You’ve heard the numbers many times by now: 7.1 innings pitched, 100 pitches thrown, five outs to go. The hot takes on Facebook, Twitter, and probably Reddit and anywhere else where people are allowed to express their opinions were hotter than Trevor Story’s start to his MLB career. Hotter than Steph Curry when he gets going. Hotter than that water heater that’s warming up water so my kid can have slightly warm formula milk. Why can’t she just have room temperature formula.

Anyway, I’m not going to deny that giving Stripling his shot would have been cool and may never, ever happen again for the kid, but there were plenty that had manager Dave Roberts’ back, and a few numbers to back up why he pulled Stripling:

@TimCowlishaw threw maybe 5 innings in a game at most in spring. The call was the right one.

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) April 9, 2016

McCarthy, pitcher for the Dodgers, agreed. Buster Olney of ESPN gave some background:

Some of the background on Ross Stripling: He threw 145 pitches in five appearances in spring training. https://t.co/KTuC40iB6A

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 9, 2016

MLB.com’s Mike Petriello (sure, you may know him as a Dodgers blogger from the beginning) gave a snapshot of Stripling’s four-seam fastball velocity:

This was Stripling’s 4SM velo by inning. Given his injury history & how good a fresh Hatcher should be, right call. pic.twitter.com/XSf6hyyNOc

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) April 9, 2016

Here’s another chart, from Brooks Baseball:

Not unusual for someone to get tired over the course of the game, especially when he hasn’t pitched that much in a game and still building up his stamina so he can be a starting pitcher long term. This is something that’s easy to get passionate about, but unlike some other debates, like dinosaur metrics of pitcher wins and pitcher losses vs. more recent ways to evaluate pitchers, FIP, for example, I firmly believe pulling Stripling was the right call, yet can only shrug if someone else disagrees.

Some people didn’t agree with the strike zone last night:

❤ this vine so much https://t.co/NsjwZscurr

— Myles (@MylesInSF) April 9, 2016

Chris Hatcher had a rough night. I would not want to be that guy, messing up the no-hitter, then because you were showing up the ump your manager has to save you from getting tossed. From there, it seemed like it was just a waiting game: how would the Giants win and ultimately crush the souls of the Dodgers and their fans for the night? Who would end it? In the end, it was Brandon Crawford:

Well, the kid is up now. This game was so crazy to be a part of, even if I could only listen to it, only watch the live update in the 8th inning and see Trevor Brown ruin everything for the internet. My wife and I were stunned at what happened. We felt awful for Stripling, and knew what would come for Roberts. Of course, I was very happy at Brandon Crawford’s shot to end it off of “Yes, he’s really a Dodger” Joe Blanton, and impressed at how opposite field he went with it. What a way he’s come to becoming the star he is today. I’m not sure if there was a game last year so crazy like this one, so memorable. I’ll remember this game for a year or more until I’ve completely wiped it from my memory and replaced it with the memories and the thousands of pictures I’ve took of my kid.

With Kershaw on the mound today, the Giants may not get to celebrate for much longer, but this game will be the talk of the town for another day, and there certainly is a lot to talk about.

It’s raining a lot in California. Word is that cats and dogs are falling from the sky in NorCal, but here in the southern part of the state, we had enough rain to fill up a wheelbarrow from the overnight clouds that passed by. Still, it was enough for one Long Beach State program to do a doubleheader on Saturday and another watch their game today get rained out due to poor field conditions, despite the rain stopping before sunrise.

Sticking to SoCal business, Chase Utley of the Los Angeles Dodgers won’t be suspended for his slide that took out Ruben Tejada in last year’s postseason. Joel Sherman with the explanation:

As @BillShaikin reported Utley suspension was rescinded from 2 games to 0. MLB/MLBPa agreed inconsistency in how slide called in past (cont)

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) March 6, 2016

Since others weren’t suspended previously, decision was made not to suspend Utley, just of forward with new rule #Mets #Dodgers

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) March 6, 2016

As much as we’d like to believe Utley should be suspended, a lot of people figured that with no precedent set for a two-game suspension like that, Utley could either retire and we wouldn’t even worry about it, or the suspension would probably not stand in the end. The latter has come, and now we wait to see how the newer rules on sliding into second get enforced.

Troy Tulowitzki continues to talk about Toronto and Colorado, though in varying degrees, and it sounds like when it comes to the atmosphere of Salt River Fields taking an effect on players, some current Rockies didn’t take too kind to it. As a fellow human being who holds grudges to a fault, I can see the former Dirtbag of Long Beach State wanting to rag on the people that made him promises until the day he dies. Sometimes you feel like you can never talk too much about people that let you down. If Tulo has new material to pass out, people will listen, but otherwise, it’s going to get repetitive.

I’m glad Spring Training is back, means we’re less than a month away from the games that count going down. Watching what I get to watch is nice, an escape from the responsibilities I could be tending to, like my job, or cleaning the house. Watching Giants prospect Cody Gearrin work his fastball-slider mix was interesting, while feeling awful for one Giovanni Soto of the Cleveland team who couldn’t find the strike zone. While I have trouble rooting for the team outcome of a game, watching individual performances is where it’s at. Plenty of pitchers are missing targets pretty bad right now, but we aren’t even a week into the games yet. Games will get boring soon as we get tired of waiting for Spring Training to end and the path to the Postseason begin.

My last post was August 1, 2014. I remember coming back from a Las Vegas trip thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore”. It was shortly before I lucked into a job where since I’ve been hired great things are happening, and it was also right about the time I found out my wife was pregnant. All this made writing about baseball feel so insignificant, that my focus had to be on so much else. In that span of time, writing about baseball still feels so relatively minor to the people I’m surrounded by, always improving at my job, and trying to be a better person as we try to progress as a people.

It’s been quite the fascinating 18 months away from the blog. I’m not sure if I want to start writing again, because I don’t really remember what the draw to my writing was. Did people come for the gifs? Was my analysis really any good? Did my immaturity bring about any laughter it was meant to at all? One of the things I came across on the many tubes of the internet though was someone reminding the folks that need it was that if you enjoy the writing, in large part I shouldn’t be concerned about what people think if I’m funny or not, if my site numbers are high or low. Maybe that was it — I put too much focus on my (hashtag) brand rather than just enjoying putting words to the screen.

It’s been a conflict recently though, riding the enthusiasm of a national teachers conference, other professional developments, and realizing that the a lot of the great individuals in their profession are so dedicated to what they do. There’s natural talent and imagination, sure, but we make it hard on ourselves to keep up with the great ones if we do not invest our own time in what we want our lives to be about.

That said, this blog has to be something of more of an outlet for me for when I feel like I need a break from everything. My kid’s asleep, maybe for another thirty minutes or so. Parents with a kid or more kids know the struggle better than I do. I have it good, I’m not going to pretend like my life is hard.

How about I talk about baseball on a baseball blog? The Giants. Bringing in Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija, Denard Span. Relying on their farm to fill the bullpen. Their homegrown infield is set, and by golly, if they can stay healthy, I feel good about this team. That’s kind of what scares me. I feel good about the Giants. Normally, I believe I’m more optimistic without the whole feeling good part, know what I mean?

No Spring Training this year for us, it’s just too crazy for the times we’d be able to go. Mostly though, my wife and I would love to go to the All Star Game this year. That’d be cool, and my wife works super hard for the family. Anything she wants to do, I should be trying to make it happen, cost of the tickets be damned. Got tickets to a Giants-Dodgers game already, and just bought this Angels Ticket Package for the “community appreciation” campaign or something. Came with four free tickets to certain Monday-Thursday games so I figured we could watch them play the Astros, Rangers, or Mariners during the summer. Salesperson was trying to tell me to go to the Orioles game to see Mark Trumbo return. Thought that was an odd angle (he knew I wasn’t an Angels fan), but I’m sure that’ll resonate with someone.

This was more of a journal entry. Maybe Fridays will be the only time I have to do this. Lesson planning takes up so much time. The other time is filled with being a Family Guy person that tries not to make his wife angry and make her life slightly easier, slightly better.

Writing this was nice. I remember why I liked this. I also hear my baby is up from her nap.