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2021 Postseason thread


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11 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Yeah, it's been this way for a while, but now I'm a grumpy old man, so I complain about it.  As for viewership, I think young fans follow sports differently today.  They gamble on games or play fantasy sports jumping from game to game or watching highlights on twitter.  So, I don't know than an extra round will affect viewership.  We'll see.     

Extra rounds do add to the gambling, crypto, and NFT revenue, though.

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My feelings about the playoffs are evolving. I like the extra baseball that comes with more and longer rounds, but I have long left behind the notion that the team that emerges at the end is the best, even if they are the “champs”. But much of that extra is also coming in-game as they stretch beyond four hours even for matches that are not particularly close. Literally half the nation are unable to see the final out until the calendar has turned to the next day.

But, to Lee’s point, do game length and end times even matter for people for whom games are not much more than prop bet opportunities? The World Series used to be unifying events for the sports nation, even when the games all aired during the weekday. Now people can come in and out of games as the mood to gamble strikes, not unlike coming into and leaving in-progress blackjack games in Vegas. I’m sure Baseball is studying minute-by-minute gambling results as closely as they do minute-by-minute Nielsens. It’s not an accident that Joe Buck is promoting prop bets opportunities in between pitches now. Wait until Shep does that starting next year.

Through it all, the games are still there to watch from beginning to end for those people who still want to—or at least those who can keep their eyes open for. The number of people who want to do so do seem to be dwindling, though, as Baseball moves decisively into a future where a game is less a four-hour story to savor than it is a series of discrete events to wager on.

Manfred gave away the whole game when he revealed his conversation with Adam Silver. I guess I’ll just have to remember that as the game continues unimpeded down its current path here in Biff Tannen’s America.

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17 minutes ago, chasfh said:

My feelings about the playoffs are evolving. I like the extra baseball that comes with more and longer rounds, but I have long left behind the notion that the team that emerges at the end is the best, even if they are the “champs”. But much of that extra is also coming in-game as they stretch beyond four hours even for matches that are not particularly close. Literally half the nation are unable to see the final out until the calendar has turned to the next day.

But, to Lee’s point, do game length and end times even matter for people for whom games are not much more than prop bet opportunities? The World Series used to be unifying events for the sports nation, even when the games all aired during the weekday. Now people can come in and out of games as the mood to gamble strikes, not unlike coming into and leaving in-progress blackjack games in Vegas. I’m sure Baseball is studying minute-by-minute gambling results as closely as they do minute-by-minute Nielsens. It’s not an accident that Joe Buck is promoting prop bets opportunities in between pitches now. Wait until Shep does that starting next year.

Through it all, the games are still there to watch from beginning to end for those people who still want to—or at least those who can keep their eyes open for. The number of people who want to do so do seem to be dwindling, though, as Baseball moves decisively into a future where a game is less a four-hour story to savor than it is a series of discrete events to wager on.

Manfred gave away the whole game when he revealed his conversation with Adam Silver. I guess I’ll just have to remember that as the game continues unimpeded down its current path here in Biff Tannen’s America.

The length of the games and the start times are just ridiculous.  But its the same in all sports.  The Super Bowl is probably the best championship start time, but even with that, why on a Sunday night which drains people for Monday morning?

Edited by casimir
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5 minutes ago, chasfh said:

In Boston’s defense:

 

Of course, Diaz called one of those pitches that was four ball widths off the plate a strike to the previous batter. 

Laz Diaz sucks, but let's not pretend they didn't benefit as well at times.

Edited by mtutiger
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Not pretending a thing. Just implying that a ball that clipped the strike zone would have ended the inning had it been called, but it wasn't, and seven runs later ...

Also not blaming Astros' seven runs on a blown call. Baseball is a game of events that lead to later events. Just an interesting what if possibility.

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13 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Not pretending a thing. Just implying that a ball that clipped the strike zone would have ended the inning had it been called, but it wasn't, and seven runs later ...

Also not blaming Astros' seven runs on a blown call. Baseball is a game of events that lead to later events. Just an interesting what if possibility.

The crying by Red Sox fans just seems a bit over the top to me. They had ample opportunities to score more runs yesterday or prevent more runs from scoring once Jason Castro got that base hit and they didn't avail themselves of them. Just don't have a lot of sympathy.

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35 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

The crying by Red Sox fans just seems a bit over the top to me. They had ample opportunities to score more runs yesterday or prevent more runs from scoring once Jason Castro got that base hit and they didn't avail themselves of them. Just don't have a lot of sympathy.

I do not care which team it was as I have no dog in the fight at all..., but when the zone gets expanded THAT much and you are a team that is VERY conscious about not swinging out of the SZ....it can all add up.  As far as Boston fans...they can all go suck an egg as far as I am concerned.

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14 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Yeah, it's been this way for a while, but now I'm a grumpy old man, so I complain about it.  As for viewership, I think young fans follow sports differently today.  They gamble on games or play fantasy sports jumping from game to game or watching highlights on twitter.  So, I don't know than an extra round will affect viewership.  We'll see.     

yeah fantasy is big. I have no sense of who gambles or how much. There are obviously a ton of folks spending a lot of money trying to attract them so someone thinks it's a big market, but who knows how many of them will survive to recoup their advertising investment?

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1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

yeah fantasy is big. I have no sense of who gambles or how much. There are obviously a ton of folks spending a lot of money trying to attract them so someone thinks it's a big market, but who knows how many of them will survive to recoup their advertising investment?

Addiction markets usually do well.  

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10 minutes ago, John_Brian_K said:

I was watching when JD got hosed by 2 different calls WELL off the plate.

The one call on JD was about as bad as I have seen this season. It seems pretty clear to me that the league has instructed umps to call wide this year - particularly to the outside, which seems to just to re-inforce all the worst trends in the game. It strongly favors sliders, which are the hardest pitch on pitcher's arms, it increases Ks and thus adds to the all or nothing aspect of the hitting, and it injects another huge dose of random outcome noise into a game already has enough built into it.

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2 hours ago, chasfh said:

In Boston’s defense:

 

That call to Eovaldi is not as horrible as I thought it would be based on the reaction I read.  If it's the pitch I think it is, the green one touching the upper right solid box.  You can play the woulda coulda shoulda game in perpituity.

 

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3 hours ago, chasfh said:

they stretch beyond four hours even for matches that are not particularly close.

When game broadcasts resume from commercial break,  and you observe outfielders  playing catch with each other as well as  with infielders,... as seems pretty evident to me where the true delay of game originates . Pitch clocks will never fix that.

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44 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

The one call on JD was about as bad as I have seen this season. It seems pretty clear to me that the league has instructed umps to call wide this year - particularly to the outside, which seems to just to re-inforce all the worst trends in the game. It strongly favors sliders, which are the hardest pitch on pitcher's arms, it increases Ks and thus adds to the all or nothing aspect of the hitting, and it injects another huge dose of random outcome noise into a game already has enough built into it.

It was brutal.  It was not close.

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