TUESDAY TIDBITS FOR JULY 21

The season ends on September 27. There are 69 days of regular-season baseball remaining.

There are 13 days until the trade deadline.

Here’s your Nine to Know:

There are 10 teams in the NL West and Central: the Dodgers, the Brewers, the Cubs, the Cardinals, the Marlins, the Pirates, and the Diamondbacks are all over .500. The remaining three teams are the Padres, the Reds, and the Rockies. Of those 10 teams, only the Brewers won (and that’s because they were playing the Mets). The Phillies beat the Dodgers, the Braves beat the Padres, and the Nationals beat the Rockies. Those were the four NL teams to win yesterday.

The Marlins have lost seven straight. They haven’t won since they finished off a six-game winning streak on July 9. They are a team to pay a lot of attention to over these next two weeks; they have many pitchers that other teams covet, and the Fish could be big players as a result at the trade deadline. Currently, the Marlins are 52-49, 7.0 games behind the Braves, BUT they are tied with the Pirates and the Cardinals for the final wild card slot. Fangraphs gives them a 21.1% chance of making the postseason, but on July 9, they were listed at 51.5%. Think of Sandy Alcantara pitching for your favorite team this postseason (and now clean up your drool).

I was talking with the fabulous Jen and Hannah (my child and their spouse) last night about the podcast, Hoax! co-hosted by their friend, Noble Blood’s Dana Schwartz and pop culture writer Lizzie Logan. The every-other-week podcast brings you stories of pranks and grifts throughout history so big and bold they make us question why we believe what we believe in the first place. It has nothing to do with Donald J. Trump, the master of lies and deceptions, who should be referred to as our Hoaxer in Chief. But it does look at great hoaxes throughout history. Creating a hoax seems like so much work, and with so much truth to tell that is already hard to believe, it seems damn near impossible to create a story that is believable but untrue.

One episode that I know you would like is the one that aired on March 26 of this year, entitled April Fool’s Day: Google, Spaghetti Trees and Sidd Finch. Now I won’t recount the Sidd Finch Sports Illustrated here for you; most of you are quite familiar with it, and those of you who are not can listen to the podcast. Very briefly, Sidd Finch was an unbelievable Mets pitching prospect who was too good to be believed, but was believed by tens of thousands of people.

This brings me to Shohei Ohtani. Let’s pretend it’s 1976, and someone describes to you a Japanese ballplayer who could hit 50 home runs, steal 50 bases, and pitch well enough to be considered for the Cy Young Award. He’s not a one-off; season after season, he does remarkable things in the regular and postseason. You would immediately cry “Hoax!” Or, if you were my late father-in-law, Jack Effenson, you would just say, “Horseshit.” Both responses would be appropriate, and obviously, as we know, both responses would be incorrect. Shohei is the real deal.

Shohei, who throws right and bats left, had set off this season with the intent of winning the Cy Young Award, and for a while, he appeared on the path to success. But now, due to inflammation in his left knee, his landing leg when he pitches, this isn’t going to happen (most likely). But what if, as he recovers from this setback, he unveils a secret? What would your reaction be if you heard that in a bullpen session, he took to the mound as a left-handed pitcher and he was just as good as he was as a righty? Would you believe it? I know I would. I can see him landing on his right leg, the injured left one flying in the air, as the usual stoic Ohtani, smiling as he busts a 99-mph fastball on the inside of the plate. All I would do then is wait for him to come to the plate as a righty and show off his switch-hitting skills as well.

T/O/H to a listener (like myself) of “The Dodgers Post,” the California Post’s Dodgers podcast hosted by California Post reporters Dylan Hernandez and Jack Harris, for the inspiration of this tale.

I hate this news. Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reports today that Karl Ravech, one of ESPN’s most prominent on-air voices for more than three decades, was laid off as part of the network’s latest round of cuts.