Monday, June 10, 2013
Rangers TV man Tom Grieve calls Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista a ‘crybaby’
(www.dallasnews.com)
Well, at least he didn’t call him Hatchet-Face.
Read More...Bautista looked at strike one, tried to check his swing but couldn’t on strike two then swung at strike 3 in the dirt. After he swung at strike three he had a few choice words for the home plate umpire. He then tossed his bat, helmet and elbow pad on the field in protest before leaving.
Once Bautista was thrown out, Grieve had this to say…
“You turn into a cry baby when you act like that. Go sit down and look at the pitch and then apologize to ...
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1 2 3 >It's a safe bet that C.J. doesn't want an extra round of playoffs, even if it might mean more revenue for the PU.
If there was already post for this, sorry I missed it.
Will anyone really take the post-season seriously anymore if that happens? Will they decide that the 87-win team just had more heart and guts?
In 1987, a team that won 85 games had home field advantage in the Fall Classic beat a 95-win team in the World Series by winning all four games in its home park.
In 1995, a 100-win team (in a 144-game schedule) did not have HFA in any of the three rounds of the playoffs, ultimately succumbing to a 90-win team in the World Series.
Somehow, the postseason survived.
not sure if there was a post on it, but I don't see a problem. personally I consider the team with the 3-4-5- home game to have the advantage, but everyone seems to focusing on the rare seventh game.
Also, when talking alleged "wild card injustices", let's not forget the 2005 100-win STL team, who lost the NLCS to the 89-win Houston team. Especially since STL was 11-5 against the Astros in the regular season.
In the first round, I see the Indians won Games 1 and 2 at home, and Game 3 on the road (Boston), but I guess this was back when the division series were 2-3 instead of 2-2-1, so the Indians would not have technically had "home-field advantage."
I don't remember why this was. How was HFA decided back then? Was it a coin flip, or was it predetermined before the season which divisions would get HFA? And why was Cleveland (100-44) playing Boston (86-58) in the first round instead of New York (79-65, wild card)? The fourth playoff team was Seattle (79-66).
A division winner will always have the 5- or 7-game opportunity. I'm not very sympathetic to the injustice of a 2nd-place team getting a poor opportunity, even if it wins 95 gams.
The hypothetical 87-win team in your post #8 would also have to win a 5-game series and a 7-game series in addition to the 1-game playoff. Just like an unimpressive WC team would today.
+1, Rangers winning their first title would be quite cool though.
"Originally, the Eastern, Central and Western Division champions rotated home-site priority, with the two of them getting the extra home game and the third one and the wild card not."
So I guess in 1995 the AL East and AL West were given HFA priority for the playoffs. Normally the better of those two teams (the Red Sox) would have played against the wild card team in the first round, but even back then they had the rule that teams from the same division could not play each other in the first round, so the Yankees got dispatched to Seattle.
Seems extremely unfair to the Indians, but then they went and swept Boston anyway.
How is it a travesty if a team gets hot late in the season? There's no shame in a team improving itself over the course of a year. In fact, I'd have to say a team that improves itself to the point where it is drastically better by the end of the season is a stronger organization than the one that just pays for the all-star talent and rolls through a flawed division (looking at you, Spankees). I'd say that, just like pitching and hitting, the ability of a team's management to adjust and improve over the course of a season--WHEN EVERY OTHER TEAM IS TRYING TO DO SO--is a very difficult thing to do. It could also indicate a better than usual farm system, in that 1) young talent gets brought up; or 2) young talent gets traded to address current needs.
This sort of team has every right to compete for a World Series berth as any other.
The idea that a WC team is somehow lesser to a division winner is silly. Baseball nowadays is all about adjustments. Many times a WC team starts off flawed but turns itself into a winner because of its ability to identify its flaws, address them, and succeed because of them. To suggest otherwise is just sour grapes.
The Cards did that nonstop in the NLCS
Meanwhile, the Crew kept trying to pull and grounding out or popping up in big spots
Of course they will. I think MLB is probably right - opening another round or two and getting more extreme cinderellas will be good for the sport in October. I have people I didn't know knew what baseball is asking me all sorts of stuff about the plucky Cardinals. The look on their face when I tell them I hate them* is priceless.
* I don't hate them and remember being outraged on their behalf in 2005. I get the whining about the whining here but the fact is, the World Series is not what it once was. I don't, necessarily, mean it isn't as good as it used to be. For some, it may be better, in fact. It just isn't the same. The game I grew up loving had a regular season that was paramount. That isn't the case today. I will watch just about anyone play baseball and I'll congratulate my friends who are Cardinal fans if they win the Series. But what they will have accomplished, if they do, is not the same as what, say, the 1982 team did.
Wherein "silly" means "blantantly obvious to anyone with even a modicum of basic human intelligence and even a third-grader's understanding of the game of baseball." Which isn't what "silly" normally means, but fans will go to great length to justify their second place team's "right" to a "championship" post hoc.
Also, having a "bye" or rest in baseball isn't that good a thing (everybody gets cold or out of rhytm).
I would think that part of the solution to this is to go the European soccer route, and treat the WS as a "Cup" competition (and your more prestigious competition), but treat having the best record in your league as equivalent to "winning your league" with a ton of fanfare and such.
That would be a change in tradition, but not a terrible one, and it would price having the best record in your league.
This idea isn't fully fleshed out, so please feel free to tear it apart.
That is one of the things I like about UK soccer. The idea of having separate competitions is fun and allows for so many more teams to be in one of the many "its" it's possible to be in. For me it's sort of like the NHL system. I like the fact that there's a massive tournament at the end of the season and regular season doesn't mean as much. Because I have baseball where the regular season DOES mean quite a bit.
I guess my point is I like having a wide variety of methods to enjoying my sports.
The main problem I see is that American sports seem to be geared towards ONE thing meaning everything (ie. World Series, Super Bowl etc.). Hence the lack of itnerest in the WBC or the hatred of ties in any form. I think the crux of your proposal is the "more prestigious" aspect of it. What determines prestige isn't really a directive by the league, but what the teams want to win. You can say here are two separate competitions, one a bit more valuable than the other. But I don't think the sports culture in America is going to easily allow teams to divide their attention at all between the two.
Just as fantasy thought experiments I do enjoy envisioning some elements of European soccer in baseball. Like a total revamping of the minor league system and a promotion/relegation process.
Hell of a saber-metric argument you made there.
They're 31-13 (.705) over the last 44 games.
Their offense led the NL in runs scored over 162 games.
Their bullpen was god awful (26 blown saves) for most of the year, but has been stellar down the stretch and in the postseason thanks to contributions from pitchers acquired at the trade deadline.
Yes, they were fortunate that Atlanta crumbled. Yes, they were a 2nd place regular season team - but there is nothing cheap about their performance. They beat the best teams in the NL and now they're playing the team that beat the best teams in the AL.
The 2000 Yankees (87-74) had the 5th best record in the AL. Same for the 1987 Twins (85-77). Teams have been 'getting hot at the right time' for decades.
Getting rid of interleague play, having a single league with the best record winning the "pennant" followed by a "cup" compeition involving the top 4 (or 5, etc) in each league would culminate in a World Series.
The idea that a WC team is somehow lesser to a division winner is silly.
But not as silly as the idea that a team losing a best of 7 series is somehow lesser to the team that beat it.
Buh?
It wasn't game 6, 1975 or anything, but that was a pretty nice game of baseball last night. Anyone who didn't find that compelling either isn't much of a baseball fan, or decided beforehand that they weren't going to be interested. I mean, I can understand if you're not much interested in either team (that's about where I am), but what's so objectively uninteresting about the Cardinals? Didn't they have the best offence in the NL, and isn't Carpenter pitching extremely well right now? I say this as someone who's mildly rooting for the Rangers.
Cards have an elite middle of the order, and no real weak spots in the lineup. The starting pitching after Carp is not strong, but they've been able to ride the bullpen to victory. They could not get away playing like this for a full season. But the strategy works pretty well in a playoff series.
irrational larussa hate.
I've been advocating this for a few years. My most radical implementation cuts the leagues down to 10, with 10 playing in a relegation league. Bottom team from each league drops each year, winner of the relegation league gets to choose which major league to join, 2nd and 3rd place teams play series for promotion.
Everyone plays the every team 18 times. League pennant to the best regular season records. Interleague playoff bracket, meaning you could get Yankees/Red Sox in the WS, etc...
It would really make the first round of the playoffs fascinating in terms of measuring AL vs NL.
Mainly this would create an environment where nearly every team would have something to play for all season long. The only knock would be that the best team in baseball could potentially play in the relegation league and get shut out of the WS tournament.
agree.
irrational larussa hate. FTFY.Therefore, what matters to MLB is how to get other people to part with their money. From my casual, and non-scientific, observations, more playoffs do that. For the casual fan, playoff unpredictability seems to be a feature, not a bug.
When was it a big deal? I guess pre-1969 it was, but not since then.
I don't understand all the kvetching about the home-field advantage, since it (1) is much smaller in baseball than in the other major sports, and (2) doesn't usually come into play. Two out of the three teams that had HFA in the first round lost their deciding game anyway. It's just not very important.
and then you die.
I don't understand all the kvetching about the home-field advantage, since it (1) is much smaller in baseball than in the other major sports, and (2) doesn't usually come into play. Two out of the three teams that had HFA in the first round lost their deciding game anyway. It's just not very important.
CONCUR.
...after stumbling around in a daze for five months. Now that's a World Champion!
Can't wait to see the ratings for this train wreck of a series...
A five letter word: "S-T-R-I-K-E"???
Actually, the Cards had the best record in the NL in late May/early June. They're sort of the anti-Red Sox. They started well, had a bad summer, then finished hot.
I've been ######## about this for 15 years.
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