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MrChips posted:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/sports/baseball/pitchers-spring-training.html quote:Pitching’s Outsiders: ‘No One Wants to Play Catch With Us’ The truth.
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Mar 2, 2020 23:52
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I feel like if they mic'd up players like that for regular season games it would be a huge hit and increase ratings. Maybe not during at-bats but it'd be cool to just mic up 5-10 guys for a national TV game and have conversations with them at random points. I would watch any game with players just riffing.
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Mar 2, 2020 23:59
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Tony Phillips posted:Mic'd up vids reminding me of Mookie's "I ain't gettin this one, boys." My favorite part about this that nobody talks about is how it sounds like he's got pockets full of loose change while he runs.
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Mar 3, 2020 00:07
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If you mic'd up players during regular season games you'd get a million people screaming that they're not taking their jobs seriously and they should work harder for how much they're paid. And then one player would totally actually get distracted and gently caress up transparently and it would be the funniest thing ever followed by the most obnoxious backlash.
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Mar 3, 2020 00:08
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I got tired of not being able to read Posnanski's Top 100 entries, and saw a deal for 40% off The Athletic for a year, and subbed. Man... you guys were right. This is absolutely worth it.
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Mar 3, 2020 00:18
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STAC Goat posted:If you mic'd up players during regular season games you'd get a million people screaming that they're not taking their jobs seriously and they should work harder for how much they're paid. Who gives a poo poo about those people? It'd be fun as hell for everyone who's brain isn't mush.
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Mar 3, 2020 00:20
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I think it would suck
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Mar 3, 2020 00:27
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I thought it was pretty great when they had Bryce Harper mic'd up during the 2018 All Star game and then Mike Trout hit a home run off Jacob deGrom while they were talking to him
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Mar 3, 2020 00:37
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MrMojok posted:I got tired of not being able to read Posnanski's Top 100 entries, and saw a deal for 40% off The Athletic for a year, and subbed. Any favorites so far? Charlie Gehringer, Frank Thomas, Bob Gibson, Jimmie Foxx and Greg Maddux have been mine.
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Mar 3, 2020 01:18
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https://twitter.com/espn/status/1234630311725719552 I guess that's an interesting way to uh get around the hitters figuring out ahead of time what you're about to throw
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Mar 3, 2020 01:38
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Trevor Bauer's gonna be like "If I do this I'm throwing a fastball", do it all Spring, and then in his first start do it and throw a curve and think he's the smartest guy in the world. Then he'll try it a second time and someone will hit a really big HR.
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Mar 3, 2020 01:47
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Pancakes posted:Any favorites so far? Charlie Gehringer, Frank Thomas, Bob Gibson, Jimmie Foxx and Greg Maddux have been mine. Andy McCullough is great as well. Came from the Los Angeles Times where I followed him closely, great writer.
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Mar 3, 2020 01:49
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STAC Goat posted:Trevor Bauer's gonna be like "If I do this I'm throwing a fastball", do it all Spring, and then in his first start do it and throw a curve and think he's the smartest guy in the world. Yeah this was my initial thought as well, followed by him actually sticking to it until he gets lit up. I'm not even sure why he's doing it, is it to prove that he's good enough to get guys out even if they know what's coming or what? It would be amusing if it worked out though and the Astros biggest critic manages to show that stealing signs doesn't actually matter.
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Mar 3, 2020 01:52
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Johnny Bravo posted:https://twitter.com/espn/status/1234630311725719552 Pretty sure he's just trying to prove the point of how advantageous it was for Astros hitters to know in advance what was coming. Several guys have come out and said that they'd rather face a player on steroids than one who knows what's coming. e. He did the same thing a while back when trying to prove the Astros were abusing pine tar where suddenly one start his velo and spin rates went up across the board and he was coy about how that could be the case on twitter. Sydin fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 02:36
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Pancakes posted:Any favorites so far? Charlie Gehringer, Frank Thomas, Bob Gibson, Jimmie Foxx and Greg Maddux have been mine. I'm cherrypicking, haven't read too many yet. I definitely agree with you about the Maddux one. I read that one first, in fact. Out of all the games I've seen live in my lifetime, maybe forty or so at various different parks, for whatever reason the one that stands out the most in my memory is this one. It was early in the season, and typical lovely bay weather--it had been raining off and on all day, and this continued into the evening during the game. Cold as gently caress, the Giants were still playing at Candlestick, with that incredible awful gusting wind. Maddux only went six innings/74 pitches and while he did give up four hits and a walk, the amazing thing was, there was never any sense that he was in any jeopardy at all. There was never the remotest feeling that any of the Giants runners were going to come around and score. I mean, he was just in total control all the time. He knew it, and so did the Giants. His opponent was a kid named William Van Landingham, and Van Landingham did not have what anyone would call a great fastball but man, his POPPED into the glove in comparison with what Maddux was throwing. There were few people there and a lot left because the rain and wind were nasty, so we moved down pretty close to see Maddux. It just didn't look like he was throwing anything impressive at all... but they just simply could not square him up. The best-hit ball off him was a double Glenallen Hill sent into the gap, but I don't remember any other hard contact at all that night. It really was like magic, and I really dug Posnanski comparing seeing Maddux to seeing a magic show. I also enjoyed the one about Bob Feller. I have a long way to go on this list. Also, I've looked around at what else is on the site, and it's just great sportswriting. So glad I did this!
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Mar 3, 2020 02:41
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Agreed. The Athletic is totally worth it. I think any current subscriber can also send a link for 40 percent off a subscription. Not sure how long that will last though.
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Mar 3, 2020 02:59
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MrMojok posted:His opponent was a kid named William Van Landingham Quite a fat kid if I remember right. Third of his name.
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Mar 3, 2020 03:00
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Been goofing around on BB-ref while I read these top 100 articles. I just read the one about George Brett, and while I vividly remember the summer he flirted with .400, what I had somehow forgotten was that he didn't get above .300 until May 31st. Check this out, the 81-game stretch from June 1st through the end of that season, Brett hit .427 with an OPS of 1.213. He was hitting for that average AND hitting them out of the park at a rate of one about every fifteen ABs, too. Absolutely insane. Here's that stretch of games. Skim down it and see all the 3 for 5, 4 for 5, 3 for 4 games. Just amazing: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=brettge01&t=b&year=1980#922-1002-sum:batting_gamelogs e: Also during that stretch he struck out just 14 times, in 316 ABs e2: And here is what he did during that postseason. Holy loving poo poo https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=brettge01&t=b&year=0&post=1#15-23-sum:batting_gamelogs_post MrMojok fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 03:31
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Finally, a non dipshit Astro speaks https://www.getmoresports.com/mlb-news-former-astro-offers-give-world-series-ring/
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Mar 3, 2020 03:39
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I feel like the only guys I could MAYBE believe didn't know about it were the bullpen guys. MAYBE. Either way giving away your ring would be a power move.
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Mar 3, 2020 03:43
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All of those Bryzzo videos are amazing
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Mar 3, 2020 04:18
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I know why they don't, but gently caress it would be so fun if everyone was micced up during more games. Like, gently caress it if it's some nothing game like the loving padres playing the marlins for like last place in the league, just mic them up to make the game enjoyable to watch or something
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Mar 3, 2020 04:40
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I agree. It especially works well when you have two players who can talk to each other so you get more than the occasional cheer or grunt. The fact that Rizzo and Bryant are both supremely capable players who can get (spring training) hits while mic'd up just makes it all the better.
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Mar 3, 2020 05:36
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Pancakes posted:Who all's left at this point? We've got 26 spots left to fill: I am getting really intrigued by this, myself. Cannot wait to see 5 through 1. I have to say, I'm a nerd who spends hours looking at baseball-ref and using their play index. And out of all the thousands of players I can find on there, of all the time I've spent daydreaming what it must have been like to be able to see Mantle or Ruth or Williams or Koufax or Mays play live... if I had a time machine and I could go back and see just one player, anyone I chose, it wouldn't be any of them. It would be Satchel Paige, pitching in his prime in the negro leagues. There are so many stories about players in those leagues that sound almost like fables, and there's a real paucity of statistics, and so much of it is just word of mouth, transcribed into written accounts for us to read now. But man... if you read about Satchel, there is so much poo poo out there, accounts from contemporaries talking about how special he was. If there is this much smoke, there has to have been some fire behind it. If you read this stuff, you are left with an impression of a pitcher with amazing control, able to blow people away but also able to change speeds and gently caress with peoples' timing by changing windup and arm angle. And above all, a showman. I apologize for the length, this is going to be a lot of quotes. quote:The ace, as expected, was Satchel. He won twenty-nine games and lost just two, one of the best records for any pitcher ever. While his 1933 ratio of eleven strikeouts for every walk had been inspired, in 1935 he nearly doubled that, with 321 strikeouts and a mere sixteen bases on balls. quote:There was less risk involved in the antics that spotlighted his pinpoint control, since most of these came before the game. Satchel’s favorite foil was a soft book of matches. Sometimes he laid it on home plate, then threw eight of ten pitches directly over it. Or he set the matchbook atop a stick, then knocked it off. Other targets of choice: a postage stamp, a handkerchief, the knob on top of a baseball cap, and a gum wrapper, preferably Wrigley’s Spearmint. The gum went into his mouth, the silver wrapper on home plate, the ball right over the wrapper. With practice targets so small, home plate looked as big as a mattress. On Paige trying out for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 41 (or was it 43? It seems Paige himself did not know how old he was), and this is also long after Paige suffered what sounds like a serious rotator cuff injury in 1938, a decade earlier. quote:The tryout was next—throwing to Boudreau for twenty minutes, then having him stand in with a bat. As soon as Boudreau stepped to the plate, Satchel reached back with his patented corkscrew windup and blistered in a pitch that the player-manager hit foul. Then he did it again, overhand, sidearm, and underhand. More foul balls, weak grounders, and infield pop-ups. The surreal scene playing out before seventy-eight thousand empty seats was made more so by Veeck hobbling around on his artificial leg shagging balls. Boudreau might have been vying with Ted Williams for the batting title, but “against Paige, he batted .000,” recalled the Indians owner. “Satch threw twenty pitches. Nineteen of them were strikes. Lou swung nineteen times and he had nothing that looked like a base hit. After a final pop fly, Lou dropped his bat, came over to us and said, ‘Don’t let him get away, Will. We can use him. quote:The pitcher was at his best when a wager was on the line, like it was one night in 1957 in Rochester, New York. There was a hole just big enough for a baseball in the outfield fence, and Satchel’s Miami Marlins teammate Whitey Herzog had tried nearly two hundred times to throw one through. No go. Tired of hearing Satchel brag that he could do it, Herzog dared him to try. quote:Equally amazing was the night the Marlins sponsored a distance-throwing contest for outfielders. Herzog, who could play all three outfield spots, managed to peg the ball an impressive 380 feet. “Satchel told me after that contest, ‘I can throw farther than that.’ The next night he threw drat near to the backstop from home on the fly,” or about 400 feet, remembers Herzog. Satchel was over fifty then, Herzog twenty-six. The Marlins outfielder was not around several years earlier when Satchel made a similar bet with catcher Clint Courtney of the St. Louis Browns. Satchel’s throw then went an estimated 427 feet—eighteen feet shy of the current Guinness World Record of 445 feet, 10 inches. Depending on just when he made his toss he might have had a claim on an earlier record of 426 feet, 9 inches, which stood from 1910 until 1952. quote:Nearly everyone Satchel played with or against had a comparable story. He pointed to fielders to designate who would make the next play, then pitched the batter in a way that guaranteed it was hit there. The twitching of fingers that foes presumed was a nervous tic really was a signal to his defense how to position itself for the next batter. He created jams simply to show he could work his way out of them. Then there was his heart-stopper, a move reported by teammates throughout his career much the way Ned Garver saw it when he and Satchel were with the St. Louis Browns in the early ’50s. The tying run was on third in the eighth or ninth inning, and the batter hit a one-hopper to Satchel. quote:If Randy Johnson was a force of nature when he signed on with the 2009 San Francisco Giants at age forty-five, and Nolan Ryan a medical miracle still pitching in the pros at forty-six, what are we to make of Satchel suiting up for three innings with the Kansas City As at age fifty-nine? quote:Rogers Hornsby, whose career average of .358 was second-highest in history behind the mighty Ty Cobb, likely never forgot or forgave the time Satchel struck him out three times in one game. Paige, with the 1951 St. Louis Browns, at the age of 44, or perhaps 46: quote:Veeck had an experiment of his own for his pitching star. Photographers snapped shots of twenty-five hitters standing in the batter’s box with just their hips showing. “We painted out all possible marks of identifications—socks, and so on—and showed the photographs to our pitching staff,” he said. BB-ref has Ted loving Williams as 2 for 11, against Paige. And this is Ted at age 29-30 and 32, vs Paige at 41-42 and 44 (or perhaps 43-44 and 46): 
MrMojok fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 09:16
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LonesomeCrowdedWest posted:Agreed. The Athletic is totally worth it. I think any current subscriber can also send a link for 40 percent off a subscription. Not sure how long that will last though. Very interested in that 40% hookup... any idea how well the site would work on an e-ink kindle?
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Mar 3, 2020 11:26
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Rickey at #24. Also, pretty sure Frank Robinson will be #20. Ooh, or Mike Schmidt. Never mind, tough call between the two of them. Pancakes fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 13:15
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So is Bryant not getting actively shopped anymore?
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Mar 3, 2020 13:39
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BigBallChunkyTime posted:So is Bryant not getting actively shopped anymore? Not till Comcast signs. In reality, apparently not- unless the Cubs decide they’re out of it come trading deadline time or choose to “soft rebuild” next winter.
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Mar 3, 2020 14:39
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The Phillies said they aren’t trading their top prospects for him so that kind of killed the market
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Mar 3, 2020 14:40
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Sorry if this is the wrong place but is there still going to be sharing for the MLB league pass? Also a link to the right thread would be appreciated.
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Mar 3, 2020 15:32
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Mayveena posted:Sorry if this is the wrong place but is there still going to be sharing for the MLB league pass? Also a link to the right thread would be appreciated. I will bang for you! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3914848
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Mar 3, 2020 15:45
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Mitch Keller's 2019 was so loving ridiculous. I've posted about it before but now Ben Lindbergh has written about it --- How Sabermetrics Salvaged the Season of Baseball’s Most Snakebit Starter: In a previous age, Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller’s dreadful 2019 ERA may have doomed his career. But the advanced stats may have saved him. Pretty good. quote:Keller’s raw stuff was superb: ACES, a metric that evaluates pitchers based on pitch-level characteristics such as speed, spin, movement, and command, placed him in the 94th percentile among starters, between Mike Clevinger and Chris Sale. Defense-independent stats that separate Keller’s contributions from what happened after the ball was put in play also say his season was a success: Among the 183 starters with at least 40 innings pitched last season, only 14 had a lower park-adjusted FIP, and only 20 had a higher strikeout minus walk rate. Unfortunately for Keller, only five had a higher ERA than his 7.13. The primary reason for the giant disparity between Keller’s advanced and old-school stats seems to have been almost unbelievably bad batted-ball luck.
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Mar 3, 2020 16:21
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Rickey is one of my very favorite players ever. I bet he could still go out there and get on base at a .300 clip in his 60s.
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Mar 3, 2020 17:07
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Does Batista actually have a chance of being useful in the bigs again if in theory he could still hit .225 with 20 HR power, and could throw 1 IP at 93 MPH every few days? Some kind of reliever that you could leave in slot to hit in the NL? Is there something about the new rules that would make someone like this super useful because of the new 3 battle reliever rule?
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Mar 3, 2020 17:14
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coronavirus posted:Does Batista actually have a chance of being useful in the bigs again if in theory he could still hit .225 with 20 HR power, and could throw 1 IP at 93 MPH every few days? Some kind of reliever that you could leave in slot to hit in the NL? The name you’re looking for is Brooks Kieschnick. He managed to scrape out a few years of just that. We’re probably going to see the inverse of that with Brendan McKay. He’s got #2-3 starter upside and a AAA/AAAA bat at first so he may end up doing some more pinch hitting this year.
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Mar 3, 2020 17:26
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Satchel Paige talk errs on the side of sounding like a fable “He created jams just to get out of them” ok uggy fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 18:05
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uggy posted:Satchel Paige talk errs on the side of sounding like a fable I mean, Dizzy Dean yelled at his infield to drop a foul pop-up because he’d threatened to strike a guy out that day instead...
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Mar 3, 2020 18:14
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brooks kieschnick ruled
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Mar 3, 2020 18:16
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RIP Chris Sale https://twitter.com/PeteAbe/status/1234869375154479104 E: Also Judge AND Stanton both not likely to be ready for opening day. Walking dead all over again lol
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Mar 3, 2020 18:50
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The inverted W strikes again
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Mar 3, 2020 20:14
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