Miguel Cabrera goes for his 3000th hit in Detroit against the Rockies. Antonio Senzatela has allowed 16 hits in 8 1/3 innings this season.
The Red Sox visit the Rays with Michael Wacha facing Corey Kluber. Wacha allowed just three hits in 9 1/3 innings this season as he tries to come back from three down years. His control is poor, however, as he walked five batters. Kluber, trying to stay injury free, comes into the game having allowed two runs in his 9 2/3 innings. He bends but does not break as he gave up seven hits and four walks.
Ross Stripling leads the Blue Jays against the Astros and Justin Verlander. Stripling is a swing man, allowing two runs in his two relief appearances this season, but four shutout innings in his one start. Verlander returned strong from his injury, allowing one run in 13 innings, the only mark against him coming on a solo home run. In fact, going back to 2020, the only three runs he allowed came on solo home runs.
Finally, the Mets visit the Diamondbacks with David Peterson battling Zac Gallen. Neither pitcher allowed a run so far this season. Peterson is a high walk, low strikeout pitcher, so we’ll see how long that lasts for him. Gallen consistently limited hits through his career, but he also tends to give up free passes.
Enjoy!
Miguel Cabrera got rained out tonight. The way things are going, baseball looks like it’s getting rained out in general.
I glanced at the Baseball Reference historical league stats today. Almost incredibly, the league OPS so far this year has fallen 51 points to .677 from last year’s .728. I downloaded the numbers into a spreadsheet and checked the change in OPS for every season since 1900. If this year’s early decline holds up, it would match 1988 for the biggest year-to-year fall in OPS in post-1900 baseball history. Incredible.
As I type the games tonight are only going to make the situation worse. I guess MLB is going for the all-time record in OPS decline. Nobody’s scoring many runs, though somehow the Giants managed to get seven. Maybe they’ll investigate San Fran for corking the bats or something.
My quick and dirty take is that such a ridiculous historic decline in offense can’t continue, although the sample of games in 2022 is getting to be pretty large. They did put in the universal DH, right? On the other hand, they’ve made the baseball into a soggy sponge, so maybe we’ll see a continuing collapse.
Entering tonight baseball was averaging 7.99 runs per game along with that .677 OPS. That’s right in line with the numbers from the second deadball era of 1963-72. You might remember that the NFL ran over baseball in that era to become far and away the country’s most popular sport. That was probably going to happen anyway because football is more suited to television than baseball. But MLB made it real easy for Pete Rozelle and friends by putting a dull pitcher-dominated game on the field.
Nowadays baseball is desperately clinging to the #3 spot in the sports pecking order, way way behind football and well behind basketball. Maybe the smart guys who run baseball want to make it the #4 or #5 sport.