owbc

The Brewers are a more successful franchise than the Twins in recent years. The Twins haven't won a playoff series since 2002! Winning seasons, last 10 years: Brewers: 5 Twins: 4 Playoff appearances, last 10 years: Brewers: 2 Twins: 3 Playoff wins, last 10 years: Brewers: 11 Twins: 0

Major doesn't matter much and many undergraduate students should be guided to study whatever they find interesting. And the whole pushing kids (even young children) to think about a job/career thing is ridiculous. For many people they should probably show up at university with an open mind and take a diverse array of classes that they find interesting. As someone who works at a university and has taught/TAed some classes recently, the biggest issue I see is lack of student motivation. Students just going through the motions because college is the next logical step toward a career. Then they burn out and/or get hammered with bad grades and a low GPA and are screwed. Yeah there are a couple careers like engineering, comp sci, and pre-med where you have to be on top of things and need to decide early. But even many of those students end up getting rejected/dropping out and falling into one of the less-competitive majors where they are then at a disadvantage. A bachelor's barely gets you a job these days (even in STEM) and graduate programs don't really care what your undergraduate major is if you have an excellent resume. If you are motivated to pursue an advanced degree you probably ended up deciding on some major related to that. If you want to be a geologist or oceanographer you definitely don't need to study that in undergrad. And even then a ton of people are doing super-specialized 5-7 year STEM PhDs and subsequently ending up in an entirely different career after graduating. All of those tech products that you are using are developed in part by people who studied geology/astronomy/etc. in grad school. I know several of them.

I just know the Nationals will choke in the WC game so that's who I want to play.

I believe the Atlantic League is now using larger bases (which effectively shortens the basepaths). If the ball wasn't juiced we would see a dramatic decrease in offense...deadball era except with 3TO baseball and 3.5 hour games. Now that would be a disaster--hence why the ball can not be 'un-juiced' without other concurrent changes.

Friday night’s game was case in point for what’s wrong with baseball. A 4-hour game with 18 walks and 19 strikeouts. Only 6 balls landed safely in the outfield, the other 6 hits were HRs or infield singles. Yuck. Does anyone actually watch the whole game?? A 6-5 game with a walk off HR should be exciting but that game was slow and excruciating.

Glad the Rangers burned their challenge!

Generally I hate the idea of being in the WC game but if this team can scrap their way into the game it would be kind of fun. Would love to play the Nats on the road actually and have a chance to add to their postseason misery...

It kinda bugs me that the Mets are the hottest team in baseball right now. I was kinda enjoying them underperforming after all the spending they did this offseason. I still think the Mets will miss the playoffs but it's good for baseball for them to generate a little buzz. Crowd is rocking there tonight.

Entirely a tossup. The Cubs are atrocious on the road and their injuries are piling up. The Brewers...it's been ugly but they have done enough to keep it close. I think the Brewers can win more games than the Cubs the rest of the way, that will be enough to get it to the last week of the season.

I switched over to the Mets game just in time to see them get 3 in the 9th to tie the Nats (Frazier HR). Fun times in the NL!

I give them about a 50/50 chance of making the playoffs, and if they do make the playoffs it is about 50/50 between division and WC2. Thinking Nationals are a lock for WC1. Mets will find a way to Mets.

I don't understand why he would have grounds for a lawsuit...there's a reason why universities are quick with expulsion--it's easy. Might not be fair but your employer doesn't need a reason to fire you either...

Winning streak! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnVrSZHnvYY

I think you meant to say it shows how great WAR is... Anyway, they are essentially tied in WAR depending on if you use bWAR or fWAR and if you include dWAR or not. Which matches the dead heat in traditional stats.

How did we let this thread fall to the second page? The Cubs have the injury bug and there is still plenty of time left to make a run!!!

A miraculous playoff push from the Brewers could also generate some votes for Yelich. The Dodgers have an 18 game lead in their division...nobody will be talking about them in September. But yes, generally agreed that a "tie" goes to Bellinger.

Part of me thinks this team needs a rebuild...a small market team with the worst minor league system in MLB...not a good look. Similar to the 2018 Mariners there are plenty of valuable assets on the ML club, they could try and do a quick rebuild for the 2021-22 seasons. By selling an 89-win team the Mariners might be a model if they can start winning games next year. The other part of me says not to sell low and try again in 2020 with a healthier version of this roster.

The off-season moves were great. This could have been a 75-win team.

I think the first challenge is to get the majority of fans to accept that changes (beyond un-juicing the ball) need to made and Manfred has so far proven to be completely the wrong person to do so. I'm curious to see what robot umps will do to the game before making other big changes to pitching. It is my belief that it will benefit hitters more than pitchers since the uncertainty of a ball/strike call on the corner forces hitters to swing at balls that might be called strikes. So maybe we will get more contact that way without having to change anything else.

I doubt it would be enough. We don't know how much of an impact juiced balls are having because everyone started worrying about launch angle at the same time. We have a great idea. Home runs are up 50% in AAA this year. They started using the MLB ball this year. Skill changes or thoughts around it don't magically propagate to the entire MLB population at the drop of a hat. A change in the baseball does. http://owlbb.com/juiced-ball.php I didn’t realize the AAA rate went up by that much after no change in prior years. Yikes. I would still argue that pace of play and 3TO baseball need to be addressed. Otherwise un-juicing the ball will simply make for a slow, boring game with little offense. Making speed valuable is the key—more stolen bases, more incentive to hit the ball on the ground.

I doubt it would be enough. We don't know how much of an impact juiced balls are having because everyone started worrying about launch angle at the same time.

Almost everyone is trying to hit a home run now in every inning, every count, every situation. Probably 90% of the time that MLB players swing the bat the goal is a home run. Any other game action is purely accidental or will be soon. That's all the justification I need for major rule changes to RESTORE the game to a previous state. Baseball has already changed to something new, the goal of any changes should be to get things back to what I would argue is a better version of baseball. Attendance is down 4,000 fans/game from the peak in the late-2000s but it is clear visually that WAY more people are leaving the game in the 6th-8th inning than they used to, generally because that's when games are hitting the 2.5-hour mark. The fans are not invested in the outcome because the games are too long. My main solution is to make stolen bases WAY easier (similar to the current test in the Atlantic league with pitchers needing to step off)--ideally a 75% success rate for the average runner and nearly 100% for the fastest guys in the league. That should greatly change the value equation in favor of fast, exciting but lower-OPS guys who are currently headed to extinction. I also think it is a way to make 3TO baseball more exciting since a walk should lead to more movement on the bases.

I 'gave up' on the season a few weeks ago when things were really not going well. The Brewers are 9-6 since I declared the season over.

I'm just going to assume you are joking...how is the poutine?

This is like the urtext of sabermetrics. This is true, and it sucks. Well, sabermetrics is what it is (it can't suck, it's just numbers)...it's the truth that sucks and makes for boring baseball. Move the fences waaaayyy back and don't count foul balls as strikes. Might get contact back into the game. It's infuriating that they have allowed the game to get so boring when there are easy solutions available. At the very least they need to make it easier to steal bases.