MLB 2021 Season Thread

[The_Admiral]

The right team won, but the Braves feel like just another team now without the star-studded roster and games on TBS. It's like if the Bulls ever win again but with just a bunch of pretty good dudes.

[Kramerica Industries]

Congrats to the Cobb County Braves.

[ManillaToad]

That was the lamest championship celebration I've ever seen

[SFGiants58]

I'm just happy Dusty Baker, the destroyer of pitchers and the playoff failure, remains ringless as a manager. May he never sniff the Hall of Fame as a manager. Granted, maybe he should get back into "sniffing." He was Dusty in more ways than one!

 

I've got The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven on my reading list, so I'm in that headspace right now.

[TrueYankee26]

But the Braves have made Atlanta the city of champions! They mess with Texas.

[habsfan1]

[Dynasty]

I didn't realize Freddie Freeman was in the league that long; 12 years?

[The_Admiral]

15 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

That was the lamest championship celebration I've ever seen

Every World Series celebration is guys jumping up and down in a big cluster.

[FiddySicks]

Pretty big yawn of a World Series, but good for the Braves (more so for beating the Dodgers) and lol at Dusty Baker keeping the streak alive. I really couldn’t care any less about the 2017 thing but the Astros outside of that are just such a meh franchise to me at this point. I think I kinda just agree with @Sportat this point. The stakes just don’t feel that high anymore outside of watching the Giants, and even that’s less of a thrill than it was a decade ago. 

[DEAD!]

Well I take comfort in that an Atlanta team is able to win a championship in Houston 

[SFGiants58]

I’m kind of in that position too, but with all sports. I’ve just moved on to other things in my life like hobbies, a relationship, working on my mental health, etc. sports are about a quarter of the importance they were to me a decade ago. The grind of two masters degrees definitely didn’t help my sports interest. 
 

I just can’t bring myself to care as much anymore. I’m more of a history/true crime guy when it comes to sports. Whelp, that’s the way it goes for my brain.

[Cujo]

"Anyone but Houston" wins again!

[DoctorWhom]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

The right team won, but the Braves feel like just another team now without the star-studded roster and games on TBS. It's like if the Bulls ever win again but with just a bunch of pretty good dudes.

That's what  I think is so fun about this team. 

This wasn't some "super team" full of All Stars & MVPs" (coughdodgerscough) that was exacted to win it all from day 1. 

Rather it was more a ragtag group of guys that no one even expected to make the playoffs, somehow make it in despite losing one of their best  & most prolific players, and go all the way despite, even against teams with +100 wins. 

 

So much more exciting than if Houston/Dodgers/Giants won it again. 

Which as I said before, is why I like the playoff format as it is. Top 2 teams (like the Dodgers & Giants) still get to face each other, but it gives dark horse teams like The Braves a good chance of making it too. 

 

Regardless, 'Grats to Atlanta. Their teams have come so very close recently, but 1 Finally makes it over the hump. Naturally it's the team no one expected to either. 

[The_Admiral]

Oh, there's always something to be said for a dark horse knocking off superteams, but it just feels weird in this case when we're used to the franchise in question being one of those superteams. I guess a similar case would be the '88 Dodgers, who were nowhere near as star-studded as previous Dodger teams that won it all but still had a pretty good group of guys.

 

I'm not looking forward to how this will craft the narrative of how the Braves winning, as a mostly white (or at least not black) team that moved to white suburbs, reflect the demographic collapse of the sport as a whole, but that's Liberty Media's fault for moving the team in the first place.

[Sport]

I know the Braves had a dip about 5 or 6 years ago and got some high draft picks out of it, but they were never the complete teardown without a plan that we've seen in Baltimore or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or Arizona. The lesson as always is the playoffs are basically a lottery and the more often you're in the playoffs the more chances you have at winning one of the lotteries. Going through a 5-10 year rebuilding cycle so you can time a window of competitiveness, a roster good enough to make the playoffs once every 7 years is silly. I'm talking to the Reds here. There's other, more fun for your fans ways to build competitive teams than tanking. Spend the money, buy good players, be good as often as possible, buy as many lottery tickets because eventually your roster of super skilled professional baseball players will gel at the right time and accidentally win it all.

 

I was happy when the Royals won the World Series because it meant that my team could win the World Series, but that spending 7 seasons to load up for a target year worked for them (and almost worked twice) is a mathematical improbability and they were just very fortunate in hindsight. Too many front offices saw that and said "that's the only way" and now at least a third of the sport is actively not trying to win the championship. It stinks. 

 

 

[The_Admiral]

I think the Brewers have made the same case by building mostly through trades rather than the wholesale teardown-rebuild that most teams seem to favor. 

 

Sometimes I feel like such a schmuck for having been into Moneyball in college. This is what being "smart" has wrought, the situation you outline where most teams are led by business majors actively making their on-field product horrible in service of maybe being good later but definitely making a profit now. What if we really were better off when baseball general managers were just crusty old baseball men who would get so drunk that they'd pass out and wet themselves? If their teams lost 105 games a year, at least it wasn't because they planned on it!

[neo_prankster]

This year's World Series I pretty much had no rooting interest in either team. I was actually hoping the Padres would be there at the beginning of the season.

 

For one, the Braves' fanbase continues to live in a fantasy world while the rest of us can only cringe whenever they did the Chop. And two, I felt like MLB was too afraid to hand the Astros any meaningful discipline after they were accused of cheating a year ago.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

19 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Sometimes I feel like such a schmuck for having been into Moneyball in college. This is what being "smart" has wrought, the situation you outline where most teams are led by business majors actively making their on-field product horrible in service of maybe being good later but definitely making a profit now. What if we really were better off when baseball general managers were just crusty old baseball men who would get so drunk that they'd pass out and wet themselves? If their teams lost 105 games a year, at least it wasn't because they planned on it!

 

Major League showed that any team can win if they try hard enough. Moneyball showed that most teams shouldn't bother.

 

As  a kid, I very much liked the thought that the beginning of the baseball season meant hope. Now, the teams themselves all but announce they're not going to compete. I really hate the cynicism of it all.

[The_Admiral]

2 minutes ago, neo_prankster said:

For one, the Braves' fanbase continues to live in a fantasy world while the rest of us can only cringe whenever they did the Chop.

 

People who don't create and consume media for the college-educated don't really have an opinion one way or the other.

[ManillaToad]

12 hours ago, the admiral said:

Every World Series celebration is guys jumping up and down in a big cluster.

 

Yeah but this one was particularly unenthusiastic.

 

Also this is 8 years in a row without a team clinching in front of the home fans