*Jake Kaplan has a mailbag on the Astros' post-2020 strategy, Yordan's knees, Click vs Luhnow, etc.
— Alex Bregman (@ABREG_1) May 4, 2020
*In Baseball-Reference's OOTP-simulated season the Royals THE ROYALS beat the Astros 13-0. George Springer, for some reason, was hitting 7th, and Josh James and Brad Peacock each allowed five earned runs. I hate this simulation. The Astros are in 3rd, behind the A's and Mariners.
*45 years ago today Bob Watson scored the National League's 1,000,000th run and I wrote about it four years ago.
*ESPN's Sam Miller ranked all 115 World Series. I'm not telling you what to think but, #51, #35, and #23. I have irrational anger. Miller, on 2017:
But after the Astros' systematic cheating scheme was revealed, this whole series has a whiff of 1919 to it. We don't really know what we saw, or who would have won if it had been played straight up. Instead, it produced a champion we all regret having felt happy for.
That "Whiff of 1919" is a reference to when the 1919 Chicago White Sox intentionally lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds for money, because the players received money from gamblers exploiting ownership's treatment and payment of players. So this is where we are.
*Today I learned that Roger Clemens still has two kids in professional baseball.
*Power Rankings, Top Players, Key Storylines: What you need to know as the KBO opens its season. The NC Dinos and Samsung Lions will play at 12am Central on ESPN. Games start at a more reasonable time of 4:30am Central on Wednesday.
*American veterans of the KBO: "Just enjoy it."
*SI: How the internet created a sports card boom.
*The Athletic's Richard Deitsch: Sports broadcasters name their do-over moment.
*Vice: The gossip-packed groupie memoir "Dirty Rocker Boys" is juicier than the tabloids.
*Behold, the greatest cover in the history of music:
*There's a big ol' meteor shower tonight. Here's how to see it.
*On this day 55 years ago Lew Alcindor picked UCLA over his hometown St. John's, and changed everything.
*Steve Carell's major credits:
-The Dana Carvey Show (1996)
-The Daily Show (1999-2005)
-Bruce Almighty (2003)
-Anchorman (2004)
-The 40-Year Old Virgin (2005)
-The Office (2005-2013)
-Evan Almighty (2007)
-Dan In Real Life (2007)
-Get Smart (2008)
-Date Night (2010)
-Despicable Me (2010)
-Despicable Me 2 (2013)
-Foxcatcher (2014)
-Despicable Me 3 (2017)
*The man feeding an Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship.
