MLB 2021-22 Hot Stove/Picket Line Thread

[FiddySicks]

Five years ago I would’ve been pretty furious about this for so many different reasons. My interest in baseball has fallen so much over that time though that I can’t even muster up outrage enough to care. Yeah, sure. Whatever. I’ll probably be about as interested in baseball next season (whenever that ends up being) as I was last season, which was probably the least amount of baseball I’ve ever watched. 

[SFGiants58]

My sports interests (outside of historical, s—tposting, and design stuff) is almost all gone. It was a good decade or so of following sports stuff closely, but now I’m back into the pop culture esoterica/true crime/technical stuff.
 

I’d rather read about Albert Fish shoving pins up his ass, the history of early punk, and the innovations of the PS1 than any sports journalism.

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

So whenever MLB comes back it'll be with universal DH.  It was inevitable. But I mourn the loss of the original game. Yeah, I'm one of "those" fans (and a fan of an AL team, no less). I find the now-former NL game more interesting.

 

I was one of those fans that felt the NL game was more "pure", but as I get older, I've come to realize the disadvantage that NL teams are at when it comes to signing FAs and keeping their own, and also I have fewer years of my life left to watch pitchers suck at bunting.

 

Much like the runner at second, me at 30-something would have punched you through your skull, pulled out your brain, and shoved it up your ass (literally making you a smart ass) for even suggesting that I'd ever be in favor of these things, but 40-something me thinks that baseball is boring AF without them.

[The Six]

Baseball is dead.

[buzzcut]

So when do the AL and NL transition over to the American and National Conferences?

 

*Not snark

[DG_ThenNowForever]

12 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

I was one of those fans that felt the NL game was more "pure", but as I get older, I've come to realize the disadvantage that NL teams are at when it comes to signing FAs and keeping their own, and also I have fewer years of my life left to watch pitchers suck at bunting.

 

Much like the runner at second, me at 30-something would have punched you through your skull, pulled out your brain, and shoved it up your ass (literally making you a smart ass) for even suggesting that I'd ever be in favor of these things, but 40-something me thinks that baseball is boring AF without them.

 

My great year of baseball fandom was in 1998, when I would watch pretty much every single Yankees and Mets game.

 

I was a Yankees fan from childhood and appreciated their perfect season, but the Mets games were more compelling -- they had bigger personalities, more interesting uniforms,  Bobby Valentine, Mike Piazza and the double switch. Even as the Yankees were setting a wins record, Mets games and NL baseball were more fun.

 

Part of me is sad that I can't watch Ms games the same way. Root Sports isn't available on my streaming package, so that's that. There's something to be said for random July evening baseball on the background while it's hot as hell outside.

[tBBP]

16 hours ago, mcj882000 said:

There's a few reasons I prefer pitchers hitting to the DH: for one it kept hitting and scoring down ever so slightly, thus shortening games a tiny bit. One of the pro-DH arguments I've seen is that more scoring will bring fans in, but... will it? Offense in baseball has never been higher than in the last 2-3 years, but attendance and TV ratings keep dropping.  Sure, it's probably not because of longer high scoring games (even if I personally feel the home run is approaching oversaturation), but all that slugging sure isn't reversing the decline!

For another, it means more strategy: in the NL of old, a manager would have to make decisions late in a close game; does he keep his hot starting pitcher in, or take him out for a pinch hitter? Does he keep the pinch hitter in afterwards? If so, who does he take out? In the AL, a manager can get away with leaving his starting 9 in for an entire game with no further adjustments, and I know this because that's what I do in MVP Baseball or The Show.

I also don't think some of us realize - or want to admit - just how much entertainment value there is in watching someone try to do something but fail at it. There's a reason stuff like Jackass, Failarmy, AFV, etc. were and are popular. Watching people be incompetent at something is hugely entertaining, at least in my opinion! And of course that general lack of competence what makes it all the more special when a pitcher does get a hit or even a home run; half of why Bartolo Colon is a legend nowadays is because of that one home run he hit.

There's also an irony inherent to this entire situation, I feel: baseball's first slugging superstar, the guy who almost single-handedly pulled the sport out of the doldrums of the dead-ball era, was a pitcher.  One of baseball's current most popular batters, the reigning MVP and slugging champion, is a pitcher. If baseball had never, ever made pitchers hit, at every level of the game in every part of the world, then two of baseball's most important hitters (including the most important hitter) never would have even gotten a look as a hitter; they would have stayed as just pitchers.

I say this as a baseball fan myself, but the ultimate reality, what its rulers are being forced to come to terms with now, is that baseball just isn't a very exciting sport. 10 guys stand in a field for hours, one of them hits a ball with a stick and a couple of them go chase it. Pitchers hitting was one of those odd quirks of baseball that maybe should have never been a thing at all, yet it was and we put up with it for decades, and now IMO it's part of the sport's charm. Take it and other quirks away and I feel we're losing more than we realize - as one person put it in a tweet I always wind up revisiting, "The best thing about baseball is that it is Strange. any time it gets less Strange, it gets more boring." Take away baseball's quirks, and what are you left with? 10 guys standing in a field for hours.

 

I say this as a not-big fan of baseball:

 

1) Well first, let me say that baseball is a game I enjoy to watch at the park, not on TV. I cannot watch games on TV...I've tried, but unless I know the teams or something high is at stake, I can't do it. That said...

 

2.) I went to a game up at Target Field in Minneapolis late last season (closest one to me). I'd been to three before that one (the Twins won the first and straight whiffed the next three), but I chose that game for one specific reason: to see Shohei Ohtani pitch and hit. He didn't pitch during that game, but he did come in as a DH, hit three deep into the outfield, and one almost cleared the left center fence. I only share this because usually when I go to baseball games, it's a/ simply to enjoy the atmosphere and hope the team I choose to root for wins (thanks for ruining that for me 3 out of 4 times last year, Twins), or b/ as a date (which had the same success rate as the Minnesota Baseball Club did during the games I attended). But that last one I had a more rooting interest: seeing Ohtani play live, just to see what he'd do.

 

For whatever that may add to the DH discussion...

[DEAD!]

7 hours ago, buzzcut said:

So when do the AL and NL transition over to the American and National Conferences?

 

*Not snark

I actually like the idea of the

American Baseball Conference- ABC

National Baseball Conference- NBC

 

[BBTV]

I have no idea where this goes, but it's too good not to go somewhere:
 

 

[DEAD!]

By now, Lenny is used to being stuffed into tight quarters.... 

[tp49]

Guess Lenny won’t be holding on to the night…or the memories. 

[BBTV]

I used to think the double-switch was the be-all-end-all of baseball strategy, and that an NL manager had to be twice as smart as an AL one.  Then  realized that "the book" pretty much dictates most of them, and all it usually does is pull a pitcher out who's having a good game and insert some jabroni off the bench that nobody cares about.

 

Really - why on earth would anyone be in favor of a pitcher who's throwing a hell of a game, but maybe trailing 1-2 or 2-1 having to be pulled for a pinch hitter and not be able to finish that out?  And for some loser reliever to usually blow it, when he should never have been in the game in the first place?

 

I don't get baseball "purists" who will argue in favor of rules that make it so that good players have to be pulled for bad players through no fault of their own.  Why wouldn't you want to see the best players be in the game as long as they can?  It's like you secretly hate the game.

[The_Admiral]

You make some good points, but the relentless optimization of baseball has played a part in its current unwatchable status. By the same logic, who wouldn't want to see guys swing for the fences on every pitch, since home runs are guaranteed RBIs and singles aren't? Why would you want to see guys make high-risk-low-reward outs on the basepaths? Baseball is already the most cerebral of our sports; we've learned the hard way that it can become too cerebral. That's why my solution is to keep the pitcher in the lineup but to remove everyone with post-graduate degrees from the front offices of all teams. To keep continuity with the thread, every team has to be general-managed and field-managed by Lenny Dykstra or a Lenny Dykstra equivalent.

[McCall]

On 2/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, buzzcut said:

So when do the AL and NL transition over to the American and National Conferences?

 

*Not snark

Never. It will never be anything other than the National LEAGUE and American LEAGUE. Much like the Big Ten, the historical aspect of the name vastly outweighs the correctness of the terminology.

[infrared41]

My feelings on baseball summed up in two quotes.

 

On 2/10/2022 at 8:10 PM, FiddySicks said:

Five years ago I would’ve been pretty furious about this for so many different reasons. My interest in baseball has fallen so much over that time though that I can’t even muster up outrage enough to care. Yeah, sure. Whatever. I’ll probably be about as interested in baseball next season (whenever that ends up being) as I was last season, which was probably the least amount of baseball I’ve ever watched. 

 

I had the MLB.TV package last year. It was a waste of money. If you added up the amount of baseball I watched all season, it might come out to five games, but I doubt it.

 

12 hours ago, the admiral said:

You make some good points, but the relentless optimization of baseball has played a part in its current unwatchable status. By the same logic, who wouldn't want to see guys swing for the fences on every pitch, since home runs are guaranteed RBIs and singles aren't? Why would you want to see guys make high-risk-low-reward outs on the basepaths? Baseball is already the most cerebral of our sports; we've learned the hard way that it can become too cerebral. That's why my solution is to keep the pitcher in the lineup but to remove everyone with post-graduate degrees from the front offices of all teams. To keep continuity with the thread, every team has to be general-managed and field-managed by Lenny Dykstra or a Lenny Dykstra equivalent.

 

Baseball is fascinating...if you're into watching spreadsheets.

 

[The_Admiral]

I'm deceptively good at Excel and I still find 14-pitch walks stultifying.

[Ridleylash]

This'll go over well, I'm sure. /s

[Walk-Off]

If the MLBPA agrees to let MLB slice off so many minor-league playing jobs, the result could be one of the best things ever to happen to college baseball in the United States.

 

A key reason why (at least to the best of my knowledge) college baseball has spent many decades being noticeably less popular across the United States than the college variants of football and basketball is because the depth of the overall system of minor professional leagues in North American baseball has made those minor leagues the most important sources of development of young players in baseball (even if and when those players gained experience on college teams).  Also, a huge reason why MLB teams have been historically comfortable with drafting and signing players directly out of high school is because of the ability to make such players start their pro careers at the lowest rungs of minor-league play and work their ways up through so many tiers of "bush" leagues before they earn places on major-league rosters.  Now, however, as so many MLB clubs seem to be so eager to minimize their player development costs, I would not be surprised if the owners of such teams want to emulate their peers in the NBA and especially in the NFL by shifting the burden of talent development to college squads as much as possible.

 

If one expects -- as I do -- that a sharp decline in jobs for players across North American pro baseball's minor leagues squeezes out players without experience on college teams more than it does those who have played in the college ranks, then I see a fairly obvious domino effect of consequences.  First, many high school baseball players who have serious long-term desires to play in MLB, but who would not have bothered with trying to go to a college with a baseball program and then attempting to join that college's baseball team in a world with clearly more robust minor leagues, would seek out roster spots on -- and especially scholarships for -- college baseball teams.  That, in turn, would cause more competition for roster positions and scholarships at existing college baseball programs across the United States, give US colleges and universities without intercollegiate baseball an incentive to start or restart intercollegiate teams in that sport (and make whatever adjustments are required by Title IX to make those baseball programs a reality), raise the overall level of talent in college baseball, and cause more attention to be paid to college baseball by both the media and the general public.  Furthermore, a stronger level of play across US college baseball might help the intercollegiate variant of the sport become a refuge for those fans who are disillusioned by the current state of MLB and even the sport's minor leagues, but do not want to give up entirely on baseball.

[CS85]

 

[Digby]

Make the first two of those games a 7-inning doubleheader, why not?