Morgan423

I'm quite encouraged simply by the fact that this didn't become another one of so many "Who cares if 3/4 of the league is doing that, we're not doing it" things that have happened in the past. The more often we join these kinds of trends, the less often we get left far behind when one of these innovations clicks and changes an entire paradigm.

14.99 seasons. Never forget the game that they were the Natinals.

70 points per play in any clubhouse Scrabble game.

Ty Blach DFA'd. The end of an era. A legend rides off into the sunset.

Gotcha. Yeah, he would have been out, at least by a couple of feet.

So, I got my first look at an actual MLB ball from this year. My brother and law and mother in law were visiting from out of town a couple of weeks ago, and we took them to their first O's game. In his very first MLB game ever, my brother in law caught a late game Rio Ruiz foul ball. I got a good look at it later, and holy crow are the the stitches low and tight on this ball. I often joke about one of us training up a knuckleball and joining the O's rotation, but now that I've seen the balls, I think it'd be literally impossible, because these things don't have enough seam to actually throw a knuckleball. Believe what you've read about this contributing to the power surge in baseball... there's no way these balls have as much drag as they used to.

It was a terrible throw. The fault on that play was 98% Sisco (from the bad decision to pick up an obviously-rolling-foul sac bunt in the first place, to not going to first to get the easier out, to that throw). The pick on Villar's end was not easy, even for a skilled major league infielder... I don't really blame him at all on that play.

Yeah. Ideally he's a guy you play in the outfield maybe 3-4 games a year for roster flexibility reasons.

Round a little bit and you have an accuracy rate of about 92%. For the best umps. If automated balls and strikes are better than that (and I'm thinking we have systems that already exceed that), then I can't see too many more winning arguments against implementing them. The plate is already a standard width; you just need a standardized, defined way to measure batter height to give every hitter the top and bottom of their zone.

Exactly. Never forget the legend of Jake Fox.

We'd better do something good with that international money. It weighed in quite heavily to our moves last season.

That is one bad case of astigmatism right there. Don't umps get vision insurance in their bennies? If not, that is the largest oversight in the history of mankind.

By the way, the Syracuse player who couldn't get that ball was our old friend Alejandro De Aza. ?

Also a defense problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the ERA of the entire pitching staff would be a run per game lower if they had a decent defense instead of this thing they've cobbled together this season.

He's going to be really good, with some more seasoning. We're asking a lot of him right now as a Rule 5 pick, but I look forward to him coming back once he's trained up some more in the minors.

I couldn't go to many September games in the Samuel era. It got way too cold with the insane breezes he circulated around the stadium. Dickerson may have a bad game occasionally, but at least you don't freeze to death.

Boston may have very well picked up the division this week, with the Skankees rolling over for them. Speaking of... we WANT them to win maybe 4 - 6 games a season (in circumstances like this) and they can't get it done in any of them. Is there anything more worthless? They're like a non-functioning, mutant third ear growing out of your armpit.

Boston's doesn't rally mean anything though. The first month and a half of the season (when their offense was scoring seven runs a game) they had a bunch of blowout wins and really cranked the run differential up. But it makes no difference if you win by one or if you win by six... in the end, a win is a win.

Nothing like a never say die, comeback win. :clap3:

Not only that, we can't afford to lose pitchers for half a season or more from a suspension.

Does it matter? At all? No. This is a discussion board. If you want to discuss a topic, bring it up. It gets discussed, everyone wins. Who's keeping score?

But I digress from the topic of this thread, and apologies... the umpire issue has its own, or should have.

Again, not a position he should have been in. Maybe (small chance) they bring O'Day back out next inning to face Cabrera leading off... but if he still hits one out, you have a tie game after he does so, not a Detroit lead.

I've never been in the "ump blew the call, but we should have overcome it," or the "ump blew the call, but we could have won it if we XYZ today" camps. To some extent there's a little truth there, but bottom line, the ump took away a two-out strikeout, and the game-tying and game-winning runs for the Tigers should never have happened in that inning. To me, the blown call directly took the game away from the team that earned the win. I know I've said it many times before, but as a baseball fan, I dream of a glorious future day, where 100% of games have their outcomes determined solely by the players on the field. One day.

Exactly. Pitch FX, or maybe that plate that sends beams up to detect when a baseball has broken the zone. The jersey sensors would be the last thing you'd try.