Baseball 2022 (if it ever happens)

[sevendaughters]

Blue Jays didn't get Ohtani and Soto so TERRIBLE

[Ferris]

Serviceable, I suppose. Like not bad, but not pulling up trees either.

Gave up some prospects (including Groshans who I don't rate and is blocked at the major league level anyway) that were shrugworthy, picked up a couple mediocre relievers and another mediocre starter.

Oh and Whit Merrifield, who is like a slightly better Cavan Biggio, albeit older and more expensive. Not sure of the thinking there, I'd guess they were trying to shift Biggio (they played him at second and let him lead off for a few games so think they were showcasing him) and wanted Merrifield as a replacement utility INF/OF but the other deal fell through so now we have two of them.

Probably done enough to get a wildcard spot, definitely not done enough to be competitive in the post-season. Can't complain really.

[Ferris]

Blue Jays didn't get Ohtani and Soto so TERRIBLE

The ask for Soto ended up being reasonable, if not massively exciting.

Im glad the jays didn't go for him really, I think he's probably ~3WAR better than a solid outfielder season over season and his defence isn't great. He's about to become very expensive, and is the price you're paying really worth the extra 3WAR? You could probably spend that money and get a better return elsewhere.

If you're already a superstar team and don't care about the money or farm system then ok, he makes your team better no question, but I don't think he fits with the Jays. We still need pitching (2 RPs and an SP) and a 4th OF, not a superstar to mess with the chemistry. And if he gets injured... woof.

[Famous Mortimer]

Fernando Tatis Jr suspended 80 games for a PED violation. Whoops!

He claims, of course, it was some other medication that he just didn't check the ingredients of. If I could lose millions of dollars from taking the wrong sort of medicine, then I'd damn sure be checking the label.

[Ferris]

Tatís always looked very jacked for a guy of his build, assumed he was just very diligent in how he worked out.

It is mad that it's still only a half season ban for getting popped with steroids. Are we taking this seriously or not? I've never inadvertently consumed a banned substance.

[Cuellar]

Just catching up on Red Sox games I missed while on holiday. Finished the Brewers series, Vasquez getting hits everywhere while everyone else does fuck all and now I've just started the first game of the Houston series to see that he's been traded TO Houston!

I know I don't really know anything of baseball but Vasquez was the only cunt hitting the bloody ball.

Edit: or the second game of the Houston series, seems the first isn't available

[Ferris]

Vazquez is a low key great player. He absolutely will not let you beat him - when the Red Sox were being absolutely annihilated by the jays a few weeks ago you could see him think "right you fuckers", think he went 3 for 5 with a dinger.

If the jays weren't overflowing with catching talent I'd say he'd be a target, smart pickup by Houston.

[Ferris]

Jays are on a slide, might even get overtaken by the orioles which would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing.

[Attila]

Jays are on a slide, might even get overtaken by the orioles which would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing.

Yay, Birds! (Still annoyed that Mike Mussian-Cito Gaston spat).

[Famous Mortimer]

Cardinals last night:

* Wainwright, 40 years old, pitched a blinder
* Molina, 39 years old, threw a guy out at second
* Pujols, 42 years old, hit a grand slam

All this in a 13-0 drubbing of the Rockies. I don't know if they're going to go deep in the postseason, or even get there at all, but this is just a lot of fun to see. My workplace has block-booked a section of Busch Stadium for early September, when the depleted / defeated Nationals will be in town, so I'm going to go and keep my fingers crossed the Nationals have a lefty on the mound (so Pujols bats) and it's a Wainwright pitching night.

Oh, provided both Wainwright and Molina stay healthy to the end of the season, they're going to pass Mickey Lolich and Bill Freehan of the 1963-1975 Detroit Tigers for most starts by a battery, all-time. Given the way the game is changing, it's going to be one of those records that'll stand for ever so it's pretty cool to see them both actually still be good at baseball and doing it, not just limping over the line.

[monkfromhavana]

I briefly got into baseball when I lived in Japan in the early 2000s.

Can anyone tell he where baseball currently sits amongst US sports? I can only imagine it being popular amongst the over 50s. Do the kids like it? I imagine that the kids who do like it are going to be white and fairly middle class.

Is this the way it has always been? Or is baseball eventually going to cark it?

[Ferris]

@monkfromhavana

(Sorry for the rant/wall of text - this subject is something of a hobby horse.)

Baseball has a real demographic problem. Fan interest (and particularly fans under 30) are pretty rapidly moving away from the sport. I am the only one of my friends who watches baseball semi-regularly or keeps up to date with it (though I don't have the sportiest friends in the first place). Sports are a competitive business here - adapt or die. You don't have the "basically soccer or nothing" environment the Premier League enjoys.

From my experience, younger people gravitate towards the NBA, NFL or EPL Premier League with baseball a distant 4th or 5th (slightly ahead of Hockey which has similar problems, actually) for several reasons.

1 - The sports themselves
Those sports are more immediately exciting (things happen! all the time!!) which I find exhausting and undermines the action. Who gives a shit if someone shoots a 3 pointer if another guy is going to take the ball down the other end and do it again? But anyway, that's an easier sell to people than baseball which, to be fair, is a bit arcane and takes quite a bit of time to adjust to the pace.

2 - Availability
Other sports leagues do things to make themselves easy to access. The NFL makes games free to stream on YouTube with explainers and popular celebrities. If you want soccer, you can subscribe for it and it's pretty cheap (few quid a month?).

However if you want to watch baseball right now, you can pay MLB $20 a month for the streaming app except, uh oh, it is subject to blackouts. What's a blackout? Well back in the dark ages, local sports channels wouldn't show local games within the actual city due to team's complaining it would stop fans from going to the game itself. Nowadays, it's because MLB has sold the rights to certain broadcasters for certain games so streaming a Kansas City game on a consumer's iPad direct from MLB means they wont pay their local cable affiliate for the Local KC Sports Channel subscription package, and cable companies want their money. If you live in Kansas and want to watch baseball, go to the game or pay some cable company for their basic cable package (a couple hundred a month maybe?) for hundreds of garbage lifestyle channels you will never watch. Don't want to do that? Then fuck you, basically. This can be ludicrous depending on team - the "blackout zone" for my beloved Toronto Blue Jays is 5,000 miles wide, the equivalent of London to Delhi. I'm subject to it though I live 1,000 miles away from the stadium because some fucker bought the rights which is like blocking someone from watching Dinamo Minsk games because they live in Rotherham. I can watch Cincinnati play the Phillies, but I don't want to.

People under 40 are increasingly cable-cutters (like me) so the sport is just shrugging and saying "fuck you". Now, there are ways around it involving VPNs or dodgy streams but why has the sporting organization made life so difficult (answer: $$$) and not bothered to renegotiate with the cable companies? If you want people to be fans of things, make it at least halfway accessible otherwise people will go elsewhere. It's not a closed shop like the Prem is in the UK.

3 - Marketing
The NBA markets the absolute fuck out of itself; it is increasingly a lifestyle brand and I know all the game's current stars because they're in adverts and things. Everyone knows LeBron/Kawhi/Giannis because the league is very good at promoting them and generating star power. Who knows the MLB equivalent of (say) DeGrom/Trout/Mookie? Or Joey Votto's acerbic (and very funny) sarcasm or Joe Biagini's left-field sense of humour?* MLB desperately needs more stars playing but they seem utterly inept at doing anything about it.

4 - The Owners

To own a baseball team, you have to be a billionaire. Owners aren't incentivized to do anything about marketing or availability of the sport because they're making record profits so why would they care? They're in their 80s - by the time the league collapses they'll be dead (see also: the environment, the economy). That's before you get onto the criminal expense of going to a game in person, and the systematic underpaying of players and staff because fuck you, we're billionaires and we need every penny. It's expensive to take your kids to game, like "hundreds of pounds" expensive, and after forking that out you have to sit and watch the visiting Cincinnati Reds play half of their AAA roster because they're cheap fucks.

The sport will have to deal with it eventually because players are signing to superstar 10-15 year contracts and relying on a lot of latent support which feels like it's dwindling (to me, anyway) as teams in lukewarm markets (Miami, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas City, Detroit... etc) openly give up and acquire the cheapest players they can so the owner can turn monster profits. If revenues collapse but they still need to find $100m to pay all those players, you could see teams going under.

There's also the fact that the Commissioner of MLB is an idiot and even if replaced his position explicitly works for the clubs (AKA 30 billionaires) rather than fans or promotion of the sport itself. As a result, MLB has the power and motivation to do shit like lobby Congress to exempt them from antitrust laws, pay minor leaguers less than minimum wage (the AAA Reliever of the Year 2021 drives an Uber in the off-season to make ends meet), and sell TV rights to local broadcasters even if this existentially threatens the future fanbase of the sport (see point 2).

These problems are all evident now to pretty much anyone who follows the sport in any detail. What they should be doing is giving away tickets to anyone under 12, renegotiating and removing blackouts, and making a trip to the ballpark cost no more than $100 for a family of 4 including hotdogs for the kids and three awful beers for dad. Make the ball game fun and affordable, make streams $1 per game, and accept that you will make profits that are only marginally obscene today but with the bonus there will still be an audience for Major League Baseball in 30 years.

The system is not set up to address these things until they become immediate, existential problems by which time it'll be too late.

I realize you didn't say "rant at me about how poorly modern baseball is run" but you knew the risks when you came in here and asked.


_{*two of the funniest things I've ever seen in live performance have been at baseball games. One was courtesy of Joe Biagini, who had set his warmup music to "One (Is The Loneliest Number) by Three Dog Night instead of the usual 5-10 seconds of hip hop or whatever people under 30 listen to. He came in for a game in the 6th or 7th inning and the song started playing, but he's a long reliever entering a game at short notice so he needed warmup pitches. It meant the stadium had to keep going with the song, and ended up playing the whole thing up to the guitar break, while he stood on the mound, all on his own, throwing practice pitches, and nodding to himself. Superb.}

[Ferris]

You can add Oakland, Cincinnati, the Cubs, the Orioles, the Red Sox to the list of teams that just don't give a shit and exist to turn a profit and nothing else because they can't get relegated.

The Cubs and Red Sox will eventually become competitive again because their media ecosystem demands that of them. Not so for the Royals/Tigers/Pirates/A's/Os/Rockies/Marlins/Diamondbacks... etc - those teams are bad today and will likely still be bad in 5-10 years. If you're a kid growing up in those cities, are you gonna have fond memories of watching your team stink up the league or are you gonna watch the Lakers instead? Or become a Liverpool fan? Good baseball teams are hard to build so if a front office gives up, then good luck.

I've seen it happen in my own life where my family (out of pity) allows kids to have two soccer teams, Villa and one who actually tries to win things (usually Liverpool these days). Villa have turned it around now (a bit), but for a generation of my family that's too late because now they want to watch Mo Salah and friends instead. A lifetime of games not gone to and claret and blue jerseys not bought (and not forcing their own kids to head down Villa Park when the time comes); being a bad "who gives a fuck" team creates financial issues well into the future.

The economics of baseball is doing that league-wide (and in great depth at specific teams), and on a massive scale.

[Famous Mortimer]

The fourth link when you Google "MLB blackout policy" is "how to get round the MLB blackout" but if you can't afford cable (I think the absolute cheapest package is about $70 a month round here, and 90% of it is absolute shite) and you live anywhere close to the ballpark, you have no other options. Well, I get round it with a streaming site and a good powerful ad-blocker, but it's definitely not an option for everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_blackout_policy

Imagine living in, say, Dubuque, Iowa, whose nearest team is the Milwaukee Brewers, and wanting to be a Brewers fan.

Local broadcasts are not necessarily available in the whole blackout territory. For example, Bally Sports Wisconsin is unavailable in Iowa, so Milwaukee Brewers games are unavailable in the state.

Can't watch it on cable, blacked out on MLB.tv.

Completely agree with Ferris on everything he said. Baseball is a decent example of the worst of capitalism in a microcosm - treat their own employees (minor leaguers and ballpark staff) like dirt, bleed every penny from their customer base, and don't even think about the future. Given a choice between $1 now and $20 in 20 years, every single owner would have taken the $1 from you before you'd even finished the sentence.

At least my local team seems to give a shit about winning, every now and again. I couldn't imagine actually being a fan of the A's, Tigers, Rockies, Orioles or Marlins (among others). The guarantee that if a player starts playing well, he's going to be traded for a bunch of prospects. The only thing you're cheering for is laundry because almost no-one hangs around long enough to become a fan favourite.

There are ten teams with an average attendance below 20,000, and one team with an average attendance below 10,000 (the A's). They're basically being subsidised by the other 29 owners, as the national TV deals give every team $60 million a year. Without that, or if their cable company declared bankruptcy, a decent handful of teams would start making heavy losses.

[Ferris]

The other end of the generational problem is when wealthy boomers die off. Right now, they can (and do) spend hundreds on cable (because they don't know how to do anything else), buy a jersey or two every couple of years  and and take the grandkids to baseball games (and pay the eye-watering prices). For MLB teams that means times are good so who cares about anything else? Add another $1 to hotdog prices and knock off for the day.

The problem with that (as with anything) is that people see a graph of revenue going up, assume it's a constant and will stay like that forever, and don't realize it's an age-demographic trend that will reverse itself. Boomers are like a basketball of wealth (and right wing votes) moving through a hose pipe. Of course revenues are going up, they're all retiring and going to baseball games and watching cable tv. In this metaphor, we're reaching the middle of the basketball.

Once they all die off in 20 years, the revenue will drop significantly because the wealth of following generations is so much less and MLB hasn't bothered to cultivate them as particularly interested fans anyway.

I think the whole thing is due a bit of a collapse and contracts signed in the next 5 years will be the largest ever in the history of the sport, but luckily the planet will be on fire and we'll all live in roving bands skirmishing for fresh water in The Resource Wars so it won't matter that Toronto needs starting pitching or the K rate of the bullpen.

[Ferris]

And to add to what @Famous Mortimer says, some teams' front offices do try but are just godawful. It's very difficult to build a good team, even with lots of money and advanced metrics (and some teams don't seem to use sabermetrics at all - for example, the Rockies seem to make all their rostering decisions via Magic 8-Ball).

($180m for Kris Bryant until he's nearly 40? All signs point to yes. Pay Nolan Arenado? Outlook not so good.)

[Dex Sawash]

People who watch baseball now

1. people who played as a kid

2. oddball numbers nerds


Safe to assume @Ferris was pretty good with a bat as a nipper.

[Ferris]

Ferris scouting report.

Age: past it

Pitching: plus curveball and slider, so-so fastball with good tailing. Developing a change up but profiles as a middle reliever. Plays softball/slo pitch where these pitches are literally never used.

Hitting: solid bat to ball skills with plus hand-eye, but 40 grade power - over the infield but not much of a gap hitter and no home run threat.

Fielding: profiles at second or first base, flashes the leather and good reactions but lacks the arm for SS or 3rd. Seems to be incompetent in the outfield and hates running out there anyway.

Opinion: can drink 3 beers and still make loud contact, would fit nicely in an organization's rec league slo pitch roster as a mediocre starter or late innings bench bat.

[El Unicornio, mang]

@monkfromhavana


2 - Availability
Other sports leagues do things to make themselves easy to access. The NFL makes games free to stream on YouTube with explainers and popular celebrities. If you want soccer, you can subscribe for it and it's pretty cheap (few quid a month?).

However if you want to watch baseball right now, you can pay MLB $20 a month for the streaming app except, uh oh, it is subject to blackouts. What's a blackout? Well back in the dark ages, local sports channels wouldn't show local games within the actual city due to team's complaining it would stop fans from going to the game itself. Nowadays, it's because MLB has sold the rights to certain broadcasters for certain games so streaming a Kansas City game on a consumer's iPad direct from MLB means they wont pay their local cable affiliate for the Local KC Sports Channel subscription package, and cable companies want their money. If you live in Kansas and want to watch baseball, go to the game or pay some cable company for their basic cable package (a couple hundred a month maybe?) for hundreds of garbage lifestyle channels you will never watch. Don't want to do that? Then fuck you, basically. This can be ludicrous depending on team - the "blackout zone" for my beloved Toronto Blue Jays is 5,000 miles wide, the equivalent of London to Delhi. I'm subject to it though I live 1,000 miles away from the stadium because some fucker bought the rights which is like blocking someone from watching Dinamo Minsk games because they live in Rotherham. I can watch Cincinnati play the Phillies, but I don't want to.

People under 40 are increasingly cable-cutters (like me) so the sport is just shrugging and saying "fuck you". Now, there are ways around it involving VPNs or dodgy streams but why has the sporting organization made life so difficult (answer: $$$) and not bothered to renegotiate with the cable companies? If you want people to be fans of things, make it at least halfway accessible otherwise people will go elsewhere. It's not a closed shop like the Prem is in the UK.

MLB.com does have one free game each day to watch, which I quite like as it removes my indecisiveness when trying to pick a game (although I have a team, I like to see what the others are up to).

Also https://mlb66.ir/simulator has all the games both live and archived from the previous day in HD, and I've not had any issues with buffering like you get with football stream (although I haven't used it in a while)

My friend got a job in America recently and his balcony has a great view overlooking the Padres stadium, jammy bastard (and he doesn't even like baseball but goes to the games just for the social aspect sometimes)

[Famous Mortimer]

Also https://mlb66.ir/simulator has all the games both live and archived from the previous day in HD, and I've not had any issues with buffering like you get with football stream (although I haven't used it in a while)

My friend got a job in America recently and his balcony has a great view overlooking the Padres stadium, jammy bastard (and he doesn't even like baseball but goes to the games just for the social aspect sometimes)

I use sportsurge.net, which is pretty handy for streaming, as long as you don't mind doing a little searching for streams that work.

Closest I got was living about ten minutes walk from Busch Stadium, if I wasn't watching the game I'd hear the home run fireworks, rush to turn the telly on and pretty much always catch it, thanks to the delay.

[monkfromhavana]

@monkfromhavana

(Sorry for the rant/wall of text - this subject is something of a hobby horse.)

A good read, thanks. So, as I suspected, it's fucked. It's weird how the other sports seem to have gotten it right, but the owners and rule-makers in baseball haven't. Are MLB basically the US equivalent of the MCC in cricket? Loads of ancient, rich, white guys with a stubborn refusal to change anything?

[Famous Mortimer]

A good read, thanks. So, as I suspected, it's fucked. It's weird how the other sports seem to have gotten it right, but the owners and rule-makers in baseball haven't. Are MLB basically the US equivalent of the MCC in cricket? Loads of ancient, rich, white guys with a stubborn refusal to change anything?

I think it's because the money is rolling in, still, and most of the big press that covers the game relies on access to players and coaches and therefore there's a heck of a lot of whitewashing of awful decisions going on.

And, over the last 20-30 years, a great number of the most famous players in the game, who other sports would have built round, were drug cheats or domestic abusers or crazed right-wing conspiracists. But even the best team in baseball will lose a third of the time, so there's less opportunity for those crazily dominant / terrible performances that inform some of the narrative around other sports.

[Ferris]

Yeah, as FM points out it's a very cozy ecosystem and everyone is making lots of money so who cares? It'll be a problem in 20-30 years but they'll be in the ground so not their concern.

[monkfromhavana]

I think everything's slowly moving towards proper football (apart from basketball)

Ice hockey and baseball are dying, and brain injuries from gridiron are going to make parents think twice.

[Vodkafone]

Sorry to butt in, but having recently read Don DeLillo's telling of the 1951 final pennant game between the Dodgers and the Giants in the first chapter of Underworld (which is an exceptional piece of writing), I'd like to watch a classic ball game on YouTube or somewhere. I'm not paying some monsters to watch baseball on TV, and don't have the time or probably the inclination to watch it regularly, but would like to watch a classic game from beginning to end. Any recommendations? Ideally I'd not know the score in advance but accept this is likely impossible. Ok thanks bye

[Ferris]

@Vodkafone its doable but older games are hard to find. They also lack some of the graphics (strike zone, pitch count etc) that make the modern game easier to parse.

That said! Every MLB game since 2009 is uploaded to YouTube for some reason so they are all searchable and free to view. Here's a handy guide on how to find them all.

In terms of "classic" games, there are some brilliant ones in that timespan. I'm on mobile at the mo, but if you don't mind I can post 2 or 3 suggestions here later today. Spoiler: one of them will be game 5 of the 2015 ALDS.

I'm sure @Famous Mortimer can think of some good suggestions (nudge nudge game 6 2011 Texas rangers).

[Ferris]

Posting so I remember to sort the links later - Doc Halliday, Galarraga, game 5 2015 ALDS, game 6 WS 2011, Joe Carter (my avatar!)

[Dex Sawash]

Would any of the mid-70s Reds games be re-watchable? Was a charismatic bunch on those teams, may be strictly in-market bias talking bollocks though. For some reason we got loads of Reds games in central north carolina.

[Famous Mortimer]

AL Wild Card game from 2014 is pretty extraordinary too.

[Vodkafone]

Cheers Ferris and Mortimer, will check those out