DrungoHazewood

I would love setup like that, and really hype up winning the league. Separate the idea of the regular season League Championship from the post-season playoff tournament. Make the pennant a big deal, cash money prizes, and you get it for winning the league, not the ALCS or NLCS.

Before I opened this thread I assumed it would be something about the Blue Jays' team plane being lost over Hudson Bay and never recovered.

Perhaps it shouldn't, but it amazes me that Buck Showalter has managed for 21 years in the majors, five playoff teams, overall winning record despite taking over a down-and-out Orioles franchise. But all anyone ever mentions are things he supposedly did wrong.

Roger Maris hit #60 off the Orioles' Jack Fisher.

Be forewarned, I'm going to go on a little tangent. Ignore if you like. Looking at the Orioles' historic attendance numbers, bb-ref lumps them in with the St. Louis Browns. The Browns existed from 1902 through 1953. Their highest season attendance was 718k in 1922. Their median attendance was 276k, or about 3500 a game. In 2019, before the pandemic, the independent Atlantic League, full of anonymous players who washed out of AA at 27, had four teams that drew more than 276k in just a 140-game schedule. During the Depression the Browns had three seasons where they drew under 100k fans for the the entire year, or a little over 1000 a game. On Thursday, May 9th, 1935 the Browns played the A's in front of an announced crowd of 200. That year they'd play 11 home games and four road games with announced attendances under 1000. So just imagine that. Major League teams who were being run like an indy league team today. This was before outside revenues for media, by the 40s they may have been getting a little money from radio. But a large percentage of revenues were game day. Tickets, concessions, ads on the wall. You probably didn't pay for parking, just found a spot in the city. Most tickets probably were like $1. There had to have been years where the Browns' total gross revenues were like $300-500k. The front office was probably two guys. They'd have a couple coaches. Who knows how they did scouting, probably barely. It's no wonder many teams didn't have many formal minor league affiliates until the 40s. How do you pay for minor league teams on that budget? You can barely afford 25 major leaguers. Remember, in 1930-31 Babe Ruth was making $80k a year. I'd bet the Browns didn't make $80k that year, so the O's making less than Scherzer this year isn't unprecedented. I'm sure there are books about this, but there had to have been discussions with the league about what they'd do if a team went bankrupt. In the 1930s several teams had to have been really close. It wouldn't surprise me if the league or other owners fronted some cash to the tail-end teams help make payroll. Even if that violated some rules.

The only time in Baltimore history where they drew very well when the team was poor was the Camden Yards honeymoon. That was a confluence of an amazing new stadium, good teams most of the time, the internet was new and streaming wasn't possible, HDTV was still years off, and the Nats were called the Montreal Expos. In the 1960s and 1970s it was common for a 90+ win Orioles team to draw 6,000 fans for a weekday game. From 1954-78 their highest season attendance was 1.2M. In 1971 there was a Jim Palmer Thursday start for a team that would eventually win over 100 games that drew 5,600. That game in '87 where Juan Nieves no-hit the Orioles drew 11k. But I think COVID and the last five years of losing has had an impact beyond any of that. I haven't gone to a game this years and I usually go to a couple a season. But with teenage kids and school and sports and a two hour drive each way I just haven't gone. Season tickets and other pre-purchased tickets typically make up a large percentage of most games attendance. @Sports Guy used to work in ticket sales, he could probably throw out some numbers. Next year I expect attendance to be up a fair amount. Obviously not like 1997, but I'd expect the highest numbers since 2014 or 2015.

*Sigh* Yes.

All right, eh!! You got me. I was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I have single-payer health care that I adore. I eat mayonnaise on everything. It's 22 Celsius in my office and I'm lovin' every minute of it! I'm using Quebec hydroelectric power for my computer right now. I get coffee and doughnuts from Tim Hortons three times a day every day. I'm naturally and almost irrationally kind to indigenous people. If someone trips me in the street I apologize. I love Queen Elizabeth, my rightful head of state. When I explain something to a stranger I do it in both French and English. I pick up trash that's not even mine. The metric system rocks harder than Bryan Adams. I am Canadian!!!!! And to all you Americans... an evil wind will blow through your little play world and wipe that smug smile off your faces. And I'll be there, in all my glory, watching -watching as it all comes crumbling down, eh! Okay, not really.

Everyone knows it's Eh not Huh. Feigning ignorance to hide your inner maple leaf? I bet your real name is Guy (of course pronounced Gee) or Gordon. You're one of those wise guys trying to sneak Canadian nickels into US stores, aren't you? We have ways of making you play football with four downs!!!

Watch out, they have sleeper agents everywhere. They walk among us undetected. Ryan Reynolds. Seth Rogan. Captain Kirk. Keanu Reeves. Jim Carrey. Dan Akroyd. Michael J. Fox. Will Arnett. Mike Myers. The Sutherlands. Nathan Fillion. Eugene Levy. Martin Short. Rachel McAdams. Howie Mandel. Sandra Oh. Matthew Perry. Brendan Fraser. That kid Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things. They're everywhere! How do we know you're not Canadian? Huh? We demand answers before we look up one day and it's winter 11 months a year, there's a thin veneer of maple syrup on everything and Anne Murray is on the radio 24/7.

Risky. You can drive from the Quebec border to SkyDome in under five hours. When properly incited the Quebecois can get chippy. Many are still very en colère about the departure of Les Expos, and you can bet some are now Jays fans. You may want to ignore a Le Grand Orange army of the north, but I'd be careful.

But what about Nunavut and the Northwest Territories? What have they done to you? Also this leaves open the question of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Sure, it's a French overseas territory, but it's very reliant on Newfoundland for basic supplies, so do we F them, too?

Finally someone steps in and provides a rational, sober, measured take.

People tend to overestimate the impact of outfield walls. When OPACY was built it was commonly said that the RF wall was going to be kind of like the Green Monster, than balls would be flying off it all the time. How often does a ball hit that wall? Once every few games? It seems to me that it's pretty uncommon for a ball to hit halfway up the wall, and the RF really has to be adept at playing the carom. It was also said that the garage door area in right would lead to all kinds of triples as the ball gets caught up and bounces around there. There probably aren't five triples a year that do that. How many balls per game hit an outfield wall on the fly? Or even a hard bounce? Two or three? Most of those hit on some unremarkable flat area. Or think about it this way, there's an extra-base hit once every 13 PAs. So the wall has no impact whatsoever in over 90% of plate appearances, and in much of that <10% that's left the ball either flies over it or bounces off some unremarkable area.

People tend to stake out positions then find rationalizations to back that up. You don't like how the wall looks compared to how it used to look, so it would be unsurprising to use that as a jumping off point for other arguments about the wall not being necessary or having the impact others say it does. Maybe that's unfair. I think I projected that the wall would lead to just a few additional triples. In modern baseball triples are rare, and triples to left even more rare. Last year there were 18 triples hit at OPACY in 6186 PAs, or 344 PA/Triple. This year so far it's 15 in 5083, or 339 PA/Triple. Tiny sample, rare event, so I wouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions. But so far essentially no change in triple frequency.

Sure, some people vote on the merits, some like to try to sell more ads and clicks and newspapers by voting and writing controversially. Hyde took a team that was projected to win 60 couple games if things went right and they're probably going to win 85 games. Good chance they end up with one of the 10 biggest leaps forward in baseball history. Cash took a team that won 100 games last year, best in the league. Had some injuries and is now on pace to win 92. If things stay on this track and Cash gets more than 2-3 first place votes it just proves some people will vote the opposite of what makes sense just to get attention.

In other words, you find the wall to be aesthetically unappealing.

Of course he'll tell them to knock it off and go win ballgames. But the Manager of the Year, 99% of the time, goes to the manager of the team that most over-achieved. Even if the O's collapse the rest of the way they're guaranteed to improve by 25 games or so, I'm not sure how any other manager gets a first place vote.

They're overcompensating because of the "all Canadians are nice" stereotype. Also, they're trying to give America pause just in case we decide to invade. They know we'd have it wrapped up by lunch, but maybe we'd reconsider for a second if we remember that the Blue Jays are a little wacko.

Nobody is ever going to agree to a forfeit ahead of time that costs them potentially $millions in revenues because a bunch of 25-year-old dudes couldn't control themselves quite well enough in the moment. And if you were to give suspensions to anyone who leaves the dugout/bullpen there would probably be unintended consequences. Like teams would unofficially designated a reliever and a utility guy as the goons who run out there and agree to get suspended. Or some pitchers would feel freed up to jaw and throw inside without fear of any repercussions, although I don't think the risk of standing around while 52 guys mill about and have an insult-fest is any kind of deterrent. Anyway, suspending everyone for a baseball fake fight seems like chopping off a hand for stealing a pack of gum. Sure, it stops most stealing by sane people but is that really the world we want to live in?

As has been mentioned many times attendance follows winning. If it was the last week or two of September with a playoff spot on the line maybe you get a bigger walkup, but it was a Tuesday night game during the school year with a season ticket base after four years of being 50 games out of first. Next year attendance will go up 30%. On Tuesday September 7th, 1971 the dynastic Orioles coming off two straight World Series and destined for a third hosted the Indians and drew 7,196. The next night, with Palmer on the mound, they drew 5,601. The O's largest crowd that September was the finale that saw them close out the season with 11 straight wins, and it drew 21,028. Yes, it was a different era. But they'll be fine. The last road game of that '71 season was another Palmer start in Cleveland, a Sunday day game. He threw a shutout, game moved along at a crisp 1:58. And 2,967 fans came to 80,000 seat Municipal Stadium to see it. You could have walked up 10 minutes before first pitch and bought 75,000 tickets.

"In the end what you're saying is your numbers don't matter to you at all if you get good money and the team is okay? At all. Sure. I could have a 6.50 ERA just so long as we win. So if you had the choice between two fairly equal situations but one is a pitcher's park, the other a bandbox, you'd flip a coin. Uhh, yea. You're lying. Yep."

The little devil on my left shoulder wants to just put a fastball in his numbers. The angel on the right says just pitch him a little more carefully, but that's often easier said than done. The real answer is probably to just pitch better, and when that fails move on to the next guy.

He's a 32-year-old DH with a career OPS+ of 106. He's here to hopefully run into a couple of pitches over the next month against lefties, at which point they'll give him a fruit basket, the home version of the game and wish him well. The Orioles expect to contend in 2023, and you don't do that by handing a starting spot to a below-average player eight months before the season.

"So the Reds offered you 3 years at $14M per, but the O's offered 3 at $13.5 and you were like hell yea, I'm going to the place where you can't bunt a ball over the LC wall."