MLB Regular Season 22: The Thread

[Digby]

18 minutes ago, tBBP said:

So what y'all are saying is I should be in for a clown show or a comedy of [personnel] error when I get up there at the end of the month to see the Sox in person...??

 

 

Basically yes. Crappy pitching, amateur defense. Haven't seen a dynastic, over-resourced powerhouse of a team try so hard to be just another bog-standard, .500-at-best standings filler club before, but the Fenway Faithful are still paying those $$$$ I guess. 

[tBBP]

21 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

Basically yes. Crappy pitching, amateur defense. Haven't seen a dynastic, over-resourced powerhouse of a team try so hard to be just another bog-standard, .500-at-best standings filler club before, but the Fenway Faithful are still paying those $$$$ I guess. 

 

Well then dangit...I had enough of that watching the Twins be the Twash last season. On the positive side...at least I'll be able to get "game at Fenway" off my bucket list!

 

(Btw, if any of y'all Bostonites have any decent hotel recommendations accessible by MBTA--and yes I'm well aware of BTMA's ongoing safety issues, but still, I ain't trying to drive--please let me know.)

[DCarp1231]

“Rebuilding” right?

[FiddySicks]

That sort of feels like what the Giants are doing. Hovering right around .500, five games back of the final playoff spot, yet they hang onto Rodon and Joc. Just, why? 

 

I’ve been pretty patient with Farhan’s ability to incrementally increase the talent on the roster, but with the Dodgers and Padres being huge spenders, it feels more like the plan is to just throw :censored: at the wall and see what sticks. It feels frustratingly similar to what the Giants have always done outside of that 2010-2014 stretch. They have a lot of money coming off the books after this season (Rodon and Joc probably being two of them), and if they don’t use some of that make a huge move like bringing in Trea Turner and/or Aaron Judge, it’ll show that Farhan really has no plan. Again, which would feel like business as usual during the Sabean era. 

[SeaTac]

The Giants have something like 29 freaking shareholders. No wonder they don't spend. They all want a piece of the pie. 

[DEAD!]

Awwwww.... Why didn't the Giants trade Joc to Boston?

[FiddySicks]

41 minutes ago, EskimoAldus said:

The Giants have something like 29 freaking shareholders. No wonder they don't spend. They all want a piece of the pie. 

 

That’s a very good point. Really, they’ve become a microcosm of the Bay Area as a whole. Everything is too expensive to consolidate ownership, it takes approval from a dozen people to make any changes, and everyone wants their dividends without increasing their input. Holy :censored: that’s bleak. 

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, EskimoAldus said:

The Giants have something like 29 freaking shareholders. No wonder they don't spend. They all want a piece of the pie. 

 

The Phillies have a similar setup, and it held them back for decades since all the partners had to approve what was essentially a "budget". Then they got the new stadium and gave more power to the "managing partner", and the rest became essentially "silent", and that partner can do whatever he wants and basically acts like an owner.  It has helped that a good number of the silent partners have died of old age in the past 15 years.

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, Brass said:

 

Which makes absolutely no sense considering they traded one of their more populars players in Christian Vazquez yesterday. I know he was an impending free agent and they need to sign Bogaerts and Devers, but the Sox have a looooooooong history of getting rid of popular players because of their asking price, then going out and spending that same amount of money on a player in the open market.

 

I don't know what the Sox plan is, but just seems weird to pick up guys like Tommy Pham and Eric Hosmer, yet let Christian Vazquez go...

 

It looks like SD is paying the entire remainder of Hosmer's contract, so the Red Sox basically get him for free.

[Sport]

This says more about the Cubs and Pirates than it does the Reds, but the Reds are now in third place in the NL Central. They were 3-22 at one point and we were worried about not catching the 62 Mets. 

[BBTV]

51 minutes ago, Sport said:

This says more about the Cubs and Pirates than it does the Reds, but the Reds are now in third place in the NL Central. They were 3-22 at one point and we were worried about not catching the 62 Mets. 

 

Losing the bum Castellanos is addition by subtraction so it doesn't surprise me that they improved.  The only way out of this disaster for the Phillies is probably to eat 50 of the 100 million and give him away to some team that wants to take a flyer on him.  

 

EDIT: regarding Castellanos, he's also indirectly responsible for a lot of anger that's been building inside me, and that's due to the trashy people that don't know how to pronounce "ll" and call him Cast-a-lanos, rather than Cast-ay-anos.  That has nothing to do with him of course, but it pisses me off every time I hear some moron mispronounce it, despite hearing the correct pronunciation a hundred times. It's disrespectful, and if anyone's going to disrespect him, it'll be me by calling him a bum.

[Sport]

9 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

Losing the bum Castellanos is addition by subtraction so it doesn't surprise me that they improved.  The only way out of this disaster for the Phillies is probably to eat 50 of the 100 million and give him away to some team that wants to take a flyer on him.  

 

 

They made the playoffs and then won 83 games the next season with him. He was a starter in the all-star game. He left and the team immediately sucked.

 

Have you ever considered that maybe it's you guys? 

[BBTV]

3 hours ago, Sport said:

 

They made the playoffs and then won 83 games the next season with him. He was a starter in the all-star game. He left and the team immediately sucked.

 

Have you ever considered that maybe it's you guys? 

i don’t discount the fact that booing guys and telling them they suck all the time can wear on them and make it tough for them to be motivated to perform (heck, we had a player this year literally say “I effing hate this place” live on the field. So I’ve become a little soft and more supportive in a live setting. But Castellanos has been given a pass by the media and fans up until around a week ago, so I don’t think it’s related to Philadelphia’s treatment of him, unless it’s the perceived pressure that’s getting to him - which is a possibility. 
 

I hold to my belief that the northeast is harder to play in than in many other areas, but again, he’s been given a pass due to the way he endeared himself in his first press conference. 
 

so I don’t dismiss your suggestion at all, but I don’t think it’s the case in this situation. 

[Sport]

11 minutes ago, BBTV said:

i don’t discount the fact that booing guys and telling them they suck all the time can wear on them and make it tough for them to be motivated to perform (heck, we had a player this year literally say “I effing hate this place” live on the field. So I’ve become a little soft and more supportive in a live setting. But Castellanos has been given a pass by the media and fans up until around a week ago, so I don’t think it’s related to Philadelphia’s treatment of him, unless it’s the perceived pressure that’s getting to him - which is a possibility. 
 

I hold to my belief that the northeast is harder to play in than in many other areas, but again, he’s been given a pass due to the way he endeared himself in his first press conference. 
 

so I don’t dismiss your suggestion at all, but I don’t think it’s the case in this situation. 

 

Castellanos had a below his average OPS and below his average overall season in 2020 when he was new to the Reds and that was with zero fans in the stadiums and no media in his face. I don't believe a guy could reach 11 career WAR in the major leagues just by never playing under "large market pressure". I'd guess it's more self-inflicted large contract pressure and new team adjusting, than it is the market. 

 

 

[heavybass]

So.... in light of Vin's death.... Nick Castellanos scores a home run.

[BBTV]

Obviously once he saw his name being tossed around on the CCSLC he decided to kick it into high gear.

 

Never underestimate the power of this place.

[DoctorWhom]

On 8/2/2022 at 7:23 PM, DEAD! said:

Awwwww.... Why didn't the Giants trade Joc to Boston?

Because they were supposed to trade Mike Yastrzemski to Boston.  

[who do you think]

On 8/2/2022 at 4:40 PM, Digby said:

Basically yes. Crappy pitching, amateur defense. Haven't seen a dynastic, over-resourced powerhouse of a team try so hard to be just another bog-standard, .500-at-best standings filler club before, but the Fenway Faithful are still paying those $$$$ I guess. 

 

I kinda let go of the Red Sox (and baseball as a whole)* when I moved away after the Bobby Valentine year, keeping light tabs from afar and  only watching some playoff games in 2013 and 2018. Would it be a stretch to call them the most bizarrely inconsistent team in baseball over the last decade?

 

2012 - 69 wins, baseball's answer to the Isiah Thomas Knicks

2013 - championship

2014 - 71 wins, sellers at the deadline, generic bad team

2015 - threw money at Pablo Sandoval and a bunch of NL pitchers, finished .500

2016 - playoff team

2017 - playoff team

2018 - best team since the 98 Yankees

2019 - asses reamed out in the first two weeks, .500 team despite returning most of the roster

2020 - sold off their best player because reasons, win% of a 64-win team

2021 - random ALCS appearance

2022 - just sort of piddling along, probably finish around .500 again

 

Is there any other team that has been nearly that erratic from year to year? All that's missing is a 2003 Tigers/2018 Orioles type season.

 

*It recently hit me the other day how stuck-in-the-past my mental map of baseball is. I was doing cardio at the gym with MLB network on the treadmill screen because gotta watch something, the graphic on the left showed Somebody @ Twins highlights coming up. I was expecting to see the Metrodome, and was momentarily surprised when they were outdoors in the sun. They built that stadium over a decade ago! I've become my dad.

[Sport]

 

 

Watch this and tell me it doesn't pay for teams try. The Padres fans were having a blast last night. Here in Cincinnati we have to watch walking Cost/Benefit analyses play baseball and our attendance is what you'd expect for such a product. 

[Digby]

3 hours ago, who do you think said:

I kinda let go of the Red Sox (and baseball as a whole)* when I moved away after the Bobby Valentine year, keeping light tabs from afar and  only watching some playoff games in 2013 and 2018. Would it be a stretch to call them the most bizarrely inconsistent team in baseball over the last decade?

 

 

I thought this frequently during the middle Henry era, where there was either a title or a dysfunctional last-place finish with no in-between. They seem to be settling in now, though, to one of those classic middle-ground filler teams. .500 records, the occasional appearance in an ALCS (but getting killed there), there's always next year. Which is a pretty wild place to voluntarily put yourself when you're the most successful team of the millennium and you charge the highest prices to your fans in the entire league, but I don't know how else to interpret the direction of the franchise.