the playoffs with that starting rotation.