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The Blue Jays welcome the Braves to Dunedin to kick off a three game weekend series. Today’s series opening game is set to get underway at a very weird time, 7:37 ET, so take note of that when you’re wondering why the game isn’t on TV when you want it to be.
Blue Jays’ Starter
Robbie Ray will make his fourth start of the season, coming into play with an 0-1 record and a 2.81 ERA. The ERA is a bit lower than he probably deserves, dancing around a lot of baserunners in his first couple starts thanks to 9 walks in his first 10 innings. His last start was much better in that regard, as he didn’t allow a single walk over 6 innings, but he was touched up for a pair of home runs that led to 3 runs and ultimately his first loss of the season.
April 30, 2021
The moment was certainly worth a chuckle. In the seventh inning of a 10-0 drubbing by the Braves on Wednesday night, Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo took the mound. After retiring Johan Camargo on a grounder to first and then walking Ronald Acuña Jr., the NL leader in wRC+, the lefty-tossing Rizzo faced off against lefty-swinging Freddie Freeman, the reigning MVP and struck him out.
Neither combatant could keep a straight face as Rizzo fell behind 2-0 via a slow curveball that was about two feet outside, and then a 70-mph fastball that missed the outside corner. Freeman laid off another 70-mph fastball that was in the zone, fouled one off that was a few clicks faster, and then went down swinging at a sweeping 61-mph curve that was low in the zone.
The Soroka portion of the announcement may cause some alarm among fans, but that 60-day term refers to the
total number of days he must spend on the injured list including days already spent there. In other words, it’s 60 days from his initial placement on Opening Day not 60 days from today. Soroka will be eligible to return at the end of May, but the latest reports out of Atlanta suggest he’s not likely to be ready to return to the roster until mid-June anyhow. It’s a largely procedural move.
Newcomb, 27, got out to a fast start this season but has been sidelined since being placed on the Covid list back on April 17. The starter-turned-reliever has pitched 5 1/3 innings and allowed just one run while striking out a whopping 12 of the 22 hitters he’s faced. Granted, he’s also walked four batters and hit another, but the early uptick in strikeout rate, average fastball velocity (95.2 mph, up from 93.6 mph in 2020) and swinging-strike rate (14 percent, up from seven p
Both these guys had so much fun
Position players pitching has lost much of its appeal in recent years. What used to be a rare moment of whimsical absurdity is now used increasingly often as a purely practical strategy to preserve bullpen arms. But that doesn’t mean seeing a position player on the mound can’t be a joy sometimes, like when Willians Astudillo threw two 46 mph strikes a few weeks ago or on Wednesday night, when Anthony Rizzo got Freddie Freeman to strike out swinging.
The Braves roughed up Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks (seven runs in 3 2/3 innings) and tacked on another three runs off Alec Mills to make it 10–0, at which point manager David Ross called on Rizzo to take the hill.
Braves 10, Cubs 0: Anthony Rizzo’s career ERA is still 0.00
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I was all set to write yet another funeral dirge of a recap, bemoaning both Kyle Hendricks’ inexplicable fall to the bottom rungs of MLB pitching and the Cubs’ inability to score runs at all in the team’s 10-0 loss to the Braves Wednesday night. and then Anthony Rizzo made us all smile.
Rizzo entered the game to pitch in the seventh inning. This is something we never expected to see again. Rizzo had pitched against the Diamondbacks in 2018, and at the time, after retiring the only hitter he faced (AJ Pollock, on a fly ball to center field), he said that was it for his pitching career: