And their announcers thought Escobar should have been benched because he didn't run out an easy out to first in extra innings.

"Baseball that's just not fun to watch put in someone else"

Like who?

I noticed that play as well, but their announcers don't understand that Esky is a freaking iron man. He was in almost his 30th inning in 24 hours, so I'm going to cut him some slack.

In 17 starts this season, Kazmir has a 2.38 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 101 strikeouts and 35 walks in over 109 innings. Kazmir signed a two-year, $22 million contract with the A’s in 2013. The three-time All-Star pitched with the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 World Series. He is coming off last nights game vs Minnesota where he threw 8.1 innings of 5 hit ball and left with a shutout until the Twins scored vs Tyler Clippard in the 9th inning.

Not really. He's a good No. 2 type starter. Not quite an ace, but a very good pitcher. He'd improve the rotation... unless he collapses like he did last season in the second half.

Escobar also is still playing through that knee injury he sustained when Brett Lawrie acted like himself (AKA a dirty piece of shit). He hasn't run the same for most of the year (just look at his SB totals) and really has been picking his spots to turn it on.

I've got no problem with him taking it easy on a routine grounder to first.

It appears Miguel Sano injured his ankle during warmups and is on crutches.

All those with the MLB Extra Innings today... Greinke vs Scherzer has started. Should be a good one.

Its the TBS game as well.

That's a huge bat out of their lineup.

They're still a decent team, but it's pretty significant. It's as big as Gordon going out for us.

Someone keep me posted if more news about this comes out. Good for Royals, but I hate seeing young guys missing time like that.

Reads like Sano stepped on ball and has mild sprain. Not expected to be serious.

Any update on Starlings injury?

I've seen this argument many times over the years. It's a completely bogus and meaningless argument. It's no more than wishful thinking on the part of the fans of the team currently in the lead.

A hot week or two by the second place team combined with a slump by the first place team, and the argument is easily and completely proven to be false.

And I don't have to go back very far to find an example of how bad this argument is. On July 1st the standings in the AL West looked like this:

Team..........W......L.......%.....GB
Astros.........47....34......580....--
Angels.........41....38......519...5.0

You could have easily said this about the AL West race on July 1st:

These are the standings of the AL West this morning:

Team..........W......L.......%.....GB
Angels.........50....40......556....--
Astros.........50....43......538...1.5

How's that argument looking now? It took a little more than 2 weeks for the Angels to turn a 5 game deficit into a 1.5 game lead.

An argument based strictly upon winning percentages for the rest of the season when almost half a season remains to be played is totally meaningless and easily disproven.

The best example of that is the Royals. At this point last year we were about 7 or 8 games behind the Tigers for 1st place. By late August we were up by 3 games at one point.

He's at 40 scoreless innings, thats ****ing insane.