Today's Monday brings us several topics, as Josh and Corwin navigate through a discussion of the Tampa-to-Montreal news that has circulating, what quantifies being an opener, the worst inning in baseball history, Shohei Ohtani, and the current state of the 2019 MLB All-Star game!
The Tampa Bay Rays moving to a different city is a discussion as old as time in the baseball world as the team has never truly found attendance success in their city, for a series of reasons. News broke last week, however, about the Rays organization getting approval to examine what it would look like if they were to split their home series' between Tampa Bay and Montreal, a city that has not had a baseball team since the Montreal Expos left to become the Washington Nationals in 2004.
The opener strategy is a relatively recent concept that was introduced in a mainstream way by the Tampa Bay Rays last season (2018) as a way of getting more out of their starting pitching. It ended up becoming more widely used as the season continued, as starting-pitching deprived teams that were in competitive races saw its effectiveness. This most notably included the Oakland A's and the Milwaukee Brewers.
The "worst inning in baseball history" that the guys discuss this week is too good to spoil here, so please listen to the episode (and check out the link below) to see what exactly happened in this unfortunate outing.
Shohei Ohtani has been having himself a nice season at the plate since his return from the IL following his Tommy John surgery, which has lead to some in the baseball community to wonder if he should return to pitching at all once healthy. His stats are also linked to below, if you would like to take a look for yourself before hearing the guys' opinions on this topic. Ohtani will likely not pitch at all this season due to his recovery, making this conversation moot until the start of the 2020 MLB season.
With the 2nd round of voting for the 2019 MLB All-Star game about to begin, the guys just wanted to check in once more to see where everyone was poised heading into the final stages of roster construction. More will follow as this progresses.
Orioles-Rangers April 19th, 1996 Box Score:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX199604190.shtml
Shohei Ohtani Stats:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml