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Last Night:
The Indians lost 5-1, after Carlos Carrasco pitched well, when throwing errors by Carlos Santana and Roberto Perez, and tough night for Cody Allen (my bad) combined to allow four runs in the 9th inning. Zach Walters homered again, but the rest of the lineup crapped the bed again.
Other Tribe Items:
Grant Brisbee counts down the ten most underrated players in baseball this season. Part I (#10 through 6) includes one Indians pitcher, and Part II (#5 through 1) includes another.
Jordan Bastian's daily notes at MLB.com include word that Yan Gomes is considered day-to-day with a "mild" concussion, which would seem to mean he should miss only one or two more games. There's also an item on Lonnie Chisenhall's struggles over the last couple months, which Francona says might be related to fatigue. I expect Lonnie to sit out a couple games a week the rest of the way, as he did during April.
Five questions with Cody Allen - Paul Hoynes asked Allen about being closer, having a twin brother, and whether or not he's going to grow a foot-long beard.
Ongoing and Overzealous Coverage of Zach Walters - Carson Cistulli at FanGraphs takes a look at Walters, who tops a list that also includes Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Abreu, and Edwin Encarnacion, of the players who have homered on the highest percentage of the fair balls he's hit.
Around MLB:
According to an interview with Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, we're getting closer to substantial changes to (maybe even the death of) MLB's awful television blackout rules. That would be nice.
The stolen base should come back, but probably won't - Howard Megdal looks back at the Cardinals of the early to mid 1980s, who ran like crazy and posted incredible stolen base totals, looking at how they did it and examining some of the reasons no one plays like that anymore. The article also includes good insight from Jon Hamm, so there's that.
The Most Pivotal 2014 Injuries for MLB Playoff Contenders - Ben Lindbergh looks at 13 key injuries that have struck playoff contenders and hurt their chances. The Cardinals have been hit the worst, but Lindbergh is also kind enough to list Nick Swisher's knee troubles, giving a potentially healthy Swisher more credit than I probably have.
Developing Minor-League Players -- And People - Russell Carleton examines what teams are doing to try and make sure their prospects aren't just getting better at hitting the curve ball and hitting the cutoff man, but learning to function away from their family, and not being huge jerks.
This Week's Off-Topic Topic:
Summer movie season has wrapped up. There wasn't anything that will mean to me what Jurassic Park did, but that's an unfair standard, and all in all, I think it was a very good summer at the multiplex.
My favorite big summer movies of 2014*:
- 5) Godzilla
- 4) Edge of Tomorrow
- 3) X-Men: Days of Future Past
- 2) Guardians of the Galaxy
- 1) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
*I enjoyed each of the five movies listed above, and a couple of them stand a good chance of landing on my end-of-year top ten, but my favorite movie released during the last three and a half months was Boyhood, which was an amazing filmgoing experience.