Happy birthday to former All-Star and three-time Gold Glover Bobby Knopp, who turns 88 years old today.\u00a0 Knopp spent six of his nine MLB seasons (from 1964-72) with the Angels, and his lengthy post-playing career as a coach included 18 more seasons on the Angels\u2019 coaching staff.\u00a0 Prior to an Angels\/Blue Jays game in Toronto in 1991, Knopp happened to toss a couple of baseballs to a pair of young fans watching batting practice.\u00a0 Those young fans were my brother and I, thus earning Knopp a special place in my baseball memory bank.<\/p>\n
1. Rays even the ALCS<\/p>\n
The bad weather that pushed Game 4 from Friday to Saturday ended up working in the Rays\u2019 favor, as Tampa picked up a 7-3 win over the Guardians.\u00a0 Richie Palacios<\/a> and Jonathan Aranda<\/a> each had three hits, and Aranda\u2019s two-run single in the top of the seventh ended up being the game\u2019s deciding hit.\u00a0 Guards right fielder Chase DeLauter<\/a> made an error on the play that allowed Aranda to reach third base, and Aranda later scored on a Chandler Simpson<\/a> sac fly.\u00a0 Tampa Bay starter Nick Martinez<\/a> tossed 5 1\/3 innings of one-run ball, and earned his first win in 10 career postseason outings.<\/p>\n 2. Rasmussen, Messick set to start Game 5<\/p>\n Today was supposed to be an off-day on the ALCS schedule, but due to Game 4 being pushed back, Game 5 will now get underway today at 4:08pm CT in Cleveland.\u00a0 Drew Rasmussen<\/a> takes the hill for the second time this series, as Rasmussen tossed a quality start (6 IP, 2 ER on eight hits and zero walks, 7 K) in Game 1 but it wasn\u2019t enough as the Guardians got to the Rays\u2019 bullpen for a 7-3 win.\u00a0 Parker Messick<\/a> starts for Cleveland, and Messick didn\u2019t allow any earned runs in his five innings in Game 2, but a costly Jose Ramirez<\/a> error led to three unearned runs in Tampa\u2019s 3-1 victory.<\/p>\n 3. Do the A\u2019s have a favorite in their front office search?<\/p>\n \u201cAre the Athletics nearing a GM hire?\u201d was a category in the October 10 edition of The Opener, and eight days later, the A\u2019s are still looking for a new front office boss.\u00a0 Not to jump the gun again, but it seems like Red Sox assistant GM Taylor Smith might be the new frontrunner, based on recent reports<\/a>.\u00a0 Former GM David Forst was fired back on August 7, so the A\u2019s have had plenty of time to access candidates, and perhaps already had a top choice in mind, except Phillies president of business ops Sam Fuld turned down<\/a> the Athletics\u2019 offer.\u00a0 The league prefers that teams wait until postseason off-days to make any major announcements, so it could be that if the A\u2019s have made a decision, it might not come until the conclusion of the ALCS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy birthday to former All-Star and three-time Gold Glover Bobby Knopp, who turns 88 years old today.\u00a0 Knopp…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-932679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}