2021 MLB Season Thread

[Хahar 🤔]

Very disturbed to hear rumors they may keep the runner on second in extras or this preposterous expanded playoffs model. I may be a political progressive, but I am thoroughly reactionary when it comes to baseball.

I didn't watch baseball last year and I don't intend to this year with any of these innovations. The ghost runner is the most offensive of all, and really it's more offensive than I would have thought possible until it was first suggested. Creating a base runner ex nihilo is wrong because only God can create something out of nothing.

[Хahar 🤔]

Guess I'm going to skip this season, too, since the ghost runner is back. I like baseball, not this.

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Pirates 58-104 this year and we still might not get the first pick next year in the draft.

Baseball is really unwatchable now that teams have realized they don't even need to pretend to be trying to win. At least when the Pirates were terrible fifteen years ago it was because they didn't know what they were doing, not on purpose.

[Хahar 🤔]

Yeah, I'm not going to actively consume baseball for as long as Manfred rules remain intact. I did write something about the created "necessity" for those rules a couple months ago that a couple people here have found to be of interest: https://naveedchowdhury.wordpress.com/2021/05/31/the-managerial-revolution/

[Хahar 🤔]

Lmao at Cubs fans who thought for a moment they were getting Bart and LWJ.

Mercifully I didn’t see it until it had already been debunked; would’ve panicked.

Instead they're getting... a couple slapdick prospects? Would've thought they could get more for Bryant but

Given that they got this year out of Bryant purely through service time manipulation, they deserve nothing, but I was expecting a little more.

[Хahar 🤔]

Does Madison Bumgarner eventually make the HOF? That will be the only way for him to get a retired number.

The Giants have announced that they will retire Will (and Jack) Clark's number, so even if this was ever a requirement it is not a requirement now.

[Хahar 🤔]

Does Madison Bumgarner eventually make the HOF? That will be the only way for him to get a retired number.

The Giants have announced that they will retire Will (and Jack) Clark's number, so even if this was ever a requirement it is not a requirement now.

It was a requirement until it was changed for Clark. I still don’t think Bumgarner gets his retired. What hall of famers are there who don’t have a retired number (excluding pre-numbers era players)? I can only think of Jimmie Foxx and Joe Medwick.

Orlando Cepeda had his number retired before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame: in other words, it was never a requirement, even if it worked out that way for a while. Obviously it's unlikely that Will Clark will ever be in the Hall of Fame (although he was certainly better than Harold Baines), meaning that it is unlikely that it will ever work out that way in the future.

As for the other point, I feel confident that the Giants will never retire Freddie Lindstrom's number.

[Хahar 🤔]

538 has the Giants at their highest odds of winning the division yet (not like Silver has ever been right about anything involving baseball ever).

An assistant coach on my high school baseball team was Bill Pecota's brother-in-law. He was of course shocked to learn that I knew who Billy was, and so I had to explain that it was because of PECOTA.

[Хahar 🤔]

On a whim I decided to go with my dad to the game this evening. It was the first time I'd been since the last time the Giants won the World Series seven years ago. It seemed like half the fans in attendance had their phones out watching the Dodgers game. Other than when the game's one run scored, the two largest years came when Alex Smith was shown on the screen and when Manny Machado homered off Max Scherzer. At the end of the game, the cheers when the Giants won were followed by equally large cheers at the scoreboard showing that the Padres were losing the Dodgers. On the way out of the game fans were chanting "beat LA" just like old times. It was a great environment.

On the way home I put on the Dodgers game on the radio, and Jayce Tingler must have realized that he had money on the Dodgers. I've never seen anything like it.

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Idk what's up with all these easterners in this thread who seem unjustifiably confident in their under-100 wild card meme teams.

I'm not confident (as a Cards fan).  Hope, sure.  We're playing with house money, it's one game.  If a hitter or two is hot (and many Cardinal bats are, you might have noticed) or if the pitcher is just on (ours is a vet that has been here many times), anything can happen in a one game playoff.
 Which is stupid for baseball, at least make it a best of three.

Yeah, the baseball postseason is basically random, which is why it's so stupid that the people who run baseball keep trying to make it bigger.

[Хahar 🤔]

I wish the Red Sox the best as they face the most evil franchise in pro sports next round. Our prayers are with them.

As far as I know, the Rays are the only organization in professional sports to contain a member of the Atlas Forum community.

[Хahar 🤔]

Red Sox and Dodgers deserved to win because Yankees and Cards did not win enough games to earn a Wild Card spot under the pre-2012 system which is the only correct way to have a wild card.

This is not true; the Red Sox and Yankees had the same record, meaning that they would have had a one-game playoff in Boston under that system also.

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Kiké Hernandez walks it off and the Sox are going to the ALCS! Next up: Cheatstros!! (or White Sox possibly)

I think it's really funny when people insist that it's obligatory to include an é in Kike Hernández's name that is neither Spanish nor English.

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Astros-Braves is of course a bizarre matchup because the World Series shouldn't be contested between two NL West teams, but aside from that it's cool to see Houston and Atlanta. There are very few really big American cities that have as much in common as these two. Houston always struck me as being like Atlanta but with proximity to the sea instead of proximity to the mountains, and even though that means that Houston is worse I've always figured that I could enjoy living there.

Dusty Baker was the Giants' manager when I learned to love baseball and I'd be happy for him if he finally won, but it's weird to see him representing the American League and anyway I have too many reasons to root for the Braves, not least of which is that they took out the dastardly Dodgers.

[Хahar 🤔]

Atlanta has such a rich history of coming up short, from the 1990s Braves dynasty that seldom won it all to 28-3, that I think the Astros have a very good chance of winning.

The Braves certainly hit 95% probability to win the World Series in-game tonight. With Georgia football independently at 35-40% to win the College Football playoff, there had to be about 97% chance of winning something this year. I still think they will, but hopefully it's limited to one title. Guess I'd prefer that to be UGA but not by all that much.

I'm not sure what relevance the Georgia Bulldogs have to a discussion of Atlanta teams.

[Хahar 🤔]

Fun fact: there hasn’t been a WS winner that has clinched on their home field since 2013.  Every champion since then has clinched either on the road or at a neutral site.  The streak continued last night.

Another fun fact and continued streak - a different winner every year since 2013. 8 unique champs.

Running through the list in my mind, I think that this is the second-longest such streak ever, behind 1978 to 1987 (Yankees, Pirates, Phillies, Dodgers, Cardinals, Orioles, Tigers, Royals, Mets, Twins).

[Хahar 🤔]

My new favorite team is the Philadelphia Phillies.