topper09er

Ground rule double would probably apply in that situation it would suck for the team batting but at least some runs come in instead of possibly none.What will happen is that the umpires will be told to err on the side of calling a fair ball. That way you actaully know where the runners end up. This is what NFL are supposed to do for fumbles, but for some unexplicable reason they still call runners down when it is an obvious fumble which just enrages fans and really makes replay look pretty stupid. So if every close call is called fair then every time the manager will want to come out and challenge the call, so every ball down the line will cause a play stoppage for a challenge.

I'm just saying you cant blame a loss on a bad call, it affects the course of the game but there are just as many other things that you can point to if you want to blame a loss on one thing Its good the ump can rule an out, I guess Jeffrey Maier is lucky the wind wasnt blowing 5 mph more to right that night or he wouldnt be famous. I was just joking about Bartman, I just like thinking about it.

As I said in my original post, we had plenty of chances to win that game, Braun had RISP in the 9th and didnt get a hit, The brewers had the bases loaded 3 times and only managed 1 walk. Plus, how do you know the cubs would not have won the game the next inning. Just because DiF struck that guy out doesnt mean the brewers would have won. Are you serious with that Twins game? in the 3rd inning the score was 12-2, and you are saying 1 call in the 9th inning changed the game??? How bout the other 10 runs the A's scored? You cannot seriously blame the umps for that loss? I seem to remember another thread about replay where I listed many good reasons not to have it and the arguement was like 100 vs me, I dont feel like listing all the reasons again but obviously I am totally against any more replay. I am OK with the HR call for one important reason, calling a HR with a replay does not replace an umpire or make a call for an umpire when the umpire is already there to make the call. It essentially is adding another umpire to the field because there are times when none of the umpires can be in good enough position to make a HR call. Anything else needs to be left to the umps. Also, I think in the current system the Maier flyout HR would have been ruled a 2B anyways instead of an out so the system still has flaws anyways. You dont know that Jeter would not have scored later in the inning from 2nd anyways. Plus, would we really have wanted Moises Alou to get credited with an out on the one of the greatest plays of all time and possibly have the Chubs make the WS? (edit: long quote and excessive punctuation --1992)

I bet Braun was trying to get a hit instead of hitting a lazy fly ball to win the game. Pathetic situational hitting as usual

Dif must be on his game, the Pitchf/x keeps thinking his cutter is a slider

What is that????

sweet

Hardy is lucky to have Kendall as a teammate. Among ALL qualified NL hitters, Kendall has the second lowest OPS (.615) and Hardy has the 9th lowest (.671)

I just had some left over General Tso for lunch and Im definetly going to have to take a mean Suppan soon

Bill Hall has an OPS of 3.000 today so far...

Doumit is reminding me of Shawn Green now...hes on pace for 6-6 4 HRs, 19 TB

Jeffery Maier.First, that allowed the game to be tied in the bottom of the 8th inning at 4-4 and the Yankees won in the bottom of the 11th. The Yankees also won the series 4-1...Lets see, first of all the ball Jeter hit missed being a HR by about 1 ft, so if there was a little wind that day it would have been a HR and no big deal. The Orioles allowed an unearned run in the 2nd inning, dont do that and they win. The Orioles left 11 men on base and were 0-9 with RISP, I would say their inablilty to hit with RISP cost them the game more than that call.

I know this will open up a huge can of worms, but here goes. Probably not as most people on here seem to favor this. No arguing with umpires as the play would be replayed on the jumbo screen and seen to be correct or faulty. Done deal There were at least 2 plays today that were too close to call even with instant replay, baseball plays are far from done deal. Same thing in teh NFL, its like everyone assumed if you add replay there will never be a bad call ever again. In reality its just not true, pretty much any play in baseball that is close enough for an ump to get wrong is so close that you cant even tell on replay. Plus showing it on the screen will only cause the fans to cheer every call for the home team and boo the others. I believe it would actually shorten the time of game as it could be done quickly on screen and there would be no reason for the manager to go on the field and argue with the umpire for no reason. Um, as Rock would say, "I mean, are you kiddin' me?" Again, today, several "reviewable calls (at first only) and no manager arguements. Manager arguements are pretty rare and certainly do not take any longer than it would to show the replay on the screen several times and have the umpires come together and change a call, plus, any call that got changed based on a replay where it was too close to tell would cause a manager to come out and argue. The umpires would not have the ability to incorrectly change the outcome of the game. One call does not ever effect the outcome of a game. If you think you got screwed out of a run by a call then win the game by more runs. Show me one example where 1 single call actaully changed the outcome of a game. (The brewers -Dbacks fair ball call does not count, that happened in the 7th inning (I think) plus how do you know he wouldnt have hit another double the next pitch?) That blown strike from Dif against the cubs on July 3rd? Well, Ryan Braun had a runner on 2nd in the top of the 9th, get a hit there and we win.... Ejections would be a thing of the past as either the player or the ump would be shown to incorrect on screen to all fans In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not. This does not work well in football, it just prolongs the game and wastes time and causes the refs to be even worse. It doesnt work for baseball, there are way too many close calls in a game, pretty soon each manager will want 10 challenges per game and the umps will still be right every time. Also, a strike is not from the arm pits to the knees or whatever it says in the rulebook, it is whatever the umpire decides is a strike.

There are Pirates fans? I guess both of them are on the internet today... When I was in Pittsburgh last season (for CCs no hitter) I couldnt find one fan in my section who knew who Honus Wagner, Paul Waner or Pie Traynor was.

Sportscenter is unbearable to watch, for every hour you get about 15 mins commercials, 20 mins of "analysis" by former players and hosts who have no idea what they are talking about that just state increadibly obvious things, 20 mins of off the field crap like how TO and Tony Romo get along or what does guy said on his twitter page, and about 5 minutes of actual in game highlights. If a brewer game has say 8 runs scored between the 2 teams, all you will see if some meaningless homerun and the last play of the game and they show the stats for the 4 most popular players. If the Yankees beat the Red Sox 1-2, you will see how every run was scored plus like 5 other important plays. ESPN knows they have a monopoly on men, all men (who like sports and those that really dont but pretend to so they can talk about sports at work) watch sportscenter no matter what, sure FSN has a show but Sportscenter has cemented itself as the "cool" show to watch so that you can say you are a sports fan. Therefore, ESPN does not try to market to the men who like sports anymore because they will watch ESPN no matter what, so now what they try to do is severely reduce the actual sports content and significantly increase the off the field crap that people who dont really like sports care more about. Now they have a watered down show which is full of crap I dont care about and very little highlitghts. There are times, in say April, when you have a full slate of MLB, NBA and NHL games and you dont even see highlitghts from all the games in a full hour sportscenter. I cant take it anymore and I agree the "who's now" really did it for me. Unfortunetly, ESPN has a monopoly over me since I dont have MLB network so I still watch baseball tonight.

I agree that you are proposing a fair contract which is win-win for the brewers and prince, just like what we offered CC. The reality, at least with Boras in my opinion, is that it just wont happen and Boras will sell Prince to the highest bidder when he is a FA. The Brewers not have the ability to EVER be the highest bidder on any superstar type player. Just wondering if anyone can look this up easily, has a Boras client EVER signed away a year of FA as part of a "rookie" or first major contract?

As long as Prince still has Boras, we all know what is going to happen, he will not sign anything that costs him even 1 year of FA and will sign a huge deal with BoSox/Yankees to be their DH for the next 5-6-7 years for 5-10M more than the brewers offer him. It will turn out that the BoSox/Yankees overpaid for him and whatever deal the Brewers offer him would have been more fair, but those teams dont care and can afford to overspend. No matter how much we want him and no matter how big of a contract we offer him, someone with more money will just offer him a bigger contrast because they can and Boras will take it. Our only chance to keep Prince in 2012+ is if he has some major personal epiphany and fires Boras and decides he would like Braun/Fielder to be like Bagwell/Biggio.

Race around the bases, put a garbage can at the plate and have outfielders to the Tom Emansky drill, put a target at 1st and have 3rd basemen and SS throw over similar to the NFL QB challenge, bunting competition as mentioned before, maybe a rundown competition...then end with the HR derby. I'd think more fans would like this than the celebrity all-star game.

He means Ichiro has a solid compact swing and hits the ball hard wherever it is pitched, and in the homerun derby every pitch is a meatball middle in (if you are patient) so Ichiro would hit those out of the park.

Another interesting stat, you were more likely to score 1 run with 1 out runners on 2nd and 3rd than 0 outs runners on 1st and 2nd, and you had the same chacne of scoring 2 runs with 1 out 2nd, 3rd as you were of scoring 1 run with 0 outs 1st, 2nd. To me that would say the proper play is to bunt with runners on 1st and 2nd 0 outs in every situation.

In the 6 games that Jason Kendall had led off, he is 6-29 (.208), 1 BB and 1 HBP for a .258 OBP, 1 run scored, 0 RBI.

True, but fielding percentage counts errors as fielding and throwing errors combined into one stat. Also, for example, when Furcal threw that low throw in the 1st inning on Saturday, you could rate that as a bad throw by Furcal but also just as bad fielding by Russel Martin. Its easy to say that Prince costs an out by not being able to scoop a throw but you could also account for times when the SS cant scoop a relay throw from the OF.

What is so hard to understand, it is more difficult to get a hit than flyout or groundout. With a runner on 2nd 0 out, you try 3 times to get a hit and fail more often than with a runner on 3rd 1out and you have one chance for a non-hit run plus still 1 more chacne for a run scoring hit. The 1 chance for a non-hit run is more likely to score than 2 chance to score using a hit. Base Outs % of times scoring 1 Run 2 0 .348 3 1 .478

The potential for this is pretty cool. It would nice to see some stats which could break defense down a little bit into its parts; range, fielding, throwing and awareness. Range would account for how many balls you can get to, like lateral range for a SS (from up the middle to in the hole) or cutting of balls in the OF (like if recognizing that if you are playing deep it is not as impressive to cut off the same ball as if you were playing more in) or getting good jumps in the OF. Fielding would account for how well you cleanly handle the balls you get to. Throwing could even account for things like how often a SS hits the 1B in the chest compared to high throws or throws to the side or in the dirt. Awareness could measure how often you throw to the right bases or times when the cut off man should have cut the ball. Im not sure how you would add them together for an overall defensive rating it would be cool to rank all the SS based on how far to either side they can go to get a ball that took 1 second to get to them.

Again, as said before dont just make claims based on your gut reaction, look at the numbers. This year, listed below are the 3 hitters for the NL and the number of baserunners on when they came to bat: PHIL: Utley, 219 NYM: Wright, 263 ATL: Jones, 177 FLA: Ramirez, 210 WASH: ZImmerman, 276 (wow) MIL: Braun, 255 STL: Pujols, 253 CHC: Lee, 224 (he has 4th a lot too, the Cubs have not had a very regular 3rd hitter) HOU: Berkmann, 230 CIN: Votto was hurt too much to use his numbers PIT: McClouth hit 3rd until he was traded LAD: Not fair due to Rameriz being suspended SF: No consistane #3 hitter SD: Gonzalez, 238 (has hit 4 a lot as well) COL: Helton, 207 ARZ: Upton, 222 (spent the first month hitting lower in the order, 7 or 8 a lot) So, out of the regular 3 hitters in the NL Ryan Braun has come to bat with more runners on than anyone else in the entire league except for Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright.