by Tommy Gimler
A friend of mine told me over the weekend that he couldn’t get into this year’s baseball season because there is nothing exciting to follow. Fuck him. There is plenty happening in MLB to keep you locked in through October, especially if you take a page out of our book and begin rooting for futility.
Mariano Rivera’s blown save last night was his first since April 6th, 2012.
Sure, he missed most of last year after tearing his ACL, but he had converted 23 save opportunities in a row before last night’s hiccup. Since the beginning of the 2008 season, Rivera has blown just 15 saves, which is eight less than Jonathan Papelbon and five less than Jose Valverde, the two players with more saves than Rivera over that time frame. His total is also one less than Joakim Soria, who hasn’t thrown a pitch since September 11, 2011 and three less than the amount of guys Taylor Swift has blown, broken up with, and then written a pig shit awful song about…
Jean Segura had more hits in last night’s game than Rickie Weeks had from May 3rd through May 21st.
Segura’s six hits tied a Milwaukee Brewers franchise record and marked the first time a player collected that many hits since Adrian Gonzalez did it August 11, 2009. It’s just the sixth time since the beginning of the 2008 season that a player has collected six hits in a game, and it raised Segura’s batting average 18 points to .365. Meanwhile, Weeks’ 1-for-6 effort last night kept his batting average at a cool .179, the third lowest mark in the National League and 37 points lower than his weight (216 talentless pounds)…
The Kansas City Royals have lost seven straight games, marking the 10th consecutive year a Ned Yost-managed team has lost at least six games in a row.
The Royals fucking blow. They’ve also lost 18 of their last 22 and ten in a row at home. Their 196 runs scored is the third lowest mark in the American League as is their .689 OPS, and their 28 home runs are the worst, 13 fewer than the Twins. Kansas City also owns the second worst fielding percentage in the AL. GM Dayton Moore hasn’t had a winning season since taking over in 2006. According to Ken Rosenthal, no other active general manager has a losing streak that long. And speaking of fucking losers, yesterday’s loss was the 500th game Ned Yost has managed for the Royals, and it was the 281st time his team left the field in defeat. According to us, that’s, well, that’s just fucking pathetic…
The Miami Marlins (13-39) are on pace to have the worst season since the 1962 New York Mets.
And the ’62 Mets were so pathetic, MLB didn’t require them to play all 162 games that year (40-120). The 2013 Miami Marlins have scored the fewest runs in all of baseball (144), 31 less than the Dodgers. They are also the worst in doubles, home runs, batting average, OBP, slugging percentage, OPS, extra-base hits, wins, and saves. The ’62 Mets were 4-13 in extra innings and 19-39 in one-run games, making them about as clutch as Sergio Garcia. And the 2013 Marlins are pretty much matching those totals (1-4 in extras, 6-13 in one-run games). Over their last 30 games, they have won just eight times, tying them with the Astros and Brewers as the most pathetic team over that time period. Yet while their roster looks more like a list of guys hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot looking for work than it does baseball players, the Marlins somehow have drawn more people to their ballpark than the Indians (27-24, 2nd place in the AL Central). And that begs the question, “If the people of Cleveland aren’t going to watch the Indians at Progressive Field, then exactly what are they doing with their time?” We’re going to assume the answer is meth…