2023 MLB Season Thread

[Red Comet]

5 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

New York sports fans seem to think every sport is dying if it doesn’t include at least one team from NY. 

 

Personally I really don’t get invested until the New York and LA teams get bounced.  Then I can start watching.  

Those narcissistic bungholes called the 50s the “Golden Age of Baseball” solely based on having 3 teams in New York being at the top of their game. They don’t ask the follow-up question of why 2 of them left, though. Anyone with a functioning brain that isn’t absorbed into an Empire State of Mind would know that the Golden Age of Baseball was from 1969-1993.

 

Also New York is a dump. Went there three times between 2012-2017 and it just got worse with each visit. 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Red Comet

[Gary]

10 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

Those narcissistic bungholes called the 50s the “Golden Age of Baseball” solely based on having 3 teams in New York being at the top of their game. They don’t ask the follow-up question of why 2 of them left, though. Anyone with a functioning brain that isn’t absorbed into an Empire State of Mind would know that the Golden Age of Baseball was from 1969-1993.

 

Also New York is a dump.

Yet not all people from New York are like this. I think some of them move to another state and will acknowledge their team from the current state. Yes they will always say the Yankees are the greatest team alive, but they will also follow the team they're living with. But with any fandom you can also say this about fans who's living 30 years in the past with the last time they actually won a championship.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

8 hours ago, Red Comet said:

Anyone with a functioning brain that isn’t absorbed into an Empire State of Mind would know that the Golden Age of Baseball was from 1969-1993.

 

Even I as an arrogant New Yorker agree with this.  The decade of the 1950s, with the Yankees' run of greatness and the epic Giant-Dodger battles was pretty special; but the 1969-1993 period was the high point of baseball, and always will be.  (Side note: a fun thing to do is to take the 100 Team Challenge, which is to name the four division winners from each year of the four-division alignment, from memory.  If you want to really demonstrate your grasp of history, do it in random order rather than in chronological order.)

 

 

8 hours ago, Red Comet said:

Also New York is a dump. Went there three times between 2012-2017 and it just got worse with each visit. 

 

And now you've blown it.

 

New York is really like a small planet.  Everyone knows of the mighty skyscrapers and the reliable subway that together constitute our signature, along with our unmatched variety of museums and theatres.  But we also have abundant parkland (including some that is composed of primeval forest), as well as wetlands and nature preserves.  And our beaches are absolutely magnificent; on a summer's day, Riis Park is possibly the most beautiful place on Earth.  Best of all, we have more than a thousand miles of bike lanes; these lanes, taken together, have transformed our City for the better, creating the greatest improvement in New Yorkers' quality of life since the Tenament Law.

 

New York remains a beacon for people from marginalised and oppressed groups who have escaped from the benighted corners of this country, as well as for the classic tired, hungry, and poor huddled masses from around the world who are commemorated on the Statue of Liberty; and we boast the greatest amound of linguistic diversity of anywhere in the world.  Of course we also have our own embarrassing and backward sections (**cough** statenisland **cough**); alas, being a small planet, we have a little bit of everything. 

 

This great City constitutes the pinnacle of human civilisation, and it is the unquestionable centre of the Universe.  If a vistor fails to grasp this obvious reality, that says more about that visitor than about our beautiful, thriving, endlessly fascinating metropolis.

[gosioux76]

2 hours ago, Red Comet said:

Those narcissistic bungholes called the 50s the “Golden Age of Baseball” solely based on having 3 teams in New York being at the top of their game. They don’t ask the follow-up question of why 2 of them left, though. Anyone with a functioning brain that isn’t absorbed into an Empire State of Mind would know that the Golden Age of Baseball was from 1969-1993.

 

Also New York is a dump. Went there three times between 2012-2017 and it just got worse with each visit. 

Seems to me like a missed opportunity that the Mets weren't named the Narcissistic Bungholes instead. 

[JerseyJimmy]

6 hours ago, Red Comet said:

Also New York is a dump. Went there three times between 2012-2017 and it just got worse with each visit. 

 

every time someone says this or something akin to it I'm always reminded of that one person I saw who moved from NYC to Columbus, OH and went on a whole tangent or whatever about how New York was "too dangerous." I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but Columbus' crime rate is way higher than NYC's.

 

now, if you wanna talk about dumps, we could absolutely talk about the soul-rending tract housing hellscapes 80% of the remaining teams call home

[Unocal]

What about this radical playoff format idea?

 

Have all 4 WC games on Tuesday, start the LDS on Thursday, 1 league takes off Friday as they did a day this year

[SFGiants58]

10 hours ago, Cujo said:

 

The Astros' success is killing the sport.

 

Like me, do people tune out/ratings dip when they make it deep into the playoffs? Still disgusts me they won a WS by way of cheating, weren't punished, and have evolved into an AL dynasty. Sickening.

 

What punishment would you have proposed? Stripping wins and titles is NCAA garbage (nobody buys it) and the forcible breakup of the team would be a massive area for players' union complaints (at a time where labor tensions were nearing their lockout peak).

 

If your answer was to ban the players from the sport? You've got yourself a threat to the anti-trust exemption.

[McCall]

1 hour ago, Unocal said:

What about this radical playoff format idea?

 

Have all 4 WC games on Tuesday, start the LDS on Thursday, 1 league takes off Friday as they did a day this year

They're not going back to single-game Wild Card rounds. The more games, the more revenue.

[JerseyJimmy]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

What punishment would you have proposed? Stripping wins and titles is NCAA garbage (nobody buys it) and the forcible breakup of the team would be a massive area for players' union complaints (at a time where labor tensions were nearing their lockout peak).

 

If your answer was to ban the players from the sport? You've got yourself a threat to the anti-trust exemption.

 

speaking of NCAA punishments, a postseason ban honestly might've been the way to go - don't know if that just would've led to them tanking, though.

[McCall]

1 minute ago, JerseyJimmy said:

 

speaking of NCAA punishments, a postseason ban honestly might've been the way to go - don't know if that just would've led to them tanking, though.

Players Union would never allow it.

[SFGiants58]

35 minutes ago, JerseyJimmy said:

 

speaking of NCAA punishments, a postseason ban honestly might've been the way to go - don't know if that just would've led to them tanking, though.

 

That I could get behind. But as you said, it'd be a mess to implement and lead to some pretty serious long-term side effects throughout the sport.

 

There's also the small part of the Red Sox doing the same thing in 2018, but they're not complained about because they started sucking after getting caught.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

There's also the small part of the Red Sox doing the same thing in 2018, but they're not complained about because they started sucking after getting caught.

There's also the overwhelming likelihood that every team did it to one degree or another.

 

This is because stealing signs is part of the game, and always has been.

 

The Astros, like the 1951 Giants, did nothing wrong.

[The_Admiral]

9 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

This great City constitutes the pinnacle of human civilisation

 

You guys forgot alleys so there's just trash piled up everywhere. 

[JerseyJimmy]

cool Mets fact! in all but two of their playoff appearances, the Mets have gone at least as far as game 6 of the NLCS.

 

but nine gorillion division championships, right

[Unocal]

What is the incentive to win your division?

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

36 minutes ago, the admiral said:

10 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

This great City constitutes the pinnacle of human civilisation

 

You guys forgot alleys so there's just trash piled up everywhere.

 

Good point! We're working on remedying the effects of that oversight.

[The_Admiral]

Quote

In October, the city gave the McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, a $4 million contract to study how containerization could be implemented in New York.

 

NOO YAWK NUMBAH ONE BABY

[Unocal]

Burn this playoff format to a crisp

 

They can’t run it back next year 

[BrySmalls]

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

Burn this playoff format to a crisp

 

They can’t run it back next year 

 

I'll jinx it and say that we get a Houston vs. Philadelphia World Series rematch.

[Sport]

7 hours ago, Unocal said:

What is the incentive to win your division?

 

You get two home games and the pitching advantage in games 1 and 2 and you don't risk elimination in a best of 3. Every team would take the bye every time. It hasn't been a problem for the Astros the last two years. There isn't an Orioles or Braves fan alive who would've switched places with the Rangers and Phillies ten days ago. 

 

The playoff format has nothing to do with these upsets. The Orioles pitching, the Achilles heel their fans worried about all year, gave up 21 runs to the Rangers in three games. They scored 11 runs so it's not like the layoff caused them to forget how to hit. The Braves ran into a Phillies team that is intimately familiar with them and probably the second best on paper team in the National League. It's sports and it's baseball especially where playoff upsets have happened forever.