As the 2023 regular season enters the home stretch, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:
1. Wainwright goes for #200:
After securing his 199th career win in Baltimore last week, Cardinals veteran Adam Wainwright is slated to take the ball at home against the Brewers with a chance to become the 122nd player in MLB history to reach 200 wins in his career, joining the likes of Jon Lester and Chuck Finley. Pitching opposite Wainwright in what could be his final career start at Busch Stadium figures to be right-hander Freddy Peralta (3.79 ERA). The final season of Wainwright’s career has been a very difficult one, as the 41-year-old has posted a 7.95 ERA and 6.20 FIP in 94 innings of work across 20 starts. Wainwright’s Cardinals are struggling similarly, with the club facing just their second season below .500 since Wainwright debuted in 2005 with the possibility of their first 90-loss campaign since 1990.
2. Rodriguez heads to LA:
The Tigers are headed to Dodger Stadium for a three game set today. Despite the Dodgers having already clinched the NL West and the Tigers being all but eliminated from postseason contention, there’s still plenty of intrigue surrounding today’s game. That’s because left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, who made waves in the baseball world at the trade deadline this year by using his no-trade rights to veto a deal that would have sent him to the Dodgers, will be taking the mound tonight against right-hander Lance Lynn, LA’s lone rotation addition at the deadline this year. With Lynn sporting an ugly 8.18 ERA over his last four starts and much of the Dodgers rotation injured ahead of the club’s impending postseason run, Rodriguez’s 3.99 ERA in eight starts since the trade deadline would surely have been a major boost to the club in the final weeks of the season and have given them a third veteran arm to pair with Lynn and Clayton Kershaw this postseason.
3. Series Preview: Phillies @ Braves
A pair of division rivals are set to begin a three-game set that could prove to be a preview of what’s to come this postseason as the Phillies make their way to Truist Park in Atlanta. It’s the second series between the clubs in as many weeks, with the Braves having clinched the NL East crown by taking three of four in Philadelphia last week. Since then, however, the Braves suffered a brutal sweep at the hands of the Marlins while the Phillies took a series win against the Cardinals over the weekend, indicating momentum may have shifted to favor the Phillies headed into this week’s series. The coming set has no shortage of intriguing pitching matchups, starting with righties Zack Wheeler and Kyle Wright facing off this evening. Tuesday will see youngsters Spencer Strider and Cristopher Sanchez clash, while the final game of the series will see Aaron Nola take the mound opposite Bryce Elder.
Terrible decision (and obviously so at the time) to blow 18m on wainwright in 2023 when he was clearly done last september. But now he’s here, lets hope he gets number 200. Seems like an all-round good guy.
He plays country music. I remember reading something about him singing on his guitar some songs off his new album at one of the last few Cardinals home games.
Found it, link below—
cbssports.com/mlb/news/cardinals-adam-wainwright-t…
Hemlock: Poor choice of music aside, I hope he gets his 200th tonight.
@avenger, you’re entitled to your own opinion about genres of music, but I share your hope about #200.
@avenger65,
So he like songs about horses, beer, pickup trucks, and your drunken horse stealing your pickup truck. Who are we to judge?
He could start chanting to thumping drums and use the N word and chant about killing cops, but he is a Christian, he has morals.
Garywally: So that means non-Christians thump drums, use the N word and chant about killing cops? What a narrow little world you live in.
BartHarley: Don’t forget about My Baby Done Left Me.
Except he wasn’t clearly done in September of last year. It’s super easy to say now with the perfect vision of hindsight, but Wainwright had a really good year last year until he tweaked his knee and his mechanics in the last month. It was perfectly reasonable to assume he would go back to being productive when he fully healed over the off-season.
Wainwright had a 3.09 ERA on the year heading into September and then he got hurt and tried to pitch through it. That production is well worth 18 mil in todays pitching market, and that completely ignores all of the extra value St. Louis got by retaining a guy so important to the franchise and the fans.
It made sense from a legacy/commercial basis and everyone wanted him to succeed. But he had lost what was left of his velo, amd a lot of people werent buying that it wasnt Father Time rather than an injury for the last 6 weeks of 2022.
But Dear Lord let him get his 200 now that its all hindsight
Dont know if you are part of Viva El Birdos but probably half the fanbase called it before the season started. Admittedly that means half of us didnt also, though for once i was right – it doesnt happen often and i wish i had been wrong as usual.
If you dont visit Viva El Birdos come join in, its a good community and you woukd be welcome
The Phillies are getting swept.
Doubt it. The first game is an auto win.
There’s no auto wins for the phillies
Or anyone else for that matter!!
I was hoping Dereck Rodriguez would start all three games against the Phillies.
Ok darkside, just keep that stink off of thegoodphight…..
Am countering with them winning 2 of 3……and the braves’ hangover lasts a little longer…..
I’ve been avoiding TGP more or less because I’ve been ignoring the team lately.
What an insult to Jon Lester and Chuck Finley lol they were both still playable when they won 200 games
They both were cardinals when they did it too. There’s lots a of parallels to it.
Lynn has made eight starts since being traded to the Dodgers, over which he’s allowed 24 earned runs. Of those, 15 came in two consecutive starts. In his last start he gave up only two earned in 7.0 innings. So good luck figuring out what’s going on with Lynn. The Dodger sure have to get a handle on it and hope for the playoffs he’s the pitcher who made those six good appearances instead of those two really bad ones.
Blue skies: He pitched pretty bad for the Sox, too. I’m surprised the Dodgers took Mr. Gopher Ball who is clearly out of shape with the hope they could turn him into something useful. It’s a roll of the dice which pitcher they get once the PO start.
Two really bad starts against six quite good ones since coming to the Dodgers. Why he runs hot and cold like a faucet, who knows? Hope the Dodgers have some ideas. They have no better options but to play him in the postseason.
Tim Dierkes: Could you please update the wild card standings in the opener each morning? It would be a big help since the races are so close.
MLB does a good job of keeping this current in real time:
mlb.com/standings/wild-card/
Another tab on this page tracks the tiebreaker scenarios.
Strength of opponent seems important. 5-0 vs non-playoff-contenders, torched vs Atl and Mia. Outlier is a good ND performance vs Brewers, which provides some hope for October.
Edit: whoops, pretend this is in reply to comments about Lance Lynn.
Not seeing it. He handled some teams that can score runs. Whether they are playoff contenders depends on other things. One of the drubbings he got was against the Marlins, a team that doesn’t score a lot of runs. The fact that he had two terrible outings in a row suggests a mechanical issue of some kind.
I was glad when E-Rod turned down L.A. Poor Dodgers aren’t used to anyone basically thumbing their nose at them. Weather’s nice, but the people are bat-spit crazy.
Which network will skip the Braves/Phillies games to give us all the Yankees vs. anyone series.
Kind of deceptive the way you compare Lynns last four starts to Rodriguez’s starts since the deadline. If you take Lynn’s starts in LA he has a 4.66 ERA over the same stretch with two absolute clunkers he threw. In my books that means he’s been very solid and better than that, he wants to be here. Dont need some guy just going through the motions, the Padres have shown us what comes of that.
What exactly is the intrigue surrounding the Tigers-Angels game? Players get discussed in trades every year and wind up not going to the team. That creates intrigue when they face the team down the road?
The intrigue is really between HARRIS and Rodriguez. HARRIS looked the fool at the deadline. Dodgers were on E-Rods no trade list, but he ignored that fact.
Congrats Waino! Done in style. Contreras provides the only run. That’s why we play the games!