Quotes of the Day
"We sucked in the first half. It was not a lot of positive from really either one of us other than a few starts here and there. I think as a point of pride for both us, you want to come back and, with a team that’s in a pennant race, be a part of that in the second half — come back and, once you’re healthy, pitch well."
- Brandon McCarthy's candid assessment of he and rotation mate Trevor Cahill's performances thus far.
Diamondbacks News
Arizona Diamondbacks' Tyler Skaggs roughed up in loss to San Diego Padres
Welp, Tyler Skaggs made one of Kirk Gibson's rotation decisions easy - Skaggs has been optioned to Reno to make room for the returning Brandon McCarthy. Skaggs has been up and down all year, and unfortunately, had a down night at the worst possible time.
Rotation decisions looming; farm report; & other stuff | Insiders
With McCarthy's return imminent and Trevor Cahill not too far behind (he threw 72 pitches in an AZL game this week), the rotation figures to undergo a renovation. As previously mentioned, Skaggs is headed to Reno to make way for McCarthy, but where does Cahill fit in? Randall Delgado, for his part, has made it nearly impossible to send him back to Reno - his dominant start still looming large in the minds of fans, coaches, and ownership. Oh yeah, there's that Archie Bradley guy too. He looks like he deserves a September cup of coffee.
Scout day 2013: Area scouts on their players | Insiders
A massive amount of scouting insight on our recent draft picks from the guys tasked with scouting them. The guy who scouted Braden Shipley refers to him as "Bradley" throughout. Name confusions aside, the scout likes Shipley as the rare college junior with massive projection:
"But I feel like for all the college juniors that came out in the draft, he’s the farthest from his ceiling. Based off how good he is right now, he warrants being a top half of the first round type guy. But what you might see in three or four or five years from now, there’s no saying how good he could be. If you give him a couple of years to fill out physically, his arm is still relatively fresh, he didn’t pitch whole lot that freshman year and even toward the end of high school — there’s a lot still coming to him in terms of pitching. Knowing how to pitch, sequences and all that type of stuff. I feel like you’re going to see — a guy like him with that type of athleticism, they tend to make adjustments much easier than the others — you’re going to see a guy who really takes off in the next couple of years."
Around the League
Dodgers Could Be Last Team To Strike Gold With Local TV Deal | FanGraphs Baseball
An interesting take on the massive TV deals between regional sports networks and Major League teams. With Senator McCain-championed legislation allowing "a la carte" cable programming on the table and new data casting doubt on the value of local sports programming to cable channels, the end of the TV mega-deal could be nigh. This would be terrible news for the Snakes, whose current television deal expires in 2015
Marginalia
Shin-Soo Choo Twice Falls For Dodgers’ Fakery On One Play
Cue Benny Hill music.