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My dad is on vacation in Slovenia right now, and he texted me out of the blue this morning with, "So the Braves apparently turned the greatest double play ever yesterday?" Apparently he was at a bus stop and met a Phillies fan who was still fuming about the result.

Austin Riley with the clutchest backup of a cut-off throw ever.

This season has been a useful illustration of just how powerful the pull toward median expectations can be in baseball. It's a long season, and there are these really strong forces pulling even the best teams back toward the pack. 104 wins is obviously phenomenal, but it's been done a bunch of...

Buck repeats the same pattern at every job he takes. He comes on board, cuts the fat, organizes everything, rights the ship, gets everyone rowing in the same direction, because he's a smart guy and detail obsessed. And we're all suitably impressed and say, "Wow, Buck's a really smart guy. How...

Counterpoint: Acuna should try to steal 10 bases this weekend.

Salt Lake City would probably be Coors Lite in terms of ballpark effects, right?

Suzuki with his Brant Brown moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6znbrkvyWoI

I don't know -- the A's seemed to have achieved exactly what they set out to do. What they set out to do was stupid and evil, of course, but they got there.

This might be too pedantic a point to be worth making, but I would point out that ERA is not a strictly observational accounting of objective facts. "Earned runs" inherently require a subjective judgement from an official scorer, and then you get into inherited runners and how they're assigned...

I like how every time I find myself begrudgingly thinking "this guy has a point about Murphy and d'Arnaud, the usage here is really weird," AJones just goes and pushes the crazy a little bit further so I'm in the same relative position as before.

Pushing Waldrep up to the bigs this year would be silly, especially since he's shown the same control issues he showed in college. Let him finish out the season in the minors, give him a nice pat on the back for a job well done, then send him home to rest for the winter.

Is there a time limit on a home run trot? Because I'd dearly love to see Acuna take, like, 13 minutes to run the bases against them.

Counting today, Strider might have four starts left, right? Or three? Anyway, based on the pretty uninspiring NL Cy Young chase right now, I think Strider still has an outside shot at it if he absolutely dominates these handful of starts. He'd need to blow everyone away, but we all know he can...

Thank you Odalis Perez for getting me a 0.2% on today's Braves-Dodgers square.

In 1894, when they also gave up 1002 runs. On the other hand, props to the 1897 team for scoring 1,025 runs and only surrendering 665. That'll get you a cool 93-39-3 record.

I was looking up the 2003 team, which "only" had a 112 OPS+. Which illustrates just how remarkable this group is -- the 2003 team clobbered the ever-loving hell out of the ball, lead the NL in most major offensive statistics, got 1.000+ OPS seasons out of Sheffield and Javy, an eight WAR season...

Jordan Montgomery has done Jordan Montgomery things in Texas, rough last start notwithstanding.

Nationals called off Strasburg's official retirement ceremony, apparently because they want to re-negotiate the terms of the settlement with him. Real classy move, especially since Strasburg could just say, "Re-negotiate? Sure, I'll re-negotiate by never, ever retiring, and you pay me every penny."

I'd make some comment about the lack of position player talent in the minors, but when you have seven positions at the big league level signed through the heat death of the universe, it's hard to get too worked up over that.

I think we have to take seriously the position Ken Rosenthal reported on a few weeks ago -- namely, that the Braves sincerely think that their core guys playing every day is both vitally important to building a good culture and actually keeps them better prepared for the rigors of a long season...