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jad

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Everything posted by jad

  1. jad
    Oh I realize that. It's not fair. Neither is giving a non-division winner the same chance to win the P.O. as the three division winners. But my view is so what? Baseball has so many inequities and is so riddled with chance that it's pointless to try to level the field. (And would we really want all stadiums to be alike and symmetrical? or placing first base further out for left-handers to make their paths equal to RH? or bringing the fences in on a bright sunny day when the air has more resistance? or any of thousands of similar absurdities in the game). The play-in game gives teams the incentive to play hard right up to the end and provides us with another do-or-die game to watch.
  2. jad
    The only tweaks I can think of in major sports (and I agree that most sports executives and owner groups are tone-deaf bean-counters) that solve a problem as well as the WC play-in game come, incredibly, from the NHL, one of the worst run organizations in sports--the 3 on 3 overtime, and (again incredibly) the All-Star game format, which made that the only AS game worth watching.
  3. jad
    So let me understand: if the media doesn't mention something, then it must exist?
  4. jad
    I love the one-game play-in. A team that cannot win its division should not start the post season on a par with the teams that do, and this way provides a lot of incentive to win the division; you can't afford to tank, as we heard so often in the past: "Oh well, no point in trying to catch the Yankees for the division, so let's just focus on getting in through the wild card."
  5. jad
    It's odd. But I remember reading an article in some sports mag. long long ago--mid-sixties, I think, pointing out (the math is easy) that the bunt sacrifice in and of itself was counter-productive (it only really got popular because it was used by pitchers, most of whom couldn't hit at all). I've thus never liked it, and MONEYBALL put the last nail in the coffin. That book (it was that book, wasn't it?), claimed it was only popular because of what it was called--the name sounded virtuous. To me, the most absurd scoring rule about the sacrifice is when a batter bunts trying to get a hit. If he is thrown out and it looks as if he were trying to get a hit, rather than deliberately trying to get an out, he doesn't get credit for a sacrifice! (That is ridiculous!) It is as if he was being too self-interested, and that (we know) is morally wrong. Why, then, not deny a batter credit for a sacrifice fly if it looks as if he were ACTUALLY trying to hit a home run or a base hit?
  6. jad
    But that's the only one, and sometimes even that is way overrated. I can't stand seeing a guy hit a sac. fly in the 9th when the team is down a couple of runs and getting high 5s in the dugout. That is not a productive out in that situation. I'd be curious about the math in other situations--say, bases loaded, 0 outs. Should be a simple calculation, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's negative in that situation as well.
  7. jad
    Exactly. Putting a ball in play is better than a K because one of four of them is a hit. (Seems like some posters are defining 'putting a ball in play' as 'putting a ball in play for an out'. I agree totally that the concept of a 'productive out' is silly. Outs are bad.
  8. jad
    The RS are scoring plenty of runs. I suppose it doesn't really matter how. The problem, from a quick glance at the standings, seems to be Runs Against, which is neither surprising nor something that was not expected.
  9. jad
    I tend to agree with that (even though I really like both those players). But won't both of us get vilified because this seems to privilege Old School stats like BATTING AVERAGE?
  10. jad
    This is way too reminiscent of the chicken and beer season. What I fear more than missing the post-season are the consequences: the Great Search for the Scapegoat. (Bloom? Cora? top RS players?)
  11. jad
    Anyone watching the O's feed??? Holy crap. THey are interviewing minor leaguers. Hardly making any reference to the game itself! I guess that goes along with all the empty seats.
  12. jad
    Yes it is. He went for the ribs. It was a cheap shot that ended Fosse's career. If you're fine with that, there's no argument, because that, apparently, is who you are.
  13. jad
    They used a robo strike zone in a lower minor league this year, no? Does anyone know how they 'set' the zone or how they adjusted it for different hitters. Was there any debate about the virtue of having one and only one zone as opposed to adjusting it so that a tall hitter has a larger strike zone than a short one? (They don't penalize tall basketball players by raising the net when they shoot; why should Judge's strike zone be different from Altuve's?)
  14. jad
    It is not ok to do anything that causes or risks causing severe or career ending injury. Period. (Remember that a-hole Drysdale saying as an announcer after someone got hit in the head: "It's only a mild or severe head injury" ...). Even Eck was appalled when Richards went to the guy's head earlier this season. Liking that sort of thing does not mean you are tough or Old School--it means you're a freaking sociopath whose idea of sports is a perverse love for say, Tony C's career cut short, or cheap shots in football or hockey. Or perhaps you think Pete Rose's cheap shot on Fosse (which pretty much ended his career) just showed what a tough guy he was.
  15. jad
    I hate 'instant' review. I'm more concerned with watching an exciting game than watching one where every call is correct, or calls are micromanaged at a level which cannot be experienced in real time (e.g., the runner's foot bouncing off a base during a slide). The RS did not lose that game bec. that was not called a third strike.
  16. jad
    We didn't have pitchers like Gibson??? Just who else did?
  17. jad
    Totally agree. When fans wax nostalgic about the quality of pitching 'back in the day' they think of Koufax and Gibson. They do not think of the ones you and I remember: for me, Ike Delock, Jerry Casale, Fornieles (who was actually something of an iron man) not to mention scores of names I barely remember or recognize. No one in those days could throw a splitter like Koji, nor were middle relievers throwing 95-100mph, even from the raised mound.
  18. jad
    I'm not sure there is any coherent entity "the fans." Nor that they can be divided into those categories. I assume a lot of us older fans who developed our silly sports enthusiasm before free agency are used to following particular players for years, and carry that over into today's sports. I.e., we like certain players and follow them, for better or worse. I will always root for Betts, JBJ, Hembree and players I happened to like (for whatever reason), and root generally against, say, ex-RS I didn't like (can't think ... ok, Price, although my feelings about him have changed after his paying the minor leaguers out of his own wallet). So I suppose that makes me irrational (of course! there is nothing that bores me more than fantasy sports, competitive GM-ing, salary cap machinations). But I never heap abuse on players I like who have bad games.
  19. jad
    I assume they wouldn't be much different, since starters back then were pacing themselves to go longer and consequently didn't throw their arms out in the first inning. Do we criticize Olympic sprinters because they're not marathon runners?
  20. jad
    Well, we have no idea what he thinks. But every athlete I know would, in individual sports, rather win than play well; and every athlete on a team sport, would rather play well than win.
  21. jad
    It could be done. Players and owners could suddenly agree to take less. Front row tix could go for $10. And at that point, since there would be no prestige to sitting there, corporations and celebrities would no longer buy up all the good seats. You could walk to the park, just like in the sixties, and buy any ticket you want. And every fan in NE with $100, all 500,000 of them, would drive their kids every weekend to Fenway, eat hot dogs, drink beer, and walk back to their car parked a block away on the street or in a two-dollar lot ... There would be no poverty. No disease. We would all wear Fedoras. And the G*P would vanish from the earth.
  22. jad
    Yeah, those stiffs Devers, Boggaerts, Sale, Dalbec, Renfroe, Hernandez, etc.--they really need to go. You can tell they are trying to lose.
  23. jad
    Four walks and a hit-batsman in two innings by relievers. That's not on Cora. That's on them.
  24. jad
    Not tense any longer.
  25. jad
    Because infielders, like outfielders, always back each other up?
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