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Happy baseball, and happy birthday to America!
In my opinion, there's no better way to celebrate the 4th of July than by staying inside and watching baseball. It's probably uncomfortably hot out there, so, imo, sit in an air conditioned room and ignore your family.
Today's pitching matchup is Kendall Graveman (5-4, 3.47) vs. Felix Hernandez (10-4, 3.05). We should all know how brilliant Graveman's been since his short stint in the minor leagues: 8.27 ERA in April, 2.01 ERA in the 53 innings since. Obviously the 2.01 figure is unsustainable and the regression monster is looming, but hey, enjoy it while it lasts.
Felix Hernandez might finally be declining a little bit – his peripheral numbers are almost uniformly down this year. K/9 is down from 9.46 to 8.71, walks per 9 are up from 1.75 to 2.70, HR per 9 are up from 0.61 to 0.87. His FIP is a whopping 3.42, a number that is not very king-like. It remains to be seen if this is a trend or a fluky 3 months, but it should give the A's some hope of actually beating him.
Of course, it's also July 4th. Today's not a very good day for kings.
Here are the lineups, which still feature Eric Sogard playing over Mark Canha for some reason:
Baseball! America!
