Thanks Direct TV

Once upon a time, in a land not so far, far away, Direct TV decided that the MLB Extra Innings Package should have another free preview in the first week of games after the All Star Break...and it was widely thought that this was the greatest stretch in television history since the last free preview of MLB Extra Innings in the first week of the regular season.  One of the things that I missed in the first free trial was this setup here to the right.  You can get 8 games at once with all of them showing the score of the game, but you only listen to 1 at a time and can change audio feeds very easily and quickly and can go to a main game just by hitting the enter button.  F'ing genius.  I was watching the ChiSox-Astros game on Saturday afternoon because I wanted to watch George Springer hit live.  I have seen the highlights and I know the stats, but I had yet to see one of his at bats in real time, and to me, you cant really know how good a player is until you see one.  When I was growing up, Frank Thomas at bats were must see TV.  When the Sox were on and Thomas was up, you stopped what you were doing, you put off the urge to run to the bathroom after eating 3 pounds of queso dip, you told mom that she was going to need to wait about 2.5 minutes...you get the idea.  There was always a sense that Thomas was going to do something that you'd never seen before and that you would kick yourself until eternity if you missed it for something stupid.  These arethe guys that every pitcher treats differently and you can see it on the ptcher's face when these guys come up to the plate. There arent many players like that.  Right now, there might be a handful - Giancarlo Stanton, Yasiel Puig and ...?  Tulo, Trout and Cabrera are spectacular baseball players and they belong on anyone's shortlist of the best players in the game today, but their greatness isnt embodied in any single moment.  They are great simply because they excel repeatedly, constantly, and ruthlessly like baseball andriods sent straight from BaseWars to dominate mankind.
If you have never played BaseWars, then may God have mercy on your soul.  Stanton and Puig, like the Big Hurt (and Albert Pooholes before he turned into old bald man PooHoles) before them, can do something spectacular and rarely seen before at any moment (for Stanton, its hitting the ball 450ft+ like hes swatting flies in his backyard. For Puig, its bat-flipping on balls that may or may not go out of the yard).  Anyways, I wanted to see if Springer had that air about him.  The Sox had Hector Noesi on the hill, so it wasnt exactly a high degree of difficulty matchup for Georgey.  I did get to see him hit a 415' bomb to right which was pretty impressive, but I also saw the Chi Sox choose to intentionally walk Alex Presley TO LOAD THE BASES in the 7th inning with Ronald Bellsario on the hill to get to Springer.  People didnt walk the guy before Thomas (or Stanton. or Puig. Or Tulo. Or Trout. Or Cabrera. Or about 25 other players I dont feel like naming).  Basically, I came away thinking that Springer is a good player (maybe even a special player) but that it isnt worth stopping my day to watch him.  The other thing that struck me as I was watching this game was how truely terrible Dallas Keuchel is at pitching (and life...his beard makes homeless people look like they belong on the cover of GQ...there might actually be a colony of finches living in it).  Keuchel's fastball was topping out at 88-89 and his change up was in the 80 MPH range.  There wasnt a ton of movement that I could tell and the Sox werent really getting fooled.  He managed to avoid the loss because he was facing the aforementioned Noesi.  I honestly have no idea how he was a competent Major League starter for more than a couple of game.  Maybe life will let him get back to his true calling as a bird sanctuary.
One other quick mention before I get it on with the recaps.  One of the other games I watched a bunch of was the Garrett Richards - Felix Hernandez showdown in Anaheim from late Saturday night.  In case you missed the pretty pictures, Richards had a perfecto through 5 innings and Felix had given up 1 hit through 6.  I have both of these guys in fantasy, so it was driving me nuts that I was going to end up without a win from either of them when they both pitched so spectacularly well.  But the takeaways were clear.  Richards is one of the, if not the, best up and coming pitchers in the league.  He throws a filthy 95 MPH fastball (that he can run up to 97-99) that runs away from lefties and pairs it with a nice slider (avg 86 MPH) and occasional cutter and change up to keep guys honest.  While Richards is up and coming, King Felix reminded me why he is the best pitcher in the Bigs not named Clayton Kershaw (and he might be just as good as Clay).  What Felix did to a pretty solid Angels lineup can be best described as a crime against humanity.  His combination of 4 seam fastball, 2 seam fastball, cut fastball, slider and change up is borderline unfair.  Watching the Angles flail against him, I was reminded of something that I heard a long time ago about pitch blending and how it is one of the things that makes pitchers succeed more or less than their talent would suggest.  The concept is simple - try to make all of your pitches look the same until they get close to the plate, then they move and the batter cant react quick enough; everyone can hit a curveball if the ball jumps 3 inches out of a pitchers hand instead of coming on a straight downward plane like a fastball then biting 5 or 6 feet in front of the plate.  Hernandez takes this concept to a level rarely seen.  It actually reminded me of MVP 05 for PS2.
 In that game, once the pitcher chose a pitch, the ball would change color depending on the pitch type.  That way, you could read it out of the pitchers hand and see what the ball was going to do - a fastball was white, a change up was green, curveball was blue and so on.  It was fantastic and it was the most realistic adaptation of the batter-pitcher interface ever developed.  What people quickly realized was that 4 seam fastballs, 2 seam fastballs and cutters were all white out of the hand, but ended up in very different places.  When I started playing online, I couldnt figure out why 75% of people were using a terrible team.  I expected to see lots of Red Sox (fresh off their first WS) and lots of Diamondbacks (with the Big Unit).  Instead there were lots of Pirates and Josh Fogg/Kris Benson and ChiSox and Mark Buehrle.  And they were unhittable in the right hands because the pitches blended.  Gosh I wish they would bring this back for The Show.

Anyways...on to the recaps.