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March 28, 2024, 09:39:01 PM

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Baseball 2021 - we defy you to care

Started by Famous Mortimer, January 22, 2021, 05:41:05 PM

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Famous Mortimer

Good news for Orioles fans is tickets must be $0 now.

Ferris

I think they'll need to start paying people to show up at this rate. They stink out loud.

Famous Mortimer

Amazingly, the Cardinals have become world-beaters since I last posted, winning 9 in a row and almost locking up the second wild card spot. Trevor Plouffe, who now works for Jomboy Media doing really insightful breakdowns of crucial plays, did one on a Cardinals double play in the 10th, against the Mets. While it certainly helps that it's my team being talked about, Plouffe is just really interesting to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywQBXxE3zYI

sevendaughters

Orioles at home all week to close out, loads of availability but cheapest is for the midweek games (ie. today/tomorrow) against the Rangers, $15. Bet if you live locally you can probably get a freebie, sports events are always papering crowds. I got two freebies for MLS when I was in California.

Ferris

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on September 22, 2021, 03:40:29 AM
Amazingly, the Cardinals have become world-beaters since I last posted, winning 9 in a row and almost locking up the second wild card spot. Trevor Plouffe, who now works for Jomboy Media doing really insightful breakdowns of crucial plays, did one on a Cardinals double play in the 10th, against the Mets. While it certainly helps that it's my team being talked about, Plouffe is just really interesting to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywQBXxE3zYI

And despite being on track for 90+ wins and Guerrero Jr leading the league in hits, runs, home runs, batting average, on base percentage, OPS (& OPS+), and oWAR, he is unlikely to win MVP and the Jays are 50/50 to even make the post season.

Life is not fair.

Famous Mortimer

sevendaughters, that seems weird. The Cardinals are offering great swathes of their stadium at $10 a ticket for the last week of the season, and that includes the Cubs, who admittedly aren't very good this year but the rivalry / hatred usually does well for ticket sales. Perhaps they just want to get people in the door so it looks good on the telly, whereas the Orioles don't care either way.

The Cardinals are up to 10 in a row now, which is their best run of wins in nearly 20 years. This team! Although it's one of those things, where you look at it and see that Arenado and O'Neill are having great years despite not having any flashy hitting numbers; and their defence is best in the majors by quite a distance. At least Blue Jays fans get to see one of the best players in the world doing his thing? Honestly, watching Cardinals games this year has occasionally felt like a chore.

Attila

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on September 13, 2021, 02:07:43 AM
I think they'll need to start paying people to show up at this rate. They stink out loud.

Lifelong Orioles fan here: sigh...and I remember the heady days of the start of the 1988 season.

Ferris

Quote from: Attila on September 22, 2021, 07:23:16 PM
Lifelong Orioles fan here: sigh...and I remember the heady days of the start of the 1988 season.

They'll get a few decent draft picks for this abject season, and their farm is supposed to be very good so I don't think they'll be terrible for much longer?

Another year or two and the Red Sox rebuild will be under way, the Yankees will run out of steam with the overpaid vets they have. The O's will be running headlong into the Jays' competitive window but if they're good enough a wildcard spot will be theirs for the taking (maybe).

Famous Mortimer

Mocking the title of the thread, last night's game had one of those wild endings that will hopefully make a great Jomboy breakdown.

Cardinals - Cubs, bottom of the 9th. An "infield fly" was called, and the umpire at 2nd didn't understand the rule very well, calling a runner out as if it was a force play, then calling the ball dead while things were still happening. Fuck-up after fuck-up, and the umpires were asked to explain the rule after the end of the game, to which they replied "no comment". Ah, to be completely free from consequence!

Famous Mortimer

Ah well, the Cardinals made it to the Wild Card game but were unable to do much against the Dodgers, and are out. Still, that last month was a lot of fun to watch.

Ferris

Jays the best 4th placed team in the history of baseball, but 4th doesn't get you into the post season so we're done until 2022.

Cool.

sevendaughters

bring that team back next year a decent bullpen and Ryu gaining some control and they win 100

Famous Mortimer

Moderately interesting news - out of nowhere, the same day that a playoff game is happening, the Cardinals have fired their manager, Mike Shildt. A "philosophical difference", apparently, and I look forward to more news coming out about this, the Cardinals hiring some other boring guy from inside their org, etc.

El Unicornio, mang

Atrocious umpire call on a blatant check swing ends it for the Giants (although statistically they'd have likely gone out anyway). Not even close.





I like the Dodgers enough though, and can't stand the three other teams left in so hoping they retain the title.

Ferris

Horrible way to end it, but calls in the 9th are always fucking brutal.

I can think of a few where the Jays were just cheated out of a fair chance because the umps are lazy fucks who want to go home. We win 2 of those, we're in the post season. Robot umps will fix those, but there's no definition of what constitutes a checked swing in the rules, so you can't review it or even objectively say if it was or not.

Personally I think something should be added about the bat head crossing home plate - if it goes past, it's a swinging strike and if not it's a checked swing. That makes sense, and you can use overhead cameras to say "yes that was the right call" or not even if you can't review it on the field. Right now, it is entirely umpire discretion and they face no repercussions for being terrible and lazy so even a huge call like this can be tossed off and they can piss off home.

Dex Sawash

I think the braves are a lock for world series of based ball

Ferris


Famous Mortimer

Former MLBer and current Jomboy team member Trevor Plouffe is getting a lot of publicity because he exactly predicted this ("Braves over Astros in 6") back in March. Good on him!


Ferris

Jays appear to have signed Gausman as a free agent and extended Berríos.

That's a rotation of Ryu/Manoah/Berríos/Gausman minimum (though I think they're still talking with Robbie Ray) for the next 4-5 years which is very good.

The lean years 2016-2020 have left the team with money to spend and Toronto is becoming a destination (and preferable to free agents over the usual markets) because we are clearly in "win now" mode.

Bullpen is good but could use an upgrade, and still short a third baseman (and possibly another middle infielder with Semien going to the rangers) but yeah I haven't felt this good about an opening day roster since... ever.

What could possibly go wrong with this season?!

Famous Mortimer

The rush of players to sign before the apparently inevitable lockout / transaction freeze should at least make the next few days interesting. Scherzer is going to sign for 4 / 160, or thereabouts, and a few other big names might sign today.

St Louis, so far, signed a middle-of-the-road pitcher (Matz) and a few relievers who played there last year anyway. Nothing to get particularly excited about, but then again? 2021 was a pretty boring season, the wild franchise-record winning streak at the end notwithstanding.

Ferris

Matz is a (potentially) tremendous pitcher and the Cards did well to lock him down ahead of the Mets and Jays. He's probably got 2-3 dominant seasons left, and maybe more in a new league.

I think the Jays look good but a couple more signings and we might be legit contenders. Who knows?

Famous Mortimer

Looks like your lot are signing plenty of people, whereas my lot are going to "finish second" on a lot of people and then get a crappy reliever for too much money, late in the offseason. Provided there's a next season, of course.

The 14-team post-season is a bad idea, I hate the DH, and I hate fans who get excited about ripping players off for less money than they're worth. So I'm probably not going to go to as many games next year as I have in previous years :)

Ferris

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 30, 2021, 04:03:46 PMThe 14-team post-season is a bad idea, I hate the DH, and I hate fans who get excited about ripping players off for less money than they're worth. So I'm probably not going to go to as many games next year as I have in previous years :)

Agree with everything here, doubly so since I left Toronto and flying back from the east coast for a game isn't terribly appealing these days.

Famous Mortimer

Well, "negotiations" (seemingly, the ownership group giving stupider and stupider demands, and completely ignoring the suggestions from the players) are over, and the owners have started a lockout, which is - effectively - a strike, but with only 30 billionaires involved.

If you look at your favourite team's website, you'll see none of the 40-man rosters, and teams are not allowed to use the likenesses of their players to sell tickets, or to advertise the club in any way.
 
Not that it matters, but players that would have been a good fit for the Cardinals have gone to other teams, so it's looking like more mediocrity for them next year (a bizarre franchise record winning streak notwithstanding). I'm not even angry about any of this stuff any more, just vaguely bored.

Ferris

Seems like the opening offer from owners was to reduce all pensions and remove cost of living adjustments in exchange for... nothing? Not sure.

Imagine being a literal multi-billionaire and thinking "yeah but I've just got to get a little bit more". It's sociopathic.

Famous Mortimer

I read that the Cardinals AAA affiliate, the Memphis Redbirds, has been bought by some big media holdings company, who plan to / already own 8 other minor league clubs. My first thought was "if MLB keeps fucking about, here's a company with very deep pockets and enough clubs to form a league" but maybe it's just rich scumbags buying property that happens to have a ballpark on it.

Famous Mortimer

A decent number of Hall of Fame ballots are now in, and Bonds, Clemens and Ortiz are all over 75%. Previously, Bonds and Clemens did substantially worse on private ballots, so even though they've both picked up a tiny handful of extra votes I'd guess they're not getting in.

Ortiz will sail in, which is a bit more "fame" than it is his numbers (he's significantly worse by the stats than fellow DH Edgar Martinez, and it took him a while to get in, but Ortiz has the post-season accomplishments and is beloved in Boston), but that's fine.

Chris Rose and Trevor Plouffe did a little chat about it today, and it's a much better chat than the one he had with the HOF voters a few weeks ago.


Ferris

Yeah I'd agree with that. Ortiz has so many accolades, he's a lock.

Bonds shouldn't go in, he's a tragic "what if" case - a victim of the era he played in and the prevailing culture (that was tacitly endorsed by MLB at the time). He could have been one of the greats, but I can't stand dopers so it's a no for me.

Clemens can go in, incredible stats and he had all his post '93 success while thinking he was a chicken.

Famous Mortimer

Results are out, and only Ortiz made it in (not my most impressive prediction).

Chris Rose and Trevor Plouffe did another video about it today, and I largely agree with them. That Bud Selig, the commissioner who 100% knew about steroids and did nothing, is in the Hall is a joke, just not a funny one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTGOBjgJi48

Plouffe made a convincing argument that voting needs to change, and very quickly, because the two people in the argument for the best hitter and pitcher of all time aren't in. Voting needs to be taken out of the hands of the writers, who should have shown more moral fibre when McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were putting up video game numbers; and I'm glad that, after those writers patted themselves on the back for their refusal to vote, that someone like Plouffe called it out for the bullshit argument it is.

There's a strong sense from people covering the game from the outside (non MLB Network and BBWAA writers) that if this lockout doesn't end really quickly, baseball in its current form and with its current level of popularity just won't continue. There's been an incredibly exciting weekend of NFL games, and all we get from baseball is a shitty labour dispute and an embarrassing Hall of Fame vote.

While I respect your opinion about Bonds, and if the character clause was real he shouldn't be in entirely because he was a pretty awful person away from the game, I don't agree with it. The Hall of Fame has a KKK member (Rogers Hornsby), violent racists (Ty Cobb and many others), amphetamine users (Hank Aaron and - if stories are to be believed - a majority of players for decades), someone who refused to play against black players and fought for segregation (Cap Anson), a commissioner who later fought against integration (Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whose name was on the MVP trophy until last year), an owner who treated his players as little more than chattel (Charles Comiskey), confessed cheats (Whitey Ford), dozens of players who owe their place to a few friends of theirs being on the voting committee (Freddie Lindstrom, Chick Hafey, etc.) and a barely above average DH (Harold Baines). Oh, and all the people who bet on games, some of whom we can be sure about, some of whom are just rumours. And every owner who benefited from the reserve clause, while we're at it.

I appreciate arguing that scumbags already being in the Hall doesn't necessarily make the case for letting more in, but it does make the case for a strong vein of hypocrisy running through this whole debate (this isn't directed at you, more the voters). They should be honest about the people in the Hall. If they want to make a moral case, then they should go the whole hog and campaign for a recall vote for some of the above people. This halfway house, which I think is largely to do with writers who didn't say enough at the time trying to retrospectively take the moral high ground, is embarrassing.


Ferris

#209
Actually I meant to come back and post in here today - apparently clemens is a shitty person too, so he can get to fuck.

Re: HoF nominations... I'm still working out how I feel about it. I still haven't changed my opinion on Bonds (or McGwire, Sosa... etc), but how do you square nominations today with those of the past? I don't really know so forgive my rambling below because I'm thinking out loud more than anything.

I completely see your point - if there's already shitbags in the Hall, then why are people getting all high and mighty about it now? It's a fair question - hold everyone to the same standard or don't, but don't get on your high horse about it. I guess historically the character aspect of the player wasn't taken into account as much. That's not great, but I think going back through and removing people isn't great either - but how can we consider keeping in literal segregationists and klansmen (to say nothing of people strongly suspected of cheating but never actually proved like Ortiz)?

Amphetamines I don't mind as much - but is that defensible? They were used fairly openly and it was culture of the game, but so were steroids in the '90s. Probably my recency bias there tbh.

I think at minimum, enforcing "no more shitbags" policy for new inductees should be the first port of call. As for going back and removing people - honestly, I'd be all for it the more I think about it, but the witless bleating about "cancel culture" and "woke MLB" would microwave my brain and ultimately I don't have that strong an opinion, and here's why.

They're lauded for their numbers - and when kids go to stare through the glass at Hornsby's cap or whatever they'll just see he was an excellent batter. His troglodyte views died with him so while bad, it is less harmful. He's not going on podcasts today, and you'd have to argue that people remembering/praising his hand-eye coordination while he is irreversibly dead is somehow beneficial to him, which I don't particularly think it is. Maybe only living people can be considered for removal and once you're brown bread, you're in forever?

As for Bud Selig... yeah. I could speak about his tenure at length. The man almost killed baseball in several different ways, he shouldn't be allowed to sweep the front steps of the Hall, let alone be inside it. An absolute joke and if we're looking for people to remove, there's a good place to start.

So to conclude - I don't know.