~2019 MLB Thread~

[ELA]

Nothing like a potential elimination game going extra innings stretching to 1 am on the east coast to bring the kids back in.

[MarqHusker]

Which game went extras?

[ELA]

Manfred listens to his critics.

[OrangeAfroMan]

They need to stop screwing around with the ball.  

[MarqHusker]

Manfred 'considers' everything.     I don't care so much about the ball as I do, the largesse of the pitcher not throwing the freaking ball in at timely manner.  To me, the one thing MLB can control is the P and the AB.   They aren't going to cut commercial time, so make the P throw the ball and make the batter get in the box, and put their hands down.    Guys like Jeter, Braun are posterchilds for the non-stop mugging int he box.  Get and stay in the box, and make the P throw, today.

[Kris60]

Everyone knows it's a grind, but this is a good point and MAY be why baseball is waning with younger people:  you have to really love baseball to be a baseball player.  You have to go out 6 days a week to play this one game.  Football players can like it and like other things, and while their Friday nights are taken by games in HS...it's 10 or so games and that's it.  2.5 months and you're done.  You get to run every play, get to hit people, score TDs....

In baseball, when you score, the guy who got the hit is the star.  You mostly spend your time standing around.  And it takes half your year.  A lot of kids grow up playing football and basketball - not because they're in love with either, but because they get to dabble in both. 

The grind is tough in and of itself, but to endure it, you've got to love it.

It sounds like you are talking about HS sports and if you are I could present a different argument.  First of all, I can never remember our baseball team in HS playing games 6 days a week.  It was more like 3-4 days per week and the season lasted as long as the football and basketball seasons, roughly 2.5-3 months.

And the great thing about baseball, at least how I saw it as a football player, was that the majority of your time was actually spent PLAYING GAMES.  My biggest gripe with football was the 95% of your time was spent practicing.  The games were the payoff.  They were fun.  In fact, I’ve always taken the exact opposite approach.  To me, football is the sport that you really have to love to play because you spend so much more time practicing than actually playing.  Once the baseball season starts there simply isn’t enough time to practice all that much.

I’m with you on the way the game is played.  Baseball isn’t for everyone.  I coached my daughter’s LL and travel softball teams this year.  There is girl who was on both teams who is a really good athlete.  Good gymnast, soccer player, basketball player.  Just a good raw athlete.  But she really struggles staying focused with softball.  Just too much down time and standing around for her.  She’s the kid I’m constantly having to remind where we are going with the ball and what to do.  She’s the kid always finding a reason to leave the dugout.  She’s the kid who you tell to take a pitch on 3-0 and she swings away.  Just too slow for her and a lot of other kids.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Actually, football is about 80% practice (M-Th) and 20% games (Fri). 



Yeah, baseball is like war......moments of action between long spaces of waiting.  
Actually, the fix for Marqhusker's gripe may be bat handle thickness.  Bill James said this years ago - because as players have gone away from being contact hitters and now everyone's trying to hit a HR (because of the ball this year, especially), bat handles have gotten thinner.

If you increased bat handle thickness by 1 mm a year for 10 years, you'd no longer have bats that everyone can just whip through the strike zone in an attempt to hit one out.  Your small middle infielders (ie Jose Altuve) won't be hitting 20-30 HRs anymore, they'll be hitting doubles and triples with their increased bat-handling abilities and more baserunners = more stealing.  You know, the exciting, multiple-moving-parts way baseball once had....which was entertaining.



This modern HR derby-style is sound game efficiency, but at the expense of entertainment.  As I've argued expanding the playoff leans too closely to entertainment and away from competition, modern baseball practices are leaning too far towards competition and away from entertainment.  A 30-min HR derby is fine....a 4-hour one, dressed up as a baseball game is unwatchable.

[FearlessF]

enjoying game 1

89 pitches for Scherzer in the 4th

[OrangeAfroMan]

Enjoy your 9-7 Super Bowl champion Washington Nationals.
Wild-card team.
.574 win %

In a 16-game season, .574 comes out to 9.18 wins.....9-7 World Champs!  Woo-hoo!  Reward mediocrity!!!!

[MaximumSam]

Enjoy your 9-7 Super Bowl champion Washington Nationals.
Wild-card team.
.574 win %

In a 16-game season, .574 comes out to 9.18 wins.....9-7 World Champs!  Woo-hoo!  Reward mediocrity!!!!

That's baseball though.  The Astros were heavy favorites all season and had 107 wins, good for slightly less than 11-5 in the NFL.  Just 14 more wins than the Nats.

[ELA]

Yeah, that's a horrible comparison.  That's a sport where in many years the best team would be the equivalent of 10-6, the worst, 6-10, and almost the entire league between 9-7 and 7-9.

[NickSmith4Three]

The Nats have been one of the best, if not the best, teams in baseball in terms of record since they got healthy at the end of May.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Ooh, ooh, another baseball-college football comparison:  the Nats have been great since May!  This 10-2 team that lost twice in September is "hot" and should be in the playoff!!!


Ugh.


14 more wins is HUGE, btw.  It's almost 10% of the season.  The Astros were massive favorites for a reason.....despite a 7-game series being nearly a toss-up, no matter the teams.  The 11-5 team winning the Super Bowl makes sense.  The 9-7 team winning it is hot garbage.  

[ELA]

Over the past five years, the team with the better seed has won the series 68% of the time. (23-11)