On that podcast I referred to earlier, they also talked about a guy who, in the 1960s when baseball was struggling to find offense, had an idea that when a player gets tagged out on a base, his team would have the option to either:
a) take the out, but get to send the runner back to previous base, or
b) lose the baserunner, but not get charged with an out
That’s probably silly, but I think it’d be fun to see a few games like that just to see how it played out. I guess the decision would almost be obvious, but it still seems interesting to me.
I really really really hate the shift. Load up some 1970s web gems on the youtubez. Don’t see that much anymore.
Plus the whole launch angle thing to go over the shift.
I’d love to have a pitch clock that was more like a chess clock. Save extra time for high leverage situations. But still prefer no visible clock. Up to ump.
Don’t mind the ghost runner but as a compromise maybe play 10th and 11th straight up and then use it.
Want to see how batters do against the high heat wo the shift. Balls in play has to go up.
Agreed. Excited for the shift exclusion, though we are still going to see the SS play as close to second as humanly possible and the 2b with his heels backed up to the grass
I’d put tick marks 10’ on either side of the centerline. No man zone.
The main reason for bigger basrs is reduced injuries, including on slides and plays not at first. Increasing stolen bases is just a minimal side effect.
Mccarver died :(
This is a real album:
If you thought you were done with the Rio after the WSOP moved…
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Mcgriff should have picked the Tom Emanski hat
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I associate Rolen more with the Phillies but that may be because I was more of a baseball fan in the 1990s then the 2000s. Also a lot of those late 90s Philly teams were pretty unremarkable. And he won his only WS with the Cardinals.
Looking back at those teams, Bobby Abreu is a very interesting Hall of Very Good guy. He has almost a decade of being a .400+ OBP hitter. Without the poor defending I wonder if he would get a little sabermetric support for the HOF. Even accounting for his bad defense bWAR has him at 60, notably higher than fan favorite McGriff. Interesting example of doing good things the quiet way with walks and doubles vs. the loud way with dingers. Chicks and HOF commentators love the long ball.
Abreu gets hurt from not having an elite peak. He was an AS level player for a long time (should have made quite a few more teams), but never in discussion for MVP or really even top-10 hitter in the league.
He does deserve it more than McGriff, but that’s mostly cause McGriff isn’t a HOFer.
Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy won’t commit to a date when Jacob deGrom would take the mound for the first time in Spring Training.
It’s not because he isn’t confident that deGrom is fine in the long term. It’s more about not getting cornered into a date.
In the wake of Steve Cohen’s spending and the financial turmoil at Bally regional sports networks, Major League Baseball has started an “economic reform committee.” Less than a year after MLB and the Players Association came to an agreement to end the 2021-22 lockout, the committee’s formation emphasizes that some MLB owners are unhappy enough that they want to discuss major change.
“It came out of a recognition of a couple of issues — one new, one old — that were particularly acute for us,” commissioner Rob Manfred said. “The new one’s the local media situation. I think that people see it as an opportunity to rethink the revenue side of the house a little bit, which has been hard in our sport. People entrenched in their local (media dynamics).”
Diamond Sports Group is the parent company of 19 Bally Sports channels, which carry 14 MLB teams. The company appears headed for bankruptcy. If that’s the case, MLB hopes to be in a position to distribute those teams’ games digitally.
…
The older challenge Manfred referred to is indeed a long-running topic in the sport: owners who are unhappy about the difference in the amount of money teams make. (For as long as those complaints have existed, so too have rebuttals that the clubs are doing well financially.)
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Not putting him in the hall would be a crime, dog
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It’s finally that day !!!1!
Today is the first day of spring training games. Leading up to opening day March 30. It’s like they made the schedule for Sabo the dog and me today. First up: Northeastern Univ vs my Red Sox in Ft.Myers FL at 10:05am. Hopefully last season’s subscription to mlb.tv is still working. There’s a non-televised game. Then the final game today is Mariners vs Sabo’s Padres in Peoria AZ at 12:10pm. Hopefully BSSD is still in busines
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Yes, BSSD was still in business yesterday. Tommorrow? Who knows. The RSN model, used by MLB, NBA, and NHL, is also the source of their despised home team blackouts. That model seems to be imploding in real time.
For us unfortunate consumers of this product, I’d suggest holding off buying anything more than the month-to-month version of mlb.tv to get the spring training games, until we get further news. It’s possible, perhaps likely, that things will fundamentally change for us consumers by the time the regular season starts in 4.5 weeks.
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