Shakespeare In The Alley

i guess it got him in a good spot. he never went down, and he sounded sharp and alert when the coaches and trainers came out to the mound. im no expert, and hopefully nothing's suddenly wrong with him today, but he seemed ok. definitely a scary situation regardless, especially with what mccarthy went through earlier this year. the giants, man. ive never seen a team catch every possible break the way those guys have been lately. im not saying theyre playing anything less than great baseball (they certainly deserve all these wins), but geez. the shattered bats spinning the ball three different

it'll be interesting to follow. the way they've carried on without him makes it kinda weird to imagine him back, but he'd probably be relatively cheap now. im in dc and ive only seen one article implying the giants will try to bring him back. whats the word in san fran on this?

but no one said that

they basically did. if i remember correctly they were neck and neck (or at least very close) with the dodgers when melky was suspended, and they really put the division away without him. of course he was a big part of them competing for the first half of the season anyway, but they've done fine without him. i thought it was cool that they left him off the postseason roster. would have been a slap in the face to one of the guys that played the last two months to suddenly not be able to play in the world series. wouldnt shock me if hes back in san fran next year though. was not expecting last

but then there'd be no more baseball and i dont see how thats desirable at all

probably why i, as a short and scrawny guy, pull for him. he looked great as a reliever so far this postseason, but last night wasnt a great outing for him. it'll be interesting to see what happens after this season. i hope the giants dont give up on him completely, but pitching's such a weird thing that its not too ridiculous to think he'll never be dominant again.

perhaps he also lost a bunch of weight last offseason and has an inherently weird delivery that can easily fall apart. i like the guy a lot so i'd like to see him return to form as a starter, but he might be quickly heading towards a second career as a bullpen guy.

i still want to see the giants somehow pull this out, but cards/tigers would be a hell of a series, and a great test of detroit's dominant pitching.

i think those springsteen ads are the worst part of the tbs coverage

id agree with this. the nats were never gonna win the title this year, which is why the strasburg thing never bothered me. their main core is too young and inexperienced, pitching especially. storen's a talented young closer, he just didnt have it last night. it happens. the cards have consistently showed why playoff experience matters. it was a great season for dc and they fought hard. cant call it a disappointment by any means. a lot of key players on the nats got big game experience over the last week, and thats the big takeaway. it was a learning experience from the start, and im excited t

again, content in any lyrical music form can be terrible and offensive. there's a whole lot of misogyny in a whole lot of legendary rock and roll songs, do you avoid listening to them or write off the genre because of it? if rapping as opposed to singing makes the difference (which i can totally understand. for me rappers are just like singers in that some have voices i can listen to and some cant) in whether you like the music or not, that makes sense. but the content argument doesn't really hold much water, because there's plenty of rap that doesn't objectify women or violence, or even use p

not a bad batch you could do better with jay and kanye albums though, if you're interested. late registration is probably kanye's best, and the blueprint or the black album for jay. although i kinda prefer the grey album to the black album, so thats a good one to have

no, thats not quite what i meant. disliking the whole genre isn't lazy criticism. if you've given it a fair shot (which you seem to have done) then thats fine. youre right, at a certain point there isnt much sense in digging deeper. my beef is that louie's criticism is exactly what you could say about the majority of any genre, and doesnt really say anything about why hip hop beyond public enemy hasn't done much for him. objectifying women is a reasonable qualm, but hip hop is far from the only place you'll find that, and its far from the only thing rappers talk about so just for curiosity's

without getting into the fact that sampling can be as valid and creative an artform as writing songs on a guitar, this is basically as true about rock as it is about rap. you cant judge entire genres on their worst examples. it will require a little digging to find the truly great hip hop stuff, just like rock or jazz or whatever. theres nothing wrong with disliking the whole genre, thats just lazy criticism

justin verlander in two alds starts, including a 122 pitch complete game tonight: 16IP 7H 5BB 1R (on the first AB of the first game) 22 Ks 0.56 ERA

i wouldnt say it makes nolan a dick, but that comment came across as something that didnt really need to be said in such a public way. its true, it wasnt the best time for hamilton the player to make a huge lifestyle change, but its a little callous to call someone out for trying to kick a destructive habit. either way it does kinda solidify that he wont be back in texas next year. it'll be interesting to see where he ends up, and for how much.

fair enough. agree to disagree. we'll see what the next few years bring. now here we have a baseball executive who cares about his players.

the world series is always the goal, but i dont think any gm would say his job is to put together a winning team for just one year. every gm in the game wants to put together a team that can compete for many years, especially a gm like rizzo who hasnt really built his team through big name free agents. the nats organization is largely homegrown, and mostly scouted by rizzo himself. the nats were just barely out of the rebuilding stage when this season began. this wasnt the year they were supposed to truly compete, so they've been more or less playing with house money all year. he apparently d

idk, winning a world series would be great but i cant justify maybe driving a young pitcher's career into the ground to do so. there are levels of sacrifices (kirk gibsons home run is iconic for a reason) but that seems too far in my mind. especially for a team that i couldnt see making the world series even when strasburg was pitching.

and thats a risk i'm ok with. apparently mike rizzo agrees.

and those players were never the same i'd rather have a guy like strasburg available for several ws runs. apparently mike rizzo agrees

that seems to be the view of more people outside the nats fanbase than within. the shutdown is predominantly supported among folks in dc. if strasburg was their only talented pitcher or player, i'd think it was a terrible decision. but he wasnt. on another forum the same people saying rizzo's an idiot for shutting down strasburg are criticizing dusty baker and the cubs folks for overworking prior and wood. it's a lose lose situation i guess.

for whatever it's worth he maintains that it was the right decision then and now, regardless of playoff outcome. you gotta at least respect that, right? personally i agreed with the shutdown. strasburg's last few starts before the shutdown weren't up to par, his velocity was considerably down, and it was a good idea to not push him. baseball is unfortunately littered with great arms that wore down too quick, and though you can never really prove for sure if this was a good idea, it's certainly not "blatantly horrible" either. it's grounded in putting a young player's long term health over an

you know the rule doesnt say that it has to be in the infield at all, right? hell, it can be even further into the outfield if the ump deems it so. it concerns infielders, and whether or not they can catch a pop up with a reasonable effort. not to say that was the right call in that game (personally I think it was wrong, more for the delayed call than the position in the outfield) but its at the umpire's judgement. and the call was late, but not "after the ball hit the ground" late.

its a legitimate beef, but im pretty tired of hearing about it. win at least one game on the road, then you get three chances to win two at home. good baseball teams should be able to win anywhere. it's a onetime quirk, and the owners voted on the damn thing in the first place. home field is way more important in the next two rounds anyway (though world series home field is obviously the biggest flaw in baseball right now, something we can all agree on)