Yeah but in 2004they added Kevin Brown and Javy Vazquez, who had ERA+ of 169 and 139 (with a bullet)respectively in 2003
MLB 2020: We're Playing, but We Can't Agree on Anything
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
- Start date
2018 Sox: with everything that’s happened, it’s beginning to feel like a long time ago.
Definitely, I knew it was going to be a rocky, and perhaps lost, year. Obviously no clue to what extent.
2018 Red Sox: We won the 54 that really counted.
2020 Red Sox: Let's just get this over with.
2020 Red Sox: Let's just get this over with.
The one I remember most is Esteban Loaiza. He won 20 games the year before and it looked like he had turned a corner into an ace and he was about to slot in as NY's #3 starter. I was mortified. Looking at his b-ref page, he really didn't cash in on that 2003 season he had. I believe Loaiza was semi-recently convicted of dealing coke and was sentenced to prison plus deportation. I was worried about him when I was a kid and he came to NY, and as it turned out it was all down hill for old Esteban from there.
E: Yup. But it does seem that over time I kind of forgot about the details of the acquisition because he was a mid-season trade and had gone belly-up before going to NY. I remember feeling like the Yankees had just acquired an ace. The Yankees got a great deal on rental space in my mind back in those days.
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Joe west needs to be fired last week.
https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2020/07/09/joe-wests-coronavirus-insanity-continues/
FYI, The Athletic published an oral history on this game:
https://theathletic.com/1915000/2020/07/09/the-greatest-game-ever-played-the-night-the-mets-and-braves-broke-baseball/
Facebook is a fucking poison to this country. The addendum about the country singer makes me so angry.
The referenced FB post that West seems to have gotten his information from on the country singer. This is linked at the end of the article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-diffie-die-from-lung-cancer/
So, uhh, the season is scheduled to start in a week, on the 23rd. The Yankees are supposed to take on the defending champs in DC. Or... maybe not in DC.
If MLB can't get through this schedule, forget about an NFL season - no way they can bubble up like NHL or NBA.
"I read somewhere"
Any idea where?
Not saying I don't think it's possible - just that I'm not seeing it.
https://www.radio.com/sports/mlb/report-kbo-officials-nervous-after-new-spike-in-covid-19
“ The league has taken significant precautionary measures to ensure that the players and faculty are safe during this time. Among those are a three-week league shutdown if any member of a team tests positive for coronavirus at any point, the prohibition of high-fiving and chewing tobacco, and the required wearing of masks and gloves at training facilities.”
“ The league has taken significant precautionary measures to ensure that the players and faculty are safe during this time. Among those are a three-week league shutdown if any member of a team tests positive for coronavirus at any point, the prohibition of high-fiving and chewing tobacco, and the required wearing of masks and gloves at training facilities.”
The Blue Jay's need to find a new home.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29488579/blue-jays-not-allowed-play-games-canada
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29488579/blue-jays-not-allowed-play-games-canada
The Bisons stadium will be empty. Do they try to stay local or go to their ST home in FL?
I hope the Blue Jays choose to play in Buffalo. The ballpark there, Sahlen Field, is much nicer than the typical AAA park. It was built by HOK Sport back in 1988, and it is really quite lovely. A group in Buffalo had built it to try to lure an expansion team in the round that brought in the Rockies and the Marlins.
I used to spend a lot of time in Buffalo when my grandparents were still alive. I've probably been to forty Bisons' home games.
It would be cool to see some major league televised from there.
My grandparents and most of my dads side live in the area. I remember when they built the stadium (totally forgot about the expansion hopes!). I’m staying there now so I’d love to see Sox games coming into the area.
I don’t believe lots of people on this side of the river are fans of the Jays, and Canadians won’t be able to travel over, which could make them choose Dunedin.
Just curious - the NYY are on TV vs the NYM and I realize I don’t give a shit about this season. Am I alone?
To me it’s not a real season. I’ll watch random games but I really am ambivalent for Boston as I don’t consider it a real year.
To me it’s not a real season. I’ll watch random games but I really am ambivalent for Boston as I don’t consider it a real year.
I’ll watch baseball definitely. Not intently, but it’ll be on a lot. I also don’t care about the season, though. The funny thing is I’ll probably watch a bunch of games I never would otherwise.
I'm 180 degrees away from you guys. I'm like a little kid, I'm so excited for sports. I'm flipping back and forth between the two preseason games now. I'll worry about the "realness" of the year after the fact. For now, I'm just going to enjoy it and hope that it lasts.
X3. Maybe it's a bit of depression because of what we are going through, or maybe I feel this baseball season (??) is a mockery.
Plenty of people feel that way.
Not I.
But plenty of people are killjoys, yes.
Same.
My 11-year-old son played two baseball games today in 95-degree heat. We were sitting on the couch this evening and I mentioned the Mets/Yankees were on. He has no rooting interest outside of always wanting the Yankees to lose. He turned the TV on and was searching for the channel almost before I could finish my sentence. His reasoning was “I miss baseball so much.”
I understand people not caring or seeing it as fake or whatever. I also understand people finding joy in the game and other “meaningless” things.
Right? Other than actual people playing, what about professional sports is based in reality anyway? It’s a bunch of people playing kids’ games and getting payed ridiculous amounts of money to do what other people literally pay money to do in rec leagues and at fantasy camps.
It would be nice to have a level of annoyance be like a 3 out of 10 that Heath Hembree walks in a run, than the 75 out of 10 impotent Jon Snow vs Ramsey Bolton rage level that I feel about our country on a daily basis.
It's 3 hours of lower blood pressure where you can sit in a room with your red state uncle. Games with easy to root for, home grown fellas will never not be highly enjoyable to me either.
It's 3 hours of lower blood pressure where you can sit in a room with your red state uncle. Games with easy to root for, home grown fellas will never not be highly enjoyable to me either.
The expansion talk here is that legit or foggy memories/urban legend? Only reason I ask is that the google box tells me it opened on 1988, with a capacity of roughly 20k; those franchises weren’t even awarded until 91 and started play in 93, both to much larger venues (Joe Robbie was pretty new still and Coors Field was built for the team) and one team was pretty much predestined for Florida.
This is where I'm at. I was happy to watch the MFY/NYM tonight, but the empty stadium, cardboard fans, masks, and the odds players will infect each other, I am not confident we'll see a full 60 game slate, let alone a playoff. They should be using this as a chance to introduce the headcam view, ingame interviews, more mic'd up players, and anything else to celebrate the game while they try to play some before it folds up.
It’s legit. It was built by a group who figured they could try to get a team, and could stay as a AAA team (at that time, they were the Pirates’ affiliate) if need be as a fallback. The thinking was that the park made them a *more* attractive destination, as had been the case in previous rounds of expansion. And maybe it did; they were one of the five finalists in the expansion process. There’s a brief discussion in Paul Goldberger’s recent book Ballpark, which everyone should read.
It is situated on its lot in such a way that it could be expanded to seat more people by reconfiguring the bleachers and the parking. And hell, it might be worth it just for the chicken wings.
Personally, I'm fascinated by the oddity of it all. The fact that it's only 60 games adds intrigue for me. The cerebral side of me knows that baseball takes longer than 60 games for team records and player statistics to regress to the mean. And also, what happens when key player test positive for COVID-19? This is all going to make the season more interesting to me. We're going to see some weird stuff, and I'm okay with that. In fact, I'm likely to pay more attention to it.
I doubt where the fans are will make a difference in decision making since no one's going to be attending games anyway. I would expect that if we reach a point where fans are allowed in the stadiums, we'd also be at a point where the Jays, and visiting teams, would be allowed to return to Rogers Centre.
Sure.
Personally, I like the tradition. I like the long season, the endurance factor, the concept that much comes out in the wash, and doing well in the sport isn't just a matter of which team might have a two week long hot streak. I like following the players, watching them arc over the season, which begins in the spring and ends in the fall. It gives a context to personal and team achievements. It's a journey you go on.
But sure, 60ish games in an odd format, in front of nearly no crowds, with some of the players but not others, for an odd schedule, in the middle of a pandemic.
Joy away.
(If someone bats higher than .406, or posts a tiny ERA, double joy.)
It's the Wild Card play-in game of seasons. Sure it's antithetical to what baseball is supposed to be, but that doesn't make it any less interesting or exciting.
Given the option, I wouldn't choose to have the Wild Card game, but damn sure I'm watching and enjoying the hell out of it.
I’m excited for the season. Every game takes on added importance due to there only being 60 of them. It will be nice to have something to watch on tv at night for a change. Even if the Sox struggle, it will be refreshing to have a team to follow night in night out again.
For me, different sports feel different. The PGA Tour is actually even better right now than normal in some ways - e.g., no boorish fans and clear sightlines of the natural terrain - and it certainly feels as though I'm watching peak level professional sports. Formula One doesn't suffer at all from no fans being there. Basketball (in the form of the TBT) was OK too, because I could envision I was watching a glorified pickup game; the NBA might be different, although in a way I've been conditioned by watching The Last Dance to enjoy MJ et al. at practice, at the pre-Olympic scrimmage and in the Space Jam pop-up facility without fans. Cricket and soccer have been weirder to watch without fans; I'm fine with both, but there you really would want to fans to generate an atmosphere. I expect the NFL and MLB will seem the worst without fans - the NFL because crowd noise is more inherent to the game, with visiting quarterbacks having to shout to be heard over the fans, and MLB because the sound of bat hitting ball echoing through a cavernous empty stadium is just going to suck. But I'm willing to reserve judgment on any league I haven't yet seen post-lockdown until I actually see what they're like to watch with no fans in attendance.
I expected to be excited for the season, but really I'm not. Everything MLB (ownership & Manfred) has done has turned me off to caring about watching this season. Instead of being stewards of the game, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to put it in the public spotlight, grow the game, and try new things that will bring in new generations of fans, everything they've done as been to maximize their own profits, right down to increasing the cost of MLB TV on a per game basis.
Maybe I'll plunk down enough to get the radio app, but at this point instead of being excited to see the players coming up, I'm basically rooting for the CBT threshold to be reset, and I don't need to pay MLB to follow that.
Maybe I'll plunk down enough to get the radio app, but at this point instead of being excited to see the players coming up, I'm basically rooting for the CBT threshold to be reset, and I don't need to pay MLB to follow that.
I also recall reading that the ballpark in Buffalo was designed with the necessary supports already in place in the grandstand to allow a second deck to be built overhead.
The group that led the expansion effort was led by the Rich family, who still own the team. In hindsight, it is a shame that MLB was intent on following the siren call to put a team in Florida. Even if Buffalo may have been destined to become another small-market team like Pittsburgh, it still would have been preferable to the 30-year yawn from South Florida community, and the fact that Bob Rich Jr. still has owned the team after all these years certainly would have led to better and more stable stewardship of an MLB franchise than what we've seen from the Marlins ownership groups (a certain commodities trader perhaps excepted).