OSS: Stoppable force defeats movable object
Three up
1. Jon Lester looked a little shaky early on, but settled down to shut out the Mets over seven innings, striking out seven. It is just the Mets punchless offense, but shutout performances are still always great to see, whether it’s the 27 Yankees or a beer league softball team.
2. How strange is it to have confidence in the bullpen again? Aside from the long relievers, who have special circumstances of their own, I’m at least at a ‘meh’ level when any of them come in, which is a huge change from the tire fire earlier in the year. And most of the same guys are still in the pen. I think Rondon is actually the guy I worry most about when he comes in.
3. I’m not sure if I should give more credit to Rizzo for his crafty slide to turn an out into a runner on third or to JD for calling it ‘sleight of foot’.
Three down
1. That offense, oy. I’m too lazy to look up the WPA numbers, and I don’t think fangraphs has it broken down anyway, but that Kris Bryant TOOTBLAN in extras should have been a back breaker. At least they have the Mets offense to make them look good.
2. Speaking of TOOTBLANs, that failed suicide squeeze sure felt like a double play to me, but I don’t know the rulebook that well. If the umpires were arguing some of the semantics that I briefly saw around the internets, I’m pretty impressed with their knowledge of the rulebook.
3. I’m not sure if I was just getting a weird feed, but the WGN broadcast I was getting through extra innings seemed pretty lousy from a production standpoint. There were lots of strange camera cuts (one in particular I remember on a Castro PA), though on the plus side there were no commercials and it seemed like we were getting the truck video feed between innings, complete with trial graphics and whatnot.
Next game: Jay Carrieta vs DeGrom, at 12:10 PM. Cubs are going for the season sweep, which would have made Santo proud.