Jump to content

2018 MLB Season


FiddySicks

Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, ozzyman314 said:

So basically, a pitcher can throw a perfect game and still lose. 

 

That's beyond idiotic. 

 

would the run at least be unearned?

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 728
  • Created
  • Last Reply
On 3/15/2018 at 8:32 AM, McCarthy said:

Manfred is probably juicing balls too.

 

Guy on second to start extras is an impressively stupid idea to solve a problem that doesn't exit. All that does is starts every extra inning with a sacrifice bunt followed by an intentional walk. Might as well skip that and start every extra inning with a guy on first and third with one out. It'll probably end games earlier, but it'll also suck the life out of extra innings. It's like they heard the average game time is too long so instead of going after the real things that have made games longer they're going after the outlying 17, 18 inning games, which sucks because those games are rare and fun and 18 inning 1:30 am twitter is one of the best twitters. 

 

Better ideas:

start weekday games at 6:30, enforce the 30 second pitch rule, if an ump thinks a guy is stepping out of the box/off the rubber too many times he gets a called strike/ball, limit mound visits the way other sports limit timeouts, eliminate replay. I don't know what to do about batters finally figuring out that it's better to extend counts and getting really good at fouling off pitches. That's probably just something that will be a part of the game moving forward. 

This is tricky, as sports need to balance what's right for the game vs. attracting new/casual fans. Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports (as the cliche goes) and fouling corner pitches off to stay alive has been around forever. To  allow for "fouling out" would be a big change.  I don't love the idea of making changes like this simply because people have come up with better strategies.

 

That said, something has to give.  I went to LA last year and really liked Dodger Stadium.  But the game was miserable.  The Dodgers lost 6-5.  6-5 seems like a good game --close, some scoring, not horrible pitching.  But it was an absolute drag.  It must have lasted four hours.  The theme of the game was catcher mound visits and fouls out of play.  If MLB is going to essentially become home runs, strikeouts, and foul balls, it's not going to be the game it was.  Again, punishing strategy is unappealing, but balls being put into play is important.

 

MLB needs to look into what's causing the games to go long.  Maybe that's known and I'm just not aware.  Do they get longer in September because of the giant rosters (i.e., feel free to let a new pitcher throw to each batter)?  Are games going long because the new expectation from starters is to go five innings?  Is it the fouls? Is it the mound visits?  Is more time being taken between pitchers?  Does the DH rule lead to more in-inning pitching changes (since they don't have to pinch hit for that spot)?  Have commercial break lengths increased?  Some of these things (catcher visits) can be addressed.  Others, maybe not. But they have to find a way to reduce the game length if they want to attract young fans (good move by the Orioles, though, with the free ticket promotion).  I'll tell you this though, it wasn't the four-pitch intentional walk.

 

As for the lack of action and balls in play, that's trickier.  If the balls are juiced, undo it. Home runs are fun, but balls in play are the essence of the game.  

 

Regarding the extra inning issue, it's stupid.  First, the nine-inning game is the lion's share of the problem.  Second, I'm not even convinced it will speed things up.  Go ahead and try it in the minors, but I hope it fails because it would be somewhere between a real game and an NHL shootout.

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

BADGERS TWINS VIKINGS TIMBERWOLVES WILD

POTD (Shared)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel like a hypocrite because I love college football overtime and wish the nfl did it, but am against this proposal for mlb. 

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

MLB needs to look into what's causing the games to go long.

 

"Somebody ought to build a town that works!"
"SOMEBODY DID."

 

Read the whole thing, it's a stream-of-consciousness romp, but here's the crux:

 

Quote

Commercials aren’t the primary villain. They don’t help the pace of the modern game, but I figured that was going to be the half-hour difference right there, and the conclusion would be simple. But the 1984 game had 33 minutes and 13 seconds of commercials, and the 2014 game had 42 minutes and 36 seconds. Considering the times of the respective games, the older game actually devoted a similar chunk of their broadcast to time away from the action.

There’s a little bit of an asterisk here, though, as I’m defining "commercial" as the time that runs from the beginning of a commercial break to the first pitch of the next inning. If we’re talking about actual BUY GEICO, YOU MEATY ROBOTS time, the 1984 game featured 19 minutes and 17 seconds of actual ads, whereas the 2014 game had 28 minutes and 25 seconds.

Here's another asterisk: There was a mid-inning pitching change in both games, but only the 2014 game cut to a commercial. That's right: for nearly three minutes in 1984, the cameras just hung around, watching a dude warm up, as announcers talked about nothing and the network threw money out the window. It was somewhere between maddening and refreshing. So if you want to count that as a 1984 commercial, the gap shrinks even more.

Still, the 1984 game took a much longer time coming back from break to get the game started, which means that the players were mostly hanging around on the field, not playing baseball, roughly the same in both eras. They just got better at stuffing more ads in the telecast. It’s possible that this is a quirk of WGN, and that they wanted to make sure all of the different randos cycling through the booth had time to chat with Harry Caray before the first pitch.

Time between pitches is the primary villain. I tallied up all the pitches in both games that we’ll call inaction pitches — pitches that resulted in a ball, called strike, or swinging strike, but didn’t result in the end of an at-bat or the advancement of a runner. These are the pitches where the catcher caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, whose next step was to throw it back to the catcher. Foul balls didn’t count. The fourth ball of a plate appearance didn’t count. Stolen bases didn’t count. Wild pitches didn’t count. Just the pitches where contact wasn’t made, and the pitcher received a return throw from the catcher.

There were 146 inaction pitches in the 1984 game.

There were 144 of these pitches in the 2014 game.

The total time for the inaction pitches in 1984 — the elapsed time between a pitcher releasing one pitch and his release of the next pitch — was 32 minutes and 47 seconds.

The total time for inaction pitches in 2014 was 57 minutes and 41 seconds.

This is how a game can have an almost identical number of pitches thrown, batters faced, baserunners, hits, walks, strikeouts, and runs scored compared to another game, yet take more than a half-hour longer. This, plus the modest difference in commercial breaks, explains nearly everything. It took nine seconds longer for a pitcher to get rid of the ball in 2014.

In the 1984 game, there were 70 inaction pitches that were returned to the pitcher and thrown back to the plate within 15 seconds.

In the 2014 game, there were 10.

In the 1984 game, there were 32 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches

In 2014, there were 87 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches.

That’s it. That’s the secret. It isn’t just the commercials. It isn’t just the left-handed pitchers coming in to face one batter, even though that absolutely makes a huge difference in the games when that does happen.

It’s not like every at-bat in the 2014 game was rotten with hitters doing a Nomar Garciaparra impression between pitches, either. It was a marked difference in the modern players doing absolutely nothing of note. The batter taking an extra breath before he steps back in. The pitcher holding the ball for an extra beat.

There was a video review that took four minutes in the 2014 game, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. There were extra commercials, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. The difference between the two games, 30 years apart, was that baseball players are lollygagging more. Or, at least, taking their sweet time to collect their thoughts.

The good news? There’s an easy fix. Baseball is already experimenting with pitch clocks in the minors, and I haven’t heard or read a complaint about them from anyone who regularly attends minor league games. They’re in the background. You get used to them. That’s it.

Baseball will keep trying different ideas, from limiting pickoff throws to limiting mound visits. They’ve already messed with intentional walks, and umpire reviews are going to be less accurate but shorter. The 2014 game didn’t feature the new rules preventing hitters from stepping entirely out of the batter’s box on inaction pitches, which has already helped a bit.

Based on one unscientific deep dive into a pair of similar games, though, the biggest problem with the pace of play is, well, the pace of play. Pitchers don’t get rid of the ball like they used to. Hitters aren’t expecting them to get rid of the ball like they used to. It adds a couple minutes to every half-inning, which adds close to a half-hour.

Fix that, and you have a head start on what Major League Baseball believes is its biggest problem.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Football is just as slow and dull as baseball is. There's a ton of downtime, constant penalties that nobody understands, and a replay system that's just as laborious. There's really not much difference between waiting 40 seconds for the next snap, or 20 seconds for the next pitch, and a handoff for a two yard gain is just about as exciting as a groundout to second. People just don't notice because football Sundays feel like events and you can flip between multiple games. Combine that with a 16 game schedule compared to 162, fantasy teams, and gambling.

 

Basically hockey and soccer and the only sports that can actually deliver consistent action without constant stoppages, and of course they're the two least popular sports. We can pontificate about how today's society needs everything to be fast, but is that really what we want in sports?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Orioles sign Alex Cobb to a 4 year, $60 million dollar contract. This is a rotation that went from AAA level to serviceable MLB rotation without splashing huge amounts of cash. Kudos to Dan Duquette for that. Our rotation now looks something like this:

 

Gausman

Bundy

Cobb

Cashner

Tillman

 

Considering where we were at the beginning of the offseason, that’s a marked improvement. 

spacer.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Crabcake47 said:

Orioles sign Alex Cobb to a 4 year, $60 million dollar contract. This is a rotation that went from AAA level to serviceable MLB rotation without splashing huge amounts of cash. Kudos to Dan Duquette for that. Our rotation now looks something like this:

 

Gausman

Bundy

Cobb

Cashner

Tillman

 

Considering where we were at the beginning of the offseason, that’s a marked improvement. 

and best case senario? Tillman moves to 2-3 where he should be at his natural ability.

 

 

Tillman as a 5 starter is a good place to be.

5qWs8RS.png

Formerly known as DiePerske

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, The Six said:

Bumgarner's hand is broken, and the Giants are probably done before the season even starts. Welp, it was a fun spring training, at least!

But it's an even year guyz! 

Red Sox: 8    Celtics: 17    Bruins: 6    Patriots: 5

Phantom Merch Collector.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This was pretty sweet:

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/22936992/vladimir-guerrero-jr-hits-walk-hr-lift-toronto-blue-jays-montreal-exhibition-game

 

 

 

My predictions are:

The Tigers will absolutely suck. 

 

AL 

East

1. NY Yankees

2. Baltimore (WC)

3. Boston

4. Toronto

5. Tampa Bay

 

Central

1. Minnesota

2. Cleveland (WC)

3. Chi Sox

4. KC

5. Detroit

 

West

1. Houston

2. Seattle 

3. LA Angels

4. Texas

5. Oakland

 

NL

East

1. Washington

2. Philadelphia

3. NY Mets

4. Atlanta

5. Miami

 

Central

1. Milwaukee

2. Chi Cubs (WC)

3. St. Louis

4. Pittsburgh

5. Cincinnati

 

West

1. LA Dodgers

2. San Francisco (WC)

3. Colorado

4. Arizona

5. San Diego

 

ALCS- NY Yankees over Houston

NLCS- Washington over LA Dodgers

WS- NY Yankees over Washington

 

sig.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PREDICTION TIME!

 

AL East:

1. New York

2. Boston (WC)

3. Baltimore

4. Toronto

5. Tampa Bay

 

AL Central:

1. Cleveland

2. Minnesota (WC)

3. Kansas City

4. Chicago

5. Detroit

 

AL West:

1. Houston

2. Los Angeles

3. Seattle

4. Texas

5. Oakland

 

NL East:

1. Washington

2. New York

3. Philadelphia

4. Atlanta

5. Miami

 

NL Central: 

1. Chicago

2. Milwaukee (WC)

3. Saint Louis

4. Cincinnati

5. Pittsburgh

 

NL West:

1. Los Angeles 

2. Arizona (WC)

3. San Francisco

4. Colorado

5. San Diego

 

AL WC: Minnesota defeats Boston

NL WC: Milwaukee defeats Arizona

 

NLDS: Washington defeats Milwaukee 3-1, Chicago defeats Los Angeles 3-2

ALDS: New York defeats Minnesota 3-0, Cleveland defeats Houston 3-1

 

NLCS: Washington defeats Chicago, 4-2

ALCS: New York defeats Cleveland 4-0

 

World Series: New York defeats Washington, 4-2

 

 

rAUPGPZ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My predictions are:

It has the potential to be a pretty dark year for the Jays.

 

AL 

East

1. NY Yankees

2. Boston (WC)

3. Toronto

4. Baltimore

5. Tampa Bay

 

Central

1. Cleveland

2. Minnesota (WC)

3. Chic. White Sox

4. KC

5. Detroit

 

West

1. Houston

2. Seattle 

3. LA Angels

4. Texas

5. Oakland

 

NL

East

1. Washington

2. Philadelphia

3. NY Mets

4. Atlanta

5. Miami

 

Central

1. Chic. Cubs

2. Milwaukee (WC)

3. St. Louis

4. Pittsburgh

5. Cincinnati

 

West

1. LA Dodgers

2. Arizona (WC)

3. Colorado

4. San Francisco

5. San Diego

 

AL WC: Boston def. Minnesota

NL WC: Milwaukee def. Arizona

 

ALDS: (1) Houston def. (4) Boston; 3-1

(2) New York def. (3) Cleveland; 3-2

 

ALCS: (1) Houston def. (2) New York; 4-2

 

NLDS: (1) LA Dodgers def. (4) Milwaukee; 3-1

(2) Washington def. (3) Chic. Cubs; 3-0

 

NLCS: (2) Washington def. (1) LA Dodgers; 4-3

 

World Series: (AL) Houston def. (NL) Washington; 4-2

World Series MVP: Carlos Correa

spacer.png

84p0o3A.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As long as Mike Trout stays healthy, I'm watching baseball this year. Ohtani may bust, or he may just be 23 and figuring it out.

 

Also, here's to the Angels pitching staff. May Garrett Richards' continued quest to not get Tommy John surgery actually pay off.

 

----

 

Yankees

Indians

Astros

Red Sox/Angels

 

Nationals

Cubs

Dodgers

D-Backs/Brewers

 

Dodgers def. Yankees

5963ddf2a9031_dkO1LMUcopy.jpg.0fe00e17f953af170a32cde8b7be6bc7.jpg

| ANA | LAA | LAR | LAL | ASU | CSULBUSMNT | USWNTLAFC | OCSCMAN UTD |

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, mcj882000 said:

So uh, far be it for me to speculate, but maybe Dodger Stadium's future isn't as secure as we all thought, if it's having similar problems as Oakland Coliseum... :mellow:
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/22938422/los-angeles-dodgers-los-angeles-angels-game-called-due-sewage-leak-dodger-stadium

 

They'll do a complete renovation of the sewage system before they move to a new stadium.

Smart is believing half of what you hear. Genius is knowing which half.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.