The 2020 Baseball Thread

[Badger]

He did outsmart one

 

Himself.

 

Plus Anderson might be the overused pitcher in the playoffs right now. No one but Cash thought he had anything left.

 

Dodgers Game 6 Mvp, Kevin Cash

[Iuz the Evil]

Please Dodgers. Finish this. 

[unclevlad]

Whoa....buzzkill city.

 

Question was raised why Justin Turner got pulled during the game.  Postgame, we found out.  He tested positive for Covid-19.  Bites for him, and to a degree the whole team.

[Pariah]

If I may be so bold as to quote Michael Garibaldi, "Lousy Dodgers."

[unclevlad]

Yeah, both sides of the 6th inning move were questionable.  

 

Analytics bites when it's misapplied, and I think it was here.  3rd time through the order is one thing...but 3rd time through the order with only about 70 pitches thrown?  With mostly easy innings?  That's not the same situation as pitching with a lot of traffic, or throwing 90+ pitches to reach that point.  If your analytics are based on the entire statistical universe, you don't get good answers when you're dealing with a fairly unusual subset...unless you account for being in that subset.  Granted, you run the flipside risk...as Brian Kenny likes to say, small sample size theater.  

 

Then, bringing in Anderson.  Yeah, that's dubious at best.

 

Still, that wasn't what killed the Rays.  That was the offense;  they just didn't hit well.  They didn't have that many men on (42 hits, 16 walks versus the Dodgers' 51 and 25) and MUCH of that was freaky game 4.  In the other 5 games...32 hits, 11 walks in 5 games.  

[slikmar]

21 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

3rd time through the order is one thing...but 3rd time through the order with only about 70 pitches thrown?  With mostly easy innings? 

And the guy who is considered your one true Ace.

 

My brother feels that Dodgers bought world series, which isn't necessarily wrong, but I was looking at their payroll, and other then Kershaw and Betts, no one else earned more then $16 million (which I realize sounds like a lot, but in terms of star players, isn't). And one guy wasn't playing, Price. Biggest thing was that they still had their young good/great players. Part of it is, owned by a multibillionaire who basically used Fox to give Dodgers an inflated tv contract to cover some of the payroll (like Yankees used to do with the Yes network). Baseball really needs to fix salary problems. too many teams now are paying superstars and then filling with rookie/low level players OR just tanking and paying nothing. the journeyman player is being caught in this, the 30-34 year old solid but not spectacular players are basically being underpaid on 1 -2 year contracts. They need to adopt a salary structure that causes a minimum and maximum and also try to work in a Bird(from NBA) type of deal where teams can designate 1 or 2 players as being theirs and maybe only half their salary or something counts. How many fans watch their great home grown superstar walk away because the team claims doesn't have money.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

*sigh*

 

Good job, Dodgers. I guess.

[Iuz the Evil]

[unclevlad]

The financial difference with MLB is that *local* media contracts dominate the economics, as well as attendance, which is also local.  National TV contracts are estimated to kick in about $2B, but that's split among all 30 teams and the league itself.  That said...Sportrac's 2021 salary projections show quite a few teams that might be accused of low-balling.  7 of em have projected total payrolls of under $70M.

 

The total revenues are also interesting.  Team by team for 2019 is here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/193645/revenue-of-major-league-baseball-teams-in-2010/

 

Ignore it says 2010.  TL;DR:  Yankees earned $120M more than the Dodgers, and 3x what the lowest teams collected (A's and Marlins).  Dodgers were #2 at $556M.  8 teams were between $275M and $300M;  5 more between $250M and $275M.  That's half your teams right there, in a very narrow band...and the Dodgers earned about the same as any 2 of them picked randomly.

 

Compare that with the most opposite:  the NFL distributed about $300M to each team.  The Cowboys were the biggest earners at a bit over $900M, but figure that was no more than double anyone else.  Plus, revenue doesn't imply profit.  Teams that are building, or having built for them, these mega-palaces...those have to be paid for somehow.  I remember looking at the seat licensing fees for Texas Stadium not too long after it opened.  The seat license is the right to buy the game ticket...it is not the ticket itself.  It's several thousand bucks a pop, and well into 5 digits for good seats.  And, no, this is not the luxury boxes;  that's completely separate.  These are the seats in the stands.  (A story I saw several times was the change to the atmosphere at Cowboys games...because the diehard FAN got priced out and now it was the corporate sarari-man.)  

But that's why things like minimum salary cap can work in the NFL, and probably can't work in MLB.

[archer]

The biggest surprise of the series is that one of the players is pulled, in the middle of the last game of the World Series, because his COVID test just came back positive.

 

And then the guy is there unmasked, in team photos after the victory.

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 10/27/2020 at 8:51 PM, unclevlad said:

Whoa....buzzkill city.

 

Question was raised why Justin Turner got pulled during the game.  Postgame, we found out.  He tested positive for Covid-19.  Bites for him, and to a degree the whole team.

What really bites is that he was back on the field for the celebration, and ignored the efforts of security to restrain him from doing so. He wore a mask for part of it, but not all, and it was still a truly reckless act.

22 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

The TV call by Vin Scully is fantastic if you get a chance to watch it. GThe buildup towards the home run, which Scully and color commentator Joe Garagiola didn't know was coming, is a masterpiece of the art of play-by-play. It shows just how improbable Kirk Gibson's feat was, why it matters so much, and why it will never be repeated in quite the same way.

[unclevlad]

Yeah, Turner apologized but...dude, come on.  You got yanked from the game, you had plenty of time to think.  

 

Of course Scully's call was superb.  Best baseball broadcaster ever.  Grew up in LA altho we moved when I was a kid, but...damn, talk about spoiled.  Enberg (Rams, Bruins basketball during the Wooden era), Scully, Chick Hearn.  2 are generally conceded Best Ever in their sports, and Enberg was top-drawer.  And the local NBC News anchor was...Tom Brokaw.

[slikmar]

4 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Yeah, Turner apologized but...dude, come on.  You got yanked from the game, you had plenty of time to think.  

 

Of course Scully's call was superb.  Best baseball broadcaster ever.  Grew up in LA altho we moved when I was a kid, but...damn, talk about spoiled.  Enberg (Rams, Bruins basketball during the Wooden era), Scully, Chick Hearn.  2 are generally conceded Best Ever in their sports, and Enberg was top-drawer.  And the local NBC News anchor was...Tom Brokaw.

Me too, and I would add Bob Miller of the Kings to this list. He was mentored by Scully and Hearn at one point. Also, back in the day on FSW they used to do this interview show, I believe Bill Macdonald was host but won't swear to it, and they had an hour long episode that had Miller, Scully and Hearn on it, this was mid 90s, and I remember host saying he basically was there to keep his mouth shut and let them tell stories and teach.

What Miller told an interviewer about Hearn's teaching was that you couldn't be a total homer. If your team was bad, say it and don't put other team down. Call the game as you see it. Scully also was excellent at this and he also was a master at using words that sounded, if not complimentary, not derogatory when someone was not playing well. I can remember when Dodgers in world series, or heck playing Angels, listening to his broadcast instead of the other one some years. And Chick Hearn basically invented 25+% of the basketball lingo used today.

[slikmar]

Not sure if people saw this, but glad to see an owner put his money where his mouth is. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2021/01/19/mets-gm-jared-porter-fired-harassment/4209832001/

[unclevlad]

Saw it.  And it was quite prompt.  I might argue that it was 4 years ago (the target of the harassment requested non-publication for quite a while, fearing reprisal)...but...the degree of the offense, and the repeated nature...yeah, he's done.

 

Glad the organization did it but from the ESPN story I read, it was truly a no-brainer.  Porter was a complete and utter idiot, and his actions were reprehensible.