Sport

3 hours ago, LMU said:

From years of watching the Dodgers lay eggs, I think for the most part playoff baseball requires an ability to harness and channel emotion. The Dodgers, for example, are a team full of talent but at the same time is a team too stoic and professional. You need more Schwarbers and Harpers out there throwing their bats 30 feet as opposed to the Dodgers only bringing themselves to do the Freddie flailing arm dance.

I totally get that with the Dodgers. The calm, chill, business-like demeanor works over the course of a long season when you're in game 11 of a 12 game road trip to get through and you're looking at the Pirates' 4th best starter, but the playoffs are a completely different animal . The Dodgers feel like a lot of guys who don't really mind that it's the offseason right now while the Phillies feel like a lot of guys who get into street fights for fun*.

The exception to that is the late 90's Yankees were a bunch of boring c-suite suits and they won a lot of games and a lot of championships so I guess it's just about how teams funnel the thing that works for them into a positive output. 

*Except for Trea Turner who looks like your fifth best friend from middle school that you don't talk to anymore. 

I grew up watching ECHL and college hockey in the 90's. Wearing a dark helmet with a white jersey will never not look extremely bush league. I don't get why the league allows the Hurricanes to do it and I don't get why the Hurricanes insist upon it. 

10 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

Interesting…

 

yeah that's totally what I meant

12 hours ago, Dynasty said:

I'm thinking that last year wasn't much of a fluke. This Phillies team is really good.

They and the Astros along with a few other teams in the past (namely the stupid Cardinals and stupid Giants of the early 2010's) have me convinced that some teams are just better at playoff baseball. People say this is luck and there is an element of BABIP at play and there is, but I also don't see why it couldn't be a skill that some teams have and some teams don't (the Dodgers, for example)

10 hours ago, tBBP said:

 

As do I, and have hated it since it came out in 2013. It's like they (and by "they" I mean the swoosh folk) sucked all the soul out of it leaving this over-sanitized...thing left in it'd wake. I feel the same way about the current script mark, too...bring back the Totally Gothic for pete's sake!

I've said before the 97 logo is superior because it has a message, a point of view, a mise en scene, if you will. It looks like it was lifted off a treasure map. The update has none of that. It removes all the character and sterilizes it. It's genericizes it. It looks like someone took the 97 logo and changed it just enough for one of those crappy websites that sells stock logos. It looks like it was lifted off a party plate for a kid's pirate themed birthday party. It STINKS and I hate it.

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

I think you yourself had a good idea with your Bucco Bruce redraw that introduced burgundy as an accent color for the traditional creamsicle orange and red. Gives it a little more contrast without resorting to black, or worse, shoehorning in pewter.

yeah that was me.

You need a darker color than red as the base otherwise the colors are just too close to one another. I'm not going to go through the trouble of doing a uniform concept, but I'd keep everything the same with orange as the dominant color and change all the red to a medium darkness purpleish burgundy. 

4 hours ago, aawagner011 said:

Big fan of the Bucs creamsicles but not sure I’d like to see them full time. I like their regular uniforms but they need to tone down the pewter pants about 3 or 4 shades lighter, if they must stick with the matte material and can’t get metallic. I’m sure they could get metallic, but it seems like 98% of the teams in NFL and college opt against it due to the lightweight material and breathability. Only ones I can think of are the Raiders, Cowboys, and Kansas State.

This is where I'm at. I think the novelty of the creamsicles would wear very quickly if they were an every game look. One thing I've always liked about the 97 rebrand is it kept the creamsicle colors so they didn't completely throw away the DNA of the franchise - It added contrast and gave it a cannonball like feel with the black and pewter. 

The solution is keep the creamsicles as an alternate, but stick with the sturdier red and pewter with metallic pants and go back to using the superior 1997 logos for the 16 other games. 

The new Cardinals road whites feel closer to how the Cardinals should look. It's at least, spiritually, in the right direction. The new cardinal and black home looks do not. 

16 hours ago, the admiral said:

Be that as it may, decoupling seeding from the actual winning and losing of games all but defeats the point of playing the games. Besides, incongruities between record and run differential are where lots of upsets come from (that and exploiting mismatches, but that's more so in hockey), and upsets are supposed to be the fun of it all.

I only use run-differential as one part of a whole evaluation of a team. Wins and losses are most important and finishing games is a skill good teams have to have otherwise you're this year's Padres. Also some managers bail on regular season games earlier if things get out of hand so they don't burn pitchers in a lost cause and their RD can get goofy in a hurry. 

But over a full season it's useful. I only brought it up because people acted like the bye killed the Orioles when the Rangers had a significantly better regular season run differential so it wasn't the monumental upset it may have appeared to be. 

On 10/14/2023 at 5:43 PM, GDAWG said:

Do we want to see Bryce Harper get a World Series Ring?  Remember he left Washington after the 2018 season, and in 2019, the Nationals won the World Series.  

Sure. I've grown to appreciate Harper as a player just because he had so much hype coming out of high school and he's actually surpassed even the most optimistic projections. I'm always very impressed by him. Also I liked when he did the throat slash gesture and it pissed me off the fanbase who does the axe chop gesture. "NOOO only we're allowed to pantomime fake violence with fake weapons"

3 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

I knew someone would post Tennessee.

 

The Volunteers lack red in their scheme and an orange facemask.
 

It’s close, but no cigar.

I know. Use your imagination. 

12 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

I’m still curious to know what a monocreamsicle uniform would look like for Tampa Bay

It would look something like this. 

12 minutes ago, PrimalCookie said:

I've always been curious - why was it so hard to make royal blue helmets back then? As far as I can tell the first time someone wore them was the 2000 Giants. I'm sure it took as long as it did because of tradition and they probably could've been made earlier, but still. That's ridiculous that it took that long for a royal team to match their helmet to the rest of their uniform.

The explanation I’ve heard is at the time helmet manufacturers had a far more limited number of color options. The Giants and Rams had to choose between dark navy blue or bright Royal blue, which is what the Broncos opted for. My guess is they decided darker blue looked better with their royal blue jerseys than the brighter blue would have. When the Giants and Rams redesigned their uniforms in 2000 metallic flake paint was an option so both teams were able to more precisely match their jersey colors. 

9 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Yes they did! But anyone clamoring for them to go back to these full time is nuts. They may look real cute now, but just try to imagine these on the back end of four consecutive ten loss seasons (something this franchise is very capable of at any point) where they wear nothing but the creamsicle throwbacks. It quickly goes from a fun little thing to a pirate with a dagger in its mouth winking at you in baby puke orange and a slightly darker shade of orange. For years. People really can’t quite grasp just how much that look was HATED by the time they changed it. Those old orange unis had such a putrid stench of failure caked into them by 1996. They had to go. 
 

These are fun strictly because they so rarely make an appearance. They’re a fun little treat on special occasions. Once a year is enough, and like I’ve said before, I’d like to see it even more infrequently than that, even. Once every five years, give or take, and only for really special occasions. 

As someone old enough to remember when they actually wore these full time, I can attest to this. Youths don't understand how much of a joke the Bucs were. The team was really bad, yes, but they were really bad while wearing the softest uniforms you could come up with. In the early 90's they felt like they existed specifically to wear goofy uniforms with a logo ripped from the cover of a trashy romance novel, and fill out easy wins on other teams' schedules. The rebrand saved the franchise. 

It's not a look that travels well and it's kind of wild that it made it until 1996. It was tough to make the colors work on sideline apparel or fan wear and everyone just looked kind of silly while wearing it. 

At home with the orange jerseys and white pants wasn't so bad, but it looked especially goofy in the last few years when they insisted on wearing orange pants with orange socks to achieve one of the weirder colored leggings look of all time. 

They're a fun curio in uniform history. It's hard to believe a pro sports team really chose to wear those colors for that long, but it's really for the best to keep it at a distance. I would hold it off for every five years whenever there's an anniversary. 

It's a great color scheme that they should readopt full-time. My only issue with this alternate is it's close enough to the originals that it begs the question why not just wear the originals?  

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

Additionally: the Brewers were an NL Central team and the NL Central isn’t exactly an amazing division (correct me if I’m wrong). Also, the Dodgers haven’t been able to score runs/hit in the playoffs ever since 2021. It’s not the format’s fault, it’s the teams’ fault.

 

The 2013-present Dodgers really are the ‘91-‘05 Braves reborn. Over a decade of making the playoffs and only one title (in a shortened season) to show for it.

The NL Central was the second weakest division in the league and the Brewers lineup doesn't strike fear into anyone. They have good pitchers, but a couple hiccups in two wildcard games was all it took to wipe them out, which is why nobody would ever prefer to start in the wildcard series. It's not shocking at all that they lost two straight to Arizona. 

I think the Dodgers just Dodgered their way to 100 wins through sheer Dodgeriness, but if Betts and Freeman go cold you have Max Muncy and then basically no protection down the lineup, which is what happened. And Kershaw not pitching well in the playoffs is the norm. If it had been a tough 5 game struggle then maybe I'd listen to some arguments, but if you get swept by the Diamondbacks I can't feel bad for you. It is not shocking to me that the Dodgers lost a playoff series - like you said, they've been doing that for over a decade excluding the COVID NIT. 

Looking at these losses closer*, Texas' run differential was significantly higher than Baltimore's and the same as Tampa's. It's safe to say those weren't upsets. Philadelphia has been on a 100 win pace over the second half and they know Atlanta inside and out so that's not shocking either.

I think our friend griping about this is just griping because he loves to gripe about everything (He's complained about the NBA playoffs being too chalk in the past). You will never satisfy that particular individual and I think he needs to find other hobbies. 

*The funniest thing in digging deeper here is San Diego had the 8th highest run differential and a pythagorean W/L of 92-70 LOL They won 14 out of their last 16 to get to 82-80. A 10 win split between Pythagorean W/L and actual W/L is the highest I think I've ever seen. 

2 minutes ago, PlayGloria said:

 

I respectfully disagree... I really like this update. The arm numbers are the only thing that throws me off with this set. I actually think they work well, but I'm not used to them. Other than that, I feel like the return of the darker orange is fantastic and the jersey itself is clean.

They didn't need to change the shape of the stripes to update the orange. I actually like the single color numbers, but the jerseys now are the same amount of "clean" as before. They just chunkified the sleeve stripe and it's no longer the shape that made those Flyers jerseys the famous Flyers jerseys. Now they look like the 80's jerseys, but they don't have the extra black outlining and it feels like it's missing something. I watched it in action last night for the first time and we're discussing personal preferences now, but I don't think it's an improvement. 

Not of a fan of the Flyers recent update. The swoopy taper of the original jersey and 2010 rebirth had some intentionality to it. Expanding the shoulder and sleeve stripe to take up more space just looks like someone tried to approximate that 70's look and got stuck with a bad template that isn't quite there. I would've preferred a full readopting of the 80's/90's jerseys to this half step. 

7 hours ago, Unocal said:

What is the incentive to win your division?

You get two home games and the pitching advantage in games 1 and 2 and you don't risk elimination in a best of 3. Every team would take the bye every time. It hasn't been a problem for the Astros the last two years. There isn't an Orioles or Braves fan alive who would've switched places with the Rangers and Phillies ten days ago. 

The playoff format has nothing to do with these upsets. The Orioles pitching, the Achilles heel their fans worried about all year, gave up 21 runs to the Rangers in three games. They scored 11 runs so it's not like the layoff caused them to forget how to hit. The Braves ran into a Phillies team that is intimately familiar with them and probably the second best on paper team in the National League. It's sports and it's baseball especially where playoff upsets have happened forever. 

9 hours ago, the admiral said:

There's a deep emptiness at the heart of the Texas Rangers that makes their success uniquely depressing from afar. We as a nation couldn't do better than this?

The soulless, generic, Texasness of their stadium really bums me out. It's like the over-sized coal rolling pickup truck of stadiums. It's like they said "what if Enron Field was worse?" 

The cheating sucks, but since then I've grown to begrudgingly give the Astros credit. 7 straight ALCS appearances in this era of playoff baseball when good teams can get swept out in 2 if they catch a cold at the wrong time, is nothing to sneeze at. 

7-7 might be the worst I've ever done in a week in all my years of playing. 

Chieftains 

Ravens

Vikes

Bengals

Niners

phins

Jags

Saints

Raiders

Cards

Eags

Lions

Bills

boys

The NLDS hasn't started yet and the entire NL Central is eliminated. A banner year for everyone's favorite division!

On 10/2/2023 at 4:05 PM, Unocal said:

Astros/Marlins WS is inevitable

Lol your  “inevitable” World Series made it two games. 
 

Commandos

Bills

Pats

Titans

Ravens

Lions

Texans

Dolphins

Bengals

Eagles

Jets

Chiefs

49ers

Packers

13 hours ago, Kramerica Industries said:

By all means, lets build a new stadium in the same damn place where there's still going to be issues getting people from Tampa or Sarasota or Clearwater...how stupid can you be? I don't care for the argument of "not enough of a local fanbase", because the Lightning are also a '90s expansion franchise and they've been wildly popular for a long time. It's not a good argument. The difference is the Lightning play in downtown Tampa, a very accessible area with a larger population base that also can draw people from Orlando and Lakeland and Kissimmee if they want to make the drive. You don't get that in St. Petersburg, you're surrounded by the ing water in almost every direction and terrible rush hour traffic and people aren't making that g-ddamned drive on a regular basis.

 

Build a new stadium for the Rays in St. Petersburg, and all you get is the same arguments about attendance existing for the next 40+ years.

I've argued for keeping the team in the Tampa Bay area provided they put the new stadium in actual dang ass TAMPA. Never did it occur to me that they'd be stupid enough to put the new one in the same location that is the root cause of all their current problems. 

Under 20k for a playoff game should never happen. I don't care that it's a day game. 

Reds Report Rap-up

- Fun team. Way more fun than expected. 

- 82-80 so a winning record.

- Could've made the playoffs with a pitcher here or another bat there, but they lost 100 games a year ago. Hard to complain about a 20 game improvement in one season.

- The core is here and the prospect tree is starting to bear fruit. 

- Lots of things to be excited. Lots of room for improvement. 

- Need another starting pitcher and need their big arms to stay healthy. 

- I will miss Joey Votto, who got ejected in the first inning of what is probably his last career game for arguing balls and strikes. That's kind of funny, kind of sad.