MLB 2012

Off Topic
881

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
So I just read this whole win or go home rule was implemented this year. It is so ridiculous and unfair. I’ve kind of given up on baseball anyway so I’m not even going to be bothered in joining the probably growing campaign of people who are protesting this thing.

But really, why do baseball teams play 160 games? So we can differentiate the teams on performance and gauge where they rank relative to each other, right? How does it make sense then, that we just ignore the whole season and have two teams with virtually equal records decide which one is better in a single playoff elimination? Okay, Texas had the division lined up and they ‘choked’ in the last week of the season but again, why are we playing so many games in the regular season? What the fuck is so bad with making it a best of 3 Wildcard series, at least?

Selig and Major League Baseball just lost another fan today. [/quote]

I actually like it more today than I did when it was implemented, even after the Rangers loss. It gives division winners so much more of an advantage, which I think is good. How many Wild card team have limped into the postseason lately and won the Worled Series? Cardinals last year, Marlins in 03, Yankees in 96 off of the top of my head, which is quite a few. Why should a team that finished second in the division get the same shot at the playoffs as the team the finished ahead of them all year? I think having one game is important so it forces the teams to use their ace (or not depending on how gutsy they are) which put them at a disadvantage for the division series also. It SHOULD be harder for WC teams, and division winners SHOULD be rewarded for playing better over the coarse of 162 games imo.[/quote]

Here’s what’s fucked up about the whole format: the homefield advantage is largely made irrelevant by having the team with the better record open up on the road in the first round. What it does is give a lot of extra momentum to the Wild Card team because not only is the team that ends up in the first round almost always going to be hot as shit, now they get the added advantage of playing at home to start off and build on the momentum.

The scheduling of the whole thing makes it fucked up too. Take the A’s for example. If they win against Detroit in 5, then the series ends on a thursday night and the ALCS starts on saturday. But the A’s have to wait until Friday night to find out if they fly to New York to take on the Yankees on Saturday or if the Orioles come out to Oakland. Either way, if the A’s and the Orioles win their series, the Orioles’ reward is a cross-country flight immediately after the game to play the next day. If the A’s win and the Yankees win, the A’s get a day of that they can’t use to travel since they have to wait for the next day’s game to finish. Assuming that the series goes 5 games.

And what do the Reds get for finishing with a better record than the Giants? Nothing. They haven’t played at home since Sep. 28th and they don’t play there again until Tuesday, at which they could be down two games to none and end up playing just one game at home all postseason. The potential for just one game at home, one game in more than a week, is hardly a homefield advantage. If the Giants had finished with the NL’s best record, or just a better record than Cincinnati for that matter, they would have gone through the same thing since they closed out the regular season on the road as well, albeit just down the road in LA.

Regardless, the idea of the extra wild card has added some excitement, but the way MLB has adjusted the scheduling to accommodate them is completely ridiculous. They should just end the season a few days earlier so they can have some extra time to squeeze all of this in. They can’t really go any further into October/November than they already are.

882

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
So I just read this whole win or go home rule was implemented this year. It is so ridiculous and unfair. I’ve kind of given up on baseball anyway so I’m not even going to be bothered in joining the probably growing campaign of people who are protesting this thing.

But really, why do baseball teams play 160 games? So we can differentiate the teams on performance and gauge where they rank relative to each other, right? How does it make sense then, that we just ignore the whole season and have two teams with virtually equal records decide which one is better in a single playoff elimination? Okay, Texas had the division lined up and they ‘choked’ in the last week of the season but again, why are we playing so many games in the regular season? What the fuck is so bad with making it a best of 3 Wildcard series, at least?

Selig and Major League Baseball just lost another fan today. [/quote]

I actually like it more today than I did when it was implemented, even after the Rangers loss. It gives division winners so much more of an advantage, which I think is good. How many Wild card team have limped into the postseason lately and won the Worled Series? Cardinals last year, Marlins in 03, Yankees in 96 off of the top of my head, which is quite a few. Why should a team that finished second in the division get the same shot at the playoffs as the team the finished ahead of them all year? I think having one game is important so it forces the teams to use their ace (or not depending on how gutsy they are) which put them at a disadvantage for the division series also. It SHOULD be harder for WC teams, and division winners SHOULD be rewarded for playing better over the coarse of 162 games imo.[/quote]

Here’s what’s fucked up about the whole format: the homefield advantage is largely made irrelevant by having the team with the better record open up on the road in the first round. What it does is give a lot of extra momentum to the Wild Card team because not only is the team that ends up in the first round almost always going to be hot as shit, now they get the added advantage of playing at home to start off and build on the momentum.

The scheduling of the whole thing makes it fucked up too. Take the A’s for example. If they win against Detroit in 5, then the series ends on a thursday night and the ALCS starts on saturday. But the A’s have to wait until Friday night to find out if they fly to New York to take on the Yankees on Saturday or if the Orioles come out to Oakland. Either way, if the A’s and the Orioles win their series, the Orioles’ reward is a cross-country flight immediately after the game to play the next day. If the A’s win and the Yankees win, the A’s get a day of that they can’t use to travel since they have to wait for the next day’s game to finish. Assuming that the series goes 5 games.

And what do the Reds get for finishing with a better record than the Giants? Nothing. They haven’t played at home since Sep. 28th and they don’t play there again until Tuesday, at which they could be down two games to none and end up playing just one game at home all postseason. The potential for just one game at home, one game in more than a week, is hardly a homefield advantage. If the Giants had finished with the NL’s best record, or just a better record than Cincinnati for that matter, they would have gone through the same thing since they closed out the regular season on the road as well, albeit just down the road in LA.

Regardless, the idea of the extra wild card has added some excitement, but the way MLB has adjusted the scheduling to accommodate them is completely ridiculous. They should just end the season a few days earlier so they can have some extra time to squeeze all of this in. They can’t really go any further into October/November than they already are.

[/quote]
I just now realized the teams with the worst record are starting the series off at home. That makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You have the better record you should be rewarded with the first game of the series at home which can be a huge momentum boost if won. I’m confused on the reasoning. I assume the team with the better record still gets three home games if it goes to five? What is the format for the five game series then?

883

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Another reason I wouldn’t want to see the Giants sign Hamilton this offseason: four outs, two strikeouts, EIGHT total pitches seen. Last 9 games of the season: 10 for 39 with 17 strikeouts plus the back-breaking error on a routine flyball that he lost purely due to a lack of concentration.[/quote]

You’re cherry picking statistics, he had a really good year. While there are plenty of good hitters in their lineup, the Rangers relied heavily on Hamilton’s production and they would not have been in a WC game without him. Conversely, Michael Young had a good night last night, but he’s been a shitbag baseball player all year.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

The guy is a fucking head case, plain and simple.[/quote]

This is a valid criticism. I wouldn’t want to sign him due to his past and mental makeup potentially destroying his production.

884

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Yankees have sucked basically since july. Had the O’s faced the Rangers in a 5 game series it wouldn’t’ve been close. The stealing of the AL West by the A’s might just end up being one of the most integral parts of the playoffs this year for the O’s.

Yankees look highly beatable, O’s look like the team of destiny, and anything can happen in a 1-game WC play-in.

[/quote]

The only good thing coming out of the rangers loss for me will be this series. These two teams have battled it out all year and now they have five games to decide who goes on. Should be fun to watch. Rooting for the O’s.

I’m not suprised by the Rangers loss either. Just extremely dissapointed. Scoring only one run off Saunders was pretty sad. I don’t know if this was as big of a collapse as the Red Sox or Braves last year, but it’s pretty close. They had to win one of their last five games (counting the WC game) and couldn’t do it. [/quote]

It’s pretty crazy, I believe they had a double digit lead in the division over the A’s back in July.

I don’t particularly fault them for losing a 1-game play-in, because as I’ve stated earlier anything can happen in a single game. However blowing the division lead is unacceptable.

885

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Another reason I wouldn’t want to see the Giants sign Hamilton this offseason: four outs, two strikeouts, EIGHT total pitches seen. Last 9 games of the season: 10 for 39 with 17 strikeouts plus the back-breaking error on a routine flyball that he lost purely due to a lack of concentration.[/quote]

You’re cherry picking statistics, he had a really good year. While there are plenty of good hitters in their lineup, the Rangers relied heavily on Hamilton’s production and they would not have been in a WC game without him. Conversely, Michael Young had a good night last night, but he’s been a shitbag baseball player all year.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

The guy is a fucking head case, plain and simple.[/quote]

This is a valid criticism. I wouldn’t want to sign him due to his past and mental makeup potentially destroying his production. [/quote]
I may be cherry picking here, but when I criticize his play down the stretch and in the past few postseasons I’m picking at the biggest fucking cherries in the whole orchard.

886

[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
So I just read this whole win or go home rule was implemented this year. It is so ridiculous and unfair. I’ve kind of given up on baseball anyway so I’m not even going to be bothered in joining the probably growing campaign of people who are protesting this thing.

But really, why do baseball teams play 160 games? So we can differentiate the teams on performance and gauge where they rank relative to each other, right? How does it make sense then, that we just ignore the whole season and have two teams with virtually equal records decide which one is better in a single playoff elimination? Okay, Texas had the division lined up and they ‘choked’ in the last week of the season but again, why are we playing so many games in the regular season? What the fuck is so bad with making it a best of 3 Wildcard series, at least?

Selig and Major League Baseball just lost another fan today. [/quote]

I actually like it more today than I did when it was implemented, even after the Rangers loss. It gives division winners so much more of an advantage, which I think is good. How many Wild card team have limped into the postseason lately and won the Worled Series? Cardinals last year, Marlins in 03, Yankees in 96 off of the top of my head, which is quite a few. Why should a team that finished second in the division get the same shot at the playoffs as the team the finished ahead of them all year? I think having one game is important so it forces the teams to use their ace (or not depending on how gutsy they are) which put them at a disadvantage for the division series also. It SHOULD be harder for WC teams, and division winners SHOULD be rewarded for playing better over the coarse of 162 games imo.[/quote]

Here’s what’s fucked up about the whole format: the homefield advantage is largely made irrelevant by having the team with the better record open up on the road in the first round. What it does is give a lot of extra momentum to the Wild Card team because not only is the team that ends up in the first round almost always going to be hot as shit, now they get the added advantage of playing at home to start off and build on the momentum.

The scheduling of the whole thing makes it fucked up too. Take the A’s for example. If they win against Detroit in 5, then the series ends on a thursday night and the ALCS starts on saturday. But the A’s have to wait until Friday night to find out if they fly to New York to take on the Yankees on Saturday or if the Orioles come out to Oakland. Either way, if the A’s and the Orioles win their series, the Orioles’ reward is a cross-country flight immediately after the game to play the next day. If the A’s win and the Yankees win, the A’s get a day of that they can’t use to travel since they have to wait for the next day’s game to finish. Assuming that the series goes 5 games.

And what do the Reds get for finishing with a better record than the Giants? Nothing. They haven’t played at home since Sep. 28th and they don’t play there again until Tuesday, at which they could be down two games to none and end up playing just one game at home all postseason. The potential for just one game at home, one game in more than a week, is hardly a homefield advantage. If the Giants had finished with the NL’s best record, or just a better record than Cincinnati for that matter, they would have gone through the same thing since they closed out the regular season on the road as well, albeit just down the road in LA.

Regardless, the idea of the extra wild card has added some excitement, but the way MLB has adjusted the scheduling to accommodate them is completely ridiculous. They should just end the season a few days earlier so they can have some extra time to squeeze all of this in. They can’t really go any further into October/November than they already are.

[/quote]
I just now realized the teams with the worst record are starting the series off at home. That makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You have the better record you should be rewarded with the first game of the series at home which can be a huge momentum boost if won. I’m confused on the reasoning. I assume the team with the better record still gets three home games if it goes to five? What is the format for the five game series then?[/quote]

The last three games are at home for the team with the better record. But they’re only guaranteed one game, whereas the wild card team is guaranteed two games at home. The reward for winning the division should be more than simply avoiding a one-game playoff.

I mean, for Christ’s sake the A’s got fucked right in the ass as far as I’m concerned. They got hot as shit down the stretch, pull off an improbable sweep of the Rangers to win the division on the last day of the year and what do they get? A trip to Detroit to face Justin Verlander. They’ll probably be down two games to none when they get back to Oakland now that they’ve lost tonight. There’s their reward for winning the division.

Quite frankly, I have no fucking clue what the reasoning behind this is. I keep thinking about where Selig might be coming from here but I simply cannot fathom what was going through that thick fucking head of his when he thought THIS was the way to structure things.

887

Man, if Cueto injured himself when he stopped his motion halfway through after Pagan asked for time (which he didn’t get) the Reds are going to be fucking pissed. Hell, they should be more pissed at Cueto than anyone else if that’s what happened. The ump never granted time to Pagan, and while it’s pretty bush league to ask for it and then step out that late, Cueto should have just thrown the fucking ball at that point. Of course, he torques himself around so far that he couldn’t see any of this going on until it was too late anyways, which might also be how he hurt himself.

It looked like back spasms. I’ve had them a bunch and I know what that awkward-looking, chest kind of puffed out walk is all about. Major seizures in the lower back area.

I’ll tell you one thing. We’re going to find out tomorrow night how mentally-tough Mat Latos is. That guy is going to get booed like no one has ever been booed in AT&T Park and the fans are going to be all over his every mistake. He’s put it on his own shoulders with all the shittalking he’s done about the Giants after he blew the last game of the 2010 season to hand the division to them.

888

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Yankees have sucked basically since july. Had the O’s faced the Rangers in a 5 game series it wouldn’t’ve been close. The stealing of the AL West by the A’s might just end up being one of the most integral parts of the playoffs this year for the O’s.

Yankees look highly beatable, O’s look like the team of destiny, and anything can happen in a 1-game WC play-in.

[/quote]

The only good thing coming out of the rangers loss for me will be this series. These two teams have battled it out all year and now they have five games to decide who goes on. Should be fun to watch. Rooting for the O’s.

I’m not suprised by the Rangers loss either. Just extremely dissapointed. Scoring only one run off Saunders was pretty sad. I don’t know if this was as big of a collapse as the Red Sox or Braves last year, but it’s pretty close. They had to win one of their last five games (counting the WC game) and couldn’t do it. [/quote]

It’s pretty crazy, I believe they had a double digit lead in the division over the A’s back in July.

I don’t particularly fault them for losing a 1-game play-in, because as I’ve stated earlier anything can happen in a single game. However blowing the division lead is unacceptable.
[/quote]

Yeah, but with the way they looked yesterday they’d have been hard-pressed to salvage a fifth game even in a seven-game series. They just looked flat. It was clear right from the start which team had just blown a three-game division lead with three games left.

I do fault them for losing the game if nothing else because they never should have been in that position in the first place. This is a team that should have won that division by ten games, but they faltered for most of the second half and then didn’t play well enough to win last night. That’s entirely their fault.

889

Oh fuck, even better. Latos is getting warmed up to come into the game tonight.

890

Didn’t get to see all of the SF/CIN game but man what a shot by Jay Bruce.

891

Before last night Justin Verlander had been terrible in the postseason.

His ERA in each individual postseason series has been over 5. That’s not a cumulative total where you have a couple of outings inflating his stats, that’s looking at each series he’s pitched in separately.

892

Oh my cant believe Crisp botched that catch

893

Oh. My. God.

Those fucking A’s. what a turn of events!!!

894

Great tweet I saw: Cespedes just did what Trout does every game. Understand now Detroit?

895

Ok what the hell is going on

896

DB you talked about extra off days will hurt pitchers.

After 6 days rest Gio looks awful

897

[quote]therajraj wrote:
DB you talked about extra off days will hurt pitchers.

After 6 days rest Gio looks awful [/quote]
Yep, I knew at least a couple pitchers would come out and look like shit due to the layoff. That might not be the reason why Gonzalez is struggling, but it probably isn’t helping. He’s typically had pretty poor command and this season looked like he had begun coming to terms with this issue, but it’s flaring up right now.

I just don’t like this format AT ALL. It’s been a complete disaster as far as I’m concerned. Between the scheduling and the lack of homefield advantage for the better teams this has been an unmitigated fuckup.

And I’ll say this about Bud Selig. The guy is a fucking joke, period. I’m sure he’ll be eligible for the Hall of Fame as soon as he retires and all that, but he doesn’t belong. He presided over a work stoppage that cost the World Series, he turned the All-Star game into a fucking joke and now that it’s slightly relevant again people give him credit for it. It doesn’t count when you successfully fix your own fuckups, Bud. Gee, let’s all pat Bud on the back because after he shit all over the house like an untrained dog he had the common courtesy to clean it up three weeks later.

He was as complicit as anybody regarding the proliferation of steroids in baseball, so the way he’s come down on PEDs since means absolutely nothing. In fact, if players who have been connected to steroid use are kept out of the Hall of Fame i can’t see ANY argument as to why this shouldn’t also apply to Selig. He knew about them and he did nothing until the FBI raided BALCO and realized “holy shit, half the top athletes in the country are on their client list”. BALCO and the FBI get the credit; Selig is just one more of many guilty people in that whole fiasco and none of them belong in the Hall.

i’m telling you, Raj, you or I could be a better commissioner than Selig by a long shot.

898

[quote]therajraj wrote:
DB you talked about extra off days will hurt pitchers.

After 6 days rest Gio looks awful [/quote]
I think Gonzalez was just a little rusty to start. Unfortunately, it cost his team 2 runs. But he looks settled in now and he’s throwing a lot more fluidly.

899

On the topic of Gio, jays fans were really pushing for our GM to trade top prospects to acquire him.

One of the local beat writers was admantly against it on the basis of his ridiculous walk rate. Believe it or not Gio LEAD the majors in walk rate in 2011.

I was indifferent at the time, but after a Cy young season I’m pretty disappointed it didn’t happen.

900

On what you posted earlier: imagine if all teams w/o home field advantage win the DS.

That would really fuck the league and Selig.