nrockway

100%. I cringe multiple times a game listening to him talk about baseball, but his heart and pride is exactly where it should be. He's a homer and Benetti was not one, Benetti's the kinda guy who would've seen the Sox lose on that terrible infield fly call and been like, "yeah that's a reasonable call, it sucks but it's fair, the umpires do a hard job and don't get the thanks they deserve". Schriffen at least has the right reaction to BS, he knows which team he's representing and isn't interviewing for a national job. IMO, the primary duty of the home team announcer is to be a homer. I would've hoped he knew more about baseball, but he's got some time. The tools are right.

Well put. I won't criticize the writer as an individual, but the decline in journalism across the board is very obvious and unfortunate. I'm one of those people who takes sports journalism as seriously any other form of it, they report on an industry worth billions of dollars and worth an incalculable amount to people's psyches. Roger Angell is probably my favorite sports writer, and I doubt we'll see another one like him because no outlet is going to pay a writer to go chill out with Bob Gibson or Steve Blass* for a week and then spend 3 months writing an article about it. Nowdays, AJ Pierzynski or Mookie Betts will "interview" the player for 30 minutes and ask questions like "is baseball hard?" "how does it feel when you get a hit? "what's your favorite color?" It takes time to do journalism and write a proper article, but time is money, and journalism is not a very profitable industry. What a shame, we, the public, suffer for it. *The Steve Blass essay is incredible. You find that reality has better stories to tell than any piece of fiction.

I agree with you completely. It's not in the same universe of bad, but it's a different kind of bad and it's still bad. It's the kind of bad where nobody even wants to watch the team(s) in a sports town. I imagine people liked watching the Black Sox and had pride in their performance up until they sold their souls. Gambling and PEDs, in my opinion, is a different beast entirely than just being bad. I worry about the future of professional sports because of gambling, but I worry about the present of Chicago sports because they all suck.

dig up that thread I'm referencing, in terms of W/L in all major sports it actually is and it isn't close. Every one of our teams is a loser. Black Sox at least won some games.

This is literally the worst moment in Chicago sports history, our gone but not forgotten friend South Side Hitmen did the math. It's not a great moment for the city of Chicago either. This is the type of moment that tests the Chicago sports fan, tests the Chicagoan. Will he crumble under the weight of his desperation and become an Orioles fan or will he be resolute, steadfast, strong, wise...and watch a different TV show for the next couple of months? Personally, I don't buy your threats. I see an internal contradiction in what I write in my post and the act of "supporting" the work of Jerry Reinsdorf, Ben Pogofsky, Mike Clevinger, but I think if your fandom is tied to who owns and operates the team, who plays for it, you're destined to be unhappy. Reinsdorf will die, Clev will retire and the Chicago White Sox will still be the Chicago White Sox.

What changes? Grifol will be gone regardless, Getz is the replacement for "necessary changes" that were already made and so is not going anywhere. Personally I don't see a reason for Getz to be gonez, we're still on Rick and Kenny's wild ride in terms of the players on the field and I'm halfway impressed by the talent in the minors. I had some hopes that this collection of bums might've impressed and played .500ish ball, but everyone knew coming into the season that this was a lost year regardless of who was GM. what would wunderkind David Stearns have done differently with this roster? Because I'm not so sure the Mets are in a better place than the Sox are, aside from having an owner who is willing to spend. I like our minor league talent better, frankly, Drew Gilbert is probably the only guy in their system we don't have a better version of. The biggest change on the horizon will be not having to pay Eloy and Moncada and you hope they use that money properly. Since I can't predict the future, I guess I'll have to wait and see. In the mean time, if I'm going to spend 2 hours watching a baseball game, I'm not going to watch it and hope we lose. Why would I do that to myself? Why spend my free time making myself miserable? I don't get it.

It sucks to watch a losing team, you want the people responsible for its construction to face some consequences, but I can't understand the desire to want your team to lose. There are some logical reasons to want your team to lose, ie to tank for a better pick or to force the hand on firing executives/coaches. Well, Hahn and Kenny already got fired and there's no doing better than the 10th pick. There is still some pride in sports fandom, it's an analogy for pride in the place you're from, a less chauvinistic kind of nationalism. If you're a patriotic citizen, you might not like the people in charge but you don't want your country to fail, you want it to get better. You guys should be patriotic Sox fans. Critical of the morons in charge, objective about the performance on the field, watch the game and hope for a win. I think, in a way, you're disrespecting yourself by considering yourself a fan and wishing for losses. Give up the fandom, find a new nation if you feel that way. I'm gonna keep rooting for these unlikable losers, a brighter future is on the horizon.

"I can finally be my authentic self when I go to an arena and watch a ball game. I once was lost, now I am found, there is joy in the presence of Angel Reese" (Luka Doncic 15:10). I can't believe people get paid to write this garbage, it's marketing copy written in the sort of language you learn about in college to write about, I dunno, Foucault or microaggressions or something. Also, it reminds me of that Onion article about the Marlins' only fan. https://www.theonion.com/florida-marlins-delay-game-until-their-fan-shows-up-1819571683

getting even Leasure for Fat Lynn is a win.

"We got our ass kicked...it's just a situation"

hey look, new Grifol quote just dropped. "This is not them against Pedro, Pedro against them. It’s just a situation...It’s over.” "It's just a situation" - Pedro Grifol

He already plays third base for the Cardinals

since he's been playing well, that's the sort of thing he should say. "yeah my teammates fuckin suck. they're losers, they should be beating themselves up, there's penance in self-flagellation" is not a very diplomatic answer. I much prefer Lee undermining Grifol. That's awesome. Hopefully we see more of that and Griffey's gone before the solstice.

05/23/24 Seattle Mariners designated LHP Sammy Peralta for assignment. 05/23/24 Seattle Mariners signed free agent LHP Dallas Keuchel to a minor league contract. you mean we could've had Keuchel?!!?

wtf

triple against a lefty. nice work, Sheets

That's pretty impressive, I'm surprised Vaughn made contact that many times with a man on base.

If you have 8 guys to get through 3 innings, why not? If the starting pitcher is going well, keep him in, sure, but 6 feels right to still make use of the bullpen without taxing it. I think a bigger crime is relievers being unable to pitch more than an inning. Kopech faced one batter tonight and he was literally just a starting pitcher, I think he has the stamina.

If you have 13 pitchers on the team, you might as well use them. I kind of agree with you that you if you have starters go deeper into games, you can have a smaller bullpen and carry an extra platoon bat or something. Otherwise I don't think it's "analytics" to say that a fresh reliever is generally a better pitcher than a tired starter who's gone through the order a couple times. Do you really want to see Chris Flexen and Mike Clevinger go into the 9th inning? God help us. I think your example of Skenes is a good point, they should've let him go until he got hit. It happened to Giolito last year too, 6 no hit innings at exactly 100 pitches. Joe Kelly came in the next inning and gave up a RBI double to Kiner-Falefa. The magic number is dumb, throwing so hard is why their arms fall off, but it's probably close enough. 6 innings seems like a reasonable amount of innings for a starting pitcher to me.

my question is, why do they put it on the screen as though it tells you anything? "39% strikeout probability" why not just put down there "hey it's bad when you have 2 strikes, you better be careful, you might strike out". I think that's more honest about what's probably going to happen. They could also just do nothing like every other broadcast. I didn't like when they added the strike zone box in either, pretty soon the overlay is going to be so extreme you can't even see the baseball being played. I'm just wondering who this is marketed toward, somebody who likes data but doesn't understand baseball? I I'm going to make an educated guess and say it's for the gambler's benefit. I'm thinking about how Benetti wanted to talk about WOBA and such on the broadcast, but who really gives a s%*#? Does the stats nerd just want to feel noticed or something? He can look these things up himself and that's more fun and you can get the specifics of what you're looking for. You don't need apple bot telling you "hey if he gets a hit here, it'll probably score a run". What does the 9-year-old think when he sees it, I wonder. Maybe it inspires an interest in math and probability but probably he's just going to start using draftkings on mom's phone and how he's got a system.

Michael Kopech, the lefty specialist. Bring him in to face one lefty then he's done. why?

Mental things that can’t be quantified. I wish they’d stop trying to “predict” sports, that’s part of the magic to me. Even weather conditions, I doubt that’s baked in. I assume it’s just “what has this hitter done in the past on this count” which is a meaningful data point, but the average fan doesn’t need to be told that a 0-2 count is not a desirable count to be in. And I don’t think those data are very useful at predicting the future. Personally, I would’ve thought the Sox would be better this year because of the “predicted” WARs of the guys on the team based on past production. A lot of posters predicted Benintendi would be dreadful this year, I disagreed because the data said he’d regress to the mean, but they were right.

I like when people attempt to turn quality into quantity, it's a worthy feat. Helps us to understand the world around us. It's usually wrong or misleading though, I don't get along with numbers that mislead and masquerade as objective. Also I think it's a funny bit that I'll run into the ground.

I love to complain and I hate Apple. Why do they put that stupid probability thing at the bottom? I get how they came up with the figure, but it's never accurate. Does it account for the probability that the pitcher's mind is a million miles away and he throws a hanging slider because he's not focused? No, because you can't measure that, and the hitter doesn't have a 24% chance of getting a hit in that specific instance, he has an incalculable chance. common sense might help, you might assume what could happen when the count is 0-2 or 3-0 or whatever. why do they have to put an exact figure on things that you can't actually quantify? dumb. appeals to a certain type of baseball fan though, the pseudo-mathematician.

That was worst of all. It's one thing to be terrible at your job, it's another thing to get totally fucked over by the fascist umpire and say "please sir may I have another". I guess that's a nice departure from his typical post-game comments where he impersonates the world's worst motivational speaker.