Na that came out wrong. I'd prefer it didn't happen but I'm not yelling at clouds mad about it bc I like him. I can admit that.
If everyone get juiced balls like he did, we stand a shot. I don’t mean that as a slight to Pujols, more on the league and fucking with the balls.
Who in the blue fuck is Miles Mastrobuoni? Probably a guy that will hit a walk off in the AL Wild Card series.
Wasn’t going to post this until MLB went typical hypocrites about it. Ump gets all butt hurt and ejects both players….MLB account, “people smiling on a baseball diamond!!! Post it post it post it (clip the ump freaking out after)”
Can't wait for the Greg Norman Saudi backed ownership group to buy the White Sox and sign ARod, Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa
Lots of fans showed up for the return home https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ci9Kr43ObDC/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Some good stuff here (and this is a new article btw, there have been a few of these Greinke pieces already) Spoiler: hello Zack Greinke’s 2022 Royals teammates share stories: ‘There are so many good ones’ Jayson Jenks and Alec Lewis Sep 26, 2022 7 The Athletic has written (at least) three oral histories on Zack Greinke, a likely Hall of Fame pitcher and one of baseball’s great characters. This might seem like overkill to some. Not to Royals pitcher Brady Singer. “I’ve read The Athletic ones a hundred times,” Singer said. “Freaking so good. I love it. I wish they were longer. I mean, they’re already long as s—, but I wish there were even more because it’s so much fun.” Well, Brady, here you go: The best stories from Greinke’s reunion with the Royals this season. Michael Massey, second baseman: There are so many good ones. Nicky Lopez, infielder: He’s the best. Collin Snyder, pitcher: We’re in Texas and a couple of guys were playing cards before the game. They were talking about guys collecting stuff. (Dylan) Coleman asked if Greinke collects anything cool. And he was just like: “Got a bunch of houses.” Jake Brentz, pitcher: He’s hilarious and he doesn’t even try. Lopez: I was on the bench with him and we were facing someone who really liked cats. I was like: “You can’t trust anyone who likes cats.” He goes: “Yeah, man, you really can’t.” I go: “I like dogs. You got any, Zack?” He goes: “Nah, I would never get dogs. I’ve got a cat, though.” Bobby Witt, infielder: Just Zack being Zack. He’s awesome. J.J. Picollo, general manager: When I first came here, he was in Double A. I’d never met him before. We were in the old Tulsa stadium and I was standing in the dugout. He walked up and introduced himself and he started asking me about my background. A trash truck drove by on the road beyond the outfield. He goes: “That’s an admirable job and they should get paid a lot more money.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. He goes: “The guys who collect trash. What would we do if we didn’t have people to collect the trash?” And then he just walked away. Merrifield: In Houston, they have this golf simulator in the hotel lobby. There were like 10 of us down there, messing around. Zack was down there, then his family showed up and he abruptly got up and said, “I gotta go. Family is here.” Forty-five minutes later, he comes strolling back down…We’re like, “Zack! Didn’t expect to see you back.” He’s like, “Yeah. I saw the kids, figured I’d rather come hit golf balls.” Just barefoot. Walking through the lobby of the Four Seasons. Like it’s his kitchen. Vinnie Pasquantino, first baseman: He beats to his own drum, but in a good way. Massey: He’s an unbelievable teammate. Brentz: I don’t think there’s one guy in the clubhouse that doesn’t love him. Scott Barlow, pitcher: He’s the man. I love that guy. Jonathan Heasley, pitcher: The first time we all felt comfortable was in spring training. He invited all the starters to his house one night, and we all grabbed dinner and hung out over there. That was when we kinda broke the ice. Brady Singer, pitcher: That was unbelievable. Heasley: When we first got there, at his house, we were hitting some chip shots. He’s got a little green in his backyard. We’re hitting some balls back there. Merrifield: When we fly, he has three irons and a putter that he brings with him. I guess in his room he’ll put a mattress up against the wall and just hit golf balls into the mattress. Singer: He goes: “Do any of you guys golf?” We’d just met him, haven’t really talked to him. We’re like: “Yeah, yeah, we all golf.” He’s like, “What are you?” I’m like, “Oh, a 12 (handicap), somewhere around there.” He goes, “Yeah, you’ll never play with me.” Lynch: Basically, like, “You guys can’t play with me because you’re not good enough.” Singer: We were sitting there at his house and he walks out with a brown paper bag. He’s sitting there and just starts eating out of it. He was just eating a whole entire bag of fried chicken. Heasley: He asked us if we were hungry. We’re like, “Yeah, a little.” It was pretty early. He’s like, “Well, I just ordered some chicken, but that’s for me. So if you guys want to order something later, we can figure something out.” We’re all just looking around like, “Alright! Sounds good!” Singer: I said I’d Uber Eats something. He goes, “No, no, no. I’ve got a guy.” So he texted the guy and here comes all this food. I think he said he had received an order from Uber Eats and he liked the guy and he said: “Hey, can I hire you to just be my Uber Eats driver?” So he has his own Uber Eats driver. He has his own food guy. Heasley: And it was awesome. Hung out. Sat around and talked baseball, life. Singer: The cool thing is how addicted he is to the game. He watches, studies all day long. Mike Matheny, manager: And he loves it. Lynch: Sometimes he’ll be like, “I looked at your metrics. Remember how you thought you were being unlucky? No, they’re actually crushing you on that pitch.” Or, “Keep throwing that because you’re getting unlucky.” Brad Keller, pitcher: I was like, “I’m not getting righties out as well as I want to. I feel like I’ve been getting lefties out more.” That night, he went home and I get a text message at like 2 a.m. He’s sending me all the data points. He’s like, “This is what I saw. These are the things I gather.” Out of the blue. Salvador Perez, catcher: One of the smartest pitchers I’ve ever met in my life. Barlow: When I’m done pitching, he’ll come up to me and be like: “You threw a fastball with two strikes. That was interesting. You never do that.” Perez: Even if he’s not pitching, he always pays attention and comes up to me like: “Hey, that was a good pitch right there.” Or: “That guy hits changeups; why did you call a changeup?” Kyle Isbel, outfielder: He has a unique outlook on stuff. Lynch: I was basically like, “I sucked today.” And he’s like, “You sucked, yeah. But they didn’t hit you at all and you only gave up three runs in almost five innings and we won the game. So, if that’s you sucking then that’s a good thing.” Isbel: In spring training, he went up to O’Hearn and Ryan introduced himself. Zack was like: “Oh, you’re Ryan O’Hearn. Left-handed. Plays first base.” He goes: “You got a hit off me 3-0 count, fastball, you beat the shift the other way.” O’Hearn: He was spot on. Perez: He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen at preparing himself to pitch. Massey: When I was younger, I would watch him on TV. I’m like, “This guy is incredible, future Hall of Famer, I wonder what he does to get ready before a start.” Flash forward. Now I’m his teammate and I’m warming up in the weight room. He comes in with his big, baggy shirt on. He sits down on the ground, pretzel style. Literally crisscross applesauce. He’s just sitting there for a minute. He pulls a banana out of his pocket and starts eating a banana crisscross applesauce on the weight room floor. He drops the banana peel, stands up with a baseball, walks over to the wall and starts slowly throwing a ball off the wall and catching it. I walked out and was like: “So that’s what a Hall of Fame pitcher does before he starts, huh?” Picollo: He’s just repeating his delivery pitch after pitch after pitch. And you wonder why this guy has been able to pitch 18 years? That’s why. Lynch: He loves the game. It’s been his thing forever. And it will remain his thing. Lopez: They’re doing the fantasy football draft. He ends up drafting two or three quarterbacks. Witt: He had (Justin) Herbert and (Josh) Allen back to back. Lopez: I’m like: “Zack, you know you can only play one at a time and you just wasted picks in the fourth and sixth rounds.” He’s like: “Yeah, I really like Josh Allen, but looking back it probably wasn’t my best move.” Witt: He drafted two of the top quarterbacks back to back just to try to make some trades. O’Hearn: He doesn’t offer fair trades on fantasy football. That’s a fact. Cam Gallagher, catcher: I’ve got Russell Wilson at quarterback, but he offered me a quarterback, his fourth-best receiver and fifth-best running back for my first or second receiver. I go: “What are you doing?” He goes: “What? The quarterback will score more points.” I’m like: “Yeah, but you can only start one a week.” Witt: I think I’ve gotten about 10 trades from Zack. Gallagher: I’ve gotten three today alone. Witt: He’ll text me and be like: “Hey, I just sent you a trade.” About 10 minutes later, he’ll go: “Actually, I’m going to reject the trade, I don’t like it.” Gallagher: He sends out so many trades a day, and I don’t think he’s made a single trade yet. Lopez: Someone texted him about the trade that he had sent and they sent him back another trade proposal. All he texted back was: “Wow, I’ve never thought about that. Give me some time to reflect on this.” Gallagher: It’s just constant entertainment. Jose Cuas, pitcher: I don’t really know about fantasy football; this is the first time I’ve done it. The first thing he told me when I walked in was: “Hey, your team sucks.” Gallagher: He always wears this three- or four-XL Travis Mathew t-shirt that’s waaaay too big for him. The sleeves come down to his elbows. Merrifield: I asked him about it. He said, “I don’t know, it used to not be this big.” Gallagher: He tried to propose a trade to me, and I gave him a smart remark. The next day he said, “Good luck to everyone, except for Cam.” As a joke in the group chat, I said, “When we face off against each other, if I beat you, you’ve got to sign that four XL t-shirt and send it to me.” He goes: “Deal. But if I win, you’ve got to sign a used jockstrap and send it to me.” Singer: He’s just so freaking honest. Witt: Sometimes when I make a good play, I’ll talk to him in the dugout and he’ll be like: “I really didn’t think you were going to make that play.” Barlow: We were playing catch. I threw him a couple curveballs, a couple sliders, and he was like: “Were those sliders towards the end?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Yeah, they weren’t very good.” Merrifield: I was sitting behind him and Salvy. They were talking about the lineup in St. Louis and how to pitch guys and who was aggressive early in the count. It was early in the year still. He turned around and goes: “You like to swing at the first pitch, right?” I said, “Yeah, sometimes. If it’s there. I’m not interested in letting a good pitch go by.” And he said, “Yeah, the staff in Houston told me you like to swing at the first pitch, but then I thought, you know, I’d just throw a fastball away. What’s the worst that could happen? You’d hit a flare to right?” Cal Eldred, pitching coach: Yeah, he’s pretty blunt. Matheny: I played catch with him today. I said, “I can say I caught Zack Greinke.” He goes, “You caught me in between innings, don’t you remember?” I’m like, “Oh yeah. But then you went and got somebody else.” He goes, “Yeah, because I gave up runs. You were bad luck.” I was like, “That’s such crap.” Then he said something (about me), like, “Get somebody else because these guys need to be able to come in and throw their good stuff.”… Like, “You’re not good to catch everybody’s good stuff.” He said that out loud! Witt: That’s who Greinke is. He just tells you everything straight up. Merrifield: Talking to Brad (Keller) around the trade deadline. I was like, “Brad, if I get traded or you get traded and I face you, any time I get to a 3-2 pitch, I’m going to sit slider.” Zack said, “And then what are you going to do with it? Flip it to right?” That day, I hit a homer off a (Michael) Kopech slider and came in the dugout and started yelling at Zack. He liked that. He cracks this little side-mouth smirk. Lopez: We were all sitting around and it was a bunch of young guys who just got called up and Zack. I go: “I’ll give $100 to whoever guesses where Zack was committed to.” Massey: We’re all guessing, and he’s like: “No, no.” Lopez: Someone said Creighton or another university and he looked at them and goes: “I was the four-time Gatorade player of the year. Do you think I would ever go there?” Massey: I was on the ground. Eldred: The first time he waved me out (out of the dugout), I was like: “This guy is waving me out to the mound?” Picollo: Nobody really knew what to do. Eldred: He waves me out and goes: “I don’t really need anything. I just need a break.” Picollo: All the sudden you see the entire infield start laughing. Merrifield: He’s just different. Daniel Lynch, pitcher: My wife homeschools his kids for right now. My wife and his are friends now. And he came up to me in the dugout and was like, “Oh, just the guy I wanted to see.” I was like, “Oh goodness, what’s this?” He had his phone out and said, “Do you think Millie would want to teach at my baseball school in Hawaii?” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, I want to buy 3,000 acres in Hawaii and build a baseball school there.” … He was being 100 percent serious. He sent me the land and everything. Massey: It was the Toronto series when we all got called up with the Covid stuff going on. We get on a plane and had no idea what we were doing on a big league charter, had no idea how any of it works. Everyone gets on with a suit and tie, looking really nice. Zack gets on in a suit and tie. He’s sitting a couple of rows in front of me, and I see him stand up just as everyone is getting seated. He starts unbuttoning his shirt and I’m like: “Alright, what’s he doing?” He unbuttons his pants, pulls everything off and he’s in like a Royals jumpsuit, grabs the pillows, lays down and takes a nap. He literally had a Royals jumpsuit on underneath his suit and tie. Gallagher: He’s one of a kind. Lynch: From the stuff he says, I can tell he keeps up with certain guys. I hope I’ll be one of them. I still think it’s cool any time he texts me. It’s like, Zack Greinke pops up on my phone. Merrifield: I really loved being his teammate. Lopez: To be honest, it’s an honor to share a clubhouse with him. Heasley: It’s just a privilege to share a locker room with him. Keller: He’s the man.
I thought corked bats had been discredited as a way to boost power because of the damage corking does to bat integrity?
I just watched a YT video the other day. The corked bats resulted in significantly higher exit velo. But they were broken much easier. If you’re gonna cork , seems like you should only use the same bat for 1 or 2 ABs
BA has something on offensive standouts from the 2022 draft class. Dalton Rushing is gonna be sooo good. Dodgers amateur scouting director is absurdly good at their job
Is Andujar just done since his shoulder injury? He’s hardly played since 2018, is there any chance he’s still good?
.618 OPS since the start of 2020 and him just being DFA'd kinda makes me think he just sucks now. He hasn't been good since 2018.
The number of untouchable Yankee prospects who have turned out to suck is impressive. Maybe they should stop making prospects untouchable
it's almost like these sites hype up prospects for the biggest fanbases to generate subs, and then other sites throw said prospects into a million prospective trade offers that were never going to happen to generate clicks, and it creates a narrative around the players that was never reality.
It's like the Braves pitching prospects around 2010 when the responses to "how much would it cost to trade for Pitcher X That Never Amounted to Jack Shit" was "Braun and Fielder"