Comments that don't warrant a thread

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

If they hadn't forbid him from practicing before the day of the game, that may not have been an issue.

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Go on......

[Dogbert 0]

The Calgary Hitmen are giving their fans what they all expected last winter. They've started the season 12-4-0 after losing their two top players (Ryan Getzlaf and Andrew Ladd) to the pro ranks.

[Richard 0]

Highlights of Tedy Bruschi's return

[The Czech Republic 0]

THIS HAS BEEN POSTED THRICE NOW

 

pay attention

[Failed Bridge 0]

ESPN.com ran a poll asking who was the greatest White Sock of all time.  Over half named Joe Jackson.  He is not the greatest Sox, and if I were to form an All-Franchise White Sox team, he would not even be my starting left fielder.

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you're biased against him though.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

ESPN.com ran a poll asking who was the greatest White Sock of all time.  Over half named Joe Jackson.  He is not the greatest Sox, and if I were to form an All-Franchise White Sox team, he would not even be my starting left fielder.

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you're biased against him though.

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1. I like Jackson strictly as a player.

 

2. There are perfectly good valid reasons to dislike Jackson.

 

3. If you're going to argue against the point, you need to do a lot more than to point out my biases.

 

On an unrelated note, in defense of the "playoffs are a crapshoot" theory. I made a passing study of the National League since the league adopted division play. When the league used the East/West playoff format, 52.5% (13 of 25) of the time, the team with the better record won the pennant. Since switching to the wild card format, four out of eleven times (36.3%) the team with the best record advanced to the World Series. That's about what we would see if we just flipped coins to decide winners.

 

That's what frustrates me about the postseason these days. When we read reports of falling ratings, no one mentions that we haven't had a World Series without a Wild Card since 2001. How are we supposed to sell a championship series featuring a team that finished 11 games out of first place?

[The Czech Republic 0]

How are we supposed to sell a championship series featuring a team that finished 11 games out of first place?

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"teeheehee! Their names start with B!"

[iggymcfly 0]

At the very least, they need to move the division series up to seven games. A five game series is a ridiculous means to decide anything.

 

Although beyond that, I don't really see what you could do. Realign into seven and eight (!) team divisions, and only let the winners advance? Have eleven game series in the ALCS and NLCS? I mean there's really no soulution.

 

The playoffs are about the only time baseball becomes a topic of national interest, so cutting them down by a round or stretching the series out would be suicidal from a marketing standpoint.

 

Also, I think you're missing something here, Al. The reason that the team with the best record doesn't win all that often isn't that the playoffs are a crapshoot. If it was, then we'd routinely see 7 and 8 seeds make it to the NBA finals. The reason for the discrepancy is that playoff baseball is fundamentally different that regular season baseball.

 

During the regular season, you need a deep pitching staff to get you through the grind of 162 games. You need at least five good starters, with a reliable spot starter for injuries, plus a deep bullpen to keep your top relievers from wearing themselves out.

 

In playoff baseball you need three (or at most four) lights-out starters, one or two reliable set-up men, and a closer. That's it. That's why teams with elite starters like Clemens, Oswalt, and Pettite can make it to the Series, while teams with a good system, but less elite talent like the Atlanta Braves can win their division 12 years in a row and only have one WS win to show for themselves.

 

I haven't done any research here, but I bet if you checked those same playoff results for which teams' three top starters had the best record, you'd see something more along the lines of a 2 to 1 ratio of the better teams winning.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Those are all good points, and I intend to respond in more detail tomorrow or Saturday.

[mike546 0]

Angels are the only recent team I can remember that didn't, but their bullpen and hitting made up for it. Arizona only had two, but those two equaled about four.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Let me address this out of order...

Also, I think you're missing something here, Al. The reason that the team with the best record doesn't win all that often isn't that the playoffs are a crapshoot. If it was, then we'd routinely see 7 and 8 seeds make it to the NBA finals. The reason for the discrepancy is that playoff baseball is fundamentally different that regular season baseball.

 

During the regular season, you need a deep pitching staff to get you through the grind of 162 games. You need at least five good starters, with a reliable spot starter for injuries, plus a deep bullpen to keep your top relievers from wearing themselves out.

 

In playoff baseball you need three (or at most four) lights-out starters, one or two reliable set-up men, and a closer. That's it. That's why teams with elite starters like Clemens, Oswalt, and Pettite can make it to the Series, while teams with a good system, but less elite talent like the Atlanta Braves can win their division 12 years in a row and only have one WS win to show for themselves.

 

I haven't done any research here, but I bet if you checked those same playoff results for which teams' three top starters had the best record, you'd see something more along the lines of a 2 to 1 ratio of the better teams winning.

There are less upsets in the NBA system because upsets are rarer, and the disparity between the best and worst teams is greater. In MLB this season, one team won 100 games (the St. Louis Cardinals), good for a .617 winning percentage. Six NBA teams bested that mark last season. The greatest mismatch in the MLB playoffs saw a .617 team face a .506 team. In the NBA, we saw a first round match between a .720 team and a .512 team.

 

As for the rest of your comments, the fundamental problem is that the Braves DID have that front-line talent. Going through their playoff losses, their pitching staffs measured three-deep or so, ignoring the entire staff, routinely outmatched those of their opponents. Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine are as good a front three as has ever been produced and maintained. At least two are going to the Hall of Fame. At least until Smoltz missed a season, their pitching staff was never outmatched. They lacked a dominant closer, but they had deep bullpens and their failure was never due to their pitching. The problem with the Braves was that their hitting collapsed in the postseason.

 

I wouldn't go as far as saying the playoffs are a COMPLETE crapshoot. But when you have four teams in the playoffs that haven't put ten games between one another in the span of 162, how likely are you to have an upset? Now, it may seem like sacrilige to suggest that pure talent does not win games. But think about what you see in the span of a baseball game. Brad Ausmus's homer maybe misses the line, Kyle Farnsworth gets the next out, and all of the sudden you have game five. Games are won and loss because batters connected an inch too high on a ball that given another ten feet of distance, becomes a three-run homer.

 

At the very least, they need to move the division series up to seven games. A five game series is a ridiculous means to decide anything.

 

Although beyond that, I don't really see what you could do. Realign into seven and eight (!) team divisions, and only let the winners advance? Have eleven game series in the ALCS and NLCS? I mean there's really no soulution.

 

The playoffs are about the only time baseball becomes a topic of national interest, so cutting them down by a round or stretching the series out would be suicidal from a marketing standpoint.

I would like to see the divisional series abolished, because it really adds nothing to the excitement. Talking heads loved to point out how the wild card added exciting races to the regular season. What it gave us is a Red Sox/Yankees game that tied the teams at the end of the regular season, and added nothing. With the old format, we would have had the Yankees, Red Sox and Indians virtually tied the last weekend, and the Braves and Astros neck and neck in the National League. That would have given us ONE game to decide the Sox and Yankees, allowing pure excitement and the ability to get one of them out of the way, and into a more interesting series with the White Sox.

 

The regular season gains more significance, and becomes more marketable. The problem now is that there is NO effort to add importance to the final days of the regular season. Fox's baseball contract is specifically structured so that a Fox affiliate can only show one game that final Saturday. That's bollocks. There have been exciting regular season finishes that have captivated the sports world.

 

But that is all a pipe dream. The best we can do is expand the divisional series to seven games. Any more than seven becomes a drawn out affair that bores fans the first few games. Let me also state that ideas to make it harder for a wild card team to advance, say by adding a second wild card with a one-game playoff, would be disasterous. Eventually the FIFTH best team would win a pennant, and we don't want that.

 

One possible solution is to eliminate divisions, and simply group teams one through four in the league. This would create disinterest in the overall race for first, but creat less opportunities for the Padres of the world to sneak into the playoffs. Another idea I would like, but fat chance, is have the Trade Deadline occur EARLIER in the season. Fans love mid-season trades to boost their club, but by and large the teams in the playoffs should be teams that played together all year. Not teams of hired mercenaries. I think much of the overall problem might be fixed if MLB and its broadcast partners simply made a better effort to market teams outside of certain large markets.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Personally, I could do without The Pedro Gomez Season-Long Barry Bonds Watch. I've read LiveJournals that were less frivolous than that endeavor. I'll take a segment of Yankees/Red Sox coverage over "he had a stye in his eye so he didn't take batting practice today" or whatever sort of trite reporting we got.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Does anyone remember the NFL This Morning? It ran on FSN for ?two? years from about 2001-2003 . . . not positive on the years.

 

Chris Myers hosted w/ Marv Levy, Deacon Jones, someone else, and Jay Mohr as sprinkling in some comedy here and there w/ segments that'd be ripped off later by Kenny Mayne. It was filmed where they film BDSSP and the format was very simple yet effective. No one got on my nerves and it made me want to be up by 10am so I didn't miss any of it. They'd even preview the Fox Pregame show by having JB and the gang give predictions on the games.

 

Then, the next year, they completely changed the format. They're now in a trendier set. Michael Irvin and Tony Siragusa joined the show and I wept. All of the charm of the show was immediately crushed as the show became a shouting contest rather than a semi-intellegent discussion.

 

Needless to say, I didn't stop to check if the show continued the year after.