MLB 2021

[Pariah]

5 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

So...well, hey, I get the complaint that they're burning down their own houses in these moves, but how much do they have that's worth keeping?  How much of this is a terrible front office, how much a poor coaching staff that can't break these *extreme* home/road discrepancies?  

 

The conventional wisdom among longtime fans like myself is that the Rockies continue to have these problems year-in and year-out, decade in and decade out, because you can't fire the owner.

[unclevlad]

Yeah, that's a common...to say the least...feeling.  I suspect that if we tried to count teams whose fans feel that way, across the NBA, NFL, and MLB, we'd run out of toes.

[Pariah]

The thing is, there's no reason for Dick Monfort and Company to try and improve the Rockies. The team is a cash cow, and people will continue to fill the stands to the level allowed by law as long as the team continues to play. It doesn't matter whether the Rockies are contenders or not. Fans still come to the games, still watch on TV (as I do), and still buy the merchandise. Win or lose, the team still makes money. Why try to fix it if it ain't broke?

 

After the Arenado trade, noted Colorado sports journalist Woody Paige went on a rant wherein he advised Rockies fans not to go to the games and not to watch them on TV and not to buy the merchandise in order to send team ownership the only message they were likely to listen to.

 

This turned out to be a pretty divisive event. There were a lot of fans who treated Paige much the same way most of the Republican Party treats Mitt Romney these days. On the other hand, there were a lot of long-suffering Rockies fans who publicly expressed support for him and vowed not to go to any of the games. (This all took place when COVID restrictions were still in place, of course, and you couldn't go to the games anyway. I'd be interested to know if time and increased availability have changed some of these folks' minds.) Paige was apparently privately reprimanded for the article and took his rhetoric down a notch or three shortly thereafter.

 

But he's absolutely right. If Rockies fans ever want to see their team compete, they have to find some way to know let the ownership know that what they're doing right now is not acceptable. And the only result ownership cares about, by all appearances, is the bottom line.

[BNakagawa]

4 hours ago, unclevlad said:

What I don't get is *why* the Rocks are so utterly, disastrously AWFUL on the road.
 

 

Ohh.  I see.

 

Rockies' slash lines: (BA / OBP / Slug / OPS) 

home:  .280 / .339 / .471 / .810  (#3 in OPS in MLB, which is what I swapped to for sorting)

road:  .196 / .270 / .296 / .566  (dead last in OPS)

 

Stats are from MLB.com;  they let you split team stats in many different ways, including home or away only.  This extreme difference is crazy.  My first take is, on the road they're simply not aggressive enough.  On base percentage 70 points higher than batting average?  That's pretty weird these days.  The slugging percentage...ok, to a point that's tied t the batting average, but still, 175 points lower is crazy.  Not only are they barely getting hits, they're heavily weighted to singles.

 

So...well, hey, I get the complaint that they're burning down their own houses in these moves, but how much do they have that's worth keeping?  How much of this is a terrible front office, how much a poor coaching staff that can't break these *extreme* home/road discrepancies?  

the Dodgers have an OBP nearly 100 points higher than their BA. Giants are over 80 points higher. Some teams just don't chase bad pitches.

[Cancer]

I admit the end of COVID restrictions will put an end to a piece of perverse nostalgia I've been having over the last year.

 

I was here in Seattle when the Mariners began.  I was working evenings so I could not attend their first game ever, but I was there later that month.  They broke a million attendance their first year (and finished a half-game ahead of last), but didn't get to a million their second year (and did finish last).  Their rock-bottom cheap seats were $2.00, so it was within even my entertainment budget.  Then I moved away to grad school and got to games rather less frequently than before, though I kept my string of seeing them live at least once a year through the 70s and 80s (though the strike of 1981 skronked me being able to claim an intact string).

 

But attendance was routinely awful.  (Not as awful as that of the A's in that era, but still awful.)  I went to several games where the paid attendance was in three digits (and I still have those scorecards to prove it).  Where I sat the likelihood of getting ball batted in my direction was small (never happened, in fact), but I had the whole section to myself if one came.

 

Consequently, seeing baseball crowds as sparse as some of the ones broadcasted this last year ... reminds me of those old days in the Kingdome.

[Pariah]

Heh. My memories of the Kingdome usually involve Steve Largent making the Broncos' secondary look silly again.

[unclevlad]

9 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

the Dodgers have an OBP nearly 100 points higher than their BA. Giants are over 80 points higher. Some teams just don't chase bad pitches.

 

Ok, I see those...but again, look at the differences between home and road.  And what bugs me is the brutally low batting average on the road...with the 80 point gap.  That looks like the batters are being tentative to me, on the road.

[Cancer]

43 minutes ago, Pariah said:

Heh. My memories of the Kingdome usually involve Steve Largent making the Broncos' secondary look silly again.

 

Given that the Mariners were never shown playing in their home stadium on national network TV until the 1990s, that is no surprise.  The old NBC weekly baseball games were scheduled to have included Seattle twice (once in Fenway, once in Exhibition Stadium in Toronto), the second of which was rained out.

[BNakagawa]

4 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Ok, I see those...but again, look at the differences between home and road.  And what bugs me is the brutally low batting average on the road...with the 80 point gap.  That looks like the batters are being tentative to me, on the road.

They're probably just being intimidated by seeing what breaking balls are supposed to look like.

[archer]

18 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

The conventional wisdom among longtime fans like myself is that the Rockies continue to have these problems year-in and year-out, decade in and decade out, because you can't fire the owner.

 

How about a straight up trade: Rockies owner for Cowboys owner?

[Pariah]

37 minutes ago, archer said:

How about a straight up trade: Rockies owner for Cowboys owner?

 

Not just no....

[unclevlad]

How bout for Dan Snyder?

 

 

BIG problem with Ohtani pitching and being the DH is raging in full force tonight.

He walked 4, gave up 3 hits...and 7 runs.  In the first.

 

As you can guess, he's out...which also means the Angels lose the DH for the rest of the game.

And happy birthday to Trea Turner.  To celebrate, all he did today was hit for the cycle.  First time that's happened, not overly surprisingly.  Cycles aren't terribly common.  Also the third in his career, which ties the record. 

[archer]

"Hit This Sign and Win a Unicycle!"

[Pariah]

The Rocks just finished a 3-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates, winning the games by a combined score of 16-2. The sweep raises their home record to 28-16.

 

The Cardinals are up next, so don't expect the steak to continue for much longer. 

[archer]

11 hours ago, Pariah said:

The Rocks just finished a 3-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates, winning the games by a combined score of 16-2. The sweep raises their home record to 28-16.

 

The Cardinals are up next, so don't expect the steak to continue for much longer. 

 

Too bad their excess scores don't carry over....

[slikmar]

16 hours ago, unclevlad said:

BIG problem with Ohtani pitching and being the DH is raging in full force tonight.

He walked 4, gave up 3 hits...and 7 runs.  In the first.

 

As you can guess, he's out...which also means the Angels lose the DH for the rest of the game.

My brother was positive that they would call that game after the top half of fifth with the 2nd rain delay, so the Yankees could win (he is a big believer in conspiracy). They didn't, so now, given game didn't finish until 1am east coast time, a lot of Yankee fans had their breakfast ruined as they found out what happened.

I agree, and truthfully, I think the Angels would like to not have him hit on those days, but with Trout and Upton out, they basically can't afford to miss him in the lineup.

[unclevlad]

I had that game on early, but both the CWS final game and NBA playoffs were on, so left after a while.

Didn't come back until after the NBA postgame...and at that point, MLB Network had decided to shift away from it to a West Coast game, at least in my area.  

When THAT ended, Quick Pitch was on.

So...I didn't see the 9th.

Wish I had.

Yankees lose!   THEEEEEEE  Yankees LOSE!!

 

Wonderful.

(I'm less anti-Yankee than that I *loathe* John Sterling with a passion that knows no bounds.)

 

Go in with a 4 run lead...lose by 3.  

 

Methinks Aaron Boone will be back in broadcasting next year...if not sooner.  They've gone from 30-25, and a half game out of the WC, to 41-39 and 5 1/2 out.  And being in contention for the 2nd WC is not exactly acceptable for that team's fan base.  And shouldn't be, with the money the team spends.  NOTE:  ESPN is just now reporting that Hal Steinbrenner has no intention to fire Boone or Brian Cashman right now.  But we shall see about the end of the season.

 

And the boos I heard during Quick Pitch...don't remember if it was as the top of the 9th ended or the game ended...were fairly substantial.  Especially given that it was around 1 AM, after those 2 rain delays.  So I still think it's possible Boone is ousted before the end of the season.  Boone's track record isn't *terrible*...Yanks have been in the playoffs every year, but losing twice in the division series isn't enough.

[slikmar]

MLB has talked about that the Yankees were built badly. Too much emphasis on the 3 pure results (strikeouts/walks/HRs). They have to many DHs or players playing out of position (their defense is one of the worst, as opposed to TB, who I think is best - look at the standings and see which works better. Stanton apparently cannot play the field and stay healthy. Sanchez went from an average catcher with offense to a bad catcher with offense, sometimes. The Angels broadcasters talked about him probably losing strike calls with his over-exaggerated pull to the strike zone pitch framing (their belief is that if a catcher moves his glove, then he is saying it was a ball, so call it. the best pitch framers don't move their glove, but catch the ball in a way that most the glove is in the strike zone, so may get a few calls). Beyond Cole, the pitching has been bad at best and they have had to wear out a pretty good bullpen. and now, there will be a lot of questions about Chapman and whether he was using gorilla glue (or whatever they call it). 

[unclevlad]

I agree they're built badly.  The defensive issues have been brought up on several occasions I've seen.  Backing this up, here's a breakdown:
http://www.fieldingbible.com/TeamDefensiveRunsSaved

 

4th worst in baseball.

 

They're also dead last in stolen bases...17 (!!!!!) to this point.  Even if you compare against teams in the middle, that's about *half* of what they've done.  That also translates to having to play station to station baseball most of the time...you're probably not getting many extra bases, like first to third on singles.  I sometimes look at the style of an individual hitter by looking at his RBI divided by his HR.  Low on this ratio...you're not getting the sac flies, or grounding into double plays with runners on first and third and one out, or...you get the idea.  It's even more applicable at the team level.  Yankees have 106 HRs but only 305 RBI, so the ratio is 2.88.  That's the worst in baseball.  

 

And they're already in trouble insofar as making the playoffs.  We're almost spot on the halfway mark;  5 teams in the AL have 47+ wins, which means they project to 94+.  That means the Yankees need to win 53 of 82 to get into a projected tie.  If the Giants win their next 3, they'd match that pace...but no one else will.  It's possible to do it, but realistically?  With the core flaws of the Yankees?  It's not gonna happen, or at least, their margin of error is already quite thin.

[BNakagawa]

HAPPY BOBBY BONILLA DAY!

[Pariah]

The Rockies just completed a 6-1 homestand, including taking three out of four from the visiting Cardinals. It seems the Rockies can't lose at home, can't win on the road.

 

And in another bizarre twist, the only Rockie to make it to the All-Star Game is one of the pitchers.

[unclevlad]

Nugget from MLB.com:  Albert Pujols just reached 6000 career total bases.  He is only the 4th ever.  The other 3...Aaron, Musial, and Mays.  Good company, I'd say...

 

For reference, Miguel Cabrera is #2 among active players;  he's just over 5000.  His productivity now, tho, is low.  Next is Robinson Cano, at a bit over 4200.  Mike Trout, in his 11th season, has ~ 2700.  Everyone above him except for Freddy Freeman is 33+;  Trout is 29.  Freeman is 31, but hasn't hit 2800 in 12 seasons.  Going the other way, Ruth had about 5800.  

Of course, Aaron finished with over 6800...700 ahead of Musial.  THAT may be an unbreakable record, given the current state of pitching and hitting.  

[archer]

11 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

And in another bizarre twist, the only Rockie to make it to the All-Star Game is one of the pitchers.

 

In all fairness, they tried to give it to Arenado again and then were like, "Oh, wait...."

[unclevlad]

So, the Dodgers just pulled all of Trevor Bauer's merch from their team store, and cancelled a Bauer bobblehead promo set for mid August.

 

Sounds like they don't expect to have him back, altho it could just be CYA.  They caught considerable flak for doing nothing until MLB acted...and MLB was slow, to make things worse.  I tend to think the Dodgers are actually less to blame, as the leagues generally have co-opted any disciplinary matters that aren't team-internal.

[slikmar]

That and doing anything before hand would have caused problems with the Union. Basically, teams for the most part of handcuffed until something legal is out there.