A’s visit the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers and what could turn out to be a sloppy track.
By My Standards there could be value here! Bob Melvin, stoic and Tacitus, enjoys Maximum Security after last year’s success. Can he parlay it into a Game Winner? Tune in all weekend to find out.
Tonight the A’s start Anderson (questionable stamina in pedigree). Tomorrow it’s Bassitt (grinder, mediocre speed figs), and Sunday Montas (green, could run if he gets a loose lead). Pirates start three lower-level claimers.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Slusser dives into the A’s efforts to get Profar to Throw Far.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/How-to-fix-Jurickson-Profar-s-struggles-A-s-13814610.php
oh this is terrible.
i was taking a quick open-air break at the park. opened my laptop to look for something…
and turns out i logged onto a kaiser hospital wifi once.
which my computer remembers.
and the signal from the big kaiser building by the lake has the same login and reaches all the way to the fairyland sign.
and it’s faster than my own at my desk?
hello summer office. goodbye productivity.
That would be the confluence of the Bad Pitching and the Worse Hitting which merge to form the Losing Streak.
Rather than giving in to the temptation of PNC Park beer I’m going to hang out in the hotel room for a while. It doesn’t look bad and I don’t think the delay will be long.
I did give in. $10.75 for a 16 oz can of Southern Tier 2X IPA (8.2 percent). BTW Pirates fans pee into individual urinals while drunk Steelers fans over at Heinz Field aim into troughs.
WHAT
THE
FUUUUUUCK
LOL Brett that was fantastic.
The Pirates are indeed bad.
The bats were just parched!
I seem to remember that pouring water on the bat handles was an old-timey slump remedy.
I would suggest something similar for Jurk store, but that might be considered waterboarding.
Phegles!!
Brett Anderson: on base machine.
Anderson beats out an infield hit pays 25-1.
When the team scores after the Brett infield hit keeps the inning alive, it’s the A’s night (he said far too early).
Phegs with 7 RBI, exactly how we drew it up.
2 doubles, a homer, another hit and 8 RBIs, and he still managed to squeeze a GIDP in there.
You robbed Brett of an RBI you bum.
Goodness gracious Jurickson.
Man, The Thing has Profar bad.
They aren’t going to DFA him so I think they have to manufacture an injury. He cannot continue to play.
Jack Zduriencik is the official scorer in Pittsburgh?
Reverse peter principle.
Profar’s “Don’t hit it to me” thought bubble is hard to miss. I look at him between pitches and feel like I’m staring at something I shouldn’t be staring at.
And it’s raining. Not staying through a delay so finish it please.
woooo! is all i heard on yhe radio
Amplified music and PA announcements in connection with Pittsburgh Marathon Weekend started promptly at 7 a.m. This event is taking over downtown Pittsburgh all weekend. Phegley and Profar both had their reasons to go out drinking after last night’s game; if they did they may be regretting that now.
7 races into the Churchill Downs card not a single favorite has won. Five winners at $23 or better.
Primera Upgrade, already known for her sharp horse sense, may now have added insight as a soon-to-be Gaucho. She’s got $5 to win on #14, Win Win Win.
was that her essay? Primera the greek?
If she’s a Gaucho it must have been “How Ken Korach Has Influenced My Life”.
Rain may be coming but that’s fine with me, horses I like should take to a wet track. I’ll be playing #7 Maximum Security, #8 Tactitus, and especially #3 By My Standards as a live longshot. Couple others on the back end of exotics. I want to see how the 10th race goes, hoping favorite Instagrand disappoints which would validate some of my handicapping.
I have $2 on Tacitus.
Excellent validation.
uhg
If the Giants had any chance at all I might feel different, but as it stands I have warm fuzzies for Stephen Vogt.
No up and coming trendy neighborhood in America is complete without a bunch of microbrewery/brewpubs. I passed up Cinderlands this afternoon in favor of Eleventh Hour in the old warehouse a block away. The food truck is from Emporio, the Official Meatball of the Pittsburgh Penguins (“Check out our balls!”). Mmmm the sandwich was good.
The IPAs here are all the hazy New England style which is a pleasant change from the usual.
Oh man a meatball hoagie sounds awesome right now.
“The usual” where? Pretty much everything is hazy and super-fruity here now – its like orange cream soda!
Another big green blob approaching from the west on the radar. It’s a bobblehead night so the Pirates will do everything they can to complete 5 innings.
Whoops, the Bobblehead Night Jinx strikes again.
My ticket:
$20 Win on #3 By My Standards. Could be peaking off big Louisiana Derby upset win. Like like his chances of getting a perfect set up trip here. I’d bet him at half the price but at 17-1 I was tempted to put my entire bankroll here.
$5 Win-Place-Show #8 Tacitus, total $15. Won two preps despite really tough trips, that augers well for Derby success.
$2 Trifecta #7 Maximum Security over 3, 8 and 16 (Game Winner) over 3, 8, 16, and 14 (Win Win Win), total $18. I like Max Security’s chance of winning, would have bet straight win at the 10-1 morning line but down as the favorite it’s less enticing as a stand alone.
One of the most open Derbys in the last 10 years, should be fun.
Late worsening track so I cut trifecta in half, $1.
Maximum Security the fave for a reason, turns out. BMS and Tacitus never showed up.
The stewards review has turned this into the longest two minutes in sports.
HOLY SHIT!
That was bizarre. Unreasonable to say Country House actually wouldve won but for that foul.
Flavien Prat goes from AAA Golden Gate Fields last week to a Derby victory today.
Is that the standard, though?
The trainer of Country House said something like: “Well, my guy wasn’t really impeded, but some others were, and if this were some midweek claiming race, he would be disqualified without much question.” Though his saying that is self-serving, it sounds right to me.
Yeah, not sure what the decision tree is there. The NBC guys clearly wanted no part of an unprecedented DQ, but the ex-jockeys seemed to acknowledge it was problematic.
Inquiries sometimes lead to a re-placing of horses based on projections of how they would’ve run, but that’s maybe not as discretionary for a foul/no-foul call,
It seems my view on this is not shared within the household.
I’m still unsure. I’ve seen enough nothing claimers to agree with Bill Mott that a DQ fits the facts. It just doesn’t fit the context of this specific race, much less that of the stage.
I lost either way, but my mother-in-law had MaxSec WPS and is irate.
A few days later and I’ve come around to your view, shared by many horse-knowers. Clear foul, properly adjudicated.
Interestingly, twinspires.com is refunding win bets on MaxSec anyway (up to $10).
I know nothing about racing and less about turf races, but Bricks and Mortar is one helluva finisher.
Another long shot comes in: Kendrys Morales Triple.
Meanwhile the juleps aren’t helping as I eventually find the A’s on Fox Sports.
Do not let Bassitt face Bell a third time.
I may be buzzed but Joe Giarardi has a tolerable grandpa-telling-stories style.
i dont mind. he is filling a lot of air space, tho
For the record it turns out I am nine full months younger than Joe Girardi
Hound not inspiring the greatest confidence.
Rain is light enough that they can play all nine if it stays like this.
If so it will be fun to watch Clint Hurdle play one run / last inning NL baseball for five straight innings.
I assumed he thought it was the last inning and figured he could take advantage of Bob oddly sticking with Hendriks. Puddles are forming and this should have been stopped at the end of the sixth.
They’ve invested too much to quit now, it’s Vietnam all over again.
Can’t we just declare victory?
do we get to win this time?
Depends who write the books. In twenty years we may yet have won Vietnam.
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its been on my mind because I have a clieng with traumatic brain injury that told me he was a green beret and what he can do is “first blood shit”
Rain did get much lighter right after I wrote that. They must have had a”keep going” forecast.
I want Kendrys to hit for the cycle a week before the DFA. That didn’t help.
I think they give the Pirates the bottom of the sixth and then bring out the tarp.
bang a kang, liam!
wow. that was an all timer of a first hit
Well that was as much fun as a bowl of soggy Corn Flakes.
6 A’s runs please
so, the nationals had this guy and treinen?
ANd they traded for Doolittle and Madson?
In keeping with the flow of the day the Sharks just got screwed out of a seemingly clear goal on replay.
Ah. That explains it.
Fosse was on the radio tonight. Apparently he had walked over that yellow bridge to the game and had noticed that people for some reason attach locks to it, which he is concerned will make the bridge fall down from too much weight. This was a multi-inning topic of conversation. At one point Korach told him he prefers his lox with bagels.
The Warriors-Rockets game is brought to you by “America’s Biopharmaceutical Companies.”
OK
Long before tipoff tonight this had the look of an NBA-scripted Houston win. The wide open NHL playoffs stand in sharp contrast and have completely won me over.
Git er done, Kaval.
Dang that’s pretty.
The Pirates have some excellent statues around PNC Park — Clemente, Wagner, Stargell, Mazeroski. This one is a few hundred yards downriver near Heinz Field. You have to see this atrocity in person to appreciate how bad it is. The sculptor clearly intended to terrorize little kids. It reminds me of that hideous George Moscone bust.
Over/under May 20 for the TJS announcement.
7-8-9 are Profar, Hundley, Montas.
Happy 19th anniversary of the Wild Alcoholic Dream.
Hundley GIDP pays $2.10
I enjoy these Pirates uniforms but really wish they had Stargell stars.
And Khris is deceased.
2-7 would sound a lot better than 1-8. Well maybe a little better anyway. So far this looks like “Let’s get on the plane and go home” though.
That was startling. That 1-0 lead felt like 10-0.
Trivino already used for two innings and Treinen unavailable. Mmmkay good luck Bob.
It’s baseball in a beautiful park, and more of that is always welcome. But boy, this isn’t the most exciting game for Soaker.
These uniforms do not flatter Melky Cabrera.
Brett is going to win this with a pinch-hit home run in the 19th inning.
Rodney going to close, get all the runs you can.
It was terrible luck not to score more, but I am certain Rodney would have given up at least the number they scored plus one.
I knew what was going to happen, of course, and was grateful for the quickness of it.
I have been checking Slusser’s feed frequently for news of the DFA. I’m in Chicago right now, hope it’s a done deal by the time I get back to Reno.
FK Fernando Rodney
i liked it when the site was down
This turned out to be a good day to not follow the A’s game.
36 games would be historically early for Billy to admit a $5M mistake but with Edwin Jackson needing a roster spot, firing Rodney is the logical move.
With the starters never going more than 6 they need a multiple-innings mop-up guy in lost causes and Brooks is fine for that until they need to find room for Manaea, Luzardo, Puk or anyone else.
Pittsburgh has been an excellent trip. The only direct impact of baseball losses on it for me was that I had both an Imperial Stout and Imperial IPA before staggering back to the hotel last night.
Avoiding being duckwalked by Imperial Stormtroopers.
Bag space was tight but I was able to jam the Obi-Wan Jameson Taillon bobblehead in there so he can take his spot alongside George Brett, the Cincinnati Reds garden gnome and a few other keepsakes from the road.
The Chron reminds that the previous mulrlti-run extra inning collapse was also on a Sunday. It it happens again May 12 I can only conclude that God hates us.
yankees in 2012? old man chavez complaining about dancing?
Horrible balk call in the 1st inning started that whole mess.
blackley?
Yep. Larry Vanover (pretty sure thats his name) made the call.
I remember that game as being a point that I thought our luck had run out and hey, we stayed on contention way longer than anyone thought we would.
I think it’s impossible to blow a lead in extra innings at home, but theologians might differ.
I feel like Fernando Rodney haas this within him.
Wait until September 6.
Certainly a title-worthy goal if it holds up.
title always goes through brighton
That was his first shot on frame from outside the box since 2013.
Thanks, and go As.
There is so much to like about his article. Including the dig at Zaidi. I like that giants fans are still anti good business practices
They forgot SBC as one of the former names.
i caught tht but couldn’t remember the name
I mean, this is above my pay grade.
He has done more impeachable things than anyone. there are slam dunk criminal cases against him in a wide variety of areas.
And yes, his base is solid. They will be emboldened by any confrontation. but will that solidify the rest of the voting public that are just run of the mill conservatives? I don’t know
IMO, run of the mill conservatives are already quite solidified around him. They want Ginsburg’s seat, don’t they?
I’ve been generally pro-Pelosi, both because for the most part she has done a good job of the cat-herding necessary to keep the Democratic caucus unified, and because the only real challenges to her leadership have come from the right, not the left.
But it seems like she’s just missing the boat on this one.
The arguments seem to be
1) The Senate won’t convict anyway, and an acquittal will just allow him to claim vindication.
The first part of that is almost certainly true. The second part sort of is, but not impeaching at all also lets him claim vindication (as he already has.)
and
2) The act of impeachment will rally his base, with the implication that it would do so more than it would rally the resistance.
I am not really clear why Pelosi et al. are so sure of this. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons with Watergate, pointing out that Nixon’s approval ratings only really nosedived after impeachment hearings started. Granted, this is a different case (tons of evidence is already public) and a different time (Fox News). But it seems like another case of Democrats not really understanding what Republicans in general and Trump in particular have been good at for so long: the way to win a PR battle is to talk up your side constantly. Make the news be about your opponent’s criminality. Even if the stories focus on their refutations, just the fact that this is what is being talked about is good for you. (How anyone can fail to understand this after n years of stories about Hillary’s emails is somewhat mystifying.)
Meanwhile, they are also ignoring
3) Trump is a criminal. It’s the House’s job to remove him from office.
I saw a normally thoughtful person claim that this argument is just “virtue signalling,” i.e. that no one really cares about the underlying crimes, it’s all just politics. That’s probably true sometimes, but this just goes way beyond normal political skirmishes. Trump’s approach (way before he got involved in politics) seems to be that he will do anything he can get away with. With that in mind, since he is (practically, though not actually legally) immune from usual prosecution, the House needs to do all it can to not let him get away with things. Waiting for another election seems like a poor substitute.
Are “impeachment hearings” distinct from oversite investigations?
My understanding is yes. The specific nuance, I couldn’t tell you. But best guess is one as a specific question in mind while the other is more general.
I think this is a key question. Might be that Pelosi is just avoiding the “i-word” but intends to have the same level of robust investigation and hearings (which could very well lead to impeachment). But if there are additional investigative powers that she is leaving on the table, then that is unacceptable.
Almost positive impeachment hearings give more powers. Likely removes executive privilege from the table.
If he leaves office and the new AG doesn’t indict him immediately upon taking office, I’ll be very pissed. And the fact that he’d have been indicted if he weren’t President just means they have a fundamental responsibility to impeach, political fallout be damn. At some point you have to do what’s right because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s politically safe.
I share this view. I also think, though, that the Dems need a national message-setter who stays away from the Trump trap and works exclusively positive, articulating a vision. Cant be Pelosi, because she’ll be in the impeachment fight, and also she’s always sucked at positive vision.
Honestly the Dems need to find their Dave Kaval.
Yup. Very much so.
Liz Warren!
I don’t agree with needing to be exclusively positive though. You have to attack him hard, but do it in a way that ties in with your program (anti-corruption, protecting the little guy, in her case).
I don’t see how it’s possible for his base to get any more solidified than it already is.
Right. There is no prospect of them just melting into the scenery in 2020, regardless of what Democrats do. They are going to stay pissed off and show up.
The election will turn on boosting Democratic turnout back to Obama levels and persuading as many non-ideological voters as possible who sometimes vote Republican not to vote for this Republican. Impeachment hearings that thrust a whole bunch of bad stuff about Trump to the forefront of people’s attention can only help in both regards, considering that there is a whole lot of actual bad stuff. And there’s no reason why the Democratic nominee can’t simultaneously stay focused on other stuff.
I also don’t see the impeachment proceedings looking good for Senate Republicans up for re-election. They’ll be forced to either protect him against these serious crimes or vote against the Republican President. Given the mountain of evidence, it’ll be a difficult sell to the fence sitters that this is purely political. Not that Republicans won’t try that tactic, which they have been doing anyway.
I guess the question comes down to timing. Do you want house hearing in the fall of 19 or the spring of 20?
I don’t so much care when an “impeachment hearing” happens. What I want is for the Democrats to commit to using all of their constitutional powers to ensure Trump’s myriad coverups don’t succeed. They have to force the issue now in order for a proper investigation to occur, because until John Roberts votes this administration isn’t going to comply with subpoenas. Taking impeachment off the table based on some kind of “no, that’s just what he wants us to do” argument just allows him to run out the clock.
Yep.
And a formal impeachment procedure makes it much harder for Roberts to buy the argument that there is no legitimate reason to subpoena his taxes, McGahn’s testimony, etc.
Solid precedent to that effect.
Maybe Susan would give a better answer if FSU’s wiping question were the one she pulled out of her mailbag.
His last eight appearances have been in “clean innings” but they have almost all been mop-up situations.
1. Down 0-8, pitched 6th inning.
2. Down 1-5, 8th.
3. Down 0-9, 8th.
4. Ahead 6-1, 9th.
5. Down 1-7, 7th.
6. Down 4-7, 7th (he gave up a run to make it 4-8).
7. Ahead 14-1, 9th.
8. Ahead 3-1, 13th.
The “team” (read Beane/Forst) may “like him in that role” but the manager got burned a few times the first dozen games of the season and refuses to use him that way. A mop-up man has to be able to go more than one inning and Rodney never does that.
I was tempted to go FJM on her whole answer to that question (which also mentions his salary, and the fact that they kept Jairo for so long last year), but decided to let it go.
Another one and we might have a game on our hands.
its a start
We might have a game on our hands.
We definitely have a game on our hands.
Holy FKing crap!
shit i turned it off to do work!
Although an away goal at this point would be a killer.
dammit now a client is here
They’ll save that for extra time to inflict maximum pain.
OK, now the away goal will be a killer.
They’ll wait for the 98th minute for that.
Wow …
What a performance. That was amazing to witness.
you are just mocking me
holy shit
Dear A’s, please DFA Kendrys before I get to the ballpark tonight. Thanks.
Kendrys was just about the best thing about the Pittsburgh series. But, yeah.
Nope.
From “fuck the draft” to “I eat ass”: A half century of First Amendment jurisprudence
Coming soon to a law review near you.
Half the cars in Southern California used to have those cropped burger joint bumper stickers that read “In-N-Out Urge”. I guess it’s a good thing In-N-Out never did business in Florida.
Somewhere in FL I hope someone is modifying a burger joint logo to read “Five Guys, One Cup”
Well that was the weirdest no-hitter I ever missed in person.
Missed? We saw you there (if not in the right thread)!