owbc

Got away with it. And yes, BA knows baseball better than most color guys

It seems like the most recent crop of rookies is better at hitting against the shift than previous years…

Now this is quality postseason baseball.

I think Florida sports fans are the smart ones. Florida is the scam capitol of the US and those fans know how to detect a shady owner when they see one. Loyalty is a two-way street. The better run Florida sports teams do just fine. The other Tampa sports franchises do not have attendance problems. Baseball as a sport is incredibly popular in Florida. MLB knows they are at fault here and they will happily push the narrative of blaming the fans or city or stadium or whatever. It's all baloney. Don't fall for it.

This has all been quantified and the answer is that time between pitches is overwhelmingly the #1 cause of the increased game time. There are approximately 300 pitches per MLB game so each added second between pitches added 5 minutes to the game time. 80% of all pitchers take between 18 and 23 seconds to throw the ball but a few take as long as 26-28 seconds. The number of pitches per game has increased by about 10-15 so it is adding about 3-5 minutes per game. Similar to commercial breaks, mound visits, etc, it matters, but not enough to get us back to the 2:50 per game range from the early 2000s. Time between pitches is the ONLY way to get baseball games back under 3 hours.

It's a little tricky for me to compute the average but from baseball reference the median was 3:12. So I would imagine the Brewers are in the 3:15-3:18 range given they played 18 games 2:45 and under vs. 22 games 3:45 and over.

Not a surprise, but all bets are off in an elimination game.

If you decrease the time between pitches, you make baseball faster. End of story. If it's still boring, that's fine, not everyone appreciates baseball and every sport is boring at times. I know pitch clocks are not the be-all end-all but they did knock 21 minutes off the game time in low-A this year. So it does work. Although I think some tests in other minor league levels have shown that the effectiveness slips with time.

I want to see Wainwright get pummeled. Get rid of the dirty birds and give us the Dodgers-Giants series that we deserve.

I’m generally pro-reform but I hate the idea of restricting shifting. It’s the kind of idea that gets suggested by suits who don’t understand baseball. The shift punishes pull-hitting sluggers, particularly lefties. Does anyone look at MLB today and think—“the problem with MLB is that we don’t have enough Joey Gallos”? or “we should reward guys who swing recklessly with the occasional ground ball single”? Guys like Smoak or LoMo became useless the second they stopped driving the ball. Great. Hitters can and will adjust to shifts if you give them the opportunity and the incentives. It won’t take much Reward singles and speed by making it easier to steal bases. Reward bunting by making a two-strike bunt a foul ball. Etc etc

Very interesting. Would be fun to see how it would play out in practice. I have a feeling that pitching grips would be affected. I do think a pitch clock is the simplest way to do all of the above...it's not a coincidence that the pitchers who throw the hardest and the batters who swing the hardest tend to take the longest. Plus it improves the watchability of the game. At least the strikeout rate finally dropped in 2021 relative to 2019. That's a minor victory. At least anecdotally it also seemed that bunting against the shift has increased. I've seen several rookies put down nice bunts which suggests that batters are starting to learn how to respond to the absurd shifting.

The Yankees can only blame themselves for blowing home field advantage for this game. Two Stanton HRs taken away by the monster.

If we're going to be stuck with Yankees-Red Sox, at least give me a blowout win for the road team complete with lots of crowd shots of sad Red Sox fans.

Strong agree. Starting pitching is the key to the series and Burnes is our best starting pitcher. Charlie Morton is no slouch, but his FIP is 1.5 runs worse than Burnes, he gives up twice as many HR/9, and the Braves are only 17-16 in games he starts. If the Brewers win that game, it gives them some wiggle room if something goes wrong and still make it to a Game 5, when Burnes would once again be on the mound.

Someone else can correct me, but I don't think the math allows for this. I think you can get it close to even, or exactly even with a slight adjustment of games played. Travel is the biggest problem. And the only way to resolve the travel problem is to play the entire series against a team at once. Which opens up a whole new set of fairness problems due to tanking or just the randomness of injuries and hot/cold streaks. That's why it makes sense to do things geographically and why it's ok to recognize that the Dodgers already lost to the Giants.

The number of tickets available on Friday is very low. It can't be more than 1,500, mostly the top 5-10 rows of the corners of the terrace. This isn't going to be like St. Louis or Washington DC in 2019 when there were 5,000-10,000+ open seats in the NLDS. If the Brewers want full sellouts they can price accordingly. The Mariners wanted sellouts for their final weekend so they sold nosebleed tickets for $9. They went quickly.

How about that one game is not enough to prove who is the better team and who deserves to advance. Shouldn't that be the goal of the playoffs? I understand that a 3, 5, or even 7 game series is not perfect either, but it's a lot better than 1 game. The Dodgerd have 106 wins and the 2nd best record in baseball and face the possibility of getting eliminated in one game? That makes zero sense to me. I feel like if the Brewers were in this situation and then lost that game, a lot of people on this site would suddenly not feel as "excited" about the 1 game showdown. Baseball lends itself to upsets more than any other sport. There is not really such a thing as a "huge upset" in baseball. Arizona can beat the Dodgers in one game. Does that mean they are a better team? That's the reason they play 162 games and not 81 or 17. You shouldn't be expected to play a 162 game schedule to prove you belong in the playoffs and then have your fate decided by one game. The Wild Card game is not a "play-in" game, it's part of the play-offs and should be treated as such. The playoffs are mostly about entertainment. We already know that the Rays, Dodgers, and Giants are the three best teams in MLB. If this was college football, the "committee" would advance them to the semifinals. However, if you value the regular season, then the Dodgers already "lost" to the Giants and therefore should be eliminated. So it's really a gift by MLB to even give them a chance. And if they're going to throw a bone to second place teams, you may as well make it as entertaining as possible. The wild card games are awesome, they are by far the safest guarantee of an entertaining, must-see MLB game. It's a win-win because you are not involving the division winners and you are still entertaining the fans and giving the Dodgers another chance. The Dodgers already lost to the Giants--they lost the season series and they lost the division. The Giants are the better team over 162 games. A 7-game series will not change that, but it would provide us with a ton of entertainment, and potentially a different outcome because the postseason is different than the regular season and everyone optimizes their rosters to win in the postseason. It's just more fun. So in my view the single-game wild card is a perfect balance of rewarding the best regular season teams and entertaining the fans.

They got unlucky because they won 106 games and didn't get a division title.

A 162 game regular season needs to be worth something, especially given the randomness of baseball in small samples. The high-stakes wild card game had the Giants and Dodgers fighting like crazy all the way to game 162. It was great for the fans. In the end, the Dodgers lost. They finished in 2nd place. And then you have the AL wild card race which was thrilling up to the final day. The Blue Jays had 6 straight sellouts to end the season (30K capacity limit) and the Mariners had three straight sellouts. The fans are buying into the current system. There was a ton of casual/neutral fan engagement and cheering for 'chaos' scenarios. As for making the wild card a 3-game series...I don't see a good reason to do it. The single-elimination format is made-for-TV excitement. The winner of the first game is going to win a best-of-3 most of the time anyway. I get that they will probably go to a different playoff system that lets more teams in, which will probably be a net win because playoff baseball is usually fun and exciting. Although the 8-seed Brewers were not any fun to watch last year. I don't think the format is what caused the excitement. As you pointed out, the teams fighting for the wildcard spots were what caused the interest in the AL while the NL was all about the top two teams. How does that change with a top five league wide format? The only real difference is the one division/balanced schedule approach eliminates the advantage of being the only good team in a weak division has. If you give up the divisional format, or go to 4 divisions instead of 6, it does open up a wide variety of options for playoff formatting. I guess it's hard for me to envision that happening. If anything, the amount of travel is going to be reduced, not increased. I just think the Dodgers got unlucky this year and there is no need to change the format based on a one-off result.

A 162 game regular season needs to be worth something, especially given the randomness of baseball in small samples. The high-stakes wild card game had the Giants and Dodgers fighting like crazy all the way to game 162. It was great for the fans. In the end, the Dodgers lost. They finished in 2nd place. And then you have the AL wild card race which was thrilling up to the final day. The Blue Jays had 6 straight sellouts to end the season (30K capacity limit) and the Mariners had three straight sellouts. The fans are buying into the current system. There was a ton of casual/neutral fan engagement and cheering for 'chaos' scenarios. As for making the wild card a 3-game series...I don't see a good reason to do it. The single-elimination format is made-for-TV excitement. The winner of the first game is going to win a best-of-3 most of the time anyway. I get that they will probably go to a different playoff system that lets more teams in, which will probably be a net win because playoff baseball is usually fun and exciting. Although the 8-seed Brewers were not any fun to watch last year.

They need both Monday and Tuesday for tiebreakers, but I agree that both wild card games should be played on the same night, which would allow the playoffs to be moved up by a day. The wild card slate it certainly unique this year with 4 juggernaut franchises going at it. As a Brewers fan it feels like this whole postseason is full of opportunities to cheer for teams/managers/players that I usually despise. Go Red Sox? Go Cardinals (or Dodgers)? Should I cheer for the cheaters or for Tony La Russa?

I was at the Mariners game today, it was rough to lose that one after coming so close. Kind of felt like what would have happened if the Brewers had lost game 162 in 2008 and missed the postseason. Although in reality the Mariners are not even there yet, it’s more like if the 2006 Brewers had made a run before their competitive window was open. For me it was good perspective…who am I to complain about the Brewers winning a division title and going on cruise control??? There’s a huge, huge gap between the Mariners and a true title contender like the Brewers. Time to take a couple days off from baseball and get ready to lean into this run on Friday.

Offense is basically a wash and the Brewers have a significant pitching advantage. Brewers in 4. 2nd half batting stats: wRC+ MIL 99 ATL 100 AVG MIL .252 ATL .250 OBP MIL .327 ATL .317 SLG MIL .420 ATL .447 K% MIL 21.2% ATL 22.6%

The Seattle fans have been a bit slow to catch on but the team is now reporting massive ticket sales for the weekend series. Everyone assumed they would fall short. Lots of similarities with the 2007 Colorado Rockies team that finished 14-1. Seattle is 10-1 in their last 11. I don't think there's anything more fun in baseball than when an underdog team goes on one of these runs (unless it's the Cardinals of course).

The AL wild card race tightened tonight: New York 90-68 +1 Boston 89-69 Seattle 89-70 0.5 GB Toronto 88-70 1 GB