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Thanks for the writeup! I read something about Clint Hurdle trying to make the clubhouse adhere to a strict Christian lifestyle, but he's gone now. It comes from the top though, I'm sure. Colorado Springs is like the evangelical Mecca.
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| # ? Mar 10, 2011 23:42 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 08:01 |
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A good source for info about this upcoming year is the Meet the Team thread, if you want to see how posters see their team panning out and what the roster will be
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| # ? Mar 10, 2011 23:47 |
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ManifunkDestiny posted:Counterpoint Counterpoint  http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=2935802
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 00:24 |
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DONT READ THIS POST posted:Counterpoint gently caress the Astros forever
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 00:46 |
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ManifunkDestiny posted:Counterpoint No, that was pretty loving hilarious.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 01:07 |
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Badfinger posted:No, that was pretty loving hilarious. Haha, enough said!
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:00 |
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With the pitcher hitting in the NL, doesn't that also make it harder for the eighth hitter to get anything good to hit? Is there any truth to that or is that more old-timey gobbledygook? Or do most teams not have enough good hitters in the day to day lineup for that to matter.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:11 |
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rabidsquid posted:With the pitcher hitting in the NL, doesn't that also make it harder for the eighth hitter to get anything good to hit? Is there any truth to that or is that more old-timey gobbledygook? Or do most teams not have enough good hitters in the day to day lineup for that to matter.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:18 |
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rabidsquid posted:With the pitcher hitting in the NL, doesn't that also make it harder for the eighth hitter to get anything good to hit? Is there any truth to that or is that more old-timey gobbledygook? Or do most teams not have enough good hitters in the day to day lineup for that to matter.  #8 guy to 2nd if he succeeds at the bunt. Now you've got a man on 2nd and the top of the line up with 1 or 2 outs. So the pitcher (on mound) is gonna want get Mr. #8 out. So he'll throw off-speed and breaking pitches to strike or induce ground out. #8 hitters aren't that great. They're usually speedy outfielders who don't have a lot of power. So if the throwing pitcher succeeds in getting #8 out, batting pitcher is almost a sure out so you have 2nd or 3rd out.Now here comes TLR (Tony La Russa, Cardinals manager) to gently caress everything up and put the pitcher as #8. I've yet to figure out why he does that.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:29 |
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JediGandalf posted:Now here comes TLR (Tony La Russa, Cardinals manager) to gently caress everything up and put the pitcher as #8. I've yet to figure out why he does that. i do it all the time in video games though because it's a video game so who gives a gently caress
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:35 |
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If you run lineups through the lineup analysis tool it reinforces the idea of the worst hitter batting eighth.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 05:43 |
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Yeah, the idea is you use your ninth guy as a second leadoff hitter, and it gives your best hitters at the top of the order more chances to drive someone in. One of the few non-retarded things that TLR has contributed to General Baseball Theory.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 06:10 |
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it's actually a pretty neat idea to put your speedy stolen base guy 9th because then he's stealing his way into scoring position for your 1 and 2 hitters who are generally good singles hitters with less power. putting the speedy guys at leadoff and 2-hole is actually a bit counterintuitive since they're gonna get most of their steal opportunities when your power hitters, who can actually plate them from first base, are up. i mean, if the speedy guy happens to be your best option for leadoff hitter that's one thing but teams will often bat a guy first who has a average OBP but is fast.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 06:30 |
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Tiny Torso posted:it's actually a pretty neat idea to put your speedy stolen base guy 9th because then he's stealing his way into scoring position for your 1 and 2 hitters who are generally good singles hitters with less power. putting the speedy guys at leadoff and 2-hole is actually a bit counterintuitive since they're gonna get most of their steal opportunities when your power hitters, who can actually plate them from first base, are up. I was told that the idea of having a speedy guy batting leadoff is that a long time ago the strategy was to just have the second batter bunt the runner over / advance him and then he'd be in scoring position for your 3 and 4 hitter. A bunt seems like the absolute worst possible approach at the plate to me so that seems crazy, but I'm not exactly versed in baseball history. Lineup order seems kind of arbitrary to me, it seems like it'd just be best to put your best hitters in descending order because the guys earlier in the lineup are going to bat more. Edit: Ok do I not get baseball or doesn't putting your cleanup guys 3rd and 4th make it more likely for them to come up with 1 or 2 outs, even if your leadoff and number two hitter are otherwise your next best hitters? Wouldn't it be better to bat your best hitters first and second in this case? The cleanup guy is going to be leading off the second if nobody gets on ahead of him anyways, and that would get those guys more at-bats. Is there just not enough of a difference for it to matter or am I looking at this totally the wrong way or what. Relief use seems kinda arbitrary to me too, why isn't the best reliever used in high leverage late game situations? It's not like you get to pick the heart of your order to bat in the 9th anything. Is there a reason for this that I am missing somewhere. rabidsquid fucked around with this message at Mar 11, 2011 around 06:47 |
| # ? Mar 11, 2011 06:43 |
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rabidsquid posted:Lineup order seems kind of arbitrary to me, it seems like it'd just be best to put your best hitters in descending order because the guys earlier in the lineup are going to bat more. Edit: Ok do I not get baseball or doesn't putting your cleanup guys 3rd and 4th make it more likely for them to come up with 1 or 2 outs, even if your leadoff and number two hitter are otherwise your next best hitters? Wouldn't it be better to bat your best hitters first and second in this case? The cleanup guy is going to be leading off the second if nobody gets on ahead of him anyways, and that would get those guys more at-bats. Is there just not enough of a difference for it to matter or am I looking at this totally the wrong way or what. quote:Relief use seems kinda arbitrary to me too, why isn't the best reliever used in high leverage late game situations? It's not like you get to pick the heart of your order to bat in the 9th anything. Is there a reason for this that I am missing somewhere. once again tony la russa is to blame Moe_Rahn fucked around with this message at Mar 11, 2011 around 07:12 |
| # ? Mar 11, 2011 07:03 |
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Moe_Rahn posted:The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball spends about thirty pages dissecting this stuff, and they came to the conclusion that the place to put your best hitters are the 1, 2, and 4 spots, with your next two best batting in the 3 and 5 spots. (Hope you like crazy huge run expectancy tables.) Of course over the entire season the effect of your batting order might add up to a couple wins at most, so a lot of the crazy advanced stuff really isn't that important, but it's neat to read about. This is really interesting to me actually. It looks like it covers a lot of questions I had about batting. Also nice to see the sacrifice bunt is in fact a terrible idea. Thanks!
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 07:58 |
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Moe_Rahn posted:this is the way it used to be TLR's cerebral, academic approach doesn't blah blah blah I'm Joe Sheehan and I'm terrible.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 12:55 |
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Moe_Rahn posted:Of course over the entire season the effect of your batting order might add up to a couple wins at most, so a lot of the crazy advanced stuff really isn't that important, but it's neat to read about.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 13:10 |
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Assuming that you could squeeze a win or two out of an optimized lineup over the course of a season, if you expect to be an 88-92 win team, wouldn't that be way more important than we usually give it credit for? edit: although I guess if this is one of those cases where it's the worst possible lineup vs. the best than never mind
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 16:10 |
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stuart scott irl posted:Assuming that you could squeeze a win or two out of an optimized lineup over the course of a season, if you expect to be an 88-92 win team, wouldn't that be way more important than we usually give it credit for? Who is like, unquestionably the Worst manager in terms of lineup design? We could compare a weighted blahblah of their various lineups to the optimal using the same personnel for each game. Then I would hang myself in my mom's basement for being such a horrible nerd.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 16:12 |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't TLR not really put that "second leadoff man" in the 9 spot, and just swaps the guy who would have been hitting 8th anyway with the pitcher? It can't be much of a true advantage.KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Who is like, unquestionably the Worst manager in terms of lineup design? We could compare a weighted blahblah of their various lineups to the optimal using the same personnel for each game. Then I would hang myself in my mom's basement for being such a horrible nerd. Every manager uses basically the same lineup formula, so it kind of comes down to the players they have available. The Mariners did have Jose Vidro hit a combination of 3-4-5 over 50 times in 2008 though, so that's pretty awful.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 19:11 |
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Badfinger posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't TLR not really put that "second leadoff man" in the 9 spot, and just swaps the guy who would have been hitting 8th anyway with the pitcher? It can't be much of a true advantage. it works fine in MLB: The Show or your video game of choice, where you can just go hog wild in franchise mode and make a crazy stacked lineup, or maybe if the Yankees played in the NL it would work well for them, but most baseball teams don't actually have 8 hitters who are good enough that getting into the minutiae of lineup construction will really give a gigantic advantage like, if you're debating the merits of batting Nick Stavinoha in the 8 spot vs the 9, his place in the order is not the real problem here
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 19:48 |
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I remember when I played Baseball for my Freshman HS team, my coach always put a good hitter in the 9 hole because he wanted to psyche out the opposing pitcher thinking he could throw junk to the guy and it'd be an easy out. It wasn't till recently that I found out that it's a really dumb bullshit idea.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 21:19 |
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seiferguy posted:I remember when I played Baseball for my Freshman HS team, my coach always put a good hitter in the 9 hole because he wanted to psyche out the opposing pitcher thinking he could throw junk to the guy and it'd be an easy out. It wasn't till recently that I found out that it's a really dumb bullshit idea. Baseball will probably be in its dark ages in terms of lineup composition for a while to come.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 21:42 |
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Why do the leagues have different rules(pitcher bats vs dh)? This has always bothered me a little bit, with different teams in the same sport having slightly different rules. It's been like this for as long as I've paid attention to baseball but I've never bothered to look it up. At what point did the AL decide to get DH's and how did baseball in general not say, "woah, no."
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 22:55 |
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Jolo posted:Why do the leagues have different rules(pitcher bats vs dh)? This has always bothered me a little bit, with different teams in the same sport having slightly different rules. It's been like this for as long as I've paid attention to baseball but I've never bothered to look it up. At what point did the AL decide to get DH's and how did baseball in general not say, "woah, no." In the 60's, the AL batters were getting owned by pitchers and attendance was down because they didn't have latin or black stars since the NL was quicker to adapt to the influx of player development. The AL decided that adding a hitter for the pitcher, because pitchers are poo poo, would help improve scoring and drive attendance. It was true, but the after effect of this is that eventually talent pools in both leagues got closer and closer and thus the AL became a more offensive driven league than the NL. The NL never had a reason to adopt the DH because they were doing fine at the time and were all 'true baseball'. This is like a short paraphrased history of the DH from my head edit: some DATA, before the DH was instituted the AL once hit .230 as a league. Awful.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 23:04 |
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Jolo posted:how did baseball in general not say, "woah, no." I'm not sure but hopefully it was because "baseball in general" realized it was an awesome idea and made the sport better.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 23:04 |
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Up until a certain point of time (I actually want to say within the last two decades), the two leagues were run mostly independently, so as long as the MLB commissioner approved the idea, the AL was good to go. The NL had a similar vote about introducing the DH at the same time and it was shot down by the NL but not the AL, but the commissioner was okay with the rule change and due to separate structures you end up with present day.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 23:08 |
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Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. How do you guys keep up with the sport? For example, I live in a college football town with an NBA team nearby. Keeping up with football and basketball is as simple as listening to the radio and watching/attending the games when they're available. I've never been able to get into baseball because of the lack of coverage in my area as well as the sheer volume of games in a season. I've been thinking about signing on to one of those mlbtv groups, but even still, I just wont have the time to watch 100+ games. Can you all recommend a website to keep up with the ins and outs of the league throughout the season? Blah, rereading this question makes me sound kind of dumb. My question literally is, how do you follow baseball in a non baseball area?
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 23:30 |
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I live in Boston so this isn't an issue for me now, but I grew up in southern VT. I listened to a lot of games on the radio. Listening to games on the radio owns. You can get an MLB.com subscription for all radio feeds ever for 20/season, so if you like the radio it's great.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2011 23:36 |
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Jolo posted:Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. I try to watch as many White Sox games as I can, but I can be forgetful, or lazy, or they play at 10pm on a worknight. I do however read the boxscore on pretty much every game. When there's downtime at work I go to fangraphs.com and baseball-reference.com and just look at stats. It may sound boring, but I find I've learned a lot just by looking at numbers/googling what I don't know and reading these guys in this forum shoot the poo poo. Being as though I'm a White Sox fan in Red Sox territory, it still gives me the chance to talk baseball with actual humans. (RESULTS MAY VARY)
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 00:39 |
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Jolo posted:
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 00:46 |
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MLB.tv is pretty great all around, especially if you're not in your team's blackout area. Otherwise, I scan CNN/SI and ESPN, then have a couple Yankees bloggers/fans on Twitter, and the Yankees Facebook page posts regular updates on major team news. Fantasy helps, since having 10-20 guys spread out across 10-20 teams also keeps you at least tangentially aware of what most teams are doing. Thing is, baseball has so many games in a season that you probably can't watch each one, but they're also much less important and you learn what games matter for your team pretty quick. Like a mid-May game against the Mariners probably doesn't have major implications for the Yankees season, but a late August/September game against the Red Sox probably does have implications for the playoffs or whatever. I consider myself relatively casual, though. One of the guys in my fantasy league gets up 30 minutes early during baseball season JUST to read baseball news.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 01:14 |
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So how bad/annoying of a manager is LaRussa and is a lot of the angst towards him because of the media sucking his nuts all the time?
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 01:28 |
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Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:I consider myself relatively casual, though. One of the guys in my fantasy league gets up 30 minutes early during baseball season JUST to read baseball news.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 01:43 |
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Jolo posted:Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. Jolo posted:Blah, rereading this question makes me sound kind of dumb. My question literally is, how do you follow baseball in a non baseball area?
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 01:44 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I live in Boston so this isn't an issue for me now, but I grew up in southern VT. Just to add to this, I really love listening to games on the radio, too. Sometimes I prefer to listen to a game rather than watch it on TV, so I could do homework or play videogames or any number of things while half-paying attention to baseball. I had an XM radio subscription for a while back in the day which was great, since I was living outside of the Boston market at the time and such could listen to Red Sox games in the car or anywhere - this was in the dark ages before iPhone apps and such. Now you can just get At-Bat app (which I would actually recommend above a standard mlb.com subscription if you just want to listen to a lot of games). Also, I really think that baseball is so much better-suited to radio than literally every other popular American sport. Unlike football, hockey, basketball, and even soccer baseball does not really involve fast-paced action and complicated physical play that often involves strategies and maneuvering that quite frankly just cannot be properly communicated via audio in the allotted time. Baseball is perfect for radio because there's this relaxed, easy rhythm to it, punctuated occasionally by periods of intense action, which can always be exhaustively described and dissected in the subsequent downtime. Radio has a real old-school charm, especially when you've got a really good long-time broadcaster working the game.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 04:53 |
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So for every Cubs loss this year I decided I'm going to drink a new beer. Double for every game Zambrano so much as even hints of throwing a fit. Finding 80+ different styles of beer is gonna be tough though.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 05:20 |
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The cool thing about baseball is you can mostly tell what happened in the game just by checking out the box score*, which doesn't really work for football or basketball. It's also the best 'follow on gamecast' sport and I personally do this all the time for early round playoff games that tend to happen on weekdays. *And you'll want to do it that way, cause the baseball season is about 60 games too long imo. People who watch every game are seriously hardcore (or drunk in the case of Cub fans)
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 05:26 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 08:01 |
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Some Jerk posted:(or drunk in the case of Cub fans) Hey Cubs fans don't watch baseball we go out to drink and Baseball just happens to be on.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2011 05:32 |
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