Simple update, late.

 

Will Smith and Austin Riley tied for player of the game honors, each going 1 for 4 with a homer. Rafael Devers did the most damage… to his own team, going 0 for 5. 

              

 

 

 

 

… oh.  I see.  Pears management did not activate Flaherty from the IL this month.  While St. Louis fans celebrated (responsibly) the return of their star, Pears fans were furious. Without Flaherty’s innings, Blake Snell’s 5 ip, 2 er and Kendall Graveman’s 1 ip, 1 er went with an anonymous replacement’s 1 ip, 1 er to generate an ERA of just over 5.00. 

 

So who was it who did the most damage to the Pears?  Someone in the Pear front office.  I bet there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on in there right now. 

 

As for the player of the game:  Mike Zunino!   He went 2 for 4 with a homer.  Arguably, Juan Soto’s 2 for 3 with a walk generating an OPS of 1.417 was more valuable than Zunino’s 1.250 OPS, but Zunino played catcher, and 1.250 from a catcher is a bigger deal than 1.417 from an outfielder.  Plus his homer drove in what turned out to be the winning run. 

 

And it’s Mike Zunino, a longtime favorite around these parts who has struggled to be suitably offensive for 8 of his 9 seasons.  Fangraphs gives him 4.0 WAR for his 2017 efforts in Seattle when he slashed .251, .331, .509.   He also gets 3.8 WAR for his sophomore season, 2014, but he had negative value as a hitter that year (OPSing only .658), and made up for it with outstanding defense. 

 

This year Fangraphs has Zunino offering 10+ runs of value above average for both offense and defense, and credits him with 3.0 WAR already, with more than a quarter of the season left to go. It’s fun to see him resurge like this.  Too bad about the front office and Flaherty, though. 

      

 

 

Do that, and even without any pitching, your team can gain 0.3 games on the leader, no matter how far away. 

 

 

 

Yes, yes,  and Kaline has already been punished with the 1 replacement inning he compiled. It’s reflected in the Drive’s score.  But, look: the Dragons got almost an entire EFL game’s worth of pitching — 6 innings out of the 7 we require (the cushion from 9 innings designed to protect us a bit from the whims of those MLB managers who sometimes ignore our usage instructions).  Haviland still has 9.3 replacement innings, so not getting 6 more should have helped them.  But look what happened!  Jesus Luzardo — allocated at 100% — was the player who did the most damage… to his own team by pitching 5 innings of 9.00 ERA baseball.  That’s worse than replacement!  That’s as bad as penalty innings!  Much worse, in fact, because they cannot be erased.  Haviland would have been better off had Luzardo stayed in bed. 

 

Poor Dragons.  When Kaline had no pitchers, the batters mashed for 11 runs.  When Peshastin had crummy pitching, Mike Zunino (and Juan Soto) stepped up to lead the team to victory. When DC came up short on pitchers, the Balkan hitters went long on offensive treats.  But the Dragons were too far in the dumps over the Luzardo’s lapses to rescue him.  Co-Players of the Game Brandon Lowe and Brendan Rodgers went 2 for 5 for what passes as the offensive highlights. They contributed 4/7 of the team’s hits, none of which went for extra bases.  Let’s give Kyle Schwarber a share of the Player of the Game reward for  his 2 walks in 4 plate appearances.

 

So… who did the most damage… to his own team? The offense was thin, as the stats tell, but it was spread as far as it could be among 12 Cheesy hitters.  Pedro Severino hogged two of the team’s 9 hits, meaning four had to go without.   Randy Arozarena and Abraham Toro each hogged two of the team’s 6 walks, leaving only 2 for everyone else.  Adolis Garcia went to the plate 5 times, but each time the team was out of hits or walks to share with him.  His 0 for 5 (with 2 of the team’s 8 strikeouts) did the most damage to the Cheese. 

 

 

 

Why, yes, it was Bobby Dalbec!  How did you know?  He went 3 for 5 with two doubles and a home run. I mean, it’s not anywhere near a Luis Urias performance, but it’s pretty darn good, the key piece in a great outcome for the Alleghenys, gaining them a league-leading 0.6 games on first place. 

 

So who did the most damage…to his own team?  Alas — it’s Trevor Larnach, who went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts.  Trevor is a deb who’s had a good season, so I take no pleasure in this one. 

 

 

 

Since no one went 0 for 4, I suppose the player who did the most damage… to his own team was James Karinchak, who chulked in an inning (allowing 2 earned runs).  The ‘Roos gained 0.2 games on first, but maybe would have gained 0.3 had Karinchak not pitched.

 

 

 

 

But the Cascades went all Kaline on us with their pitching, providing almost three games’ worth in a single day and all of it good to very good.  (Except for Jake McGee, whose 0.7 ip, 2 er outing might also qualify for most damage…to his own team.)  The best of a very good lot was Tyler Mahle: 7 ip, 0 er,  the second best of any pitcher in MLB, according to Baseball Reference.  

 

 

 

So who is the player of the game for Portland?  How about CJ Cron, who went 3 for 5 with two doubles.