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Play ball! 2019 MLB season thread


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Well I went to bed when Greinke made short work of the sixth inning. So certainly surprised at the final result but even if hindsight is 20/20 there's just no reason to take Greinke out and really absolutely no reason to take Greinke out for someone name Will Harris, of 9 innings of work all season. If you're gonna die do it with your best guys on the mound.  And that doesn't mean Cole necessarily though with a lead I'd have had him work the 8th.  

In game 7 with a lead your best guy comes out of the bullpen first which means Osuna.  And really I don't think anyone would have hassled Hinch if Greinke had given up the second home run so I go back to, why pull him at 80 pitches with a lead?

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6 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Well I went to bed when Greinke made short work of the sixth inning. So certainly surprised at the final result but even if hindsight is 20/20 there's just no reason to take Greinke out and really absolutely no reason to take Greinke out for someone name Will Harris, of 9 innings of work all season. If you're gonna die do it with your best guys on the mound.  And that doesn't mean Cole necessarily though with a lead I'd have had him work the 8th.  

In game 7 with a lead your best guy comes out of the bullpen first which means Osuna.  And really I don't think anyone would have hassled Hinch if Greinke had given up the second home run so I go back to, why pull him at 80 pitches with a lead?

Hindsight is certainly 20/20, but I also think Greinke should've been given a longer leash. The guy has ice in his veins and had been dominant up until that point. Hinch said afterward that he'd rather pull him one pitch too soon than one pitch too late, but his pitch count was still reasonable and he'd pitched into the 9th inning just a month ago before losing a no-hitter. 

The timing of going to the bullpen aside, I can't fault Hinch too much for going with Harris before Osuna. Harris had been better than Osuna in the postseason - he hadn't surrendered a run until Game 6. But he had been used a lot, and there's some after-the-fact speculation now that he was simply running on fumes as the Series neared its end.

Anyway, congrats to the Nats on a well-deserved championship. A truly memorable season that came down to two teams who both did so many unprecedented things, culminating in a Series with no home wins and the Nats with a ridiculous five successive elimination games in which they were behind and came back to win. I read somewhere that no team had come back from being down so far below .500 at the beginning of the season to win the Series since the 1914 "Miracle" Braves. 

Looking forward to next season with a likely Astros starting rotation of Verlander, Greinke, a healthy McCullers, and Urquidy. But that's a topic for the hot stove thread. 

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  • 3 months later...
On 10/25/2019 at 2:43 PM, ghost of miles said:

Well-agreed on that, but "shit-stupid" is a kind way of putting it.  More like Trumpian bluster/arrogance, what with the immediate unsigned statement that attacked the reporter and said the whole story was fabricated (after refusing to talk to said reporter before she even published the story in the first place!) and the whole slew of dumbass without-a-clue responses and incidents that followed, including this one (Astros GM says many people oversaw scathing statement):

Luhnow, who was addressing the decision to fire assistant general manager Brandon Taubman for his actions in the locker room after the Astros' victory over the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series game, was asked whether he personally reached out to reporter Stephanie Apstein.

“I have not — I’ve been traveling up here,” Luhnow said, according to the MLB Network. “We’ve been — I had to have a pretty tough conversation this morning with someone that’s worked for me for a long time. But, I will as soon as I can.”

According to MLB Network’s Hazel Mae, Apstein was sitting at the press conference.

 

I mean f&*%, these guys are just clueless when it comes to anything not involving analytics/winning baseball/making money, which, granted, is what it's all about, right?  Obviously what it's all about.  No, I have no illusions about the nature of other professional sports organizations, but damn, the Astros have, as I said earlier, really shown their ass to the world this week.  Keeping your ass in your pants is a good sign of all sorts of things--restraint, respect for self and others, and better for business too.  The past few days have provided little evidence that *any* of that is flourishing in this particular organization.  They're coming off as Trumpian dudes (as Jeff Passan of ESPN noted, they have an attack-back-when-attacked mentality, whether they've actually been "attacked" or not... sure sounds familiar to me!) who didn't even bother to check out what went down in the first place until it all blew up in their faces after that initial press release.  But here, let an Astros fan and blogger break down how even the announcement of the Taubman firing was laced with a considerable amount of b.s.:  The Astros' statement, with thoughts

All of that to me points to a deep and systemic, fundamental dishonesty at work within this organization.  And yeah, I know that said dishonesty is at work everywhere, but they haven't been able to get it right for nearly a week now, which says to me that they do indeed have some f'd-up issues at play. 

Per that post on the Astros County blog, this passage resonates as well:  " How much of what our society is currently experiencing - and especially to those of you who think that Baseball is: a Respite from What's Actually Happening and not what Baseball actually is: Indicative of What's Actually Happening - could have been avoided if you just, simply, believe the report and the corroborations of the report."

The Astros seem *very* indicative of What's Actually Happening, the ongoing shit-storm that we're not allowed to discuss at Organissimo because I guess jazz is supposed to be a "Respite from What's Actually Happening" (regardless of all the jazz artists who have spoken out in the past several years).  And the way they handled this whole incident is not some kinda weird, clumsy aberration, but testimony to an ongoing mentality of win-at-all-costs-and-bluster-dishonestly-at-anybody-who-gets-in-your-way.  I've had enough of that noise for a lifetime, thanks, which is why I'm still hoping that the Nats smack them down in the World Series.  

Thank the baseball gods they did! :g Turns out Taubman was indeed just the tip of the iceberg.

Edited by ghost of miles
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4 hours ago, Dave James said:

Looks like the Mookie Betts deal is finally back on track.  This has to be one of the stranger, more convoluted baseball trades in some time.

Better to get two decent prospects than a mediocre 83rd ranked reliever with questionable medicals.

 

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5 hours ago, BFrank said:

I went to Giants Fan Fest on Saturday and was lucky enough to see Hunter Pence's first appearance after his signing on Friday.
Here with Posey and Alex Dickerson

Image may contain: 4 people, people smiling

Good to have a upbeat person like Pence on the team. It will be interesting to see the kind of personality the Giants will have this year, it seemed like Bochy liked the low-key, subdued player, over the flashy, intense, gregarious type, eg. Posey, Belt, Panic, Duffy, Crawford, et.al. The last two season they've been a very dull team. Hopefully they'll liven up a bit this year.

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