2024 MLB Thread

[Edman85]

Dodging the NFL on Sunday

[Sports_Freak]

16 minutes ago, oblong said:

Tonight would have been game 7 in the ALCS.  I don’t think 3 days off is unreasonable. Let them recover from partying tomorrow. Give them a travel day Wednesday . Then a day to work out in the stadium. They have media sessions too. 

I'm sure people in NY and LA are happy to wait. 4 days off loses a lot of casual fans. I may tune it to watch and see how much 5 days off effects NY.

[oblong]

29 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

I'm sure people in NY and LA are happy to wait. 4 days off loses a lot of casual fans. I may tune it to watch and see how much 5 days off effects NY.

But they aren’t to change the schedule if the preceding series ends early.  TV spots have been bought based on the days they are airing, plus you have all the logistics that go into planning the games.  Don’t blame the league, blame the Yankees and Dodgers for not losing more in their LCS. 

[casimir]

4 hours ago, oblong said:

Tonight would have been game 7 in the ALCS.  I don’t think 3 days off is unreasonable. Let them recover from partying tomorrow. Give them a travel day Wednesday . Then a day to work out in the stadium. They have media sessions too. 

Probably a day in there in case the LCS is backed up a day as well.

I know there’s a rest vs rust debate in baseball.  I don’t mind an extra day before the World Series to allow each team a possibility to tweak their rotations a bit in order to maximize their pitching.  It might not be evident in the first game, but maybe it allows a guy to be bumped up from game 4 or 3 to game 3 or 2.

[casimir]

On 10/21/2024 at 10:07 AM, Tiger337 said:

I am sold on Olson's ability.  Not sold on his health.  

Doesn’t seem to be too much effort to his delivery.  Of course, that’s only one variable.

[oblong]

13 minutes ago, casimir said:

Probably a day in there in case the LCS is backed up a day as well.

I know there’s a rest vs rust debate in baseball.  I don’t mind an extra day before the World Series to allow each team a possibility to tweak their rotations a bit in order to maximize their pitching.  It might not be evident in the first game, but maybe it allows a guy to be bumped up from game 4 or 3 to game 3 or 2.

Yeah I think at that point they’ve earned the right to get a chance to catch their breath and possibly set up their rotation.  It’s the World Series. We should want quality baseball.   I just don’t know what people expect the solution to be when you have the preceding LCS can go from 4 to 7 games.  You can’t work around that.  

[Sports_Freak]

3 hours ago, oblong said:

But they aren’t to change the schedule if the preceding series ends early.  TV spots have been bought based on the days they are airing, plus you have all the logistics that go into planning the games.  Don’t blame the league, blame the Yankees and Dodgers for not losing more in their LCS. 

Yeah, it's all because they need to accommodate TV. The huge money from the TV contracts is significant. Like you said, they need to schedule the time slots way in advance. I just don't like waiting so long between series. Of course, I feel the same way with the stupid 2 week wait for the Super Bowl.

[lordstanley]

Could use the days off to enjoy Game 7 of the '52 World Series. Or a 7 minute summary of Game 7 in '55 when Brooklyn finally won. Or Larsen's perfect game against the Dodgers in '56. Or the half hour World Series highlight films from '77, '78 or '81.

 

[oblong]

RIP Fernando.  Horrible news on its own but throw in the Yankees And Dodgers WS and 1981… this really stinks.  He was only 63.  That’s shocking to me.  I was just a kid for Fernando mania and here he is only 12 years older?  

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

Yeah I think at that point they’ve earned the right to get a chance to catch their breath and possibly set up their rotation.  It’s the World Series. We should want quality baseball.   I just don’t know what people expect the solution to be when you have the preceding LCS can go from 4 to 7 games.  You can’t work around that.  

The longest the series could have gone was Monday, so they could have played Wednesday.  

[Tiger337]

23 minutes ago, oblong said:

RIP Fernando.  Horrible news on its own but throw in the Yankees And Dodgers WS and 1981… this really stinks.  He was only 63.  That’s shocking to me.  I was just a kid for Fernando mania and here he is only 12 years older?  

Fernando Mania was probably the closest thing we had to Bird Mania.  They both died too young.

[IdahoBert]

I’m really saddened by the passing of Fernando Valenzuela. It feels personal.

When I spent six months recuperating from a bad motorcycle accident in 1982 and couldn’t go anywhere I listened to all 162 of Vin Scully’s broadcasts which was the only baseball available in Tucson, Arizona and Fernando was a big part of that. The Dodgers ended this season, I think, one game out of first place behind the Atlanta Braves, and I was honestly disappointed.

It’s not like Ernie Harwell’s broadcast could reach all the way from Detroit to Tucson. So, for one year I was a Dodgers fan and a huge Fernando fan.

Then of course in 1984 and no longer laid up and fully recovered I was able follow our own season as well as possible from such great distance — and with three new friends who’d recently moved from Detroit to Tucson — I forgot all about the Dodgers easily. But forgetting Fernando is hard. 

I will easily pull for the Yankees in the World Series, though, simply because of Sue. 

[lordstanley]

Fernando-mania was something else. It's the closest thing to Fidrych '76 that I can remember. I just watched this clip the other day:

 

[guy incognito]

4 hours ago, lordstanley said:

Could use the days off to enjoy Game 7 of the '52 World Series. Or a 7 minute summary of Game 7 in '55 when Brooklyn finally won. Or Larsen's perfect game against the Dodgers in '56. Or the half hour World Series highlight films from '77, '78 or '81.

 

Or perhaps enjoy the radio broadcasts of the 1963 WS, which featured a voice that will be familiar to most of you.

 

[guy incognito]

9 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Dodging the NFL on Sunday

ISWYDT

[CMRivdogs]

11 hours ago, lordstanley said:

Could use the days off to enjoy Game 7 of the '52 World Series. Or a 7 minute summary of Game 7 in '55 when Brooklyn finally won. Or Larsen's perfect game against the Dodgers in '56. Or the half hour World Series highlight films from '77, '78 or '81.

 

Allow the 8 year old me to introduce you to the 7th game of the 1960 World Series. Yankees at Pirates, Forbes Field. Mel Allen with play by play. Thanks to Bing Crosby for commissioning the film so he could watch it after his vacation in Franc

[papalawrence]

12 hours ago, IdahoBert said:

I’m really saddened by the passing of Fernando Valenzuela. It feels personal.

When I spent six months recuperating from a bad motorcycle accident in 1982 and couldn’t go anywhere I listened to all 162 of Vin Scully’s broadcasts which was the only baseball available in Tucson, Arizona and Fernando was a big part of that. The Dodgers ended this season, I think, one game out of first place behind the Atlanta Braves, and I was honestly disappointed.

It’s not like Ernie Harwell’s broadcast could reach all the way from Detroit to Tucson. So, for one year I was a Dodgers fan and a huge Fernando fan.

Then of course in 1984 and no longer laid up and fully recovered I was able follow our own season as well as possible from such great distance — and with three new friends who’d recently moved from Detroit to Tucson — I forgot all about the Dodgers easily. But forgetting Fernando is hard. 

I will easily pull for the Yankees in the World Series, though, simply because of Sue. 

Really sad about Fernando. He burst onto the MLB scene as magical as Mark Fidrych. RIP

[KL2]

nm

Edited October 23 by KL2

[chasfh]

23 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

It's all for TV scheduling. They don't need 4 days off. It should have started today, maybe tomorrow at the latest.

I also wonder whether another part of it may be that, since the World Series is such a behemoth to plan out, for broadcasters and the league and including for fans who make travel plans contingent on certain dates, they can’t be as flexible about scheduling at the last minute as they might want to be. Because I gotta believe Baseball would be thrilled to avoid the (undeserved) bad optics of playing into November.

[oblong]

38 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I also wonder whether another part of it may be that, since the World Series is such a behemoth to plan out, for broadcasters and the league and including for fans who make travel plans contingent on certain dates, they can’t be as flexible about scheduling at the last minute as they might want to be. Because I gotta believe Baseball would be thrilled to avoid the (undeserved) bad optics of playing into November.

I think that’s exactly it. Plus the uncertainty of knowing where game 1 will even be means you can’t start until you actually know. 

[casimir]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I also wonder whether another part of it may be that, since the World Series is such a behemoth to plan out, for broadcasters and the league and including for fans who make travel plans contingent on certain dates, they can’t be as flexible about scheduling at the last minute as they might want to be. Because I gotta believe Baseball would be thrilled to avoid the (undeserved) bad optics of playing into November.

The fans are probably a part of the consideration, I would think.  Once you do the math to remove the TV and movie stars that get shown during the games, there’s around 35,000 on up in the stadium.  Plus, unlike throwing a court down or getting ice ready, there’s the field to deal with, making sure it’s ready to go.

And really, with the NBA and NHL, isn’t there usually an additional buffer day or two between the last possible game 7 and the start of the championship round?  Maybe there isn’t, but I think there is at least a hangover day, a travel day, and a day before.

[casimir]

19 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Yeah, it's all because they need to accommodate TV. The huge money from the TV contracts is significant. Like you said, they need to schedule the time slots way in advance. I just don't like waiting so long between series. Of course, I feel the same way with the stupid 2 week wait for the Super Bowl.

How’s your driveway?

[Sports_Freak]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

I also wonder whether another part of it may be that, since the World Series is such a behemoth to plan out, for broadcasters and the league and including for fans who make travel plans contingent on certain dates, they can’t be as flexible about scheduling at the last minute as they might want to be. Because I gotta believe Baseball would be thrilled to avoid the (undeserved) bad optics of playing into November.

November here is looking like decent weather, so far. Trees in my area are still green. I'll be raking leaves into December, just like the last few years. But yeah, the optics are kinda crazy.

[IdahoBert]

I was looking back on the 1982 season of the Dodgers, which I inadvertently followed closely on radio in Tucson that season, and it was such a different kind of baseball than we know today.

First of all Fernando started 37 games. Nobody does that anymore. It was still the era of the four-man rotation. He pitched 285 innings and had 18 CG’s. Sheesh.   

Everybody aside from the catcher and an outfielder played 150 games or more with of course Garvey doing 162. I’m going to count Dusty Baker’s 147 games as 150, rounding it up. Not much platooning. Doesn’t look like there was a lot of “overmanaging“ going on. 

Nobody struck out over 100 times. Most were striking out 60 times and everybody was walking 50 to 60 times. Garvey was of course the outlier and only able to walk 20 times in 162 games. Nobody was striking out one guy per inning as a rule. 

The game is just so different now. 

[lordstanley]

14 hours ago, IdahoBert said:

I was looking back on the 1982 season of the Dodgers, which I inadvertently followed closely on radio in Tucson that season, and it was such a different kind of baseball than we know today.

First of all Fernando started 37 games. Nobody does that anymore. It was still the era of the four-man rotation. He pitched 285 innings and had 18 CG’s. Sheesh.   

Everybody aside from the catcher and an outfielder played 150 games or more with of course Garvey doing 162. I’m going to count Dusty Baker’s 147 games as 150, rounding it up. Not much platooning. Doesn’t look like there was a lot of “overmanaging“ going on. 

Nobody struck out over 100 times. Most were striking out 60 times and everybody was walking 50 to 60 times. Garvey was of course the outlier and only able to walk 20 times in 162 games. Nobody was striking out one guy per inning as a rule. 

The game is just so different now. 

Fernando threw 149 pitches in his Game 3 victory in the 1981 World Series. 

Watching Fernando’s 1990 no-hitter, I noticed he was wearing glasses for it. Now I’m trying to find another example of a glasses-wearing pitcher throwing a no-hitter. It’s proven harder to find than I thought it would. Greg Maddux, for example, never threw one.