Baseball

[Deleted User 141]

The old minor league model? That’d be alright except if you out performed your talent for 80-90 games (it happens, see Rockies:2019), then went back to mean, or more likely, that injuries remove some of the pieces which allowed such a stretch, then you are not really being represented by the best at the end of the year, which is the entire point of a regular season in its entirety, isn’t it?

[jfish26]

Sort of? But we're talking about two teams that play each other in a one-game playoff.

In a sport where the very best teams win about 60% of their games, and the very worst teams win about 40% of their games, I'm not especially worried about an average or even below-average team getting through to the real playoffs now and then.

[CrimsonNBlue]

Is there really more parity in the NBA than MLB? It looks to me they are about the same, and the stars end up going to the same exact cities in both leagues.

I mean, I think so. You've had teams like Golden State (Oakland isn't the biggest destination spot) Milwaukee, Orlando, Detroit, Toronto, San Antonio all showing continued success the last 15 years or so.

Those aren't LA, NY, Boston, Dallas, etc.

Those are smaller market teams doing successful things.

Golden State is the bay area's team, which houses two successful baseball franchises. I think you can find just as many examples of "small-market" teams in the MLB that have done quite well for themselves. I'm not sure there is a team out there that I can think of that have never been successful over last decade.

[CrimsonNBlue]

I like that with MLB, you can go get a player because all it takes is money.

[jfish26]

‘Dark Arts’ and ‘Codebreaker’: The Origins of the Houston Astros Cheating Scheme

https://www.wsj.com/articles/houston-as ... 1581112994

On Sept. 22, 2016, an intern in the Houston Astros organization showed general manager Jeff Luhnow a PowerPoint presentation that featured the latest creation by the team’s high-tech front office: an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm that could decode the opposing catchers’ signs. It was called “Codebreaker.”

This was the beginning of what has turned into one of the biggest scandals in Major League Baseball history.

[...]

The way Codebreaker worked was simple: Somebody would watch an in-game live feed and log the catcher’s signs into the spreadsheet, as well as the type of pitch that was actually thrown. With that information, Codebreaker determined how the signs corresponded with different pitches. Once decoded, that information would be communicated through intermediaries to a baserunner, who would relay them to the hitter.

[...]

On Aug. 26, 2017, in another “road notes,” Koch-Weser wrote: “The system: our dark arts, sign-stealing department has been less productive in the second half as the league has become aware of our reputation and now most clubs change their signs a dozen times per game.” He added that struggling teams like the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics “seem not to care as much.”

Luhnow responded two weeks later.

“Tom, this type of write up is very helpful,” he wrote.

I, for one, will choose to believe that the Royals' comeback in the 2015 Division Series profoundly and permanently broke the entire Astros organization.

[Sparko]

I like a cap that funnels more money to cities. Part of my outrage is that teams overpay players and beg for money to build their Xanadu Pleasure Dome downtown. Everyone needs to start with a more equal competition for players. National Lampoon made a joke of every good MLB player in LA and NY back in 1980. Small markets get a tiny window

[Geezer]

Teams overpay owners not players.

[pdub]

Morales retires:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/286 ... -home-runs

[CrimsonNBlue]

Oh. Boy.

[Geezer]

Would the World Series be over by Christmas?

[Cascadia]

Oh. Boy.

I’m in.

Only baseball worth watching is playoff baseball. More of it is better

[Deleted User 289]

100% against 7 teams. I was against 5 teams.
100% for Wild Card game going away.
75% against first round being best 2 of 3.
75% for best team getting a bye.
100% against team with best record picking their opponent.

[Deleted User 141]

It’s the ‘there is always something better’ approach to organizing sports in America. At some point it should all flip and the post season becomes the regular season which becomes the preseason.

[jfish26]

Expanding the playoffs is the dumbest (literally, the least intelligent) way possible to combat tanking (which is really the goal).

[pdub]

Expanding the playoffs is the dumbest

[jfish26]

The new postseason proposal would be terrible for fans and for the game

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2020/02/11/th ... q8ly9cQC9g

[T]he spin basically goes like this: “this is great as it gives more teams a shot at the postseason, which in turn will generate excitement, and of course now that the postseason is more attainable for teams, it will serve as an anti-tanking device.”

Which is all wrong, of course.

To increase the value of something — to make it more special and exciting — one does not increase the supply. That’s basic economics.

[...]

As it stands now, the worst team to make the postseason in a non-strike-shortened year was the 2005 Padres who won the NL West with 82 wins. The worst World Series-winning team was the 83-win Cardinals in 2006. They’re seen as aberrations now, but under the proposed rules, teams of that quality and worse would be playing October baseball every year. Given how baseball sees far more variation in short series situations than other sports we would, without question, have 95+ win teams getting bounced out of the playoffs most years, rendering the regular season far less significant and turning the postseason into a tournament that is increasingly unconnected to the previous six months of baseball.

[...]

People talk about tanking in terms of the current Detroit Tigers or the Houston Astros of a few years ago. Teams happy to lose 100+ games for draft position or whatever. The more pernicious aspect of tanking, however, is what the Red Sox are doing. Or what the Indians have done for the past couple of years. When teams who, by all rights, should be going for it are declining to go for it in order to save money on payroll. As it is they’re doing things like trading Mookie Betts, considering trading Francisco Lindor and declining to make offseason acquisitions which might take them to the next level over some pretty harsh criticism and in way that creates fan apathy. If you make 80-83-win teams “playoff teams” every year, you incentivize such behavior in a pretty significant way.

Which is to say that the proposal is one aimed at depressing salaries every bit as much if not more than it’s aimed at “creating excitement” or “shaking things up.” Indeed, I suspect that’s the real idea behind this. I suspect it’s a proposal with an eye on upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations.

If you’re a general fan of baseball you should hate this proposal because it would render the regular season far less meaningful and would render the postseason even more of a crapshoot. If you’re a fan of a specific team you should hate this proposal because it would give license to your team’s owner to serve you a substandard product year-in-year out. If you’re a player you should hate this because it would strongly encourage teams to spend less on players than they already do.

It’d be good for the owners and for the league’s bottom line. That’s pretty much it. And that’s nowhere near enough.

[pdub]

NCAAB should be MAX 64 teams ( and i'd be fine with 32 ).
NBA, MLS, NFL ( sorry but top 4 from each conference ), NCAAF should be 8 teams.
MLB should be 4.

[jfish26]

[Deleted User 141]

This sounds like it might just work.

[NewtonHawk11]

Holy hell the Astros today just bombed it.

They've fucked up at every turn.

I feel bad for their players, because there are going to be a lot of empty base, 2 out beanings this year for them.