Not sure if this was mentioned on this board already, but Pat Murphy was fired by the Padres. Wouldn't surprise me to see him end up on Counsell's staff.
Papelbon got into a fight with Bryce Harper in the Nats' dugout today. Pap was chiding Harper for not running out a popup (Harper isn't new to this act) and then Harper took exception to Pap calling him out, and Pap lunged at Harper and started choking him. It was ugly. Things are a mess in Washington.
Schafer batted against a lefty last night with the Brewers are already out of the game (at least in my opinion they were cooked down 3) and that could have been a decent time to give Reed his first AB. You make a fair point about not throwing him to the wolves right away.
He's caught Pena more than Maldonado has so it makes sense. Not questioning the decision to start him, was just making sure it was his first appearance in MLB and it coincided with his first start.
Plus he - right now - has three pitches he can throw for strikes. I don't see the velocity on his fastball being that much of an issue if he has sink on it and can keep it low. All things considered, I thought he looked good last night. Going to take an adjustment to teams trying to slow him down - we'll see if he can do anything with that this month.
Velocity is down, his mechanics looked off, he was all over the zone, and he had weird body language. Other than that, he looked pretty good. And there's another HR off Lohse.
Don't the Brewers have a lot of days off in this stretch? Why even bother with Garza anymore, sure the pitch count is low but he's all over the place. And here we go again. And I know, it doesn't really matter.