SweetSpot Roundup 9/9

The Capital Avenue Club (Braves): Collapse Thoughts 
"Blowing a 7-game lead over the course of six weeks isn’t difficult to do. I’d wager more substantial leads are frequently blown in less time. However, it’s much easier to do when the team overtaking you is playing like the 1961 Yankees, and it’s particularly frustrating when you’ve actually played exceptionally well."

The View from the Bleachers (Cubs): Five Burning Questions!
Chet has a good time asking five admittedly-not-as-hot-as-advertised-but-still-interesting questions about the Cubbies.

Austin's Astros 290 Blog: Bourn Crushes Cubs
"The hits have been coming in bunches lately for [Michael] Bourn.  He has a 1.036 OPS this month, and he’s batting .381 over the last 16 games.  That includes a 12-game hitting streak that went from Aug. 22-Sept. 3." Whoa!

Dodger Thoughts: Russ Mitchell to make major league debut at first base
This, and a couple other piquant Dodgers links.

Disciples of Uecker (Brewers): 600
"Regardless of what it means to you or me, it was clear that it was a fantastic moment for this team and for the Hoffman family."

Ducksnorts (Padres): Two Is More Than One
"A laugher would be nice at some point, but wins are good. The Giants aren’t going away and neither are the Rockies. This is fun, right? Sure beats thinking about next year."

Fungoes (Cardinals): Narveson leads ex-Cardinals repaying their old team
Lots of former Cardinals or Cardinal farmhands have been coming back to bite the Cards in head-to-head play this year. Chris Narveson might be the least talented of them, and also the most damaging.

Nationals Baseball: Zimmerman MVP voting thoughts
Harper wonders where Zimmerman will wind up in the voting after two years as one of the best players in the National League. For whatever it's worth, FanGraphs says it should be #1. Baseball-Reference is less impressed, mostly because it thinks much less of his defense.

The B-List Indians Blog: B-List Lite
Steve opines Lou Marson’s grand slam.

Baseball Time in Arlington (Rangers): Rangers Gameday Chat
Who doesn’t like a nice, friendly chat about baseball? “if we lose this game i'm committing cyber war on this chat” Oh, that guy.

Royals Authority: Piggyback
“I’m always up for some outside the box thinking and this is something that works, given the circumstances. The minor league seasons are over and the Royals want to continue to move their pitchers forward in their recovery process….So why not go to the “piggyback” option we often see in March?”

Nick’s Twins Blog: Managing to Win
“Managers get judged by fans based on a lot of trivial minutia, but ultimately it comes down to winning and Ron Gardenhire has overseen an awful lot of winning. This year, he's paced to lead a flawed and injury-riddled team to 96 wins and a sixth division title in nine years.”

Sox Machine (White Sox): Guillen has White Sox fighting for playoff lives
“We haven’t seen this kind of seat-of-the-pants managing from Guillen in years. He went with a four-man rotation down the stretch in 2008 (and the short-rest start will make a return with John Danks tonight), but when it comes to reshaping the bullpen and, to a lesser extent, the offense… well, you’d probably have to go back to 2005 to find him being this resourceful. Or desperate.”

It’s About the Money Stupid (Yankees): Competitive Balance, Football, Salary Caps and Small Samples. Oh My!
Throwing us a curve, Brien argues that it’s not about the money, for once: “Even accepting the premise that there is generally good turnover in the NFL, it’s simply not the case that there’s any evidence that salary caps play a role in this. That’s mostly because there are other, more obvious factors that do more to explain why the NFL would have higher turnover in their postseason than baseball.”