Phillies players tests come back 100% negative. It maybe too early to celebrate but it’s def good news.
Joe Kelly confessed “it wasn’t my best pitch”
So, another day, another Sabo Bowl, and another insult to the baseball gods.
The insult isn’t a new one, but it’s going to be especially egregious this covid crippled season. Today MLB lists the Phillies playing a road game
against the Toronto Blue Jays of Buffalo. Insultingly, this game will actually be played at Citizens Bark in Philadelphia… with the Phillies batting 1st. WTFBBQ !!!1!
The home team batting first was fairly common in the 1800s. The home team had that option until 1950. None of those games are counted as an “away” game for the team which actually played at their home field.
Teams giving up games at their home field, and instead playing those games at the previously scheduled away team’s home field have happened often before. Before 2007 those games had the previously scheduled away team batting second on their home field, and those games were listed as “home” games for previously scheduled away team.
Well, MLB jumped the shark years ago with their official record keeping (when they ruled that T.Cobb has a career hit total which is not the sum of his season hit totals). The premiere stat and analysis services, such as Fangraphs and All-Star Sabo-Metrics, account things differently. Here’s how ASSM handles things…
Games are considered either home/away, home/home (when two teams share the same stadium), or neutral site. Batting 1st or 2nd is a separate issue.
I’m still bitter they pulled this shit for the 2016 All-Star game… and had the NL bat 1st in Petco Park. Not only was this an insult to all Padres fans, and vicariously the entire city of San Diego itself… it robbed me of a whole 1/2 inning of the two most expensive sportsball tix I’ve ever bought… and it confused the crap out of me for the entire game.
But, before I get too overwhelmed with bitterness, Sabo’s new Reds lost yesterday’s Sabo Bowl #1111. The stakes remain hugeness for today’s…
| Sabo Bowl #10000 | lp | line |
|---|---|---|
| my new Cubs | Kyle Hendricks | +101 |
| Sabo’s new Reds | Sonny Gray | -111 |
1 Like
Sabo better watch out! The Jays have been playing uncharacteristically respectable baseball!
The Jays maybe the best collection of homeless athletes ever. The kid pitching tonight will be special. Nate Pearson tips out ~ 103 / 104. MLB has cleared Soto to play. My half full glass is filling up!
MLB soon probably: Surprisingly, it turns out that the overwhelming majority of spread risk takes place in the locker room and dugout.
NFL/NHL will also be completely shocked by this
NHL is in a bubble.
I don’t understand why they need locker rooms. Scouting reports can be done via zoom, or spread out n a large ball room at the hotel etc. Hopefully it’s just the Marlins that f ed it up real bad. Your buddy nickolas hadn’t made a baseball post til the Marlins for covid. I swear some people are rooting against recovery and they scare me more than the right.
I think playing team sports (especially outside of a bubble) at the expense of the health of the players and their families/friends is abhorrent to some of us. We are going to end up with players in the ICU if not dead. We are going to end up with friends and family members of players in the ICU or dead as a result of playing sportsball. We are going to end up with hotel staff and the like and their family and friends sick and dead.
I love sports, I have watched much more golf and NASCAR the last 2 months than ever before. So I want sports to come back. But the decisions being made in sports are literally a microcosm of what is wrong with the Covid response in the country at large. It is $$$ over lives. That is a sick mentality and not the way we should be making decisions.
So put me in the camp of I wish sports could work without costing people’s lives but in July 2020 in USA #1 that isn’t a reality. The Marlins are the tip of the iceberg for what is coming for MLB/NFL. The bubble sports have a chance to maybe not have rampant infection. MLB/NFL are already both infested just a couple weeks into the start of the process with no evidence it will get better.
I can’t speak for Nicolas but I am personally rooting for recovery for lots of reasons. Rooting for recovery means the opposite of what you are saying though. It means making decisions that actually lead to recovery. Simply ignoring reality so that we can have sports isn’t rooting for recovery, it is actively working against it. It isn’t clear to me at all that what the MLB/NFL are doing is anything that leads to anything positive. A lot of people will get sick, some will be permanently damaged and some will die.
It’s going to be real dumb to sicken/damage/kill a lot of people for seasons that seem doomed from the start. And it isn’t just the players. It is EVERYONE THEY COME INTO CONTACT WITH TRAVELING ALL OVER. Maybe they say fuck it who cares and finish no matter how bad the collateral damage is. That isn’t a success we should be cheering on though. That mentality is exactly why we have 150k+ dead already in 4 months here.
7 Likes
I’m not bitter at the Toronto Blue Jays of Buffalo. It’s not the players fault that their owner shat the bed preparing for the season. All things said, a World Series championship for Buffalo would be pretty damn cool. And… I guess it really doesn’t matter who bats first in a studio staged season like we have this year.
However, screwing up the stats this way is fucked up. FYI: the NFL also does this screwy shit with their stats.
For example: If the season finishes as scheduled the Blue Jays will play only 25 games in Buffalo. Which, as far as All-Star Sabo-Metrics is concerned, would tie them for least home games in a season with the 1878 Milwaukee Grays (NL 15-45-1, 7-18 at home).
What Wichita said. I’m rooting for recovery, which means to stop putting our heads in the sand, sacrificing lives and our ability to actually recover for non-essential luxuries like free tea refills and sports.
At some point this country needs to wake the fuck up and stop being so lax about hundreds of thousands of Americans dying when many of those are preventable with a little less selfishness.
I love sports. I ran a 1B pageview/year sports site network, i was at the last Falcons game in the old Dome and the last college football game in the old Dome. I was a Hawks season ticket holder and go to a handful of Braves games every year.
But when we are having 60k new cases a day of a disease that kills 1% and may cause long-term injury to countless more, then I am pushing for us to be better as a society than to sacrifice lives for $$$ or drink refills or sports.
I’m done talking to you about this and I’m done posting about it in this thread other than when you bring it up. You can have the last word tho, so I won’t respond to your next one, only if you keep bringing it up.
I root for lives, not money, not the economy, and not sports/school/events/refills/etc. People rooting for sports and restaurants/bars are the ones actively rooting against recovery and real human lives. They scare me more than the right because the right is already long gone, but when people on this site don’t take it seriously, that scares me and makes me post the way I do.
4 Likes
In Canada (Toronto, Edmonton) no less
Can we play the NFL in Canada this year? CFL teams play on Saturday, NFL on Sunday. Or hell I’ll take Tuesdays if we can have a season.
1 Like
Come on dude, get a grip. Players dead? Show your work please.
That’s actually a pretty good idea.
Do you think they are invincible? That their families are? That the hotel staff is? In my wife’s 20 bed ICU they currently have 5 Covid patients under 40 fighting for their lives. People in that age range are dying every day.
The MLB and NFL have what maybe 2500 players combined? If half of them contract the virus the odds of one dying is very high. The odds of one ending up in the ICU is 100%.
1 Like
That is a great idea. Play the sports in a location that takes the pandemic seriously and has few enough cases that they can make it safely work.
If they have to be away from family anyway, why not bubble in a safe place where it can maybe work.
I’m guessing the players would revolt.
This has a lot in common with pretty much all of the never ending non-debates we have here on UnStuck, and used to have on 2+2. People are, of course, talking over each other.
I’ll respond to this personally.
If I was put in charge of public policy I’d shut the team sportsball down in the US, including the “bubbles”. But at the same time, I’m watching all the games, and cheerfully posting about them ITT. Does that make me a liar or hypocrite? Not in my book.
I already paid for mlb.tv. They aren’t giving refunds for the 2020 broadcasts. Should I watch those games, considering I’m in general against them being played? Hell yes in my book… this is historically unique baseball and I’m a baseball fan into it’s history, how could I not want to watch this? Should I be cheerfully posting about these games here? Why not… if I feel like doing so?
The same thing happens when we chat about politics. I’ll say something like “defund the police”. Our resident fool Messagista Brigade will predictably chime in with some crap about saying things like “defund the police” hurts the stupid potato’s odds of beating the toxic waste container in POTUSBOWL. Which, of course, is patently absurd considering we are only just ~50 ex-poker players here.
1 Like