Subject: Baseball
Date: Fri Apr 22 11:27:37 2022
User: MrFixit
Message:Yeah, seemed to work the first time.
Date: Sat Apr 23 13:53:48 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Miggy just got his 3000th.
Date: Sat Apr 23 22:46:38 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Cubs score three touchdowns,shutout Pirates at Wrigley.
Date: Sun Apr 24 01:33:20 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Players in MLB history with 500 HR, 3000 hits, and lifetime .300+ BA: Aaron, Mays, Cabrera.
Date: Sun Apr 24 03:11:58 2022
User: _.!._
Message:In the Cubs game it was that quite impressive trio of Hendricks/Newcomb and Effross with their 106/70 ON TOP of all that offense that impresses. Maybe some kind of record,who knows. Cubs vs Pitt and Phi have had some crazy explosions over the years.
Date: Sun Apr 24 12:05:11 2022
User: BuzzClik
Message:Is 106/70 impressive? Pirates pitchers had a nearly identical ratio.
Date: Sun Apr 24 13:18:08 2022
User: Klepp
Message:I wonder if Joey Votto is considering early retirement; he'd likely make a pretty good comic.
Date: Sun Apr 24 13:32:30 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:We need Snowguy to weigh in on this occasion. Where are you, Snowy? For that matter........................where is Danny Murtaugh when [they] need him?
Date: Sun Apr 24 20:28:55 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Actually,BuzzClik,they were the better ratio,with a few extra pitches. Okay,eaningless stat.
Date: Sun Apr 24 20:39:45 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Back When Men Were Men, vignette # 142:
Warren Spahn pitched 22 complete games at age 42, on his way to 382 total. The only 'modern' (nebulous delineation, admittedly, but for measuring "sturdiness" (not *quite* to be confused with "studliness"), it's not an absurd comparison at all) pitchers *remotely* in that 'league' are Robin Roberts with 305 and Gaylord Perry with 303. Early Wynn had 289, and Feller had 279, but both those guys started in the late '30s, so they're borderline at best. And Spahn missed 3 years early in his career with military service!
If one wants to use a less liberal interpretation of "modern", say "at least pitched into the '80s"..............then beyond Perry is Fergie Jenkins with 267, and Gibson and Lefty with 255 and 254 (altho technically Gibson didn't pitch into the '80s). Then you'll see more down in the 240s.
And.........for those not knowledgeable about such.............Cy Young had 749, and Pud Galvin had 646. Very likely nobody will ever touch *any* of the numbers in this post ever again.
Date: Mon Apr 25 00:37:51 2022
User: BuzzClik
Message:TN, your discussion perfectly meshes with the DL chat: Pitchers in the NL were batting less and less because they were pitching less and less.
The link below will take you to career complete game leaders for active pitchers. It's a who's who among pitchers, and the leader is Adam Wainwright with 27. In the 1970s, about 28% of the games pitched were complete games. That dropped to 2% in 2014. Maybe they don't keep that stat anymore. ;)
Today's baseball is a different game.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_game
Date: Mon Apr 25 03:43:01 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Yes, I was well aware of the parallel/dovetail discussion thing. I was also remembering our earlier discussion along similar lines back in May of 2015, altho I didn't go try and find it. But now I did. See link. And if one scrolls back to the previous page, one will see that firenze started the "when men were men" train of admiration(?). I recommend all to read firenze's link, about the 16-inning 1-0 duel between Marichal and Spahn. It's behind a pay wall, but jailbreaks very easily. For ease, here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/sports/baseball/02nohit.html
“The idea of doing permanent harm to a pitcher’s arm didn’t come into anyone’s mind.”
------------
Me: "The leader for all the major leagues last year was Clayton Kershaw, with 6. In 2013, 4 pitchers tied with 4 each. Wow - what a change....."
Some interesting stuff back in 2015 - even if some of them are attributed to me. ;) So the trend established well before 2015 has only gone even further.
As to your link, Buzz, I would probably have guessed Verlander, or possibly Kershaw, and they're second and third - but like I've said, I don't follow most players these days. I'm only obliquely aware of Wainright, which tells you how little I know many of the current players.
A quick check shows that Verlander has started 457 games, but has only 26 CG. That's kinda absurd. Kershaw has started 379, and has 25 CG (none since 2017). Wainright has started 362 and has the 27 CG, as you know.
I know sabermetrics is a powerful tool, but really? I wonder if there are some managerial types who think this has gone too far - but are afraid to speak up because they know too well which way the wind blows?
Link: earlier discussion of complete games and such
Date: Mon Apr 25 09:37:36 2022
User: Klepp
Message:My dad evinced his deep respect for Warren Spahn again yesterday; he saw the man's strength and stamina firsthand as a kid, following the old Braves (series winner in '57, with young Henry Aaron!).
Date: Mon Apr 25 13:16:28 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:I actually thought of you yesterday (well.....last night) as I was composing that post, Klepp, as that's your territory. What I hadn't realized until last year sometime was how short was the Braves stay in Milwaukee - only 13 years! The 'ancient' history of the team goes back to Boston in 1871, when they were the Red Stockings - NOT to be confused with the Red Sox. That's a whole story in and of itself. In fact..........the famous phrase "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain" (something I think you quoted in another thread years ago) was coined when they were still in Boston! And while the Red Stockings of Cincy are proud of their claim as the oldest professional baseball team, the Braves are actually the oldest *continuously-running* team, as the Red Stockings quit for a year in 1870. So the Braves were in Boston longer than in Milwaukee and Hotlanta put together, which is quite amazing.
And while most folks know the Ruth Red Sox/Yankees famous story, most don't know he came back to Boston late in his career as a member of the Braves. Here's the whole history of the Braves (with a real nice pic of Spahn high-kicking):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Braves
...........while below I'll link just the Boston version of them. All interesting stuff - at least to those interested in baseball history and lore.
Link: history of the Boston Braves
Date: Mon Apr 25 16:40:11 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Ok, trying to bone up on Wainwright........
He's against the DH.
He was world-ranked in racquetball ages 10-12 (I think).
He's had a world ranking in table tennis. May still have; not sure.
Last Sept., pitching (and winning) against fellow 40-yr. old Rich Hill of the Mets was the first time two 40-yr. olds had faced each other as starting pitchers since 2015. It's *also* the first time a *Cardinals* hurler had faced another 40-yr. old (Cincy's Eppa Rixey) since Dazzy Vance in 1933. Dang.
He's one of 19 pitchers to hit a HR his first at bat.
He's second only to Gibson in strikeouts among Cardinal hurlers. That's impressive.
Unfortunately..............some (1 or 2) of his complete games have come in those newfangled "baseball lite" 7-inning doubleheader games. Ernie Banks would be appalled - as should we all. I hope they're sticking prominent asterisks on such games.
Date: Mon Apr 25 17:06:02 2022
User: Klepp
Message:I like watching Rich Hill pitch, and thus getting screechingly pissed off at someone or something: an ump, a fan, a mascot, a television monitor, his manager, his pitching coach, a teammate, an opponent, the public address announcer, a ballpark fixture, a concessionaire, the heavens above, and even occasionally, his own very self...and he does so *each and every single time* he does pitch (over dozens of occurrence hilariously witnessed by myself)...hypertension...mood elevators...
Date: Wed Apr 27 12:36:11 2022
User: Klepp
Message:27-39...opponents' runs scored versus CHC' runs scored last seven games..1-6 record for CHC out of the seven (the 21-0 drubbing of PIT, of course)...(Snowguy can snicker)...
Date: Wed Apr 27 12:41:27 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Yeah, it's 'kinda' reminiscent of the '60 Series, when the Yanks totally blasted the Buccos in 3 games, but lost 4 close ones to lose the whole thing.
Date: Thu Apr 28 15:54:45 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Top of nine, down by one, one out, Yelich sees the shift on and...bunts away from it for a single to start an eventual game-winning rally to sweep PIT, in their (nice!) place...old school...
Date: Thu Apr 28 16:09:44 2022
User: Klepp
Message:And, regarding the '60 WS...I've course seen the clip of Yogi as LF, going going back back back, and pow! seeing MLB history unfold in front of him...
Why not see again?
Link: Greatest HR ever...as per ESPN (can't argue)
Date: Mon May 2 23:30:15 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Robinson Cano-doesnt get much better than tis. Ah,retirement.
Date: Thu May 5 17:37:42 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Madison Bumgarner wants to beat the snot out of Dan Bellino...and maybe he will someday...that's one dude I'd NEVER let get pissed off at me...ay yay yay...
Date: Thu May 5 18:02:43 2022
User: Klepp
Message:I wish I had seen a game here, with a HR to dead center.
Link: Polo Grounds
Date: Thu May 5 22:11:59 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Curiously..................one of my best friends and I have been discussing the old variations (there were a total of 4(?) iterations) of the Polo Grounds lately. SOOO many crazy stories. Willie Mays used to walk to work (occasionally stopping to play a bit of stickball with the kids in the street on the way!); and when they played the Yankees in the W.S. he even walked to the 'away' games at Yankee Stadium. Of all the iconic all baseball parks, that one's probably the *most* iconic. Sooo much history......
Date: Thu May 5 23:37:21 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Willie Mays would have 900 career HRs if he'd played in one of today's bandboxes instead of the Polo Grounds and Candlestick...
Date: Sat May 28 18:50:59 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Again, again, and again Jose Ramirez does it...how does this guy not get the pub he deserves? Oh yeah, he dominates from both sides of the plate in Cleveland, where the major networks don't give a damn since the city is so working-class poor and such (not demanding huge ad money for broadcast...
...a career .600 slugging percentage with the bases jammed? An RBI machine...
He's like Matt Stairs plus 25 points batting average! Matt Stairs comes to mind considering left-handed power at 5'9" 200 lbs....
Link: Nationally underappreciated annual All-Star and MVP candidate
Date: Sun May 29 18:34:17 2022
User: Klepp
Message:We all can dream...I want an Angels/Brewers WS...ahhh...
Date: Sun May 29 19:09:16 2022
User: Klepp
Message:I see Buck Showalter in the Mets' dugout, which causes me to flash back to NYY Buck Showalter manager speaking to George Costanza regarding...wait...see below...(Buck has aged rather well...
Link: A George Costanza/Buck Showalter tête-à-tête
Date: Mon May 30 02:58:40 2022
User: Klepp
Message:The Milwaukee Brewers are 23-3 when scoring four or more runs this season, no lie...of course that's a WS contender...
Date: Tue May 31 10:42:52 2022
User: joeygray
Message:I used to be such a baseball fan. How far that has fallen just came ringing through when I noticed for the first time. That the Cleveland Indians are no more. And it happened a year ago apparently.
Date: Fri Jun 3 04:02:12 2022
User: Klepp
Message:...ninth inning, down by three, hard single to right by Huira HBP, HBP...bringing up Jace Petersen...who triples off the right angled wall...McCutchen walks off...Rogers seemed really really pissed at a lot of people, and I guess stress did him in...suffered...some of that team is pissed they see MIL take rematch also, in October...Hey, you can understand pissed getting out no oats...in front of Josh Hader,
Date: Wed Jun 8 20:17:08 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Today's baseball: Kyle Schwarber hits leadoff for PHI with sub-.200 AVG (OPS .773, 119 OPS+)...............different...
Date: Wed Jun 8 20:26:53 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Today's baseball: Kyle Schwarber hits leadoff for PHI with sub-.200 AVG (OPS .773, 119 OPS+)...............different...
Date: Wed Jun 8 20:56:09 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon fired mid-season? Handful of Manager-of-the-Year titles between them, sure! If there were Vegas odds on that occurrence and somebody were an oracle, they'd have cleaned up (but I seriously doubt anyone did so...
Date: Thu Jun 9 19:15:01 2022
User: Klepp
Message:110-38...did I hear that correctly? The NYY-MIN head-to-head record since 2002? Yeesh...
Date: Sun Jun 12 18:45:11 2022
User: Klepp
Message:A black cat got loose in the Angels' dugout today? Oh, the painful metaphor for LAA fan...
Date: Sun Jun 12 19:43:02 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Sure feels a lot like another Subway Series summer heatin up.
Date: Tue Jun 21 02:25:21 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Sabermetrics produces (or "spins off") an offspring.
I'm thinkin'....................if'n I get me one of these contraptions.............in a few weeks I'll finally be able to hit a major league curve ball -- thus my path to The Show will be open.
And something tells me mr buck just might have one already -as if he needed the help.
.beautiful sound of a wooden bat correctly smacking a baseball
Link: Fight hi-tech with more hi-tech?
Date: Wed Jun 22 02:10:21 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Yeah, the crack of a bat ripping the cover off the ball is distinctive...I hope to hear the home team's batters regularly making such for Thursday's day game at American Family Field (née Miller Park)...enjoying the game in "the best seats in the joint" (just cheapies...you know, quoting that kid from John Sayles' "Eight Men Out"--(the best baseball movie ever made, opinion))...
Date: Wed Jun 22 02:54:31 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Ok...............back to the early pulling of Kershaw in April when he had a perfect game going..........
This is quite interesting - and worth absorbing, not skimming. One astonishing factoid is that there were 60 years between 2 of the occurrences. With all the rain-shortened games in the past, that just seems rather incredible.
Link: It coulda been............
Date: Wed Jun 22 15:14:21 2022
User: mrbuck
Message:TN, I haven't obtained one of these pitching machines yet although if I had I couldn't publicly admit it it seems. Perhaps one day I will but for the time being I'm still trying to perfect a submarine delivery knuckleball and knuckle curve.
mrbuck
Date: Mon Jun 27 23:10:14 2022
User: mrbuck
Message:You can place baseball and other games while playing baseball.
mrbuck
Link: circle takes the square
Date: Thu Jun 30 00:38:37 2022
User: joeygray
Message:So I hear the automated strike zone is coming soon to MLB. If not next year, then the year after.
Sorry, you die-hard traditionalists. Ever since I was a young boy first following the game and I heard about some pitchers, or hitters, getting more calls than others because of who they were I’ve hated the concept and the reality of that. Ever since I heard what a great “skill” it is that (some) catchers have framing a pitch that is a ball to cause the fallible ump to call it a strike, I’ve wished for there to be no such skill and no such effect. A strike should be a strike no matter who’s throwing, batting, catching, or umping and so I welcome the robo-ump.
Date: Thu Jun 30 01:58:45 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Don't know if you're aiming that at me or not, but in general I'd probably call myself a baseball traditionalist. But either way..........and as an ex-umpire................I heartily agree joey. That part of the game should not be left to 'chance'.
In my younger days, one of my professors (who was also a tennis buddy) and I spent some time trying to develop a chemical 'signature' a tennis ball would leave on a hard court, similar to what a ball does on a clay court. This was of course before the Mac-cam, or whatever they call it now. We made some small tentative progress, but it was a daunting task, and really was a rather tough problem. We gave up maybe 3-4 years before the electronic techniques came on the scene. And I doubt anyone would argue they've been a boon to the game.
Same with instant replays in football, basketball, and baseball. Altho in basketball, imo, it should be radically expanded *and* speeded up. There's far too much money on the line, and the margins of error are far too tiny to allow human shortcomings to affect outcomes. I think the tennis comparison may be closest, and there are at least 20x more points in time when an electronic eye would be useful in baseball. If it works, it'd be totally crazy NOT to employ it.
So although I hadn't heard this news, it can't help but improve the game.
Date: Thu Jun 30 07:37:02 2022
User: joeygray
Message:In football and basketball the problems are IMO intractable. Of course they have reviews to fix the most egregious reffing mistakes but tons of things, seemingly almost every play, call for judgements too close to call even in slow motion but the calls and non calls are critical to the plays’ outcomes, and thus the game outcome. That’s why reviews take so long and I see no hope of speeding it up, nor of course any hope of robo-decisions doing any better. The baseball strike zone is not that. It’s pretty clear-cut, and a robocall is going to be more correct than a human can be.
Date: Thu Jun 30 08:37:14 2022
User: mrbuck
Message:I'm also a baseball traditionalist (FU DH!) and I welcome our robo ump overlords with open arms!
mrbuck
Date: Thu Jun 30 08:58:19 2022
User: Klepp
Message:One of the beauties of baseball is its ability to nearly always being able to be reduced to an obvious binary call: strike ball catch no catch homer double safe out et cetera et cetera...so very unlike its counterpart sports...
Date: Thu Jun 30 14:15:28 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:I don't disagree with your comments, joey, about football and hoops. I think football is decent where they are now - or fairly close to it - other than holding calls, etc., which will never be amenable to anything other than judgement-in-the-moment.
Hoops is where there could be some dramatic improvement. My semi-solution would be to have something like 4-5 appeals per quarter (NBA), BUT the reviews would have to be very quick - like 30 seconds max - preferably 20 seconds. There would be two replay officials, let's say. They wouldn't have to see 5 or 7 angles. They would have *maybe* 3 views to look at, but 2 would be better. They would just decide, quickly, if the call was correct or not, on a best-guess-quickly basis. If they disagree, the call stands and play continues. I think the players would eventually adjust; quickly, actually. One of the key drawbacks of the NBA to college ball is the flagrant traveling stuff ("Euro-step", etc.). The contact underneath on every play is another, and maybe harder to police, but it really needs to be reined in. Zero chance my ideas will be taken up, of course. I'm just sayin'. The good news is that over the course of the far-too-long playoffs, the cream still rises to the top. Over that period, the signal-to-noise ratio is sufficient to show that (perhaps with some exceptions, but very few). (It's easily within my memory that (some) folks called basketball a "non-contact sport". LOL)
In March Madness, the problem is actually worse, because it's one-and-done, and there have been some egregious and shattering miscarriages therein. And those moments can be somewhat life-defining, athletically-speaking, for some of those kids. But it's an easier problem to solve, with, say, 4-5 challenges/half. It just *has* to be quick and efficient. And one thing that *really* bugs me is that certain plays can be reviewed with under 2 minutes left, but only then. Why is an event that happens at 2:01 somehow less relevant than one at 1:59? I know, one *can* make an argument supporting the "well, you have to draw the line somewhere", but it doesn't really fix that. Ok, enough yammering.......
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