This Week In Baseball 9/16-9/23

[strummer 0]

Mets bullpen at it again

[NYU 0]

"But this is the finest bullpen money can buy. ERA in negative numbers. Blah blah blah"

[NYU 0]

And this is starting to feel like last night all over again.

[NYU 0]

One of Schoenweis's finest outings that I can remember. Three nice strikeouts and a groundout for a must-win. Magic number down to 8.

[Hawk 34 0]

Nothing like a extra innings game between two dead teams playing for "pride" with Harang bunting. Phillips did take two bases on that bunt, so that was neat.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Did Friday's win wrap up the Cy Young for Josh Beckett?

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Did Friday's win wrap up the Cy Young for Josh Beckett?

I hope not. The only advantage Beckett has over C.C. Sabathia is that 20 is a round number.

[CanadianChris 0]

If the writers look at the right stats, this could be one of the closest Cy Young races ever. Beckett and Sabathia are pretty much even across the board. But they'll look at Beckett's 20 wins and give it to him for sure.

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

Congrats to Josh Beckett, first MLB hurler to win 20 since 2005!

 

FYI, 2006 was the first non work stoppage/war shortened season in MLB history not to have a 20 game winner.

 

Is there a way the Mets can get around the postseason roster rules and dump the entire pen, sans Wagner? =

 

Hey, where did my shoelaces go?

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

If the writers look at the right stats, this could be one of the closest Cy Young races ever. Beckett and Sabathia are pretty much even across the board. But they'll look at Beckett's 20 wins and give it to him for sure.

 

I agree, for no real reason win totals tend to be an overwhelming factor when everything is equal. Even if both are on playoff contending teams. The only way someone without 20 wins would win if for some reason the voter decides to make the award "The Most Valuable Pitcher" award rather than looking at the whole stats picture.

[Slayer 0]

Well, if all the other stats are equal except that one, why wouldn't you compare the two

 

What's telling to me is looking at their stats and seeing they're (proportionally) equal, I see Beckett has more wins in fewer GS/IP

 

Beckett - 20W 29GS 194.2IP

Sabathia - 18W 32GS 216IP

 

That's why I would give the edge to Beckett over CC

[CanadianChris 0]

But Sabathia has several more quality starts. Is it his fault his team scores fewer runs for him than Beckett's team does for him?

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

There is an interesting article on the health of baseball in the recent Smart Money, a monthly magazine put out by the Wall Street Journal, and every month as a "10 Things" column. This is only in the print edition, so from the October '07 issue

Ten Things Major League Baseball Is Not Telling You

by Barry Petchesky

 

Number One, "So Much For The National Pastime" really is good evidence in a "baseball is dying" argument as it mentions a Harris Poll from 1985 where baseball as a favorite sport was listed by 1/4th of the respondents. In 2006, that number dropped 14% which is half as much as the NFL. Petchesky also mentioned the rise of NASCAR and soccer in the context of it, but showed no reason for the inclusion of those two sports.

 

Also mentioned is the Nielson ratings where the postseason ratings since 1985 have fallen 50% and the fact that all 10 of the lowest rated World Series have occurred within the last decades. Inconvenient game times is given as the culprit, and more to the point there is a quote from SABR's Gary Gillette that says "the diehards will always be there...but the causal fans have left in droves."

 

The other items include;

 

-How MLB is essentially scalping their own tickets by going to bed with Stubhub and other resellers.

 

-Alienating fans because of arcane territory rights that black out certain markets on MLB.com's MLBTV service.

 

-The rise of the Latin American player at the expense of American born players.

 

-Crazy accounting that makes teams appear to be losing money and in turn more raises in prices at the ballpark, not to mention getting the public to finance new ballparks in one form or another.

 

-There are still many problems with the drug policy, especially in the case where you can not test for HGH.

 

-And the coziness of having that anti-trust exemption.

 

Its good for a quick read on the problems still facing baseball, despite what the revenue streams of attendance records and merchandise sales will have you believe.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Those conclusions seem to make sense to me. The biggest problem for pro sports in general is that they are pricing out the average fan to where it costs an arm and a leg to take a family of four to a game.

 

I'm a firm believer that baseball would benefit from some form of contraction. Too many teams spread the talent a bit too much. I'd start by eliminating the Marlins and the Devil Rays (or I guess they are just "the Rays" now).

 

I fear that if A-Rod opts out of his contract and someone grants him the $30 million a year that he wants that it could lead to another strike sooner rather than later and if that happens I think it could do more damage to baseball than the 1994 strike.

[Richard 0]

You can't contract the Marlins though, they've won 2 championships in the past decade. That's has to mean something.

[Brett Favre 0]

Look at the number of people in their stadium. That shit is hard to watch.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

But their fan base is abysmal and they have an owner who is killing the franchise like he killed the Montreal Expos. Their attendance is usually horrendous. I hate seeing baseball played in empty stadiums and that is basically what the Marlins play in front of, even during seasons when they are having a moderate amount of success.

 

Then again, I could live with the Marlins staying and contracting the Nationals instead.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

It means that Huizenga bought the best team money can buy, then sold it off piecemeal. Later on, Jeff Loria put together an average team that got hot at the right time, then the unspeakable happened, and they won again. The rest of the time, nobody cared. The club under Loria has managed to alienate its fanbase to, not coincidentally, Expos levels. I agree that a club with two world championships cannot cease to exist (I felt the same way about the Pittsburgh Penguins), but there is no way that this team can succeed in Miami, even with a new stadium that I doubt they'll end up getting. Where are the fans? They're just not there. Miami just isn't a baseball town. It's not an established part of the culture, like it is in Chicago, Boston, New York, and St. Louis. The best they can do is depend on fair-weather fans. They need to go somewhere where they're wanted.

 

I haven't seen any mentions of Ryan Braun's decision to play Friday night and Saturday afternoon. I've always been under the impression that one was proscribed from working on the high holidays, and within baseball, the precedent had been set by Greenberg and Koufax, resp., who didn't play.

[CanadianChris 0]

But their fan base is abysmal and they have an owner who is killing the franchise like he killed the Montreal Expos. Their attendance is usually horrendous. I hate seeing baseball played in empty stadiums and that is basically what the Marlins play in front of, even during seasons when they are having a moderate amount of success.

 

Then again, I could live with the Marlins staying and contracting the Nationals instead.

No. Contracting the Marlins and keeping the franchise Loria last tried to kill alive (albeit in a different city) would just be so delicious.

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

The Nationals are moving to their new ballpark next season. They aren't going to be contracted.

Contract the Devil Rays and get rid of the Marlins owner.

 

I still there should be more interleague games and that DH should be done away with.

 

 

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Call me a traditionalist but I really dislike interleague play. I wouldn't mind seeing the DH eliminated, though. I like the strategy side of the NL when the pitcher has to hit. Also, it would decrease the amount of pitchers beaning batters or throwing at their heads (Yanks-Sox I'm looking at you) because the pitcher has to hit so there is an incentive not to do that.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

I think we can eventually expand to 32 teams. Probably in the next five years.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

I think we can eventually expand to 32 teams. Probably in the next five years.

 

And where would these teams go?

 

While everyone is ranting on here I might as well add that it has never made sense to me that the AL West has 4 teams and the NL Central has six. I'm a Reds fan so it makes me angry that we have to beat 5 teams to win the division while most teams have to beat 4 and in the AL West you only have to beat 3.

[CanadianChris 0]

If they expanded by two teams, they would both go to the American League. One to the West for sure, the other wherever it fits geographically.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

YOU CAN'T HAVE ODD NUMBERS IN LEAGUES WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS HUNDREDS OF TIMES

 

Portland and one of Norfolk/Charlotte/Raleigh would be the best destinations for expansion teams.

 

[Richard 0]

YOU CAN'T HAVE ODD NUMBERS IN LEAGUES WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS HUNDREDS OF TIMES

 

Portland and one of Norfolk/Charlotte/Raleigh would be the best destinations for expansion teams.

 

So move the Marlins to one of those places.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Well if you theoretically moved the Marlins to Portland and put them in the AL West then you could move the Pirates to the NL East and even up each division with 5 teams.

[CanadianChris 0]

Well if you theoretically moved the Marlins to Portland and put them in the AL West then you could move the Pirates to the NL East and even up each division with 5 teams.

And then theoretically you'd have an interleague series every single day of the season. No thanks.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Well it looks as if baseball really never should've made three divisions in each league then.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

Well if you theoretically moved the Marlins to Portland and put them in the AL West then you could move the Pirates to the NL East and even up each division with 5 teams.

YOU CAN'T HAVE ODD NUMBERS IN LEAGUES WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS HUNDREDS OF TIMES +1

 

 

I agree that three divisions is a bad idea. As I've gone over before, it makes more sense to have two divisions, from which the #1 and #2 teams make the postseason.