Owners submit new economic plan to union : UPDATED

[Philip]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Sure.  But how many boring games of three hours do you have a season?  Last year the Yanks played 49 games that were over three hours and were decided by four runs or more.  The Orioles played 41.  Over a quarter of the schedule were games that weren't particularly close and took forever.

What's great is a tense, suspenseful game played in a crisp 2:05.  Baseball used to be played in two hours.  They haven't added an hour more baseball, they've added an hour more standing around and talking and doing nothing.

 I don’t disagree with that, I loved Fergie Jenkins, and he could pitch a complete game so fast it was over before you got your hotdog. 

But all this ridiculous malarkey about pitch clocks and eliminating  shifts and having the DH or not has nothing to do with making the game more interesting. It’s just layer upon layer of added crap that accomplishes nothing.

 If you want to make the game more interesting, increase activity on the base paths. Make it easier to get on base. 

Remove the modifications to the ball That made it easier to hit a homerun, because homeruns are boring if there are too many of them.

[Tony-OH]

56 minutes ago, Philip said:

 I don’t disagree with that, I loved Fergie Jenkins, and he could pitch a complete game so fast it was over before you got your hotdog. 

But all this ridiculous malarkey about pitch clocks and eliminating  shifts and having the DH or not has nothing to do with making the game more interesting. It’s just layer upon layer of added crap that accomplishes nothing.

 If you want to make the game more interesting, increase activity on the base paths. Make it easier to get on base. 

Remove the modifications to the ball That made it easier to hit a homerun, because homeruns are boring if there are too many of them.

This is 100% true. The excitement of the home run has been marginalized because of how many are being hit.

[scOtt]

3 hours ago, Philip said:

The replay’s dumb, because you know that the first 11 pitches are going to consist of nothing.

The replay is VERY valuable to someone like me that works 2nd shift. Till 11 or midnight. I can stay off my phone during the 7:00 game and then when I get home I can watch the 11:30 replay not knowing who won. A LIVE GAME!

 

Now if you're talking about MASN Orioles Classics... Some random game from even a good year 2014, Baltimore playing in... Detroit or anywhere. "Manny Machado hits 2 HRs"... that's kinda boring. Recently tho, they showed a bunch of games from the 83 Playoffs and I think some World Series games too. That was Tony the Tiger GrrrrrrrrrrrrrREAT

[Philip]

3 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Yeah, walking or pitching around the 8th hitter to load the bases so you can pitch to an automatic out is real strategy. Watching your pitcher run around the bases then get tired and come out and get a hammered the next inning is a blast. But man, those double switches, my God those are exciting and takes a genius to pull those off correctly.

I agree though, these shortening the game things are pretty bad outside of making the batters stay in the box and pitch clock (which no one ever calls even when it goes out).

Tony, I love you man, but I gotta push back. Using the pitchers wisely is strategy. If a pitcher can’t run the bases, ummm that’s a problem, but even if he can’t, that’s part of the strategy. I don’t hate the DH, but I do love the differences in approach between the two leagues and would hate to lose it.

im glad you see the larger point, though. We can argue about the DH, and that’s fine, but if the goal is to increase interest, nothing that Manfred is doing so far is helping to accomplish that goal. 

[Philip]

1 hour ago, scOtt said:

The replay is VERY valuable to someone like me that works 2nd shift. Till 11 or midnight. I can stay off my phone during the 7:00 game and then when I get home I can watch the 11:30 replay not knowing who won. A LIVE GAME!

 

Now if you're talking about MASN Orioles Classics... Some random game from even a good year 2014, Baltimore playing in... Detroit or anywhere. "Manny Machado hits 2 HRs"... that's kinda boring. Recently tho, they showed a bunch of games from the 83 Playoffs and I think some World Series games too. That was Tony the Tiger GrrrrrrrrrrrrrREAT

I’m not talking about seeing it for the first time, I’m talking about seeing it for the second time. I’ve always thought the highlights of homeruns were stupid. Most of the time you can’t even see the ball in flight. I would much rather see defensive wizardry, and that’s why I prefer balls in play that stay in the park.

[weams]

9 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Realistically every team should be able to absorb the loss for one year. 

2?

[scOtt]

7 hours ago, Philip said:

I’m not talking about seeing it for the first time, I’m talking about seeing it for the second time. I’ve always thought the highlights of homeruns were stupid. Most of the time you can’t even see the ball in flight. I would much rather see defensive wizardry, and that’s why I prefer balls in play that stay in the park.

I like replays (slo-mo) of HRs  to see the pitch, and the destruction... But to see the pitch. I don't pick up on that very well. I like to see exactly where the mistake was made.

Don't care about the flight... It's too high!

It's far and it's high. It's a HR. Gone.

[scOtt]

1 hour ago, weams said:

2?

PA and friends paid $173 mill. Worth at least a billion now. Owners will be fine.

[scOtt]

2 minutes ago, scOtt said:

PA and friends paid $173 mill. Worth at least a billion now. Owners will be fine.

Eat Beluga and foie gras only once a week for a while...

[Redskins Rick]

16 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Exactly. Especially when the owners started off with a 50/50 revenue split option. That's sounds pretty fair without knowing all the specifics. 

I can never see the business owner giving up half their revenue, but that could just be me.

Like you said, we dont have all the specifics.

[Fan4Life]

On 5/11/2020 at 8:31 PM, Philip said:

I’ve often compared a player’s minimum to a teacher’s salary. Good teaching is a valuable skill and not everyone can do it well, though lots of people succeed in doing it badly.

State base in Texas is about 47k, but teachers top out at about 55k. So it takes ~12 years for a teacher to match one minimum salary season.

I don’t have any issues with that but I have lots of issues with 30 million a season.

Tony Clark isn’t even fighting for the minor leaguers( they aren’t part of his Union) but he’d better start understanding his disconnect with everyday people, or he’s going to lose a lot.

This is where I'm at and always have been. I'll never feel good about paying a player $30m a year in any sport no matter what the sport's revenues are.

[DrungoHazewood]

11 hours ago, Philip said:

 I don’t disagree with that, I loved Fergie Jenkins, and he could pitch a complete game so fast it was over before you got your hotdog. 

But all this ridiculous malarkey about pitch clocks and eliminating  shifts and having the DH or not has nothing to do with making the game more interesting. It’s just layer upon layer of added crap that accomplishes nothing.

 If you want to make the game more interesting, increase activity on the base paths. Make it easier to get on base. 

Remove the modifications to the ball That made it easier to hit a homerun, because homeruns are boring if there are too many of them.

The last two paragraphs I agree with, but you'll still have the problem with players dawdling and standing around and not playing baseball an hour+ a game.

I am in favor of a brand of baseball that has more people on base, more balls in play, and more athletes doing athletic stuff like running and stealing bases.  Yes, home runs have become commonplace and boring.  Pitchers make a good pitch and it seems like half the time they're down 3-0 in the first.  But to get there you have to make changes.  To rules, to equipment, to the ball, to stadiums.

They missed a great opportunity the last 25 years, they should have made every stadium have minimum fence distances.  I would have said that the sum of the LF, LC, CF, RC, and RF lines had to be greater than 1830 feet.  That means you could have a stadium that's 330-380-420-380-330.  Or... 300-390-440-400-300.  Or whatever you want, just so long as it adds up.

They need to mandate minimum bat diameters, and handle diameters, and weights.  Phase in larger and larger bats over five years until few players can do max bat speed all the time against max effort pitchers.  Contact has to come back.  Deaden the ball and shrink the strike zone in the rule book.

But there has to be some kind of time enforcement.  With an unbounded clock there's nothing stopping teams from constantly delaying the game.  The time continues to grow unchecked.  We will have 3.5-4 hour games unless someone steps in and says that's enough. Baseball can't become old-school cricket, where a small group of old guys and die hards won't watch anything but five-day test matches because only ADHD kids like a sport that takes less than five days.

[DrungoHazewood]

30 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I can never see the business owner giving up half their revenue, but that could just be me.

Like you said, we dont have all the specifics.

In a normal year they devote just over 40% of their revenues to player payroll.  In the last 20 years there have been years where it has been closer to 50%.

[CarrRun49]

19 minutes ago, Fan4Life said:

This is where I'm at and always have been. I'll never feel good about paying a player $30m a year in any sport no matter what the sport's revenues are.

Why? There hard work and dedication to their craft, took them to a level that allows them to earn what they do in that competitive market.  That's like saying, "I've worked my ass off through college and post grad, but shouldn't make anymore than a teacher because that's not fair".  Let me first start this by saying, teachers are great.  Are teachers underpaid? Maybe.  Lets say they make 45k avg per year.  They work roughly 2/3 of the year.  45k prorated for the 2/3 is almost 67k for those working months.  

Choosing a low paying profession is a choice.  I was in law enforcement prior to my current position.  Was I underpaid for the position? Yes.  But, I didn't perform my job for the money.  I did it to help people and the community.  I assume that is why people become teachers too.

These guys were blessed with a special talent and someone is willing to pay them 30 million dollars a year.  Would you say no?

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

And commercials. Noticed they really didn't cut down the in between inning times because that's where their commercials come into play. I'd rather see more in game sponsored stuff then the same 10 commercials that I can quote word for word by May every year on MASN. 

Mostly the game has changed because the strike zones got smaller, guys starter going deeper into counts for the most part, and of course the fact that guys are now all trying to hit home runs which means more strikeouts. Also teams like the Yankees and Red Sox that have lots of guys who will just foul pitch after pitch off until they get a mistake they can mash.

I kinda toyed with the idea of starting the count at 1-1 and once you get to two strikes, you get two fouls, on the third you are out. This would encourage batters to put the ball in play more.

A lot of it really is just pacing.  There's a only a few pitches difference between a high-K inning and a low-K inning.  And pacing is hard to change.  Pitchers really did used to work much faster.  Jim Kaat (IIRC) used to say that at two hours his arm turned into a pumpkin, so he worked really fast. 

I used to play seven-inning softball games in an hour and it never felt rushed.  Limiting the Stanley Steamer commercials will help, but somehow attitudes have to change.