DrungoHazewood
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Everything posted by DrungoHazewood
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Or you'll quickly find out that it wasn't poor umps so much as a nearly impossible task. What would happen if the bottom 33% of MLB rosters were banished at the end of each year? My guess is a small but noticeable decline in MLB talent. -
Isn't baseball known for its ability to quickly and proactively address obvious problems?
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I think it's nearly certain, and umps guessing and missing 10% of pitches and making up their own strike zones will be one of those things we laugh about the old days.
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Rule 2.00- Definition of Terms The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.
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I once read someone argue that the game needs injustice meted out from on high to really be poetic and tragic and meaningful. I think that's a load of crap.
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The conspiracy theorist in me thinks some curmudgeons pushed to implement replay in an NFL-challenge way so that it would be clunky and they eventually do away with it. Another part of me says they just lacked imagination and took the What Would The NFL Do path of least resistance. The obvious way to help with balls and strikes is a real-time indicator that only the home plate ump is privy to, indicating if it was a strike. We'll see if they do something more ill-conceived.
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Yea, the only two possible choices are a room of clones simulating all the games in a Google datacenter, or playing the game exactly like it was in 19-and-aught-five.
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You'll lose a lot more fans by telling them that it's okay that the folks on the field are the only ones who can't know the right call. It's become untenable to have millions of fans see a clearly wrong call in real time and no one can do nothing about it. Not using electronic aids would be like handing out speeding tickets based solely on the cops' judgment, when there's a radar gun sitting on the seat next to him. Yes, there needs to be consideration about flow of the game, but this ain't soccer. Baseball naturally has a discrete, segmented rhythm with dozens of pauses and breaks.
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Do you remember Ron Luciano? He was like Leslie Nielsen with the dial turned back three notches. In his autobiography he claimed he threw Earl out of several games just for fun, before he'd even done anything.
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Wait... what? Have you heard something?
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I'd like the next CBA to just state that you become a free agent after six years of service time, or after your age 28 season (or maybe 27, I haven't totally thought this through), whichever is first. So for most players who come up at 23 or 24 or 25 it would incentivize putting them in the majors as soon as they're ready to play any kind of role. No more games, just put your best players out there, with a few exceptions. No, this is not going to happen. But I believe the NHL does do something like this.
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I know this will get little, if any, traction here, but I think the poll numbers reflect this a lot better than the post-trade hand-wringing: Parra had every expectation of being an average MLB outfielder filling a sub-replacement hole, while Davies was in a fairly tight grouping with Wright and Wilson as potential future backend starters. I thought it was justifiable, the Orioles were in a spot where a win or two was conceivably the difference between the playoffs and not. Much of the hate and discontent* comes from the fact that Parra had a near .900 OPS in Milwaukee, but a .625 for the Orioles. * Exempting Can_of_corn, who had an intense fear and loathing of the trade from day one for mostly ideological reasons.
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Greenland. Or maybe Madagascar. Still islands, unlike Australia.
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It's March first and the Braves are in first place.
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Sounds like he's in the best shape of his life.
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One last straight-on kicking aside... I completely forgot to mention the other Hokie conventional kicker from the 80s - Chris Kinzer. Before Shayne Graham's field goal to win the '99 WVU game when you said "the kick" everyone at Tech knew you were talking about Kinzer's 40-yard FG as time expired to win the 1986 Peach Bowl over NC State. Straight-on with his toe from the right hash mark to win the Hokies' first ever bowl game.
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He does have a lengthy track record of being the steadying influence on a chaotic roster of Julio Lugos and Tike Redmans.
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I almost want to post a poll that says "would you trade an Orioles organizational 5-10 prospect for Nick Markakis and $10M?" Frobby would probably respond with "hell yes, and I'd even throw some cash in instead of expecting it back."
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If I were the Braves I'd be very wary of his .338 BABIP despite a LD% right at his career average, since that drove his value up to 1.6 fWAR. If he repeats the .290-something BABIP he had in 2013 and 2014 he'll have a poor year, probably a sub-one-win year. This year did nothing to change my mind that a 4/44 deal was a significant overpay. My Worlds Simplest Contract Estimator has him worth 3/21 until he slips below replacement level, and that's assuming you want anything to do with a three year deal for three wins.
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I've always had a soft spot for straight-on kickers. They were almost extinct when I was a kid, but I spent many hours practicing straight-on kicking in my back yard. The Skins had Moseley, but also had Steve Cox who was their punter from 1985-88 and also long field goal specialist who kicked straight on. IIRC he once attempted a 67-yard field goal, but came up well short and wide. In a strange coincidence, I went to college at what had to have been the last holdout of the straight-on kicker, Virginia Tech. My freshman year (1989) their kicker was Mickey Thomas, who kicked straight-on. And a few years later they had Ryan Williams who had a kind of birth defect or injury that left him with only half a right foot, but he kicked straight-on with that half a foot. As far as I know Williams was the last major college kicker who didn't kick soccer-style.
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Something crazy was in the water in the early 80s. Rollie Fingers won the 1981 AL MVP pitching 78 innings with 2.6 fWAR, in a season where Rickey was at 6.7. Then the next year Moseley won the NFL MVP in a season where he probably was on the field for about 8 minutes the whole year.
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Does that reset his HOF clock? It's not impossible that some sanity will have been injected into the process in another five years.
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He was funny last night. Jawing with the ump about the strike zone, lots of obvious facial expressions. Gave up a bases-loaded walk or two. Then York's manager got tossed.
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Sitting at Blue Crabs game watching Rommie Lewis pitch for the York Revolution.
