Sunday Bantering: Baseball stuff, real and sim

It is Sunday right? Every day is a holiday in the new world.

So today’s (sim) Blue Jays game in Baltimore was rained out.

In league news:

• Alex Gordon has announced he will retire at the end of the season. I’m sure the real Alex Gordon would be surprised to read this.
• Dodgers’ pitcher Pedro Baez “suffered a torn labrum” and it now out for the season.
• Nelson Cruz, of the Twins, was named AL Player of the Week. He hit .414 with 4 home runs and 9 RBI. On the season he is hitting .257 with 8 home runs.
• David Dahl, of the Rockies, was NL Player of the Week. He hit .500 with 1 home run and 13 RBI in 6 games.

And in (sim) Jays news. The Jays called up Brian Moran sending Sam Gaviglio to Buffalo. Moran was sent down just a couple of days ago. OOTP doesn’t use that pesky 10 day rule. I don’t know why they would send down Sam. He has a 2.13 ERA in 12.2 innings. He’s allowed 12 hits, 2 homers, 1 walk with 14 strikeouts.

And Moran, well he had a 7.74 ERA in 5.2 innings with the Jays. He’s allowed 10 hits, 1 homer, 4 walks and 11 strikeouts.

Tomorrow the Jays start a three-game series with the Red Sox at Rogers Centre. Thankfully they can’t be rained out there. Going into the series the Jays are 2.5 game up on the second place Red Sox.

In some real world stuff:

• SABR has a post up about Dave Stieb. I always like reading about Stieb. He really should be in the Hall of Fame.
• Speaking of should be in the Hall:

• And there is this story on former Jay Ryan Feierabend:

• I didn’t know this:

• Tao wrote about the balancing act between wanting baseball back and wanting to keep everyone safe.

We want baseball back, even if it is in some strange form in distant and empty ballparks, and as such, we’ll be tempted to accept a lot of compromises along the way. But can we accept sequestering the thousands of players into some place which may or may not be safer than anywhere else, possibly keeping them away from their families and testing them while others go untested?

And what of all the off-field staff that would find themselves pulled into the bio-dome? How well would they be looked after, and how do we keep them safe in a time where there are so many unknowns?

This, for me, is the problem. I really want baseball back but if it came back and someone got sick and died? Being able to keep the players safe is one thing, keeping the other people needed to run baseball safe. That’s another issue.

I was saying this to someone talking about real life opening up, in my small part of the real world. I said I’m not built for having someone I know get sick and die because I wanted to get back to normal.

I’ve been lucky, so far, I haven’t had anyone in my immediate circle of friends come down with the virus. I’d love that to continue.