To build a computational model of muscle fatigue, Sonne gathered data on 73 American League pitchers – including innings pitched, pitches per inning, time between pitches, and the type of pitch thrown (fastballs and curveballs) – from FanGraphs, an online clearinghouse for baseball statistics, and simulated how fatigue set in on the muscles used to stabilize their elbows during throws. The shorter the time between pitches, his study found, the higher the muscle fatigue and the more strain placed on areas like the UCL.

Amaro received a huge endorsement from manager John Farrell last week for his work with base runners and outfielders. Farrell also mentioned Amaro as a future managerial candidate, which is what Amaro had in mind when he took a field job after being fired as Phillies GM.

SAN DIEGO, May 22, 2016—What should have been a night of joy and celebration at Petco Park last night, instead turned into a nightmare raising serious questions about homophobia within the San Diego Padres organization and its relationship with the LGBT community.

Before the start of the last night’s San Diego Padres game, 100 volunteer singers of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus took to the field to proudly sing the National Anthem. Instead, in front of the large crowd gathered for the LA Dodgers game, the San Diego Padres played the recorded voice of a woman singing the anthem.

No attempt was made to stop the recording and start over. No announcement of apology was made to the singers or their friends and families in the stands. No attempt to correct the situation occurred other than to force the 100 men to stand in the spotlight of center field for the song’s duration and then be escorted off the field to the heckles of baseball fans shouting homophobic taunts including “You sing like a girl.”

This incident followed several days of troubling comments and behavior within the San Diego Padres organization. Three days before the game, San Diego Padres representatives aggressively sought to prevent singers from performing the National Anthem unless they purchased a ticket to the game—even if they did not plan to stay for the game—which was not part of any previous discussion or written or verbal agreement and would have cost the small, community-based non-profit thousands of dollars. The demand eventually was rescinded on Friday following repeated complaints made by SDGMC and San Diego Pride to San Diego Padres management.

With this as background, we call on the San Diego Padres and Major League Baseball to immediately launch a full and transparent investigation into the incident to determine if someone or some people intentionally engaged in anti-gay discrimination or a hate crime by playing a female’s voice to represent a group of gay men with the purpose of denigrating and/or ridiculing gay men. The historic significance of such an act is not lost on the LGBT community—especially in relation to professional sports—and added to the depth of embarrassment experienced by the singers and their families.

We also call upon the City of San Diego City Attorney’s Office and the City of San Diego Human Relations Commission to independently investigate this incident to determine if members of the San Diego Padres organization engaged in activity in violation of the San Diego Human Rights Ordinance or engaged in any deliberate hate crimes based on sexual orientation.

We applaud San Diego Padres President and Chief Executive Office Mike Dee for reaching out to our organization to apologize and to offer to meet with LGBT leaders to discuss the incident. We look forward to this meeting. We believe it is important to work together with the San Diego Padres organization to build bridges within the LGBT community rather than burn them down as happened last night.

However, we are very disappointed with the San Diego Padres dismissively brief two sentence statement at 9:37 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2016 which did not appropriately address the gravity of the situation nor pay due to the 100 volunteers who took to the field in celebration and were led off in humiliation.

mcare89 wrote:While it certainly could be something weird, it kinda just seems like somebody screwed up and played the wrong track. Am I missing something?

BigEd76 wrote:

mcare89 wrote:While it certainly could be something weird, it kinda just seems like somebody screwed up and played the wrong track. Am I missing something?

Lots of entertainers use a backup track during live shows, but why would the mens chorus have a female one?