MLB 2021 Season Thread

[DEAD!]

So... uh... about the Orioles....

[Seadragon76]

5 hours ago, DEAD! said:

So... uh... about the Orioles....

 

Well.. it's not like they had a chance this season to do much, so why not throw in the towel and tank?

[dont care]

On 8/23/2021 at 8:20 PM, Ridleylash said:

Could the MLB pull a Sterling and force Moreno to sell for this happening under his watch? Because I hope the MLB can do that, Arte Moreno.

The nfl didn’t force Dan sneider to sell after a sex trafficking ring was exposed under him and he had much more involvement.

[Crabcake]

It must be our mission as a society to never let the baseball world forget that the Angels wasted arguably the two best baseball players of their era. Not just wasted, but legitimately accomplished nothing. 

[SFGiants58]

49 minutes ago, Crabcake said:

It must be our mission as a society to never let the baseball world forget that the Angels wasted arguably the two best baseball players of their era. Not just wasted, but legitimately accomplished nothing. 

Heck, Joey Votto has been to the postseason more times than either Ohtani or Trout.

[Dynasty]

That spending sure has worked out for the Padres, huh?

[LakeShow24]

A 16th inning game for Dodgers and Padres yesterday.

 

Manfred won't like this.

[Sport]

The Padres tripping over their own butts the last several weeks has been nice because it's visibly clear the last couple nights that the Reds aren't catching Milwaukee. The Brewers are legit. 

 

11 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Heck, Joey Votto has been to the postseason more times than either Ohtani or Trout.

 

Wow that is sad. Mike Trout has played in 3 postseason games total, which is tragic. He has 15 total postseason plate appearances. Votto's played in 11 playoff games in case anyone's wondering. (2-9 record. F***!). I don't want expanded playoffs, but one benefit would be that all-time greats buried on bad teams would get more cracks in the playoffs. 

[SFGiants58]

Expanded playoffs are the way to go. Heck, the Mariners and Angels should’ve demanded them several CBA’s ago.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

29 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Expanded playoffs are the way to go. Heck, the Mariners and Angels should’ve demanded them several CBA’s ago.

 

Agreed. The only real tradition baseball has left is the limited playoffs, and they've only chipped at the margins at how to get more teams in.

I just now learned that 2020 had a 16-team playoff (lol the Mariners still couldn't get in) and it's possible they return to 16 teams in 2022 and beyond. That's good. The more teams than have opportunity for playoffs, the more compelling the product is -- especially when baseball doesn't have the built-in ratings and interest advantage football does.

[BBTV]

12 hours ago, Crabcake said:

It must be our mission as a society to never let the baseball world forget that the Angels wasted arguably the two best baseball players of their era. Not just wasted, but legitimately accomplished nothing. 

 

At the end of the day, both of those guys are side shows, and neither of them will have really mattered if they remain where they are.  Not saying the only way to matter is to play for Boston or New York, but the history of the game is no different now than if they had never existed.  Plus we'll never know how they respond to pressure when they're playing somewhere where there's none, and playing mostly in games that don't matter.

 

15 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Agreed. The only real tradition baseball has left is the limited playoffs,

 

And no DH in the NL.  I've come around after last year to feeling very strongly that the NL needs it.  It's too much of an advantage for the AL teams.  The Phillies first baseman has a groin that's so bad he can barely move, and on the rare occasion he goes down for a ball, it takes him some time to get back up.  He's their best power hitter, but can't play, but would otherwise be able to DH.  The Phillies slid dramatically while he was on the IL, but if they were an AL team, they'd be in much better shape now.  

[SFGiants58]

7 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

At the end of the day, both of those guys are side shows, and neither of them will have really mattered if they remain where they are.  Not saying the only way to matter is to play for Boston or New York, but the history of the game is no different now than if they had never existed.  Plus we'll never know how they respond to pressure when they're playing somewhere where there's none, and playing mostly in games that don't matter.

Like, Hunter Strickland has had more playoff appearances than Ohtani or Trout. He even has a ring!

 

Hunter.

 

 

Strickland.

 

 

This douche has played in more meaningful games than Trout and Ohtani.

[Dynasty]

The Reds are doing what they can to not make the playoffs. That's fine; I guess watching the Dodgers demolish the Padres in the WC is something I can live with since it's the most likely (and inevitable) outcome.

[Quillz]

On 8/23/2021 at 5:20 PM, Ridleylash said:

Could the MLB pull a Sterling and force Moreno to sell for this happening under his watch? Because I hope the MLB can do that, Arte Moreno.

This is a common misconception. The NBA did not force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. He lost ownership after his wife took him to court. Upon assuming control, she immediately put the franchise up for sale. And this fiasco happened because the NBA knew for years Sterling was dirty, but they could no longer ignore it.

 

Moreno might be a bad owner, but he's not anywhere on Sterling level where public pressure will force the MLB to act.

[Digby]

7 hours ago, Quillz said:

This is a common misconception. The NBA did not force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. He lost ownership after his wife took him to court. Upon assuming control, she immediately put the franchise up for sale. And this fiasco happened because the NBA knew for years Sterling was dirty, but they could no longer ignore it.

 

"Clippers' #1 Fan"

[MJWalker45]

7 hours ago, Quillz said:

This is a common misconception. The NBA did not force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. He lost ownership after his wife took him to court. Upon assuming control, she immediately put the franchise up for sale. And this fiasco happened because the NBA knew for years Sterling was dirty, but they could no longer ignore it.

 

Moreno might be a bad owner, but he's not anywhere on Sterling level where public pressure will force the MLB to act.

He's also not a slumlord so there's that too. 

[Kramerica Industries]

I always suspected a year like this was going to happen after MLB adopted the wild card game format in 2012, and this is the year where it's finally going to happen.

 

Right now, at the time I'm writing this, the #1 wild card Dodgers are 16 games ahead of the #2 wild card Reds/Padres, with the Cardinals also right in the mix. The current trajectory has it looking like it might be a 102-win team facing an 84-85 win team. And that game is actually going to happen and if the Reds/Padres/Cardinals manage to win one solitary game, they'll be in the playoffs over a team that might win over 100 games and finish with the 2nd best record in the entire sport.

 

It's an absolute disgrace. It's bad enough the game exists. You'd think enough common sense could be baked in that says "if the discrepancy is [x] number of games...(lets say 10)", the game is cancelled. There's no reason at all the Dodgers or Giants should be subjected to that game. And I don't care for the "well, should've won your division" canard. When you allow four teams to make the playoffs, one from each division, even though that allows for the possibility of division winning teams automatically reaching the playoffs while they might have inferior records to a wild card team, that argument becomes nonsense.

 

An added bonus to this is that, if the Dodgers/Giants were to win that game, you'll get the NL's two best teams playing each other in the first round instead of the second round, because the wild card winner always faces the #1 seed. The only saving grace to that might be, you know, a Dodgers/Giants playoff meeting, but even then it would be better as an NLCS matchup than in a best-of-5 first round meeting.

[FiddySicks]

The Giants, a team that was expected to win about 75 games, just picked up their 94th win and clinched a playoff spot. On September 13th. To say I’m pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. MotY and EotY have to be Gabe and Farhan. 

[OnWis97]

11 hours ago, Kramerica Industries said:

I always suspected a year like this was going to happen after MLB adopted the wild card game format in 2012, and this is the year where it's finally going to happen.

 

Right now, at the time I'm writing this, the #1 wild card Dodgers are 16 games ahead of the #2 wild card Reds/Padres, with the Cardinals also right in the mix. The current trajectory has it looking like it might be a 102-win team facing an 84-85 win team. And that game is actually going to happen and if the Reds/Padres/Cardinals manage to win one solitary game, they'll be in the playoffs over a team that might win over 100 games and finish with the 2nd best record in the entire sport.

 

It's an absolute disgrace. It's bad enough the game exists. You'd think enough common sense could be baked in that says "if the discrepancy is [x] number of games...(lets say 10)", the game is cancelled. There's no reason at all the Dodgers or Giants should be subjected to that game. And I don't care for the "well, should've won your division" canard. When you allow four teams to make the playoffs, one from each division, even though that allows for the possibility of division winning teams automatically reaching the playoffs while they might have inferior records to a wild card team, that argument becomes nonsense.

 

An added bonus to this is that, if the Dodgers/Giants were to win that game, you'll get the NL's two best teams playing each other in the first round instead of the second round, because the wild card winner always faces the #1 seed. The only saving grace to that might be, you know, a Dodgers/Giants playoff meeting, but even then it would be better as an NLCS matchup than in a best-of-5 first round meeting.

Someone (maybe you?) pointed that out in year 1. That was when the A's and Angels were fighting for the West with the Mariners comfortably behind about 7 games. Had that played out, the A's and Angels may have gone all out to win the division, with the loser bring in their fourth starter to face King Felix, since the Mariners would just coast into that game and set their rotation. The A's ended up falling like a rock, though, and that scenario never played out.

 

Yeah, this is stupid.  "One game" is a very non-baseball way to separate two teams, anyway.  But when the two had such blatantly different levels of success all year, it's particularly a travesty.  Given the unbalanced schedules, you could make an argument that two teams one game apart in different divisions are essentially tied. Well, I'd rather have the slight flaw of letting W/L break that tie than the enormous flaw of throwing 15-win gap out the window.

[Kramerica Industries]

14 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

Someone (maybe you?) pointed that out in year 1. That was when the A's and Angels were fighting for the West with the Mariners comfortably behind about 7 games. Had that played out, the A's and Angels may have gone all out to win the division, with the loser bring in their fourth starter to face King Felix, since the Mariners would just coast into that game and set their rotation. The A's ended up falling like a rock, though, and that scenario never played out.

 

Yeah, this is stupid.  "One game" is a very non-baseball way to separate two teams, anyway.  But when the two had such blatantly different levels of success all year, it's particularly a travesty.  Given the unbalanced schedules, you could make an argument that two teams one game apart in different divisions are essentially tied. Well, I'd rather have the slight flaw of letting W/L break that tie than the enormous flaw of throwing 15-win gap out the window.

 

I don't know if I wrote what you're thinking of, and I also don't know if I remember a year where that specific scenario played out (it's entirely possible you just have the wrong teams or have them assigned the wrong way; either way it doesn't really matter), but I definitely was writing about this stuff a lot more circa 2013-'14, when I was a lot more active on this website and, frankly, more of a baseball fan than I find myself these days - it's really my #4 sport these days, if I'm being honest - and the scenario you describe always was and is a possibility where the #2 wild card is in a more advantageous spot than the would-be #1 wild card would be just because one is in a division race and the other isn't. 2010 would've been a similar case to that, had it existed, where the Red Sox would've been able to line things up for that game while the loser between the Rays and Yankees would've either in essence "punted" the division on the final weekend, or exhaust themselves in the process of trying to avoid the one-off. I'm sure, if I looked hard enough, I could find an example where this actually did happen somewhere between 2012-'19. The fact that the very real scenario exists of the #2 wild card being able to be in a more beneficial situation than the #1 wild card in the first place is just one of the many fatal flaws to this format.

 

There's definitely an argument to be had about that the unbalanced schedules are a contradiction to the wild card race. No disagreement on my part. In a year like 2018, when the 100-win Yankees faced the 97-win Athletics, where the AL West had four teams finish with 80+ wins and the worst team won 67 while the AL East had a 73-win team and a 115-loss team (in other words, more opportunities to pad the win total), you can argue the game is a worthwhile tiebreaker to be played. Still think the better solution there is to balance the schedules in the first place so that you don't need to use a Band-Aid solution to it, but I understand the "de facto" tiebreaker aspect of it. But at a certain point - much sooner than the one we have in the NL this year - it's abundantly clear one team is clearly much better and performed as such. Making the NL West "loser" have to play this game against any number of teams that barely finishes over .500...blech.