Ben and Sam answer listener emails about refunds for team losses, catcher receiving, defensive positioning, and more.
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| 6:06 |
: Hi everybody!
Jeff Zimmerman and I will be here to entertain all of your baseball-related queries. Chris Cwik will NOT be here, something about preparing to get married this weekend. I don’t know, sounds suspect. Anyway, get in your questions. As a tribute to Chris, we’ll be running some polls on your favorite movie with a wedding scene. There’s tons, so don’t be mad if I don’t pick yours. Or, be mad if you want, it’s up to you really. See you soon! |
| 8:45 |
: We’ll start in 15 minutes. By the way, if you have a tasteful message of good luck — or of warning — for Chris, drop it in the comments, and we’ll run them at the end of the chat!
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| 9:01 |
: Hi guys. Let’s get started. Jeff will be along shortly.
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| 9:02 |
Would you trade A.Jones and P.Corbin for M.Trout? |
| 9:03 |
: Probably. I like all three players, but if you’re going for it, I like the gamble on Trout.
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| 9:03 |
Would you bench Cishek for David Hernandez now that the Marlins are going with a committee? Thanks |
The lowest ERA on the Diamondbacks right now belongs to Matt Reynolds. The lowest ERA on the Diamondbacks belonging to a pitcher who’s thrown more innings than a really long baseball game belongs to Patrick Corbin. Monday night, Corbin took the mound in Coors Field with an ERA of 1.52. He came away with an ERA even lower than that, and at present his ERA is the second-lowest in baseball among starters. Only Clayton Kershaw has Corbin beat — Matt Harvey, Shelby Miller, Felix Hernandez, and everyone else is behind him. And Kershaw’s allowed three unearned runs. Corbin has yet to allow his first.
It’s been a brilliant season-opening stretch for a guy who now looks to have been underrated in the past. To pick on Keith Law, here he is calling Corbin a back-end starter, and here he is calling Corbin a No. 4. To pick on us, here’s Corbin as a potential No. 3, and here he is as a potential No. 3 again. Previously, it was thought that Corbin’s ceiling would be that of a mid-rotation starter, perhaps. Already, he’s exceeding that, and I’m not blaming the prospect evaluators. Corbin’s just beating expectations, and that’s worthy of a deeper dig.
Johnny Cueto came off the disabled list and started for the Reds last night. He had been on the disabled list due to a sore right oblique; it was the same injury he experienced during last season’s playoffs. His unique twisting windup seems to be the reason that he’s suffered the same ailment twice now, and he has said he might consider changing his delivery to correct the problem in the future.
A couple of weeks ago, you the attentive reader, will surely have observed the introduction of our depth charts and standings pages. It was a long time coming, and we remain pretty freaking excited about it. As such, we thought that every two weeks that we’d take a look at some sort of change or happening or goings-on that occurred.
We’re not going to cover every team, because let’s face it, there really is only so many times that one can write a variation of “the Marlins aren’t even trying” without wanting to scrape out your eyebones with a rusty screwdriver. But we’ll still try to pry out an objective look in some way. This week, we’ll take a look at the three biggest movers — one positive and two negative — in terms of ranking of projected full season winning percentage. (One note — the looks here are from last Tuesday, the 14th, to this morning, but in future editions we’ll likely use Monday as the cut-off day for a number of reasons, nearly all of which involve my sanity.)
Last night, Alex Sanabia gave up a home run to Domonic Brown in the second inning, and as he was walking back to the mound, the video appears to capture him spitting on the baseball. Sanabia then proceeded to retire 14 more batters without allowing any more runs, and the Marlins beat the Phillies 5-1. Based on the video evidence, it seems as though Sanabia may have been throwing a spitball last night. Based on the fact that he had one of his best starts of the season, by results, it appears as though the spitball might have fairly effective.
Of course, this is all still highly speculative. We only have that one video clip of him spitting that one time, and because the clip is very short, we don’t actually know what happened before he threw the next pitch. Maybe he dried the ball off. Maybe the spit didn’t actually hit the ball, and it’s all a camera angle trick. If we’re going to assume that Sanabia was throwing a loaded baseball, we should investigate a little further.
| 9:03 |
: And we begin at my customary three minutes after the hour!
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| 9:03 |
: Usual notes: the queue is very busy so don’t be offended if I don’t get to your question. I don’t know much of anything at all about fantasy baseball so asker beware. I’m going to try to cut this off after an hour instead of 100 minutes because today is unusually busy.
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| 9:04 |
: Onward, friendly chatters
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| 9:04 |
Patrick Corbin has a .246 BABIP, 88% LOB, 3.9% HR/FB, and an xFIP of 3.59, yet Keith Law said on Twitter that he was legit. What are us normal folks missing on him? |
| 9:04 |
: I’m going to be writing about Corbin a little later today! More investigating to be done, but his slider looks to be incredible against both handedness…es.
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| 9:05 |
: Corbin shouldn’t strike anyone as an ace in the making, but he looks to be a legitimate above-average starter, as Law might have been implying.
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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.
1. Featured Game: Detroit at Cleveland, 19:05pm ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
Featured Game: Detroit at Cleveland, 19:05pm ET
Starting This Game, In Terms of Pitchers
Starting this game for Detroit and Cleveland in terms of pitchers are right-hander Max Scherzer (54.1 IP, 63 xFIP-, 1.9 WAR) and Corey Kluber (28.1 IP, 86 xFIP-, 0.5 WAR), respectively.
Ben and Sam discuss whether they’ve underrated Patrick Corbin, then talk about whether there’s a bias against redheads in baseball.
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Let me preface all of this by saying that it’s always possible that a quick video replay could be missing necessary context and misrepresenting what actually happened. There is some uncertainty when viewing events from afar, especially in a narrow timespan. It is possible that what you’re about to see isn’t what it looks like.
But, uhh, it sure looks like Alex Sanabia was caught on video spitting all over the baseball after allowing a home run to Domonic Brown tonight. As pointed out by one of our commenters, you can see the video here, and pay attention at around the 13 second mark.
Or, if you’d rather, just watch this helpful GIF, care of Jeff Sullivan.
