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reflex posted:How many games do you people watch a season? I'm looking at the Nats schedule and there is a stretch in April of 20 days where there is a game every day. How the hell. Does baseball eventually degrade into highlight watching for 75% of the regular season or does it become your main time sink/you get really invested? I try - and inevitably fail - to watch every Red Sox game, but almost never as my Main Activity; I'll have it on while I eat or play games or whatever. That's part of what attracts me to baseball, actually; because it moves at a relatively leisurely pace, you don't need to focus on it with laser-like intensity for the entire length of the game.
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Apr 1, 2014 03:34
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One of the great things about going to minor league games is that it gives you a head start on your irrational attachment to players. I was bummed when Jacoby Ellsbury left the Red Sox, not because he'll make the Yankees better (I mean he will, right up until he runs into the outfield wall and his body shatters into a million pieces), but because I'd seen him play with the Portland Sea Dogs and became a fan even before he made it to the big leagues. It's also a... less star-driven experience than a major league game; in that same game I also got to see Clay Bucholz pitch a no-hitter through six innings. In the majors it doesn't matter if the guy's thrown 397 pitches, if he's got a no-no going the manager'll leave him in; in the minors? Not so much. He got pulled after six. Minor league ballgames rule, is my point.
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Apr 3, 2014 23:16
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AA is for Quitters posted:who'd the Bucs get? McCutcheon? Cause i remember seeing his debut season when i was living in WV and it was dirt cheap to see games (we got tickets behind home plate for like $30), and he was phenomenal from the start. Andrew McCutchen is a valid reason to watch Pirates baseball with hope in your heart. My fiancee's dad, who's been a Pirates fan forever, compares the guy (with a fan's boundless optimism rather than things like 'numbers,' admittedly) to Clemente. He's a lot of fun to watch.
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Apr 9, 2014 04:34
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screaden posted:Not looking for a new team, just if I have to watch another game like today's...I'd just like a less painful way to get my baseball fix There are no less painful ways to get your baseball fix. Sometimes your team will be lovely. It happens. The Rays are going to be not-lovely a lot more often than they're lovely.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:30
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LordPants posted:It did with Matsui, right? While I can't find the records to support my recollection and am unwilling to put in the time it would take to actually look that poo poo up, as far as I can recall for the most part Ortiz actually sat a lot more in interleague play in 2013 than he had in previous seasons, not least because putting him at first meant losing Napoli, so the defensive downgrade (which wasn't huge!) wasn't worth the offensive upgrade. He came in as a PH any time he didn't start, but he sat a lot more than he had in seasons past. I have a vague memory of a game where Ortiz was at first and Napoli was somewhere else - the outfield, mebbe? - and they sat, I don't know, Johnny Gomes or something, but I could be making that up.
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May 3, 2014 19:12
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Yeah, having the stadium with the smallest number of seats means having those seats rise in price, sadly. StubHub is probably your best bet; alternatively, there is a lively and active contingent of scalpers outside of Fenway for pretty much every game. As for seating recommendations, grandstand seating is usually fairly inexpensive and still gets you a decent view of the action; there's really no 'nosebleed seats' simply because Fenway is so drat tiny. Even the seats furthest away from the action will usually have a halfway-decent view. Last time I was there I was in section 18 of the grandstands, looking basically right down the third-base line, and it was a great view. There are bad seats at Fenway - though they've tried to eliminate most of the obstructed view seats that are basically blocked by support beams - and even the good ones will not be comfortable unless you're only five feet tall, and everything is stupidly expensive... but it's still a good time in my book. Hope you have a good time!
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May 18, 2014 05:33
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Austrian mook posted:Closer seems an interesting position, they're just there to play a single inning? Why? How valuable to a team is a good closer? A good closer is, I suspect, vastly more valuable to the fans of a team than the team itself. As to why a closer (usually) only pitches a single inning, the idea behind most closers is that - hopefully - they'll be lights-out pitchers who you can trust with your team's close lead in the ninth inning; you don't have to worry about the other team clawing their way back to tie the game and send it into extra innings or even win it outright because you've got your A-NUMBER-ONE reliever in. Since you ideally want your closer available to pitch whenever a save situation arises - and you don't know how often that'll happen - you don't want to strain the guy's arm too much, especially as you might need him to pitch on consecutive nights; thus, you keep the guy's workload as light as possible and save him for the game's final inning. Other posters can tell you a lot more about how 'valuable' a closer is, using Actual Numbers that I haven't researched recently, but to all accounts a shutdown closer does seem, anecdotally at least, to be beneficial to the team in a psychological, if not statistical, sense. Koji Uehara's 2013 season with Boston did, if you believe interviews, make a lot of the Red Sox' players feel "less pressure" in a close game, because they were certain that Koji could come in and shut down any batters the other team had; how much that actually matters is, to say the least, debatable. Uehara, interestingly enough, was basically plucked off the scrap heap by Boston as a setup man and got handed the closer's job basically by default when the two 'proven closers' on the team, Andrew Bailey and (groan) Joel Hanrahan, got hurt; he proceeded to turn in a season performance that was unbefuckinglievable, which no one really saw coming. The moral of the story is that the whole notion of knowing who can and can't be an amazing closer is pretty much bullshit; like so many things in baseball, it's all just educated guessing.
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May 22, 2014 08:43
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Mornacale posted:The remaining awesome-story foreign guy in the Pirates' system is now Mpho Gift Ngoepe, who is from South Africa. He's in AA as a 24-year-old, with a good glove and speed and a lot of walks, but strikes out a ton and has no power. He's a longshot to make the Show, but it's possible he could develop into a utility infielder. I desperately want Gift Ngoepe to make the majors so I can get his baseball card. The dude has such a great story; I've never seen him play but I love him anyways. The SI article linked above is an astonishingly good read and you should all read it immediately or else you are bad people.
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May 26, 2014 08:08
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