Highs and Lows Dept.

Yesterday Ohtani had a perfect game through six innings, and finished with 7 shutout innings, 1 hit allowed, 12 K. He's won both his starts and has an ERA of 2.08, a WHIP of 0.46. He's also started 4 games at DH, has 3 HR and a line of .389/.421/.889.

The Angels have played 10 games so maybe it's a bit early for lofty predictions, but I'm calling it: Ohtani becomes the first MLB player to win 20 games and hit 20 HR in the same season.

Also yesterday, Stanton had his second platinum sombrero (5 strikeouts) this season, going for 0-7.

From the NYT:

It’s hard to imagine a player of his stature having a poorer start with a new team than Giancarlo Stanton has had in his first week as a Yankee.

In his first 10 games in pinstripes, Stanton has batted .167. He has three home runs, two of them on opening day, and has driven in seven runs, but his on base percentage-plus-slugging is a middling .700.

Oh, and he has struck out 20 times in 42 at-bats, including 16 times in the six-game homestand that concluded on Sunday with an 8-7 loss in 12 innings to the Baltimore Orioles. To put that in perspective, consider that Joe DiMaggio struck out 13 times in all of 1941, a season in which he won one of his three American League Most Valuable Player Awards.

Ouch.

so we can agree, Stanton is no Joltin' Joe, but I guess we sort of knew that, despite all the lofty predictions coming out of the NYC pundits about "historic power production".

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took Jose Mesa Jr. deep tonight.

Feel old yet?

Big night for fans of brouhahas, fracases, ruckuses, skirmishes and tussles:

Yankee Tyler Austin slides into Boston's Brock Holt

Joe Kelly plunks Tyler Austin

Over in the NL, Colorado's Arenado pursues back-pedalling Padre Perdomo

But no donnybrooks?

Bartolo Colon flirts with a perfecto (broken up in the 8th).

Some nice video clips in the above link.

b-r.com has a "Succ%" stat for managers, which is the % of challenges that are successful. Watching my Blue Jays the past couple of seasons I've suspected that John Gibbons is the absolute worst at this stuff, and lo and behold the stats prove it so:

- dead last in 2016 (38%)
- dead last in 2017 (26%)
- dead last so far in 2018 (0%, tied with three other managers but since Gibbsons has more challenges I'm giving him the tie-breaker)

Looking at the four full seasons b-r has kept track of this, former Yankee manager Joe Girardi was by far the most successful: 1st in 2017 (75%), tied for 2nd in 2016 (64%), 1st in 2015 (73%), 1st in 2014 (80%). Fat lot of good it did him!

That's because they don't measure challenge opportunities missed. :-)

Something like a fielder with def ratings of A+/D-? Does well if he can get to the ball, but doesn't get to the ball all that often...

Exactly. Maybe that's why his challenge % is so high.

So Joe Girardi is the Jhonny Peralta of managers?

In a vacuum, that doesn't mean much. You'd have to look at when those challenges occurred, and if the team got burned on a bad call later in the game that they couldn't challenge. If a manager is using challenges on close plays late in the game just so he doesn't have a challenge go un-used, I have no problem with that. I'm sure plenty of managers would see it as pointless and just let the challenge go to waste, while others figure they have it, so why not use it.

Just from games I've watched, I've always felt John Farrell was a horrible judge of when to use challenges. He has an awful success rate and seems to waste them early in games.

that Colon pic above

he looks like a hunnert year old snappin turtle or something

something at the bottom of the lake

catfish, gator, bass, sturgeon, something

Yes, I found that pic in my local paper. Using it as my desktop background now. It cracks me up.

As if I didn't hate Facebook enough. The Blue Jays game today (starting right now) is only available there. You need a Facebook account to watch; fine, I've never had one, but my wife is letting me use hers. I log in. Go to the MLB Live link. Get directed to another site, and that site wants my credit card info. Doesn't want to charge me anything -- just, you know, for "verification purposes." No thanks.

Screw Facebook.

Oh, and screw MLB too for making this deal. What a great time to be associated with Mark Zuckerberg. What's next, a movie deal with Harvey Weinstein? Vitamin deal with Martin Shkreli?