Almost Cooperstown

Happy Memorial Day! This is episode 301 as we forgot to mention our 300th last week!  #tigers Tarik Skubal pitched a Maddux on Sunday, throwing a complete game, striking out 13, only yielding 2 hits, and he threw 94 total pitches. His Game Score was an amazing 96. Anything over 80 is special and a 100 is nearly unattainable. It's a great way to evaluate starting pitchers and you will be hearing more about it even though Bill James came up with it years ago. 

#Braves Ronald Acuna came back with a bomb on Friday hitting a home run on the first pitch he saw! Then he hit another on Saturday. We talk about being 1/3 of the way through the 2025 #MLB season and how stats might project out if the current rates are maintained. Will #Mariners Cal Raleigh hit 51 home runs? Probably not but it's fun to think about what could happen.  

All the divisions are covered and we're still doubting #Cardinals and #Phillies. Or at least Mark is.

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

Three managers have been fired already before Memorial Day!  #Pirates Derek Shelton, #Rockies Bud Black, & #Orioles Brandon Hyde all were dismissed and it kind of makes sense. You can't fire 26 players!  

#Twins won 13 straight before finally losing on Sunday. They move to 2nd place in the #ALCentral. #Tigers are the best team in #MLB right now and look strong enough to hold that position. How about #Mariners hitting? After years of putrid offense, the M's are leading the #ALWest over tired #Astros & underperforming #Rangers. Only #Yankees are over .500 in the #ALEast. 

#Dodgers still leading the #NLWest but the #Padres, #Giants, & #Dbacks are all good teams and will vie for a playoff spot all season. #Cubs may be the only #NLCentral team to make the postseason. #Mets lead #NLEast, #Phillies lose Jose Alvarado to PED suspension, and Aaron Nola is on the IL. #Braves are righting the ship & will be heard from. 

We also talked about inside the park home runs which are an increasing rarity. Ballparks are smaller, players are better athletes and understand how to play the outfield in the various parks. There have only been 10 inside the park homers in the World Series. When was the most recent?  We tell all! 

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

#Yankees Aaron Judge is now on pace for 56 home runs which would surprise exactly nobody!  Judge also has a #MLB leading 39 RBIs which over 162 games would be 156 RBIs. That hasn't been done since A-Rod did it for those same Yankees in 2007. But the real question is can Judge maintain his +.400 batting average? Doubtful but fun to watch! 

#Pirates CF O'neil Cruz leads MLB on pace for 60+ SBs. Can he keep that up? He has a new manager now that Derek Shelton has been let go. Bud Black of the #Rockies was also dismissed this weekend. Probably doing him and the franchise a favor as the team has been historically awful and had a historically awful week! 

Max Fried has a MLB league leading ERA at 1.04. He's in place to start the ASG if this keeps up. But how about #Royals Kris Dubic? He's had an excellent start to the season and is largely forgotten behind Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo. #Tigers Skubal has rounded into form but the loss of Casey Mize will hurt the Motor City kitties. 

#Dodgers Shohei Ohtani has been routinely amazing such that it's no longer notable! Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music! 

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

It was more fun talking about This Week in Baseball goings-on since #MLB team captains are kinda unimportant. A vestige of 19th century baseball, there are only three team captains in the Majors today. # Yankees Aaron Judge #Royals Salvador Perez, & #Rangers Marcus Semien.  Why aren't there more? We dive into that thought in this week's episode. 

Four of the five teams in the #ALWest are .500 or better. Who'da thunk it? Jacob DeGrom is looking like prime DeGrom for Texas. Pitching injuries continue to be the story of the 2025 season.  Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow of the #Dodgers are both on the IL. The boys from L.A. keep on winning.  

How about the Tampa Bay #Rays?  They have had a bunch of home games scheduled in the early part of the season because there is not roof over Steinbrenner Field in Tampa - the temporary home of the Rays. If you didn't know, it rains a bunch in the afternoons and evenings in Tampa in the summer. So MLB is trying to avoid rainouts and scheduled the Rays for a lot of road trips after May. ]

#RedSox puzzle us. Injuries yes, to Tristan Casas, hurt,  but the Sox just find ways to lose instead of ways to win. #Yankees are in 1st place by default. 

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

#Pirates rookie 27 YO Matt Gorski hit a home run in his first #MLB at-bat this week!  But maybe #Dbacks Eugenio Suarez outdid him by clubbing 4 home runs in a game versus the #Braves, that Arizona ended up losing!   Are the #Giants & #Tigers built for the long haul?  Is #Yankees Paul Goldschmidt really back in HOF form?  We cover the big and little stories of the past week. Like the phantom triple play turned by the Nationals in their crazy win Friday vs. #Mets. 

AND, then there's checked swings. In the Arizona Fall League last year Mets Drew Gilbert was the first player to call for a check swing review using the technology that was tested. The criteria is that the swing cannot go past 45 degrees beyond the edge of home plate. It worked just fine and we hope that along with ABS, ACS (automatic check swing?) will become part of daily life in the majors. Getting the call right is what all fans want most! 

Here's the clip on the first check swing review in the Arizona Fall League in 2024 - https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-testing-check-swing-challenge-in-arizona-fall-league

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

About 1/8th of the season is past so you can pretty much take #MLB player stats and multiply by eight. Tyler Soderstrom of the #athletics s is not going to hit 72 home runs. But #yankees  Aaron
Judge could definitely finish with 56 or more homers. Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt was taken out by a line drive foul ball last week in the #Mets #Twins series at Citi Field. Hoping that he's going to be ok but it was a scary thing. 

Is the National League really that much better than the American League this season?  It may seem so at first but it's too early to be certain. Might be that the top #NL teams #Padres #Dodgers #Cubs #Giants #Phillies and Mets are stronger than those in the #AL where the #Rangers & Yankees stand out. 

Is Manny Machado a sure-fire HOFer? He plays 3B which is generally underrepresented in the HOF. He's closer than you think and is in his 14th season of a stellar career. We talk about the slam dunk HOFers playing (Verlander, Scherzer, Kershaw), and others who are probably already there as well as those knocking on the door.

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

#Angels in first place is something we did not expect. Mike Trout leading the #AL in homers is not as shock but that he has 6 HRs and 10 hits is at least surprising!  The #Tigers are in 1st place as are #Yankees, #Padres, #Cubs w #Mets & #Phillies tied for 1st place in the #NLEast as of Sunday morning. 

Justin Steele may have an injury to his elbow that could change the Cubs fortunes. #Giants Wilmer Flores also has 6 HRs. #Mets Pete Alonso is off to a raging start which is good since many of the other hitters on the team are still not in full gear. 

Since we are avid Mets fans we put them first in our round up of all 30 teams best five starting pitchers in franchise history. We will do this periodically through the 2025 season. 

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

Baseball movies are rarer than they used to be. Has there been a great one that you love in the past 10 years?  Gordon and Mark participated in a roundtable with 4 other baseball writers/podcasters/personalities - Vince Wetzel (author of "Lose Yourself" and a past Almost Cooperstown guest, Scott Bolohan (host of the Twin Bill podcast and content), Kelly Franco (Three Inning Fan the podcast), and former ESPN and The Athletic writer, current Substack author and author of "The Best Team Money Can Buy" Molly Knight.  

We each picked two movies to feature as one's we'd recommend watching again or for the first time if you haven't seen it!  Spoiler alert - nobody picked "The Natural" or "Field of Dreams" or "Eight Men Out".  To find out which ones we did pick listen or watch the podcast! 

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

The #Dodgers finally lost & #Braves finally won. Yet it's the #Giants who are in 1st place in the NL West. #Padres also lost but still are off to a great start. #Cubs are looking good as are #Phillies who beat L.A. 2 out of 3 this weekend. #Mets bullpen is over-performing but they will take it for now. #D'backs have good news and bad news. 

#Yankees are still clubbing home runs and the #ALEast is already a dogfight. At one point this week all the #ALCentral teams were 2-4 but it was the #Tigers who ended up in 1st place after this weekend. #Rangers are in 1st in the #ALWest over the surprising #Angels? #Astros are scuffling and the #Athletics are flawed but interesting. 

#MLB commissioner Rob Manfred had some interesting thing to say about the future of baseball including Robo-Umps as well as competitive balance. We also talked about our podcast that will drop on Thursday with 4 other great #baseball personalities/writers/podcasters where we shared our thoughts on 2 baseball movies we felt fans should take another look at!

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!

It's not really been a week in baseball but the Dodgers & Cubs have played 5 games now (Dodgers have won them all and are on a path to be undefeated) so that's close to a week. There are no narratives written in March for MLB teams. That goes for April too although teams will be almost 30 games into the season when April ends. 

#Yankees Aaron Judge was on a pace for nearly 500 RBIs this season when he had 11 RBIs in his first 11 ABs.  That goes with his 4 home runs in three games putting him second to Adrian Gonzalez for most homers in a season's first 3 games. Judge hit 3 HRs Saturday to become the 4th Yankee to do that including Babe Ruth and A-Rod. Lou Gehrig surpassed that with (4) 3-HR games! The Yankees spanked the #Brewers and gave Nestor Cortes a bad reception at Yankee Stadium in his first game pitching for the Brewers. It was a game in which the Bronx Bombers hit 9 home runs. 

Shohei is hitting homers. Mookie Betts is back in the lineup and the 2024 World Series combatants are a combined 8-0 in 2025. 

We pick who we think will win MLB awards this season. Rookie-of-the-Year, Cy Young, MVP, and Manager of the Year for both leagues. It's not as easy as it sounds after Ohtani! 

Intro & Outro music this season courtesy of Mercury Maid! Check them out on Spotify or Apple Music!  

Please subscribe to our podcast and thanks for listening! If you can give us 4 or 5 star rating that means a lot. And if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at [email protected].  You can also follow us on X @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown Facebook page or YouTube channel.  And please tell your friends!