At the rate we are going with this Corona BS, Severino, Thor and Sale will be ready for spring training summer 2021.
I hope not. I already see Cora and Hinch coming back next season. Baseball handled this whole thing terribly
Lifetime bans would have been more appropriate. And no HOF for Beltran (maybe posthumously). It’s ridiculous.
In favor. Do covid tests in the morning. The tests take like 15 minutes. Anyone whose positive can’t play. No fans. Salary rollback to account for no fan revenue. How hard can this be?
Apparently, the new plan is to somehow have three leagues, East, Central and West this season, play about 100 games all within your league, and then just have the best records make the playoffs. Back in March, I thought it seemed like a sensible idea. But now, with the situation as bad as it is, I really don't see how that can work. I think that Arizona makes a ton of sense. You have ten ST stadiums, plus Bank One, or whatever the Diamondbacks call it now. Florida is harder, with things more spread out. Its a quick drive for anything in Phoenix, but some of the Florida sites are a 3-4 hour drive apart. I say that could just have every team go to AZ, and do up to 15 games a day out there. Some at 3pm EST, some at 7pm, and some at 10pm. Unique and weird, but they could televise a lot of them, and people would watch.
The distance in Florida is overstated. There’s minimal traffic right now. And even when/if things get back to normal it’s only a 3-4 hour drive as opposed to 10-12 hours. It’s not crazy. Team bus solves everything.
I think that they're just the tip of the iceberg. MLB was bound and determined to try the short season despite the pandemic not getting better, and this is what was bound to happen. I think that things will shut totally down soon until February.
The players did not want a bubble like the nba. They voted for this. MLB barely has any power over their players.
Not sure a bubble would work anyway - bigger teams and slower games. Still, I think they probably should have condensed into a few stadiums instead of staying nationwide. If it hasn't gotten too out of control, they will likely try and work around it. The Marlins had no real expectations so it wouldn't really be a league hit to have them essentially just play a triple a squad lol. If it happens to several teams though, or if we see that it spread from the Marlins to the Phils? Then it's probably game over.
The Cubs had a seven run lead, and starter John Lester allowed zero hits in five innings vs the Reds tonight. But their bullpen tried as hard as they could to give the game away, allowing 7 runs in four innings. The pen has now allowed 12 runs in 12 innings in the first four games. So...yikes. Everyone knew it was a weakness, but giving up a run an innings isn't something a team can cope with very well.
That’s not unprecedented. In 1981 during the strike shortened year the teams didn’t all play the same number of games.
The Cubs have signed Cody Allen to compliment Craig Kimbrel in their bullpen. A few years ago, that would have been a dream team.....goes to show how quickly guys can just lose it.
The Marlins are back in first place. This whole not playing any games thing is working out really well for them! The Final NL East standings could be a mess if the season does finish out. Already, the Braves and Mets have played 11 games, the Nationals 7, the Phillies 4 and the Marlins 3. Its looking less and less likely that most of those will be made up. Imagine if a team ends up playing ten fewer games than their division rival but ends up in first place because of win percentage? By the time they're scheduled to play one another this coming weekend, the Cubs could have 13 games in the book while the Cards only have 5, due to their own Covid situation that's growing by the day.
Lots of doubleheaders. This is part of why they will do the 7 inning doubles. Frankly, I don't mind. They use it in the minors and I never had a problem with it. The games go at a good pace but you still get to spend a good amount of time at the park. I also don't mind the runners on base in extra innings. I love baseball, but extras that go beyond the 10-11th are interminable, just awful imo, both on TV and especially in person. I just want the game done at that point. As long as both teams have the same opportunity, Im not griping.
The first minor league game I ever went to was the first game of a double header, and I was completely confused when they hit a home run in the bottom of the 7th to break a tie, and all of the players celebrated on the field and then walked off.
Haha yes it confused the hell out of me the first time as well. We showed up rather early thinking it would be a normal game time, but there was a game going on already in like the 3rd inning. We asked the ticket people what was going on and learned it was a double header. I actually thought that would drag things on later than we had planned, and then got really confused when the teams walked off after the 7th. But I liked it, and after that kept an eye out for double headers, usually rain makeups. I miss the minor league games more than almost anything else from the place I moved haha, Austin Tx and the AAA Round Rock Express.
Miami has now surpassed St Louis in the number of games played, and the Cardinals will sit at only five in the books when they play the Cubs this coming weekend. (If they actually get the green light). With only four days off the rest of the year, it seems unlikely that the Cards and Tigers will make up the four games that have been missed. They can probably make up games vs the Brewers via double headers. If they do that, and don't have any other games missed, they'll need to play 53 games in 52 days the rest of the way. I wonder if that would be a record.
Cards/Pirates has now all but been cancelled as well. There is virtually no chance the Cardinals can play a full slate and we are a little over 1/6th of the way. This will be interesting.
Its gonna get worse. Frankly, they've been lucky that its only been a couple of teams so far. Once this happens with a few more, things are going to get all out of whack.
Division leads in MLB can always be a little weird, but this season is off the charts. The Cubs have now played three fewer games than the Reds, and have a 4.5 game lead over them. They've played two fewer games than the Brewers, and have a 4.5 game lead over them. And they've played eight more games than the Cardinals, and have a 4.5 game lead over them. Meanwhile, after their series against the Cubs, Pirates and Tigers have been "postponed", the Cardinals haven't played since July 29th, and would now need to play 55 games in 46 days to get to 60 games, should they be deemed able to continue later this week. The next series is supposed to start Friday at the White Sox, before they again try to play the Cubs starting on Monday of next week. They have seven games @ Wrigley scheduled the rest of the way, and zero at St Louis, so any make ups of the series lost there would have to be road double headers.
Bit of fun: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29639421/which-new-mlb-rules-do-love-which-never-seen-again My thoughts on them. 1) Runner starting on base in extras - KEEP. Extra innings are just an interminable slog. Getting them over with asap is good, and starting a runner on second increases tactical options available to managers. 2) Universal DH - KEEP. I just hate pitchers hitting. It's fun to see one hit a dinger a few times a year, but otherwise it's just lame strikeouts, flailing ... a waste of a space. 3) Three-batter minimum for pitchers - KEEP. Things that keep the game moving and limit interruptions and non-play time are good. 4) Seven-inning doubleheaders - Keep it for makeup doubleheaders.
I'm just never going to be a fan of the DH, even if it helps my own team, the Cubs. I'm not at all a fan of the low average, high strikeout, high home run style that the game has trended towards, and the DH is a big part of that. On some teams, the lineup looks the same one through nine, and its just boring. It also takes the strategy of pitching around guys in the 7 or 8 hole away, depending on the number of outs and the score. And it takes away the strategy of whether to hit for the pitcher or leave him in the game once he's gone through the lineup a couple of times, and whether that might come back to bite you. I thought that I would love the three batter rule, but in practice, I just don't really know. I would be more on board if it were three batters OR the end of the inning, like was talked about originally. But when you have a questionable bullpen, you can absolutely get killed if you have a guy out there who can't get people out. I'm hoping that they can come up with something else to prevent the huge number of pitching changes.
I think the issues you espouse aren't a result of the DH and really aren't made all that worse by subbing one guy out of 9. It's just the statistical revolution driving those numbers. Most hitters - even guys who traditionally would have been lightweights like Baez or Altuve - are using launch angles, exit velocities, bat speed, etc. Plus modern strength training. Throw in the possibility of juiced balls because chicks dig the long ball and there you have it. I don't really think a DH in the NL will be a big difference to that. I also am not a huge fan of the potential of needing to pull a pitcher for a hitter later in the game. Let the pitchers pitch. I wouldn't be opposed to experimenting with the 3 batter rule either - allowing end of the inning, maybe 2 batters, or X number of runs, hits or baserunners. In general, I like the idea of preventing single inning righty/lefty/righty gamesmanship that precipitates new pitchers needing to waltz in from left field, throw warmups, loosen up. It not only takes a long time in general, but breaks up the action too much.
I'm not going to argue all of your points, because there's truth to it. But I do think that NL teams taking a more AL-style approach more and more has lead us to where we are. Over the last decade, the game has become more and more uniform, largely due to sabermetrics, and I strongly dislike the changes, even though the adoption of those changes has helped my own team have their greatest run of success in generations. It just doesn't feel the same. If you look at the top 10 guys in the majors in batting average, and the top ten in OBP last season, there are only two players who are on both lists! Christian Yellich, who's game I absolutely love, and I wish he wasn't on the Brewers, and Anthony Rendon, a player who's gotten better at both average and power at the same time as he's gotten older. But I really miss the high average, good glove, 20/40 guys that we saw with more regularity before that. I'm sorry, but walks and strike outs bore me. I want balls in play and speed, with a little pop here and there. Let the first basemen and left fielders swing for the fences, but it can't be one through nine.
I can buy that, would personally assign that more to - as you note - sabermetrics than things like the DH. I also wonder if the proliferation of hard throwing pitchers has contributed at all. Harder for the average hitters to keep that average up when going against 95+ in every at bat. The AL used to have a lot more of the classic speed/average/defense guys as well - Kenny Lofton, Robby Alomar, Omar Vizquel, Nomar G, etc. They definitely had the Jim Thome's as well with the 3 true outcomes, but they weren't prolific. I do like that more players are a big hit danger, but I do miss the action of guys on bases, so I guess for me it's a bit of give and take. Ultimately, I still enjoy the game so won't complain too much. I just need my ADD elder millenial addled brain to have less complete stoppages like pitcher changes haha. Cubs 1, Brewers 0 after 1. Glad to see Yu doing OK, he was so dang good with the Rangers, I got to see him a few times when he did rehab starts in Round Rock, was good stuff. Hopefully he got through the yips or whatever that was going on. If Kimbrel can figure himself out, this team could make a run.
Yu finally got healthy and figured things out during the second half last season. He looked rough his first outing this year, but has been lights out since. The dude honestly has more pitches that he can throw than anyone else in baseball, so when he's on, he's pretty dominant. I think the way that the Astros cheated to abuse him in the playoffs a few seasons ago stuck with him a little bit, but he seems to have moved past it. As far as Kimbrell....yikes. His four appearances have gone like this so far: 0.1 inning. 2 ER, 4 BB 1.0 inning. 2 ER, 2 H, 2 HR allowed 0.1 inning. 2 ER, 2H 0.1 inning. 1 ER, 1 H, 1 BB Its been brutal to the extreme. Expectations are really low.
Mookie Betts hit 3 homers in a game for the 6th time, tying a record. He's another dude that kind of exemplifies how modern stats, training and such have changed the game. In the 80s, 90s and early 00s he would be a dude trying to leg out bunts, hitting for average and working hard to get on base and steal bases. In 2020 he's hammering the ball like a tiny version of Babe Ruth - he's 5'9 and 180lbs. It's crazy how some of these smaller dudes have unlocked serious power games.
In situations like this, I've never understood why this isn't an 11 game lead for the Cubs. Same number of losses, 11 more wins. If the Cubs didn't play for eleven days while the Cards had a game each day, they'd need to go 11-0 to pull even. It's all semantics of course, but it's just something that's always bugged me.
1. Hate it. Why change the rules just because the 9 innings are complete? The NBA and NHL don’t change their rules for OT (well the nhl has the shootout in the regular season but not in the playoffs but that’s just cause ties stink). Dumb idea long term but ok for this year because they’re trying to keep guys healthy so I get it. 2. I’m with U13...the DH is brutal. Never gonna feel otherwise. While I don’t need athleticism or speed necessarily, I do like hitters who put the ball in play. I don’t mind high Obp guys who look to walk a lot...heck Keith Hernandez was like that in the 80s and helped the Mets win a ws. But I’d rather watch Jeff McNeil or Daniel Murphy types. 3. I’m ok with this. The only caveat I’d add is if there’s an inning change it’s unnecessary to enforce. The pitchers going to throw his warmups then anyway. 4. No. Just no. Again ok for this year but no thanks long term. It’s called a doubleheader not a 1 and 7/9ths header.
Mets are brutal. BVW did a brutal job assembling this team. Oh and the Kelenic/Diaz+ Cano trade still sucks. Andres Gimenez is a star in the making tho. Rosario need to be an OF or a trade piece. Gimenez actually understands defense and pitch selection
If I were to make up a list of my favorite players to fill up a lineup from the last 20 years, excluding Cubs because of my emotional attachment, I think that this would be it. C Joe Mauer 1B Todd Helton 2B Jose Altuve SS Jimmy Rollins 3B David Wright RF Ichiro Suziki CF Andrew McCutchen LF Carl Crawford