trwi7

Shaw facing all these lefties is ridiculous. I know he's one of your top relievers but he's pedestrian against lefties. That cutter breaks right into their wheelhouse.

I think this series goes a lot differently if they have Carrasco and Salazar. I'm amazed they actually made it to the World Series without them considering their only good SP is Kluber right now. The only bright side to the Cubs winning is no more of the tortured fan base garbage from the media. I didn't see the Brewers win a playoff game until I was 21 and have only seen 6 total. Don't want to hear how tortured another fan base is.

What the he'll is the 2nd base umpire looking at?

Cleveland chokes. Cleveland chokes. Nice job by those two idiots in the outfield.

I think they said both had alcohol in their systems but neither was legally drunk and one of them also had cocaine in their system.

The World Series killed the NFL in ratings last night and that game was two huge markets and national teams in Dallas and Philadelphia.

Say a pitcher reaches the limit. There's nothing stopping a runner at that point from just getting an 80 foot lead knowing that the pitcher can't throw over to pick him off. Sounds good in theory. Impossible to implement.

If a pitcher just sucks or is tired, it would probably take longer for him to finish the inning than calling in a reliever. And tired pitchers lead to injuries so there's no way the PA would agree to that.

What a weird group of players. I assume "that type of hitter" means low OBP and high strike out hitters but Jaha had a .365 OBP and struck out 20% of the time with the Brewers. Same with Vaughn except he wasn't a high OBP guy, mainly due to his lower batting average. Sexson didn't strike out a lot either for a guy his size and was a pretty awesome hitter with the Brewers. Fernando Vina was a terrible hitter. I have no idea why anyone would willingly want him in their lineup. Just fill your roster with the best hitters and pitchers you possibly can and then hope you get lucky.

Pitchers don't take 40 seconds between pitches so your "consistency" issue that football has is weird to me.

It wasn't an article, it was a video segment. They had Eric Byrnes who was extremely in favor and Crawford who was extremely against. They did an entire game under the system and everyone came out in favor of it.

Enjoy http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/10/25/twitter-major-league-indians-pennant-win?xid=socialflow_twitter_si

Every player can be traded. Now no team is going to assume the entire financial commitment but if the Reds want to move on and are willing to pick up some money, a big market team would be willing to take the risk that he would be able to have a few great years left and that his decline years he would still be a productive hitter.

I mean the obvious answer is a 0-0 game with one of the Cubs pitchers having a perfect game and then giving up a home run on an 0-2 count with 2 outs in the 9th.

Traded for Rizzo (Andrew Cashner), Hendricks (Ryan Dempster), Arrieta (Scott Feldman), Russell (Samardzija and Hammel), Fowler (Luis Valbuena). Drafted Bryant, Schwarber, Baez, Almora (I know GM's don't draft but they put in place people who do and they deserve some credit when scouts identify talent.) Picked up Rondon in the Rule 5 Draft from Cleveland ironically enough.

It was a lot easier until that piece of crap Chapman joined their team.

The Bad News Bears might beat the Dodgers with the way they're playing.

It's not like baseball is like football either where a certain scheme is going to give certain teams difficulties. I mean, you could be 5-14 against a division opponent one year and 13-6 against them the next year.

Huh, Joe Blanton sucks. Who knew? Other than pretty much everyone.

I doubt Stearns went looking to acquire Susac. More like they wanted more than just Bickford and Susac was who they agreed upon. Alone for Smith, probably not but he was a fairly high draft pick that was looked at as a potential starter who just happened to be drafted by a team that he would never start for. Would much rather see if he can start than sign Castro or trade for McCann or any other option that might be out there.

We didn't trade for Susac to have him sit on the bench or be in the minors.

La Stella almost retired this summer because he was sent to the minors and wasn't with the Cubs. Yeah, he could've been bluffing but why take that risk that he actually does retire?

I mentioned this in another thread a few weeks ago but hadn't seen the entire segment. I have watched it now and think it might deserve its own thread. Some notes. It starts out with Eric Byrnes talking about how he watches more games now as an analyst than he ever did as a player and constantly seeing games that are affected by wrong ball and strike calls. They then run through a series of clips of the most egregious calls they could find. They go on to explain "High tech cameras are now in use in every major league ballpark capable of mapping the precise path of every pitch in real time. Which means that today that everyone watching a game, from broadcasters, to TV viewers, to fans watching online can see for sure whether a pitch either hits the strike zone or misses it. Everyone that is but the guy who gets to decide." They go back to the Byrnes interview. He randomly pulls up a Texas/Anaheim game on his phone on the MLB app and shows gameday and whether or not every pitch is a ball or a strike. Byrnes goes on to say "So here we are, 3,000 miles away from Anaheim and I have this information (snaps fingers) like that and the person who's responsible for that call doesn't have the same information? Why do millions of people watching at home get to know if it's a ball or a strike, yet the poor dude behind home plate is the one left in the dark?" Jon Frankel then goes on to interview former umpire Jerry Crawford. Get rid to get angry as you start reading more from Crawford. Frankel: Could you ever see a situation where you might want technology? Crawford: Never. It's it's it's ridiculous. Frankel: But progress is a good thing, isn't it? Crawford: Not in the game of baseball. Frankel: Why do you think the umpire can't be replaced? Crawford: Traditions make the game of baseball. You bring your kids to the game to watch the players, the managers, the umpires, eat hot dogs. That's what you do. It's all about tradition. I know the direction everyone seems to be going. Something mechanical can do the job better or won't get things wrong. The machine does get things wrong and umpires are doing an absolutely tremendous job umpiring balls and strikes. Frankel wanted to test that so he went to Yale University and asked a leading economist for help. Toby Moskowitz agreed to analyze every pitch thrown in MLB in the last 3.5 years, about 1 million pitches total. MLB claims umpires get 97% of the calls right, however, Moskowitz found that since 2013 that umpires are only 88% right. That equates to 30,000 mistakes per year and that includes the easy calls. When the pitches are anywhere near the border of the strike zone, Moskowitz found that they miss at a much higher rate. They went on to show a strike zone and then a yellow region that is the equivalent of 4 inches wide extending 2 inches in each direction around the border of the strike zone. In a typical game, around 32 pitches get thrown in this region. Moskowitz found that umpires get pitches thrown in that area wrong 31.7% of the time Moskowitz was surprised by that high of a number but after thinking about it and how fast every pitch is, it just shows the limitations of what humans can do, despite being trained. They then expanded the yellow region to 3 inches to include pitches that should be even more obvious balls or strikes but even then, the error rate only went down to 25.9%. To make matters worse, Moskowitz found that umpires aren't only missing calls but are doing so in a biased way. In an average game, they make 8 more mistakes in favor of the home team. Moskowitz: Do they want to see the home team win? No, they're professionals, they want to be unbiased but it's hard to be unbiased as a human. They've got to make that judgment in a split second and what they're hearing is 50,000 fans who are quite sure of how that should go. Frankel then goes on to say that hours after the interview with Moskowitz, that his favorite team, the Cubs won a game on a walk off walk on a pitch that was actually a strike. Okay, now get ready to be angry. Frankel: In the decisive game 7 of the 2011 World Series, the data shows that the home plate umpire missed 14 calls in favor of the Cardinals against only 3 for the Rangers. (During him saying this they show a pitch way outside to Josh Hamilton that was called a strike and Yadier Molina drawing a walk on a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded and 2 outs in the 5th inning when it was still a 3-2 game, a pitch that was actually a strike.) Guess who won? Frankel: As a baseball fan, is this disappointing, unacceptable to you? Moskowitz: If there were no other alternative you would say, well, this is the best humans can do and that's what we gotta live with. But, if you care about getting it right, there's an alternative that's so much better. They then go back to Jerry Crawford. Crawford: I don't care what the guy from Yale's looked at to be honest with you. It's not even feasible. He's absolutely incorrect. Frankel says that Crawford doesn't trust the math or the technology, which he says is no match for guys like him. Crawford: These guys have gotten so good, so good at calling balls and strikes. You got guys that are not missing any pitches. Frankel: (shocked, taken aback) You think there are guys calling perfect games? Crawford: Yes, they're calling perfect games. Frankel (voiceover): Major League Baseball appears to disagree. The league has not only installed this technology in every park but for the last several years has actually been using it to try to tutor their own umpires. Yes, after every game, umpires are shown exactly where each pitch actually was, so they can review what they got right and what they got wrong. At least, that's what the league thinks is happening. Crawford: About 20 minutes after the game was over there would be a knock on the door, there would be a guy standing there, he'd have a disk, he'd say umpire Crawford, I'd say me, he'd hand me the disk. Frankel: And you would usually do what? Crawford: I threw it in the trash. Frankel: Are you telling me you never sat down and used it as a learning tool to improve the way you called a game? Crawford: No, I didn't. I never did. Frankel then goes on to visit SportVision in Silicon Valley, creator of Pitch f/x and the same company who created the computer generated 1st down line in football. Frankel: How does it work for you to actually track the pitches? Zander (SportVision's GM of baseball products): So you see we have two tracking cameras, one mid 3rd and one mid 1st and each camera is tracking the pitch about 20 times, so we get about 40 samples of the pitch from when the pitcher releases it to when it crosses home plate. He says you do need a human to oversee the program, pitch f/x is easy to use and accurate to within a half inch. Frankel: How easy is it to establish the strike zone? Zander: It's quite easy. So we have an operator, that will establish a strike zone for a player the first time we actually see that player and then we'll save that strike zone information so the next time that player comes up it's already loaded in. Frankel: If a player comes up and decides to change his batting stance, how quickly can you adjust the strike zone for him? Zander: The operator will do that instantly. As you can see here, I can drag the bottom of the zone and adjust it to where it needs to be. They then went on to show the game that was called entirely by pitch f/x in the video at the beginning of this post. The players and coaches were skeptical. Afterwards, however, they seemed converted. Matt Kavanaugh (former Indy League player, current manager of San Rafael Pacifics): The game wasn't left in someone else's hands, it was left in the players hands and I think that's what this game is meant to be. Frankel: Did you feel like it interrupted the flow of the game at all? Kavanaugh: Had great flow to the game. I think we had one of our shorter games of the year. Frankel: If a big league manager came to you or an executive from MLB came to you and said, what do you think, should we implement this? What would you say? Kavanaugh: Right now, today, I'd say do it for a full season and see what happens. Back to the interview with Crawford. Frankel: How would you feel if you were sitting behind the plate with an earpiece and someone telling you whether the machine saw it as a ball or strike? Crawford: I would certainly feel inadequate. Let's face it, you're not doing what you were trained to do. Frankel: Would you feel like you were just a puppet if the machine was making the calls? Crawford: No question. You're not really doing anything. Frankel wanted to ask MLB how it would feel about such a change, as well as what they think of the rates of umpire error the Yale professor found and why the league is willing to stop games, often for minutes on end to correct the rare missed call on the base paths. While on average they allow more than a dozen mistakes at home plate every game, which could've been gotten right in real time. The league however would not talk nor would any of the players, not one of whom would agree to speak on the record. They go back to Byrnes. Byrnes: These guys aren't going to speak out on it! Frankel: Why aren't the players speaking out about it? Byrnes: The umpires! You think they want to be the guys to speak out against this? No way! There's no way I would've done it when I played either! So what does everyone think about this? The argument was very compelling and made only stronger by having Crawford act as pompously as he did. Just a completely smug, arrogant interview. Me typing what he says doesn't do justice to how smug and arrogant he was.

Trevor Bauer's finger is pretty gnarly.

Are they getting large crowds on Sunday because it's Sunday or are they getting large crowds on Sunday because of the giveaways?