Baseball Chatter 08/01

Jose Altuve finished July with 48 hits and an Astros record-breaking .485 batting average

Gio Gonzalez retired 14 batters in a row last night in the midst of allowing only one hit over eight scoreless innings

Barring an injury to Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia and Gray, Garcia will likely replace Jordan Montgomery in the rotation.

Jurickson Profar was pissed off that he wasn’t traded so they kept him out of the lineup yesterday. <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Profar out of lineup tonight for Round Rock after he expressed frustration over not being dealt.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) August 1, 2017

The Rockies released Dominic Brown. Remember all the Fantasy love we were going to see from Smith? A rookie is a rookie is a rookie

The Royals are so happy to have Melky Cabrera back. Yost will slot him into the third spot in the order right behind Lorenzo Cain and Whit Merrifield.

Lucas Sims will get called up to start against the Dodgers tonight. He has a 3.75 ERA, 132 strikeouts and 36 walks over 115 innings, 19 starts at Triple-A

Teams

The Mariners are above .500 for the second time this season after their win last night, but they are 22-26 on the road and 21 of their next 28 games are away from home.

The Phillies swept the Braves and now have a record of 7-0 against the Braves at home.

The Braves have lost five straight and eight of their last nine games

The Orioles are banking their playoff chances on Ubaldo Jimenez, who had the same crappy start last season, but who came around the second half.

The Indians starting rotation is not solid right now with Josh Tomlin on the disabled list and Mike Clevenger with two bad outings in a row.

The Tigers acquired five infield prospects in the past two weeks but they still have 140 million on the books for next season. Al Avila says that he doesn’t have to worry about money.

Angels General Manager Billy Eppler might be living in his own Fantasyland, as he believes the Angels can make the playoffs with what they have. I shouldn’t say things like that because anything can happen…

We were open to making reasonable trades,but it didn’t make sense for us to have an estate sale. We were mindful of considering our postseason probability and also the effects that getting some guys back will have on this club. We feel we have plenty of games to make this interesting. I had conversations on a starter and a position player. We were cognizant of where we are, the players we’re getting back and the amount of season left, so I didn’t feel comfortable moving guys for less than how we valued them.Manager Billy Eppler

Injury Updates

Johnny Cueto was supposed to throw 70 pitches in a Single-A rehab start last night but he only threw 34 pitches because of forearm tightness

Yoan Moncada should be fine after his knee crashed into Willy Garcia’s head in the outfield. Garcia will have more tests this morning. He is considered day-to-day

Clayton Kershaw has started throwing and Adrian Gonzalez is nearing a return

Kendall Graveman will return from the disabled list to start on Thursday. He was 2-2 with a 3.83 ERA in eight starts before landing on the disabled list with a strained shoulder.

Waiver Wire Pickups

Derek Fisher doesn’t have to worry about losing playing time when George Springer comes off of the disabled list since Norichika Aoki was traded.

Doug Fister lowered his ERA to 6.27 from 7.46 last night. He earned two runs in 7 ⅔ innings, struck out five and walked two.

Brad Miller will be the starting second baseman in Tampa now that they traded Tim Beckham

We’ve got to get Brad Miller going and wanted to give him a little bit of a clearer path to get going. He’s going to be out there, and we all saw what he’s capable of, saw what he did last year (30 homers) and we’re banking on that for these next two months.Kevin Cash

Jarrett Parker will be activated Wednesday and should see everyday at bats in left field. Gorkys Hernandez might not be the only outfielder who loses playing time as a result. Denard Span and Hunter Pence also could be candidates for reduced roles.