Joe Lucia

It's actually 211 games, starting on Thursday. Girardi said he's going to use him tonight. Farewell, 80% insurance on $29 million...

As I said in my post about it, it's just like the Mitchell Report ten years ago. Everyone's like FUCK YES, TIME FOR THE LID TO BE BLOWN OFF STEROIDS!, and you're getting names of guys like David Segui past the top tier of heavy hitters. All or nothing.

-Nelson Cruz, Rangers-Everth Cabrera, Padres-Jhonny Peralta, Tigers-Antonio Bastardo, Phillies-Jordany Valdespin, Mets-Francisco Cervelli, Yankees-Jesus Montero, Mariners-Cesar Puello, Mets-Fautino de los Santos, Padres-Sergio Escalona, Astros-Fernando Martinez, Yankees-Jordan Norberto, free agent Insert fart noise here. Three players on the minor league DL, three minor leaguers, one unemployed player, one player on the major league DL, and a middle reliever for a shitty team to go along with Cruz, Cabrera, and Peralta. Out of those 12, the only one that's really a huge deal is Cruz, since the Rangers couldn't find a suitable replacement at the trade deadline. The Tigers grabbed Iglesias to replace Peralta, and the Padres are garbage and they might drop from third to fifth without Cabrera.

I'm going to a Flyers-Coyotes game in two months with my gf for her birthday, and I'm totally wearing my hideous green alternate jersey.

As someone who goes to at least half a dozen Phillies games a year, and has been going since the dog days of the Vet in the 90s, I can safely say this: if you don't take things personally, you'll have a good time. I've had two incidents in the near decade CBP has been open. One involved an obviously drunken fan throwing a bottle at my head after a Brave homered to extend the lead to like 9-0, and the other involved an obviously drunken fan yelling in my face for...well, no real reason, aside from my team sucking because Cliff Lee homered off of Tommy Hanson (in a game the Braves would end up winning). So, there's that.

"Over three hours to finish"? Sure, maybe if you're watching the Yankees and Red Sox, or the game goes into extra innings. If you try to boil baseball down to "two guys playing catch", you probably shouldn't be watching the damn game. How many plays in football result in passes that one player touches or rushes that pick up two or fewer yards?

Heckler above the Braves bullpen today: "HEY KIMBREL! YOU'RE GOOD, BUT YOU'RE NOT GREAT! STOP MIMICKING PAPELBON!" Me: "...if he were mimicking Papelbon, wouldn't he have blown the save already?" Dude also tried to make a crack about Kimbrel not being an All-Star and Papelbon being one (whoops), and another about Kimbrel going through the league the second time...welp. He was pretty drunk, though. Man, I'll tell you...Fredi put on a clinic in how to *not* manage a game today.

I'm pretty sure the hopeless Indians spent more this winter than the mighty Yankees. Both Cleveland and Baltimore have a better record this year than New York. So...there's that.

I like the show, but there's really no way to figure out who the killer is by using any sort of logic.I'm also curious as to whether/how it's possible for the killer to win, since eventually it's going to come down to one-on-one by the looks of it, and whoever is not the killer is obviously going to know who it is by then.The only thing I can think of is when it gets down to 4 or 5 people left, if no one names the killer, then the killer wins. There's only three episodes left, with five living people...so the final show should have three of them, which should be a nice way to put them against one another. I think they're subtlely planting clues, like the stuffing in the shoes this week ruling out a man with bigger feet.

Northwestern won ten games last year, including two over THE ALMIGHTY SEC, and returns nearly all their skill players. Also, NU was the highest ranked B1G team at the end of last season. This ain't the LOL JUST NORTHWESTERN of years ago.

THE NATS ARE STILL IN IT!!! DON'T TELL THEIR FANS OTHERWISE!!! NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY LOSE BY DOUBLE DIGIT RUNS!!!! nothing has to be motivating the Nationals more than having a manager who could quit any day to take his retirement, i'm sure. And awesome that none of the top teams in the AL Central are losing. "Royals? you've won 8 in a row? well fuck you, because the Tigers and Indians won't lose any games either!" The White Sox are so useless It's wild. Hey Indians and Royals, good for you guys! 15-10 in July, pretty awesome! Oh wait, you lost ground because the Tigers went 18-8. So sorry. The Royals are 10-2 since the Break...and are still seven out. Imagine if GMDM's 15-5 streak comes true, and they're still far out.

Whodunnit! is simultaneously the best and worst show I'm watching right now. It's so campy and over the top, but the premise is awesome and they'e managed to get me genuinely invested in who wins this and who the killer is. I think it speaks more to the state of this season's Dexter when I'm paying more attention to a reality show about a fake serial killer than a drama about a serial killer.

Gaylord Perry made himself into a Hall of Famer pitcher by slathering the ball more shit than your typical plate of cheese fries. His logic in an interview a couple of weeks ago? "we were just having fun out there", which apparently makes him superior to the PED users. I mean, what the fuck?

My friends have been having a field day retweeting MSM writers picking the Phillies to finish above the Braves in the division, Danny Espinosa saying the Nats' lineup is better than Atlanta's, and so on and so forth.

Congrats. You guys win the "Our division is shit" award. Remind me how well the Yankees, Reds, and Nationals did last season while winning 95+ games?

The Braves are up 11 in the NL East. The other five division leaders are up a total of 12 games. Oh.

Quote from Neal Huntington: "we were willing to do something stupid. We weren't willing to do something insane" That actually makes sense. You can slightly overpay, but going ham rarely works out well.

They gave up a guy named Kyle Smith, which has some Royals people really pissed off. Norris to Baltimore for LJ Hoes, a comp balance pick, and possibly Josh Hader. s/a trade deadline

Cruz is apparently going to get smacked down with 50 by the end of the week. It's why the Tigers jumped on Iglesias when they did. The issue with Texas isn't their team, it's the fact that the teams ahead of them (Tampa, Boston, Baltimore, Oakland, Detroit, Cleveland) aren't slowing down.

Ian Kennedy to San Diego for Joe Thatcher, a prospect, and a comp balance pick. Like it for both clubs...Kennedy had wore out his welcome in AZ, and getting out of that shithole park and into Petco could help him a ton. He's also from SoCal, so that's another potential benefit. As for the Diamondbacks, they have Cahill and McCarthy both ending rehab stints soon and have three other solid starters in the majors. Kennedy was the correct one to trade. They also only had one lefty in their bullpen (Tony Sipp), and he was getting beaten like a drum by left-handers. Makes sense for each team, and even if you don't think Kennedy will rebound, he's much better than the garbage other teams were getting for relievers.

A certain subset of Red Sox fans losing their shit at trading Iglesias...man, that's funny. He has one extra base hit and two walks in 89 July PA. It's almost like he's not a good hitter and was being helped by a sky-high BABIP!

Giants fans have turned on Wilson en masse. Hey, they're finally realizing what every other fanbase has for years: that he's an attention whore.

A good chunk of that money will go to extending players as opposed to signing new ones (SEE: what the Rays have been doing for years). Teams are getting smarter, and that along with the new CBA killing comp picks for rentals, is why the trade deadline is a lot more boring this year. We're two days before the deadline, and three relievers were traded today. Christ.

The issue with that is that everyone will be getting the same amount of money from the national deals. So yes, while a team like the Pirates or the Rays has an extra $30 million, so do the Yankees and Phillies...plus their built-in advantage with their ridiculous (or soon to be ridiculous, in the case of the Phillies) local TV deals.

The Cardinals are so scary because of how smart the franchise is. They have a total of *four* free agents this winter: two that haven't played this season (Furcal, Carpenter), an aging OF that they have a replacement for in AAA (Beltran), and their closer (Mujica). They've also got an option on Westbrook that they'll probably decline, so essentially, they're going to cycle out two or three members of their roster and replace them with younger, cheaper players. After 2014, their only free agent is Motte. Unless Holliday or Molina gets hit by a truck, they have no bad contracts really. And in comparison to the other extensions signed by pitchers lately, Wainwright's deal is an absolute steal for them. There are too many teams that spend like drunken sailors when that's not what got them to the dance (hello, Nationals). The Pirates need to not fall into that trap too. Their only free agents this winter are Barmes, Karstens, and Burnett, and while it would be nice if they brought Burnett back on something like 8-10M a year, they don't really need to make a huge splash. If they start sniffing around the marquee names out there, something is seriously wrong.