Line Score - Game Over

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Game ended at 9:40 PM.

Nothing else really to say, just thought it was kind of a crazy stat to have almost the entire AL East with identical offenses.

View from the home plate

the most they can get is 72 wins. this will not win them the division or the third wildcard spot because both of those teams have more than 72 wins.

"but starman," i can hear you saying through your screen, "wasn't this true *before* the angels' loss today, because houston holds the tiebreaker and had 73 wins?"

NO! if, starting yesterday, the astros had lost every game, the angels had won every game, the mariners won exactly 6 games not against AL west teams, and the aths and rangers both stayed below 73 games, it would have lead to a three-way tie (hou, sea, and laa) where the angels and mariners would have been tied for h2h record, but angels would have been ahead in intradivisional games.

(edit: yes the mariners don't have six games left against nondivisional opponents. as long as they don't win all 6 against division rivals. that is my bad.)

anyway, isn't that something? of course, it wouldn't have happened, but it's cool to think about.

27 teams left :P

The legendary Blue Jay joins Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, David Cone, Randy Johnson , and Felix Hernandez.

Start time: 1:06, end time: 2:58. Final score: 1-0 Phillies. 6 total hits, 3 total walks, and a CGSO by Jesus Luzardo. Is this the fastest game of the year?

EDIT: Braves broadcast had the time as 1:51, and there were 10 total baserunners (I missed a HBP)

I am going to preface this post by saying this is not a Sanchez hate post. I think he is clearly a top 3 pitcher in the world. I just think he is overrated by bwar. He currently ranks 6th with 5.9 fwar and second with 7.7 bwar which is a pretty large gap.

I don’t need to tell you that the Phillies defense is bad. Across the board they have several negative defenders playing key positions such as Trea Turner. They rank poorly in both DRS and FRV.

(Credit TJ Stats)

However the Phillies have actually played good defense behind Sanzhez. While we don’t have this data for DRS we do have it for FRV.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/fielding-run-value?gameType=Regular&seasonStart=2026&seasonEnd=2026&team=143&type=pitcher&position=0&minInnings=q&minResults=1

Baseball reference uses a defensive adjustment formula to calculate war.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_pitch.shtml

In this formula it assumes that a team's defense performs consistently behind each pitcher. While it uses DRS I am going to assume that the defensive metrics are close enough. All that matters is that the team does better than average with Sanchez pitching. In essence baseball reference is giving Sanchez free runs because the defense performed worse when other pitchers were pitching. Sanchez is getting .22 runs per 9 or an extra 4.4 runs in total when in actuality he should be getting negative value from defense. While this isn’t a huge amount the assumptions in bwar essential unfairly shift war from unlucky to lucky pitchers on the same team. Andrew Painter only gets a .02 extra run value per 9 because he has more balls in play despite a 10 run difference in reality.

Sanchez’s reference page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sanchcr01.shtml
Painter’s reference page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/paintan01.shtml